Not only the seasons of the natural world, but also the seasons of life circumstances, bodily limits, relational realities, and inner change. Every so often, I find it helpful to pause and attend to where I’ve been, where I am now, and how I long to move into what is emerging.

Recently, I finished my first year of doctoral work. My oldest child is about to “graduate” from preschool. And I can feel the transition from spring to summer — not so much in the weather, because I live in the PNW, but in the widening of our schedule, the lazy mornings, and the constant question: What are we going to do next?

Most often, the answer is: I don’t know.

I have found myself frustrated by this unknowing. My schedule and routines were working. They were holding us and helping us move through the days with some sense of rhythm and steadiness. And now the season is changing.

Our capacity as a family is both growing and becoming strained by that very growth.

So, in an effort to meet this frustrating mystery of life together with curiosity and compassion, I’ve crafted a simple examen for the end of a season. It is my current practice of offering loving attention to this messy life that is mine. It’s also a way of discerning with God and community what longs to be noticed, honored, released, or carried forward.

You may not be in the same season I am.

Your life may not be shaped by the academic calendar, preschool graduations, or the unreliability of childcare. Perhaps you have already moved through a season of frustrating unknowing and are settling into something deeper and steadier.

If so, you might bookmark this for later because life is lively. Seasons are always changing. And each new season invites us to pause before rushing forward, to get curious about our longings, to attend to our particularities, and to practice living rather than merely existing.

A Simple Examen for the End of a Season

You might move through this practice slowly in one sitting, or return to one section at a time over several days. There is no need to answer every question. An examen is meant to cultivate attention and communion, so allow your attention be drawn toward what feels most alive, tender, resistant, or true.

1. Begin with an image

Consider this past season of life. It could be the last few months, the school year, a stretch of work, a relationship, or any period of time that feels like it is coming to some kind of close or significant transition.

Allow an image, metaphor, color, or sensation to come forward.

There may be one or several. Ultimately, they do not need to make sense, and they do not need to be harmonious. They are a collection of what feels true to what you just lived.

You might ask:

What image arises from this season?
What color or texture does this season carry?
Where do I feel this season in my body?
Is there a word, phrase, or metaphor that wants to emerge?

Let this representation take some form. You might draw it, speak it aloud, write a few lines of poetry, move your body, or simply sit with it in silence.

Allow sacred presence to meet you in the noticing.

2. Remember with tenderness

Now turn your attention toward the gifts of the season.

Attend to moments of beauty, awe, kindness, delight, provision, or grace. Let yourself savor what was sweet, even if the season was also difficult.

You might ask:

What memory do I want to keep?
Where did I experience beauty?
What surprised me with joy?
Who or what helped me make it through?
Is there one memory that could act as a seal for this season — something that holds and blesses the whole of it?

Stay here as long as you need. Gratitude doesn’t erase grief. Instead, tenderness can make room for both to exist together.

3. Listen to the parts that carried you

A change of season often requires that we change too.

The ways we have managed, thrived, coped, or simply gotten by may not be what we need in the season ahead. Some parts of us may be tired. Some may feel proud. Some may feel anxious about what comes next. Some may be ready to rest. Others may be asking for more room.

With compassion, you might ask:

Is there a part of me that has been working very hard lately?
What has this part been carrying?
What has it helped me survive, protect, accomplish, or tend?
Can I honor its labor without asking it to keep working in the same way forever?

Then, gently listen:

What does this part long for now?
Does it need rest, support, appreciation, freedom, or a new role?
Is it ready to share the load?
Is there another part of me that has been neglected and now longs to be seen?

Try not to rush toward fixing or managing what you notice. Let the practice be one of attentive welcome.

4. Notice the gaps and invitations

As you look back over the season, notice what felt absent, undernourished, or simply longs for your attention.

You might ask:

What felt missing in this past season?
What longing kept returning?
What ache deserves my attention?
What part of life has been asking for more space?
Is something new naturally beginning to emerge?

Notice if there is a felt sense of how you might honor these longings, gaps, aches, or possibilities in the season ahead.

You do not need a full plan. Instead, start with a small next faithful step.

5. Receive the wisdom of the season

Every season offers something, though we may not recognize it without intentional reflection.

Take a moment to consider what this past season has taught you.

You might ask:

What wisdom has this season offered me?
What gift did I receive, even if it came through difficulty?
Is there a thread I can trace through these months or years that sustained or shaped me?
Was there a shift that created greater freedom, joy, honesty, or truthfulness?
What do I know now that I did not know before?

Then ask:

How might this wisdom be woven into what is emerging?
How might it shape my rhythms, relationships, practices, or prayers?

6. Carry one thing into prayer

Of all that you have noticed, is there one part, emotion, memory, image, or gift that wants to be carried into prayer or contemplation?

You might hold it before God with or without words.

7. Bless the threshold

As you mark the transition from one season to another, allow an image, metaphor, color, or sensation to emerge for the season ahead. Allow your body and imagination to engage what is emerging.

You might ask:

What hope do I carry into this new season?
What image helps me move toward it?
What kind of support do I need?
Who might I invite into my discernment?

Attention itself is a kind of blessing. John O’Donohue describes the vibrancy of blessing like this: “Blessing is a more robust and grounded presence; it issues from the confident depth of the hidden self, and its vision and force can transform what is deadlocked, numbed, and inevitable. When you bless someone, you literally call the force of their infinite self into action.”1 To bless is to see what has been burdened and to lift off the burden with creative, lively words of love. As you attend to what was, is, and is becoming, you are blessing your very life. May that blessing be expansive, flowing from your current season to the next and from your life to the lives of others.

The branches, often brandished by sweet children, sway like joyful fingers reaching toward the heavens. Cloaks create a colorful path lined by a crowd swelling with energy.

And then the word: Hosanna.

We tend to hear it as celebration, often in the voice of Brooke Ligertwood. We hear it as a kind of ancient “hallelujah.”

But that’s not what it means.

Hosanna means: Save us.
Or more precisely: Save us now.

And suddenly, Palm Sunday sounds less like a parade and more like a collective plea.

The crowd is not just honoring Jesus.
They are asking something of him.

They are looking at him and saying:

Be the one who fixes this.
Be the one who changes our circumstances.
Be the one who makes this easier.

They all come with clearly defined visions of salvation.

And Jesus does not meet their expectations.

I’ve been sitting with this alongside the work of Richard Schwartz, and I can’t unsee the connection.

Schwartz names something that feels almost uncomfortably familiar.

Most of us carry a deep, often unconscious belief that someone else will finally come
and make us feel whole. He describes this as a rescuer fantasy.

It shows up most clearly in romantic relationships. It’s the hopeful expectation that another person will fill what is missing, soothe what is activated, and steady what feels chaotic inside us.

And yet, something else happens.

The people we love don’t rescue us. They trigger us.

They become what Schwartz calls tor-mentors—both the source of our irritation or suffering and the doorway into what is still unhealed. They mentor us towards wholeness only by activating what is most painful.

And once you see that dynamic, it’s hard not to see it everywhere, including Palm Sunday.

The crowd is doing something profoundly human. They are taking their internal experience, including their fear, their longing, their exhaustion, their hope, and placing it all onto Jesus.

You can almost imagine the different parts involved:

A part that is tired of instability:
Make things predictable again.

A part that is afraid:
Keep us safe.

A part that is angry:
Overthrow what’s oppressing us.

A part that is desperate:
Please, just fix this.

And together, they cry: Hosanna. Save us.

Jesus doesn’t reject the cry.
He doesn’t correct their theology.
He doesn’t silence their longing.

He receives it. And then he invites them to experience salvation differently.

He comes on a donkey, not a war horse.
He moves toward vulnerability, not domination.

He does not take control of their external world. Instead, he keeps moving toward the deeper work. The healing of fragmentation and death, of systems that run deep within us. And he draws others into that work.

He sends two disciples to fetch the donkey.
He allows the crowd to hope, even as he reshapes what they hope for.
He washes feet, eats, and prays with his friends.
He asks them to remain with him in his unrest.
He tends to a wounded servant at the moment of his arrest.

Jesus refuses to become the kind of savior who rescues from a distance.

Instead, he draws people into his life, into participation, and into a way of being that is grounded, compassionate, and healing.

So, I’ve found myself wondering:

What if Jesus does not come to take over our inner world, but to restore our capacity to be present to it?

Rather than saving us from our activated parts, salvation might be the life of God moving with us and within us, tending to the parts of us that feel chaotic and need compassionate care.

In this way, Jesus empowers and accompanies our healing by drawing close rather than decisively acting on our behalf from a distance.

Said differently, God welcomes us to become more present to ourselves, our neighbors, and the world as compassion takes root in how we relate to our inner life.

Palm Sunday, therefore, holds up a mirror, asking: What kind of salvation do you want?

Because “Hosanna” can mean: Save me from what’s happening.

And maybe it also means: Save me from the ways I’ve learned to survive what’s happening.

• Save me from the instinct to suppress, eliminate, or push away what feels uncomfortable.

• Save me from the reflex to hand my inner world over to someone else.

• Save me from the belief that I am only okay if everything around me changes.

This is not a rejection of salvation.

It is a deeper participation in it. A deeper participation in the life of Christ.

We might hear ourselves, with the crowd, saying, “Jesus, save me now!”

And like Jesus, I hope we listen. I hope we get close to the pain within us and around us. May we become curious, befriending what is crying out. May we participate in salvation as we, in the company of Jesus, learn to remain present, grounded, and alive even in the midst of what is unfolding within us and around us.

I find myself returning to the image of the children, waving their palm branches.

Small hands. Open. Reaching.

And I wonder if our parts are like those children.

Not problems to solve, but young and sometimes wounded places within us still reaching for attention, for care, and for love.

What if salvation begins with turning toward them with patience, curiosity,
and compassion?

But the last week or so has felt anything but spacious.

It’s felt like a gradual buildup of stress.
A dip into anxiety.
A nervous system entirely frayed.

Parts of me have been getting louder and more active—protective, urgent, overwhelmed parts that crowd out Self-energy.

And somewhere in the middle of that, I found myself wondering:

How did I get here…in the middle of my “spacious” Lent?

Thankfully, an overnight trip with friends was coming up. I imagined working on my laptop during the day and resting and being present with people I love in the evening.

So, with a massive headache, I stopped for ten minutes on a hydromassage chair, trying to coax my tight muscles into relaxing. And then I drove an hour north, stopping at a café for coffee, a bite to eat, and a plan to complete a list of school assignments.

I opened my backpack and…

No laptop.

Just like that, everything in me flooded.

Dread.
Frustration.
Anger at myself.
A tiny, irrational flare of anger at my two-year-old who had “helped” me pack by filling my bag with treasures, but not my computer.

And underneath it all—sadness.

My plan was ruined.

So, naturally, I send out an urgent text to my husband. I considered turning around. I considered asking him to drive it up to me. He even offered.

Every part of me wanted to fix it, recover it, get back to the plan.

And then something unexpected happened.

Silas—who is not particularly invested in IFS language—gently reflected back to me what he’s been hearing me talk about for a year.

He asked about my parts: What if you don’t try to fix it? What if you check in with the part of you that wants to have fun?

I experienced a bit of a jolt. I couldn’t access my own Self-energy, but through Silas’s compassionate text, I leaned on his. I found just enough space to start noticing the many parts vying for control of my inner world.

I noticed that there was a part of me that wanted to be with my friends and not worry about school. It wanted to have fun without feeling guilty for being irresponsible. Another part felt incredibly scared about “getting behind.” And there was a part that was exhausted from holding everything together. I even noticed this part experiencing relief. Relief that I couldn’t work. Relief that I simply couldn’t keep producing.

I didn’t suddenly feel peaceful. My body actually tightened more.

Sometimes space does that—it reveals what’s been held beneath the surface.

But something else was happening too.

I laughed.
I felt seen.
I was present in a way I wouldn’t have been otherwise.

And the next day, I didn’t rush home.

I lingered.

I think I’m beginning to understand something I didn’t before:

A spacious Lent isn’t necessarily one where everything inside me feels spacious. It may be that spaciousness is holding me. That salvation—this open space—is the container of my life, held within a God of infinite compassion.

Holding the anxious parts.
Holding the frustrated parts.
Holding the parts that still want control, productivity, certainty.

This is what I’ve been circling in these past reflections—the idea that salvation itself is spacious.

Not because it removes what’s hard, but because it can hold all of it.

If you find yourself in a similar place this Lent—more crowded than calm, more activated than at ease—you’re not doing it wrong.

You might actually be right in the middle of it, right in the middle of salvation.

Lent does not pull us away from our inner world, nor does it quiet our external struggles. Instead, Lent leads us into open space where the fragments of our lives can be seen, known with compassion, and held in the spaciousness of an endlessly creative God.

A few gentle questions to sit with this week:

• Is there a part of me that I’ve been trying to push out of the “spiritual” space of Lent?

• What might it look like to let that part be welcomed, rather than managed?

• If spaciousness feels out of reach, what parts of me are being revealed and compassionately held in this season of Lent?

I’m still learning this, slowly and imperfectly.

But I’m beginning to trust that spaciousness isn’t something I create.

It’s something I’m held within.

The first half of Lent was spent, among other things, dealing with a variety of sicknesses and watching Alysa Liu skate her way to Olympic gold. I was half-distracted on the couch when something in her movement caught my attention. It wasn’t just the athleticism or the artistry. It was the sense of watching someone move with strength and joy at the same time, disciplined but not frantic, focused but not driven by fear.

As she glided across the ice, I felt something in my own life wanting to move that way.

Strength without panic.
Focus without pressure.
Energy without violence.

And in that moment of recognition, I felt the faint movement of prayer, something I haven’t felt much over the past few years.

In the wake of my own season of faith deconstruction, the loss I have felt most deeply has been the loss of prayer. Not belief exactly. In many ways my faith feels truer now, but it is also more complicated. As old certainties unraveled, so did the easy intimacy I once felt with God. The prayers that once came effortlessly began to feel harder to reach.

Looking back, I can see that some of what once felt like spiritual vibrancy was entangled with forces I hadn’t yet learned to name—cultural assumptions, political loyalties, and forms of power that shaped my imagination of God. As those layers came into view, something in my interior life went quiet.

And strangely, the loss of prayer coincided with a loss of contact with myself as well. When the language of prayer disappeared, a certain kind of inner awareness disappeared with it.

Over time, prayer has begun to return in different ways as my faith continues to be reshaped. But I have still found myself longing for something I once knew, the sense that prayer could reach into the granular texture of ordinary life.

Not necessarily as words spoken to God.

But as a kind of awareness unfolding within me.

And oddly enough, in this Lenten season of spaciousness, Alysa Liu became part of that return. Watching her skate stirred something that felt like prayer again, an invitation to move more freely within myself and therefore more freely with God.

Prayer as Proprioception

Recently I’ve been thinking about prayer less as something we say and more as something we sense.

A word my husband introduced me to has helped me name this experience: proprioception.

He’s a soccer goalkeeper, and one of the things goalkeepers train for is proprioception, the body’s ability to sense where it is in space without needing to look. Because of proprioception, you can reach for a mug of coffee while your face is buried in a book. You know exactly which floorboard to avoid so you don’t wake the baby. You can walk through a familiar room in the dark.

The body knows where it is.

Increasingly, I’m beginning to suspect the soul can learn something similar.

Prayer, for me lately, has not been a designated “quiet time” or a carefully structured litany. Instead, it has felt like a subtle interior awareness, a sensing of where I am within my own crowded inner world.

A kind of proprioception of the soul.

And that awareness has begun revealing parts of me I usually move past too quickly.

An Icon of Integration

Orthodox theologians often describe icons as “windows” or “doors” between heaven and earth, not merely pictures of sacred reality but places where divine presence becomes perceptible. Windows and doors are not meant only to be looked at; they are openings that invite passage. In much the same way, icons—whether an ancient image, a blazing sunset, or a moment in ordinary life—invite participation.

Watching Alysa Liu skate, something in me experienced her performance in that way.

Her story only deepened the resonance. She had stepped away from her sport for a season. Then she returned, not under pressure but on her own terms. When she skated, she didn’t look frantic or burdened.

She looked alive. She was having fun.

It echoed something in my own life: stepping away from the academy while having children and returning later with a different set of values and expectations.

I simply kept watching.

The image of Alysa skating in her gold dress settled quietly in my imagination—an icon waiting for its meaning to unfold.

The Inner Drill Sergeant

During a graduate course on Internal Family Systems as a Spiritual Path, my professor invited us to engage and befriend one of the parts of ourselves carrying the most energy. For me, it was the part that carries much of my academic anxiety.

She is not subtle.

Her presence shows up as racing thoughts and a tight pulling sensation in my torso, an internal urgency that pushes me toward constant productivity. Her voice is clear and insistent:

You’re behind.
You’re not going to get everything done.
If you slow down, you’ll fail.

A cartoonish image of a drill sergeant blowing a whistle came to mind.

She is relentless because she believes panic is strategy. This part often sees my children, friends, and hobbies as distractions and obstacles. If she can make me anxious enough, the hope is that I’ll move faster and accomplish more.

In her mind, panic is the only way forward.

It is a violence with good intentions.

Internal Family Systems in Brief

Internal Family Systems (IFS) suggests that the inner life is less like a single voice and more like a community of voices. Within us are many “parts,” each carrying its own fears, strategies, and stories. Some parts carry wounds; others work hard to protect those wounds from being triggered.

But here is also a spacious center of awareness—often called Self.

The Self, which is akin to the imago Dei, is marked by compassion, curiosity, calm, clarity, confidence, courage, creativity, and connectedness.

Healing begins when we can notice our parts from that spacious place. In IFS language, this shift is called unblending.

Spaciousness

Unblending doesn’t mean eliminating the anxious part.

It simply means there is now a little space between me and the urgency.

And that space changes everything.

Instead of arguing with the drill sergeant, I can listen to her. Instead of being driven by her anxiety, I can begin to recognize the care hidden within it. I can meet her with compassion and truly befriend her.

Spaciousness is not the absence of intensity.

It is the presence of room.

Room for the anxious part to speak.
Room for the fear beneath her urgency.
Room for a different kind of energy to emerge.

As the drill sergeant felt heard, something softened. She didn’t disappear, but she didn’t need to shout quite so loudly anymore.

And then I realized something surprising.

The drill sergeant was only a façade, like one of those life-sized cardboard cutouts that look real from a distance but collapse when you step behind them.

My anxious part didn’t actually want to be the loud drill sergeant. When I asked her what shape she would rather take, she told me she wanted to be like Alysa Liu.

She still wanted to move fast.

But she wanted to move with joy.
With play.
With freedom.

And in that moment, Alysa Liu’s free skate at the 2026 Winter Olympics became a kind of sacred icon for me.

What the Icon Revealed

Watching Alysa Liu skate, I had seen something my system longed for before I had words for it.

A different relationship to effort.

A different relationship to discipline.

A way of moving that was powerful but not frantic.

My anxious part didn’t want to disappear. She simply wanted a different way to do her job.

Not a whistle-blowing drill sergeant, but a skilled and joyful skater.

She still wanted to move fast. But she wanted to do it for the sake of beauty, play, and the thrill of moving freely.

In other words, the part didn’t need to be silenced. It needed to be transformed.

The icon had shown me that possibility before my mind could articulate it.

As Maggie Ross writes, “icons are windows that show us our original face, our divinity, thus allowing us to live the fullness of our humanity.”1 She goes on to suggest that divine light does not appear instead of darkness, but shines from within it and through it—if we are willing to recognize the fullness of our humanity.2

Prayer as the Proprioception of the Soul

Which brings me back to proprioception.

The body knows where it is in space without needing to look.

And prayer may be the way the soul learns something similar.

Not by escaping our inner world.

But by sensing it more truthfully.

By noticing the anxious protector.
By allowing compassion to arise.
By discovering that urgency is not the only energy available to us.

Prayer, in this sense, is woven into the fabric of our lives.

What remains then is simple but requires great intention.

Breath.
Beholding.
Befriending.
Becoming freer.

And in that spaciousness I begin to realize something surprising:

Prayer was never really gone.

I simply needed to learn where my soul was again.

At the beginning of 2026, a word came to me: spaciousness.

I don’t always trust New Year’s words. They can feel like spiritualized goal-setting. But this one has stayed. It has lingered in my body. It has become an interior compass for when I am frozen in indecision, when my to-do list feels like a wall, or when I sense a longing but can’t quite locate it.

I’ve simply begun asking: What would cultivate spaciousness right now?

Sometimes the answer is small and ordinary like noticing how my work anxiety is growing in correlation to the growth of the papers littering my desk. Following spaciousness means I resist the urge to work through the discomfort (because there’s always an upcoming deadline) and instead take time to clear the physical space.

Other times spaciousness looks like slowing down enough to watch a show with my spouse. Life has felt tight lately—compressed schedules, compressed patience, compressed joy. Spaciousness in our relationship is not optimizing the evening but letting it expand where we are. Often that means the couch, together, watching Ponies or the Olympics.

But as Lent approaches, I’m realizing something significant: Spaciousness is not just a productivity strategy or a relational reset. It may be repentance.

Salvation as Open Space

In Writing the Icon of the Heart, Maggie Ross notes that one meaning of the Hebrew word for salvation is open space (Ps. 31:8).1 Salvation is not merely rescue from something; it is the creation of room—to breathe, to belong, to live within the vast web of life. Salvation is experienced in the mind and body as spaciousness: a liberation from violent constriction and a coming home to oneself in a vast world.

Ross insists that pain is essential to this openness. When faced rather than avoided, pain becomes invitation. It strips away the artificial barriers that divide us from ourselves, from one another, from the earth, and from God. But when pain is avoided, repressed, or forced into submission, we clutter our inner and outer worlds instead of making space for healing. Have you ever felt this? There’s an ache of loneliness, and the scrolling or online purchasing or addictive pattern temporarily eases the pain.

Ross is unsparing: the pollution of the earth mirrors the pollution of our souls. We choke on interior noise and external consumption. We construct what she calls a “toxic, phantasmagoric pseudo-world” that cannot bear silence because silence reveals it for the delusion it is.2

And so we live crowded.

Our minds are crowded.
Our schedules are crowded.
Our desires are crowded.
Our homes and devices are crowded.

And underneath all that noise, something truer waits to be heard.

Ross writes:

“Suffering and the gift of its transfiguration in the love of Christ is at the heart of Christianity. Pain is the source of compassion, and compassion shifts our perspective on pain, which frees us from fear. For pain to be transfigured, it must first be owned.”3

Lent, then, arrives not as restriction but as invitation to awaken to our mortality, to feel our pain in the company of the Holy, and to step into open space.

Repentance as Coming Home

Ross delightfully describes repentance as being “restored to ourselves (Luke 15:17).”4 That phrase echoes Howard Thurman’s invitation to listen to the sound of the genuine:

“The sound of the genuine is flowing through you. Don’t be deceived and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams (and) your ambitions that you don’t hear the sound of the genuine in you. Because that is the only true guide you will ever have and if you don’t have that you don’t have a thing. Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in yourself.”5

The sound of the genuine is not loud. It does not shout over our ambitions, our anxieties, or our compulsions. It is steady, compassionate, and flowing with divine love—the imago dei alive within us.

And yet, if we are honest, much of what moves us day to day does not feel like that sound.

Just this week, a protective part reacted to a vulnerable situation, flooding me with embarrassment. Before I knew it, I was doubting my need for medical care. Fear of embarrassment took over. As I sat alone in an emergency room weeping, I could sense that the tears were not due to my physical pain—something else was active. All it took was a simple question: “Embarrassment, can you step back a little?” And the flood of tears subsided.

The space that opened created a container of care, where I got to know this part that was simply trying to protect me.

The genuine is often buried beneath strategies we develop to survive pain.

And this is where repentance becomes more tender than we imagined.

Being restored to ourselves isn’t a matter of willpower. It is the tender creation of space so that our compassionate core can lead us toward greater freedom.

When we begin to listen this way the parts that have worked hard to keep us safe can feel exposed and activated. In the language of Internal Family Systems (IFS), managers optimize or criticize so we don’t feel what really hurts. Firefighters numb or distract when we get too close to the pain. We scroll. We perform. We produce. We binge. We react. We demonize.

Reactivity keeps our system loud and crowded.

The good news is that we do not approach it alone. In spaciousness, pain is held with compassion. Frank Rogers reminds us that compassion is not merely a human virtue but the very character of God. In fact, Jesus reframes the core commandment of holiness with this invitation: “Be compassionate just as your Father in heaven is compassionate” (Luke 6:36). Rogers writes, “At the very core of God’s identity, we find neither judgment, punishment, cold aloofness, nor unapproachable strictness…[but a] loving presence—a presence that is infinitely understanding about our shames and our pain[.]”6

This is the kind of compassion that makes open space possible. In its presence, pain begins to shift. It becomes a place of integration as our parts begin to trust that love, not fear, is leading the way. And when love leads, nothing inside us must be cast off.

Here, repentance becomes the healing it was always meant to be.

Spaciousness Within, Spaciousness Between

But salvation is not merely individual; it is relational.

If I have cultivated compassionate interior space where my pain can be witnessed with curiosity and compassion, then when I encounter yours, I am less threatened.

If I can tolerate my own discomfort, I can remain present to your discomfort.

If I can befriend my own exiles, I do not need to exile you.

If can hear the sound of the genuine within, I can hear it in you too.

Spaciousness within me becomes spaciousness between us—not distance but hospitality.

Practicing Spaciousness in Lent

Isaiah 58 reframes fasting as justice: sharing bread, loosening yokes, ceasing the pointing finger. When we remove the yoke and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, “your light shall rise in the darkness… you shall be like a watered garden.”

Lent, then, is not about shrinking ourselves but widening our capacity for compassion. Lent moves us toward freedom.

What if your fast this year was not primarily restrictive but spacious?

What if each day you asked:

• What pain have I been trying to anesthetize with busyness or noise?

• Is there an area of my life that longs for greater spaciousness?

• How can I create spaciousness for someone else today?

And here is the hope:

When we become more at home within ourselves, we become less reactive toward others.

Spaciousness is the ground of repentance. And as repentance restores us to ourselves, we begin to take up space differently in the world—less defended, less hurried, and more attuned to the holy in one another.

Throughout this Lenten season, I’ll be exploring the spirituality of Internal Family Systems (IFS)—a way of understanding why we react the way we do, and how we might grow into a steadier, more compassionate way of being in the world.

If that sounds like good Lenten work, I’d love for you to journey with me.

But when I look at my actual life, I see love practiced every day in ways that are easy and delightful, in ways that are utterly unpolished and deeply true. My most faithful teachers of this kind of love are my kids.

Have you ever encountered a child like this (or have you been one)? The kid who will not leave the house unless she is wearing her Spidey shirt, her Spidey mask, and listening to her favorite Spidey song on repeat. She webs strangers in the grocery store. She sleeps with no fewer than three Spidey stuffies—Mommy Spidey, Baby Spidey, and Other Spidey. It is utter devotion: messy, wholehearted, and entirely true to her.

And this devotion somehow makes room for even more exploration. One day she insists, with fierce clarity, “No, me is not Rhea. Me is Spidey!” The next day, with equal conviction, “No, me is not Rhea. Me is Little Koala!” And she spends the day clinging to my leg because she is, quite obviously, Little Koala.

Like many almost-three-year-olds, my daughter loves what she loves with abandon. She moves freely from one delight to the next, trying out her loves, discovering what makes life more fun, more interesting, and simply amazing. Last summer, she was enamored with ants. She would bend down to kiss each one, and then, mysteriously, they disappeared (she ate them all). Rhea no longer kisses ants, but she has been experimenting with singing unusually loudly in public spaces. To her great delight, people have feelings about this. The world, it seems, is wonderful.

Watching Rhea’s devotion to Spidey and her many other fascinations has me wondering: when did I last love something this absurdly, without trying to do it “right” but simply for the love of the thing itself? When did curiosity give way to self-consciousness? When did joy begin to feel like something that needed justification?

What about you? Can you remember a childhood obsession or hobby you once got lost in? Something you loved not because you were good at it but because you simply loved it? What sensation does that memory bring into your body right now?

It was in this space of wondering that I encountered the work of Karen Walrond, whose reflections on dabbling gave language to something I sensed but had not yet named. Walrond invites us to reclaim amateurism by pursuing a wide range of interests without the pressure to master them. Instead, we take them up for enjoyment, for love. And when enjoyment doesn’t arise, there is no failure, only information. Dabbling, then, becomes a practice of discernment and discovery. It helps us learn more about who we are and about the particular shape and texture of what challenges us and what brings us delight.

Before encountering her work, the word amateur evoked feelings of shame and judgment for being ordinary and not quite measuring up. But Walrond’s work has changed all of that for me. She encourages her readers to return to the original root of the word: amator, one who loves. An amateur, in this sense, is not someone doing something poorly, but someone who chooses to engage an activity for the sake of pleasure, curiosity, and love itself, regardless of outcome or expertise.

In her book, In Defense of Dabbling, Walrond explores the relentless pressures of perfectionism and hustle culture on human wellbeing and then responds not with theory alone but with practice. She goes on a mission to become an intentional amateur, dabbling in pottery, meditation, surfing, and more. What struck me was not just the variety of activities she dabbles in but the intentionality of her dabbling. She repeatedly uses the word avocation, giving weight and dignity to pursuits we often relegate to the margins of our lives. There is something grounding about naming an intense desire, like crafting an entire Christmas tree of felt ornaments or taking up a consistent writing practice, as an avocation rather than a hobby. It places our delights beside, not below, our vocations. It gives dignity to what has been diminished by a culture addicted to productivity and achievement.

Can you imagine a world where the first thing we asked one another isn’t “What do you do for work?” but “Tell me about some of your avocations?” It feels a bit thrilling. What would you want to say? Oh, I dabble in making my own paper. I try to get to the slopes a few times a month. I’ve started meeting up with friends on Tuesdays to discuss what we’re reading. I’ve been learning how to code on the weekends. Humans are so interesting!

Imagining life this way feels expansive, as it defies the relentless demands of competition and consumerism. But I rarely see it in adults. And when I do, I must admit that I’ve felt a tinge of jealousy and judgment. Jealousy of the time and resources others have to pursue life beyond work, family, and obligations. But when I attend to those feelings, I realize that they are pointing me toward a longing for more freedom—freedom for myself and for others. Freedom to play, to relax, to celebrate, and to savor life. And then I begin to wonder if amateurism is the path of freedom. Isn’t love what will ultimately save us? And maybe it starts by getting as granular as the love of crafting beautiful things for friends, connecting to the land by exploring challenging hikes, or squashing the tyranny of perfectionism by consistently trying new recipes. Maybe these are the beginnings of embodied love that draws us deeper into our humanity and opens space for others to embrace the beautiful particularities of their humanity.

And all this wondering has me contemplating one more layer of amateurism.

What if amateurism is not only a posture toward activities, but toward people as well? What if Rhea’s devotion to Spidey has something to teach me about love in my everyday relationships? While Karen Walrond focuses primarily on avocational pursuits, I cannot help but notice how living as an amateur might also reorient the way I love my spouse, my children, my neighbors, my friends, and those who I’ve yet to encounter.

To love as an amateur is to resist the illusion that we can ever fully know another (person, activity, etc.). It is to remain curious, to stay open to surprise, and to return again and again so we might behold one another as unfinished and full of depth. Perhaps love deepens not through expertise, but through a curiosity that refuses to close—one that refuses to be finished.

So, in this month that often narrows love into a single shape, I am wondering what it might look like to widen it again. To practice love that is playful, attentive, and free. To embody love that liberates rather than constricts. To practice a love that is curious and full of questions rather than definitive proclamations.

This February, I am not trying to love better. I am trying to remain an amateur at love. I’m trying to come to my relationships the way I come to a great mystery, with openness, humility, and delight. I have a hunch that this kind of love is the way we stay human together.

Two questions to sit with:

• Where in my life could amateurism bring greater freedom and delight?

• Who might I behold with fresh curiosity today?

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A Gentle Practice:

Place a hand somewhere grounding—on your chest or on the seat holding you up.

Let yourself arrive to this moment just as you are.

For being an amateur of your own life…

Bring to mind something you once loved simply for the joy of it.

It could be a childhood obsession, a half-forgotten hobby, or a small pleasure.

Notice what stirs in your body as you remember it.

Create a little place in your imagination for this lost delight, and allow it to nourish you now as it did in the past. There’s no need to move past this simple act of savoring. But if you find that the remembering activates something in you (frustration, joy, longing, etc.), tend to that sensation. Hold it tenderly so you might listen more closely to your life speaking.

For being an amateur in relationship…

Consider a person you interact with on a regular basis and who you know well.

Imagine meeting them again for the first time.

What do you notice as you approach them with curiosity rather than certainty? Do any questions or wonderings surface? Revel in the wonderings and linger a little longer, beholding the mystery of this person.

Take one final breath and whisper to yourself:
I’m allowed to love like an amateur.

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Beginning a new year. Practicing a new skill. Starting a project that just feels overwhelming.

This letter is an invitation to pause, listen, and respond to the parts of us that are groaning to be heard.

When I look for guidance on how to begin, I keep returning to Jesus.

I feel drawn to a God who meets us in beginnings, who lived through countless human beginnings.

God messily eating first foods. God learning to walk on wobbly, chubby legs. God waking his parents in the middle of the night. God discovering his likes and dislikes.
God practicing (and failing) at ordinary life skills.

How do those images land in your body?

For me, they bring a loosening. A lightness. A gentle permission to try something new and be bad at it. They make me feel more joyful about being human.

And oddly enough, contemplating the humanity of Jesus has me reflecting on a moment of disrupted contemplative silence—courtesy of my son, Rowan.

Picture this.

I’m participating in an online course on hosting group spiritual direction. We’re in the middle of a guided contemplative practice. The facilitator slowly repeats the phrase, “Be still and know that I am God,” dropping one word with each repetition, until only “Be” remains.

The moment is calm. Spacious. Centering.

And then (from the bathroom adjoining my office) I hear loud, strained groanings.

Be still and know that I am… ahhhhh.

At first, I’m annoyed that my then four-year-old chose this moment and this bathroom to do his business. Then it becomes impossible not to laugh.

Be still and know that I… ughhhh.

I quickly realize what’s happening. He’s wearing new “big boy” pants. The kind with buttons, and he cannot figure out how to pull them up.

Be still and know that… Come. On. Pants!!

He is utterly frustrated—stuck while trying to do something simple, new, and surprisingly hard.

And suddenly, I feel myself drawn into his groaning.

His groans weren’t noises interrupting the prayer; they were a prayer of their own.
A body learning.
A small human naming, in the only way he could, that something essential was hard.

As I listened to him struggle, I began to hear myself more clearly.

His groaning gave me permission to notice my own groans.

My groans typically aren’t as audible, but they are no less real.
They show up as tension. Fatigue. Uncertainty. Late-night scrolling. Quiet worry. A subtle sense of being behind. A particular part of my forehead that experiences relentless pressure.

It wasn’t the resolution of his struggle that taught me something. (He did figure out how to pull up the big boy pants). What lingers with me is the attention cultivated in that moment.

Groaning, I’m learning, is a kind of spiritual language.
Groaning reveals where life is pressing for growth.
It names longing before clarity, discomfort before discernment, desire before direction.

When we listen long enough, our groans teach us what matters.
They show us where we are being stretched.
And they invite us into holy attention.

In that bathroom moment, I didn’t fix my son’s struggle, and I didn’t fix my own.
Instead, I became more present to both, and even experienced awe. (Isn’t it amazing that we once couldn’t pull up our own pants. Look how far we’ve come?! What else might we struggle through in order to learn and transform?)

Listening to our groaning (personal and collective) may be one of the most faithful ways we settle into our humanness.

Some of what this season asks of us is hard:

• Showing up in our local communities.

• Learning how to protest or organize with integrity.

• Staying engaged when the world feels overwhelming.

• Tending to sick children.

• Creating joy in the midst of despair.

• Choosing courage, honesty, and solidarity over comfort.

But these commitments are not formed overnight.
They are learned slowly, awkwardly, relationally.
They involve missteps, discomfort, and plenty of groaning.

Formation unfolds over the course of seasons, not moments.

If you are beginning this year with struggle (chosen or imposed upon you), may you listen gently to what groans in you. May you remember that God chose to struggle too. And may we press into the hard, holy work of being human together—patiently, imperfectly, and never alone.

Two questions to sit with:

• Where is your life groaning right now?
• Is there an image (of a beloved child, of Jesus as a child, or of yourself in an earlier season) that might help you listen to that groaning with compassion and awe?

A gentle practice:

Find a quiet moment.
Place one hand on your chest.
Take three slow breaths.

Then ask yourself:
What in me is groaning right now, and what might it be asking me to notice?

Without fixing or deciding anything, simply listen.
Let the listening be enough for now.

End by whispering:
Struggle is allowed here.

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