***

Imagine

if all you had to do to be beautiful

was to

let the wind dance you where you stand

as you grow into the only shape you ever had.

—James A. Pearson

***

It began with tears.

I sat in the front row of my childhood church in what I knew to be my family’s final service in the community where I had grown up. Ordained in the United Methodist Church, my dad was subject to being reappointed on occasion, whenever the bishop decided a change was to be made. To my knowledge, it’s a process somewhat akin to that of a general manager’s office in the Major Leagues: a group of advisors (known as district superintendents) and the bishop sitting around a boardroom table, moving pastors’ names around on a big whiteboard as if preparing for draft day. This year, we were one of the names on the board.

And so I sat in this familiar, one-hundred-year-old sanctuary, the paint on the walls markedly cleaner and more recently painted than when we first arrived. Now at eighteen, I had spent more than ten years as part of this community, and many of my formative memories had taken place within these walls (even my first kiss, although this might be new information for my family).

As community members walked to the front of the sanctuary, again and again wishing us well and sharing stories from eleven years of friendship and connection, I felt increasingly overwhelmed by the transition that was taking place. One of the final church members to share that morning, Betty, began to cry as she spoke of finding a spiritual home there, a group and community to call her own. She shared what it meant to her to watch our once-young family grow up, seeing my older brother venture off to college, and watching from afar as I chased my baseball dreams. It was when she got to me that I lost it. Her eyes locked on mine and tears began to streak down my face, an impulse I still have to this day whenever I see another person cry.

As the service wrapped up and my tears refused to slow, I found myself being embraced again and again by community members and people I had come to view as elders and family friends. My eyes, scanning across the room, landed on one of the oldest gentlemen in our church striding toward me with determined focus. Dale had been an ever-present figure as I grew up, attending every Sunday service, along with various committee meetings, adult education classes, and church outings. As I played in the corner of church meetings or sprinted across the grass at church potlucks, Dale was invariably meandering around, engaging in small talk with anyone he could. If there was a church event, he was there.

He walked toward me, his long stride slowing as the sea of people began to evaporate, the celebration of our time there moving from the sanctuary to the coffee area. He came up to me, his eyes still locked on mine, and placed a firm hand on my shoulder, uttering a statement I would never forget.

“Men don’t cry.”

I stood for a moment in shock, not quite sure how to respond, while another church member quickly stepped in and whisked Dale away. In the momentary reprieve from hugs and attention, I felt alone and confused, riddled with questions emerging from an unknown space within me.

Why would he say that to me?

How could someone be so unempathetic?

And most of all—if this is what a lifetime of spiritual development produced, why even bother?

***

My moment of disillusionment that day marked a turning point in my years-long process of deconstruction as I investigated my Christian upbringing and began to set aside the parts that no longer worked for me. Spurred by my experience with Dale, I found myself searching for trustworthy guides who would help me become the man I wanted to be as well as someone for whom spirituality was connected to how I lived my life. As a person deeply concerned with the state of our world, I yearned for a spirituality that felt intertwined with my social activism and could help me understand my part to play.

Turning away from some of the defining features of my childhood faith, which included weekly church attendance, never-ending potlucks, and a belief in a god who I saw as male, white, and largely distant, I found myself falling deeper into a contemplative spirituality, one in which the divine was best found in the here and now. I began to read modern spiritual teachers such as Richard Rohr, Christena Cleveland, and Thich Nhat Hanh, as well as mystics like Saint Teresa of Ávila and Kahlil Gibran. Rather than feeling disconnected from my spirituality, I felt as if I were embodying more and more a spirituality that could have a real impact on the world. Rather than leaving everything spiritual behind, I began to ask what healthy spiritual development could look like.

***

In my own little way, this is a book offering what I myself have found to be liberating and sustaining in my life, with the hope that it may be a support for others as well. In each chapter, you’ll find stories, spiritual teachings, reflection questions, action prompts, and body practices that will help you explore your inner life so that you may engage the outer world from a more empathetic and well-grounded place. As you read, I invite you to linger and pause on any teaching that connects with you, setting the book aside for a while if needed, and taking time to work with it in whatever way works best for you.

(Seriously, please don’t read this in one sitting. Grab a pen and a cup of coffee or tea, read for a bit, write all over the pages, but then put it down. This book has been written to be digested over time, with plenty of bathroom breaks in between.)

A few years ago, I had the privilege of attending a conference featuring Zen priest and modern wisdom teacher Reverend angel Kyodo williams. Unlike the other speakers who took the stage that day, she taught from atop a pillow, seated with her legs crossed, appearing perfectly grounded in the present moment. It was one of the first times I ever heard someone speak so clearly and with such a sense of authentic credibility, as if what she was saying was flowing through her from a greater source. Afterward, I spent months reading her books and watching her online talks, seeking to understand how she remained so grounded yet focused while discussing the harms and terrors that exist in our world.

As I listened that day, I found myself sloppily scribbling down words I would hear from her again and again in other venues: “Without inner change, there can be no outer change; without collective change, no change matters.” For me, this means that the work of inner excavation, paired with spiritual practices that can hold and embolden it, will only matter if it leads to foundational changes in how we see the world. Spiritual development, in whatever form it takes, will only matter if our actions become an outpouring of love that touches and impacts the world around us at personal, communal, and societal levels. Ultimately, our choice to engage the inner life is just the beginning of sustainable activism, a practice in building capacity for the collective work that lies ahead.