The Spiritual Practice of Offering What You Have

Several months ago, I received one of those routine emails from Practicing the Way. You know the kind: ministry updates, stories from other churches, resources you tell yourself you'll read later. Most of the time, I skim them. Sometimes I delete them without opening them.

This time, I clicked.

There’s a church in Denver, Colorado, that hosts an annual church-wide reflection retreat where they spend half of their time reflecting on the previous year and the other half of the time looking ahead. I was immediately curious. An entire church retreat? I’ve only ever experienced that as a summer opportunity, where hour-long teachings and small group questions in the morning intersect with afternoon fun at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

What sort of weirdos sign up for an all-church retreat in January where you most definitely cannot go to the Boardwalk?

As it turns out, the people at this church in Denver do, and the more I learned about how they do it and the ways the church is flourishing, the more I thought maybe they’re onto something.

I started thinking about how I could make that happen at my own church - a place where I’m not on staff, I’m relatively new, and I don’t know many people. I started looking through their calendar of events, searching for anything like this or anything that would pair well with a church-wide reflection retreat. Aside from Practicing the Way and Emotionally Healthy Relationships, both of which are 8-week courses offered once a year, there wasn’t anything people could engage in that offered training or support in the cultivation of regular rhythms of reflection.

I recalled a few sermons that invited reflection, and if people were open to those invitations, they might be effective. What I find in my experience is that even when someone hears a new idea or invitation and thinks it’s a great idea, they might stick with it for about two weeks before giving up or forgetting about it, because there isn’t anyone guiding them through it.

It struck me that the problem wasn't a lack of information.

We live in an age of information abundance. Any spiritual practice I could recommend is available through a podcast, YouTube video, online course, blog post, or book. Within seconds, most of us can access more wisdom than previous generations could have imagined.

The problem isn't information. The problem is formation. Knowledge may show us a path, but it rarely walks us down it.

My spiritual director once told me that we cannot guide ourselves into new levels of understanding. We can will ourselves into a new habit for a little while. We can read books. We can listen to podcasts. We can become inspired. These are all great and play a role in our growth and formation. But eventually, we reach the edge of what we know.

It’s not a criticism, it’s simply the truth. We don't know what we don't know. We don't know what obstacles are normal. We don't know what gifts await on the other side of sustained practice. We need willing guides. We need gentle, truth-telling companions. We need people who have walked the road before us, who are willing, like Jesus, to say, “Come and see.”

Then it occurred to me: That’s me. I’ve been there.

I've spent years learning practices of reflection, both on my own and in seminary: the prayer of examen, silence and solitude, centering prayer, embodied practices, and more.

I've spent years sitting with spiritual directors. Seeing a spiritual director was a requirement throughout seminary and for my spiritual direction certification. Month after month, year after year, meeting with the same person who came to know me well and witnessed both my struggles and my growth.

I've spent years discovering that transformation rarely happens through information alone. In fact, it was during my second year of seminary that I sensed something seismically shifting in my experience of God. I learned how to accept myself and how to allow myself to be fully known, loved, and accepted by God.

That sounds simple now.

It wasn't.

I didn’t learn that in any book, lecture, or small group discussion. I learned it and integrated it through hundreds of hours of centering prayer and silence over months and years.

I've experienced what it means to have someone walk alongside me. Not only my own spiritual director, but my seminary colleagues, professors, friends, and family. None of us makes it through this life, or grows into the people we hope to become, entirely on our own.

And then it occurred to me.

Maybe this was something I could offer. Not because I've arrived. Not because I've mastered any of it. But because I've walked the path long enough to know where some of the trail markers are. Long enough to say to someone else what others have said to me: “Come and see.”

The vision of a church-wide reflection retreat was compelling, but it also felt a few steps ahead of where we were. Before people can spend a weekend reflecting on an entire year, they have to learn how to notice a day, a week, or a month.

The Denver retreat gave me a destination. What I needed next was a trailhead: a simple, sustainable invitation that would help people practice paying attention to their lives and God's presence within them. An invitation to slow down, reflect, and notice together.

A day or two later, I came across a book of poetry. All of a sudden, I had an idea.

I spent the next few days turning it over in my mind, jotting down notes, sketching out possibilities, and typing random thoughts into my phone during sales meetings. As the idea began to take shape, I started feeling nervous.

Like, "Oh shoot, this could be nothing. Or it could be something."

For a few weeks, I carried the idea around with me. Eventually, I worked up the courage to text one of the pastors at church: "I've been pondering some things. I'd love to explore an idea with you..."

A few weeks later, we found time to meet, and I shared the very rough draft of what would eventually become poetry + prayer.

I remember feeling surprisingly tender. Protective, even. The idea wasn't finished yet. It was still forming. Sharing something this early in my creative process is wildly out of character for me. I much prefer presenting a polished plan: every detail considered, every question anticipated, every loose end tied up neatly.

This was different.

Letting someone into the creative process before I knew exactly what I was making felt both exciting and vulnerable. Exciting because I've learned over time that two or three heads are usually better than one. Vulnerable because once an idea leaves your notebook and enters a conversation, it no longer belongs entirely to you.

It begins to change. It picks up other people's questions, experiences, insights, and imagination. What started as my idea was slowly becoming our idea.

After that initial meeting, I worked up the courage to text my two closest friends. These are women I've served alongside for years. They've witnessed my faith deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction. They've most definitely heard me swear. And perhaps most importantly, they've earned my trust.

We've walked similar roads, but they've been walking them longer. Their wisdom, honesty, and feedback carry weight with me, so even though we often approach things differently and bring different gifts to the same table, I wanted to know what they thought.

“I’m doing something new at church. It’s in the baby phase. It may never make it out. But it’s exciting.” Their responses gave me the courage to lean in.

I continued refining the concept and landed on what would become a summer trial run. I didn’t have to commit to an entire year. I just had to commit to one summer. Before moving forward, I was invited to share it with the church staff as a kind of beta test. I wanted their honest feedback, but more than that, I wanted their perspective.

I wasn't asking them to create a new program or take on more responsibility. I was simply asking them to consider whether this might be a helpful offering for the people they were already shepherding. If I were willing to do the work, could this become another pathway for people to slow down, pay attention, and grow? A pathway they could support?

What I offered them was still rough around the edges. More sketch than blueprint. More possibility than plan. But their response was encouraging. As I left the meeting, it felt like this little idea was taking on a slightly new form. It still resembled the original vision, but somehow it was becoming stronger, clearer, more connected.

This is what happens when we dare to offer what we have in the safety of a loving community.

Then it was time to really get to work. This is the part I love. Getting into the weeds on a project is one of my favorite things…just do not ask me to pull actual weeds.

As the details began to take shape and the summer series started to feel more connected, it was time to share this baby-now-toddler idea with the entire church. For me, this is one of the more real tests. Creating an online sign-up page and putting an announcement in front of four or five hundred people is its own kind of vulnerability.

You're essentially asking:

Is this actually something people want?
Will anyone come?
Who is this for?
Have I completely misread the room?

The rest of the details are so boring. You don’t need to hear about the slow trickle and then wave of sign-ups. It’s not critical that you know that we totally forgot to order the supplies, but they made it just in time. It’s totally fine, and completely unimportant to know, that we spilled a large bag of ice on the floor minutes before people were supposed to arrive. And don’t pay attention to the fact that at the last minute, six more people signed up, and we didn’t have enough packets. It’s fine and so boring. Truly.

But none of that is the story.

The story is what happened when people actually showed up.

All you need to know is…

We had our first gathering. It was beautiful.

When I would have been thrilled with ten people showing interest, nearly forty people (women, men, young, old, and in-between) came together in a way I could have never anticipated. What could have crashed and burned instead had the audacity to gently soar.

I thought I was preparing a series to help people lean into the spiritual discipline of paying attention to their lives and the world around them. What I witnessed was a collective inhale and exhale: joy and laughter, discomfort and awkwardness, curiosity and anticipation about what the evening might become.

Nothing ever truly prepares you for what happens when people from all walks of life, all ages and stages, come together, share a meal, and pay attention. You cannot plan that. I cannot plan that. We can only hope for it.

What struck me most wasn't the turnout, though that was certainly encouraging. It was the participation. In a community where potluck sometimes feels like a four-letter word, people brought incredible food and genuinely seemed to enjoy sharing it. People who had never written poetry before wrote poetry. People who rated themselves a one out of ten on the poetry comfort scale sat alongside lifelong poetry lovers, and both contributed equally.

We watched a short conversation about creativity and the Holy Spirit. Then each table created a collaborative poem from individual lines written by practical strangers ten minutes before. What emerged wasn't polished or perfect. It was honest. And it was beautiful.

At one point, I found myself looking around the room, realizing that the thing I had hoped for was already happening. The room felt alive in a way I hadn’t anticipated. People weren't consuming content. They were creating something together. They were listening. They were paying attention. They were contributing.

They were allowing their stories, experiences, and imaginations to shape something larger than any one person could have created alone. In other words, they were practicing exactly what I had hoped they would practice. I was so overwhelmed with the response that, naturally, I texted my friends with an update mid-group poem. I couldn’t help myself.

When I think back to the moment I saw the video about the church in Denver at their church-wide reflection retreat (with no Boardwalk), I’m filled with gratitude. I still want to see some iteration of that retreat become a reality for my own community. I’m hopeful that we’re taking the first of many steps in that direction. But I can’t imagine what it would look like if we had jumped to that retreat and skipped the process of cultivating and nurturing a steady rhythm of paying attention.

Looking back, I realize that poetry + prayer was never really about poetry. It was about paying attention. It was about creating space. It was about trusting that if enough people showed up willing to bring what they had, something beautiful might emerge.

And that's exactly what happened.

The Denver church gave me a vision. A book of poetry gave me a trailhead. A community gave the idea room to grow. Maybe that's how most meaningful things begin. Not fully formed or perfectly planned. Just someone willing to offer what they have: an idea, an invitation, a poem. Trusting that in the hands of a loving community, it might become something more.

And if we're lucky, we may even discover there were poets among us all along.