Seeking Authentic Voice

This morning dawned bright and sunny, a welcome relief from the seemingly endless rain that is defining this late spring and early summer season in SE Michigan. I do love cloudy, rainy days and take them as an invitation to read, reflect, and do interior work both within me and within my home or the church. However I have a vested interest right now in balancing this rain with sun and warmth: walking to yoga and nurturing my baby vegetable garden. Walking to yoga is one of my CREDO II "Rule of Life" practices. Five times a week, sometimes more, I rise early and walk to an early morning yoga class. Sometimes the first class is at 7am but on Saturday it is 8am and on Monday, my day off, I usually take the 9:30 class. The walk is only fifteen minutes each way, not far. It is a lovely walk through quiet tree-lined neighborhoods. Walking is an intentional decision.  I could ride my bike or drive the car. I do love to ride my bike and on hot summer mornings it is one of my fa...

A couple of weeks ago I packed a giant suitcase and prepared to head off for eight days into the unknown. I would join some thirty other Episcopal priests, fifty-five years old and older, from all over the country, for a time to reflect on our lives. We would gather at a retreat center in the heart of Mississippi. That fact alone, that we would be in Mississippi, was enough to cause me to be a little guarded. (Not that I had ever BEEN in Mississippi...). I had to schedule this CREDO retreat sometime last summer - gotta claim one's space when the invite comes - even though it is really hard to project out and decide when will actually be a good time to be gone for eight days. As it turns out this was probably the perfect time for me to go. I was exhausted, completely done in from a year of really GOOD hard work. I know this to be so, but I've come to realize just how true it is- good stress is just as wearing on the body as bad stress. As far as the body knows, stress is stre...