Adam S. McHugh

Adam's Speaking Topics

2019-01-28T13:01:00.001-08:00

The Listening Life, Introverts in the Church

I have a number of talks centered around my books The Listening Life and Introverts in the Church. I am particularly passionate about teaching groups how to listen to people in pain, flowing from my years of experience as a hospice chaplain. I have talks on the following subjects:

Listening to God
Listening to Others
Listening to People in Pain
Listening to Scripture
Thriving as an Introvert in an Extroverted World
Leading as an Introvert

"Adam McHugh shares a tremendous message about intentional listening and its vital signficance. He is an engaging and insightful speaker. He speaks vulnerably and with grace. He uses humor and evokes compassion. Those who heard and met him recently at our annual fundraising event left impressed and challenged to consider the transformative and healing impact of good listening in our lives. We recommend him highly. His insights can inspire us all to be surprised by intentional listening's impact." Michael Gingerich and Tom Kaden, Co-founders, Someone To Tell It To

Wine and The Spirit

My newest study is on the spirituality and history of wine. I moved from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara County a few years ago to delve deeply into wine, viticulture, and the spiritual meaning of place. My newest book project, to be published in 2021, will tell the story of my move from hospice chaplain to wine educator. Do you know that the modern wine industry, whether in the old world or in California, owes its greatness to the monastic and missionary traditions of the past? People immersed in the scriptures and in the grand Christian tradition have placed wine at the center of their rituals and tables for millennia.

In addition to being an ordained minister and spiritual director, I am also a sommelier and Certified Specialist of Wine. I worked as Tasting Room Manager at Au Bon Climat in Santa Barbara for 2 years, and now I work at boutique wineries in Los Olivos and also offer wine tours that cover the wines and history of the Santa Ynez Valley. I even have access occasionally to a stunning house up on a hill in Solvang if you are interested in a weekend wine and spirituality retreat for your small group.

I regularly teach the basics of wine tasting and wine and food pairing, and I lead wine tours that cover geology, viticulture, climate and how they influence the wine in your glass. I have led "Wine and The Spirit" seminars at the Glen Workshop in Santa Fe and have a series of lectures and discussions on:

How To Taste Wine
Pairing Food and Wine
Wine and Christian Spirituality
Wine in the History of the Church

These subjects, of course augmented with actual wine tasting, would be fantastic for retreats and conferences. I can tailor events for diverse audiences, whether or not there is any spiritual or religious bent. Email me for more information on speaking, wine tours, or wine retreats.

"Adam talks about wine like someone who doesn't just know his subject, but loves it. He's winsome and funny, and turns what can be a very intimidating subject into something accessible and enjoyable, without flattening any of the complexity of the topic. Adam threads his deep knowledge of theology and spirituality into his discussion of the wine, bringing its fuller significance into the light. As he talks about it, wine becomes more than just a bottle on a shelf or a liquid in a glass -- it's something alive and vital." Alissa Wilkinson, Film Critic at Vox.com and Associate Professor of English and Humanities at The King's College

Speaking Highlights

March 2019 - Moshin Winery, Healdsburg CA, Writer-in-Residence

March 2018 - Casa Dumetz Winery, Los Alamos CA, Words to Live By series

April 2018 - Azusa Pacific University, Azusa CA, Writing as an Act of Listening

October 2017 - John Brown University, Siloam Springs AR, Relationships Week

September 2016 - Someone To Tell It To Banquet, Hershey PA

August 2015 and 2016 - Glen Workshop, Santa Fe NM, Wine and Food and Spirit

January 2014 - World Vision International, Monrovia CA

April 2013 - Image Journal Retreat, Napa CA, Ferment: Winemaking and the Creative Process

February 2012 - U.S. House of Representatives, Washington D.C., Guest Chaplaincy

April 2012 - Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA, Introverts in the Church

July 2011 - Laity Lodge, Leakey TX

April 2011 - Glenkirk Church, Glendora CA.

October 2010 - Irvine Presbyterian Church, Irvine CA.

Seasons of the Soul

2018-09-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

The calendar has driven us, once again, into the bracing arms of autumn. Northern Hemisphere residents are inhaling the snappy chill of the late-afternoon air, wrapping their dangerously exposed necks in magical Hogwarts scarves, exclusively eating and drinking things that taste and look like pumpkins, losing their children in elaborate corn-mazes, and unabashedly participating in the creepiest-sounding of all autumn activities: leaf-peeping.

Meanwhile, here in Santa Barbara, California, it’s 70-something degrees and sunny, and everyone is at the beach. Just like every other damn day of the year.

I’m not foolish enough to try to elicit any sympathy for my life in a Mediterranean climate. For a century, people have moved to Santa Barbara precisely for the therapy of sun and salty ocean air. No one in upstate New York will shed any tears for me when they’re shoveling themselves out of 11 feet of snow in January and I’m unironically wearing shorts.

Yet, while I am happy to call this place home, I miss seasons, sometimes desperately. No doubt retailers play a role in my angst; they have conditioned me, rather brilliantly, to associate dates on the calendar with particular products and activities. When the bell of the autumnal equinox rings, I start salivating for pumpkin-spiced whatever—like the most annoyingly hipster Pavlovian dog…and I don’t even like sweet things. Most of it is influenced by nostalgia. I grew up in Seattle, and autumn evokes childhood memories of driving with my dad past the sprawling local pumpkin patch on drizzly Saturday evenings and returning home to the fire after University of Washington football games.

But it goes even deeper. Seasons are not only realities that occur outside and around us, in the skies and in the trees. I believe seasons are also internal and personal, interwoven into the fabric of human life. We are designed to transition, to change, and to vary. Our souls have seasons.

When there are few changes in the outward seasons, it is easy to neglect the shifts required by our internal seasons. When you live in an unchanging climate, it’s tempting to try to match it with an unchanging life. External seasonal cues can remind us to transition into something new and to live differently. The reason why people historically have celebrated the month of October so extravagantly is not only because it’s harvest time, an ancient time of gratitude, but because they sensed on a primal level that the world was slowly closing, the sap was gravitating back toward the soil, the darkness was encroaching, and the natural world was going dormant. They knew their daily lives were going to change along with it: it was almost time to go inside, build a fire, and wait out the winter.

My longing for seasons feels like a desire for the permission to change, to slow. I don’t believe we are built to move at the same pace, do the same activities, and feel the same feelings all year round. Humans, just like the natural world, are meant to cycle through seasons of dormancy and new life, activity and contemplation, celebration and sadness, blossom and harvest, openness and closedness, austerity and abundance. I believe the seasons serve as a lesson book for the soul, instructing us when to move fast and when to slow down, when to act and when to rest, when to focus on the world outside and when to hibernate and go down deep. If we ignore the lessons of the seasons, we may feel the pressure to try to be “up” all the time—always going, ever energetic, constantly gleeful. We may find ourselves restless and exhausted without having any idea why.

Living in a climate of seemingly endless summer has taught me some valuable lessons. First, the seasonal changes are there, but you have to discipline yourself to pay attention to the subtleties. Seasons are exercises in attentiveness. The radiant glow of summer modulates into the beautiful sadness of autumn, but it’s delicate. The marine layer persists just a little bit longer in the mornings, and the air warms up a little slower in the morning and cools down a little faster in the afternoon. The clouds linger on the peaks of the Santa Ynez Mountains into the afternoons. The light falls differently and casts longer shadows, and the loud pink rays of the summer sunset are brushed aside by the amber and burnt orange hues of fall’s curtain call.

Second, seasons are now something I choose. Here, autumn is something you resolve to do. I love that the word deciduous has the word decide embedded in it. Although I live in an evergreen climate, I have resolved to lead a deciduous life, for the sake of my soul. I allow the encroaching darkness of the fall to drive me inside earlier in the evening to read, to write, to reflect. And sometimes, you just have to put soup in the crockpot when it’s 80 degrees outside. I want to let the seasons, and their inherent gifts, rhythms, and offerings, teach me how to live and to be more human.

There is a growing trend in our country of eating in season, enjoying the produce that particular season has to offer rather than trying to eat a plastic tomato in the middle of February. What if we extended that idea to living in season? What if we stopped trying to live the year at a dead sprint and instead let the seasons teach us about how to move and how to live?

The Writer as Madman and Mystic

2018-01-17T13:05:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot of time reading what other writers say about writing. It's an excellent way to procrastinate from actually writing. In reading the words of seasoned authors, who themselves are usually writing about writing in order to avoid other projects, I have discovered two recurring themes. The process of writing may very well make you crazy. And it may also make you a mystic.

Sometimes the crazy is the charming kind of crazy, like the retired journalist in my hometown who walked the streets for hours a day, waving at everything that passed by: cars, people, planes, squirrels. Philip Yancey says that the first phase of his writing process "is all psychosis. I don't even subject my wife to it. I go to a cabin in the mountains. I don't shave. I'll go a week without speaking to a single person, except maybe a store clerk. I work really long hours just pounding out junk."

But sometimes the crazy is the life-choking, relationship-poisoning kind of crazy. It doesn't take much experience with the madness of the writing life to understand Hemingway's routine on Key West while writing A Farewell to Arms. Yet the alarm bells start to sound when spending the mornings writing with six-fingered cats, the afternoons getting bombed on cheap scotch, and the evenings shooting at sharks with a Tommy gun begins to sound like a viable lifestyle. Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, pondering that her greatest writing success is likely behind her, confesses "It's enough to make you start drinking gin at 9 in the morning." She laments that the pressures of the creative process have been killing off our artists for the last 500 years.

The writing process is an emotional rollercoaster that threatens to run you right off the rails. Writing is about so much more than sitting down and typing. It's more like a war, as you, your ideas, and your words all battle each other for supremacy. In writing, your hopes, dreams, fears and inadequacies are exposed. You learn what it is you most want in life and how incompetent you are to actually achieve it. It's easy to see how the first casualty of this war is your sanity.

But the process of writing may also make you a mystic. A life of writing can transform the most committed atheist into someone who talks of gods and spirits and muses. Countless authors attest that, in some mysterious way, the discipline of writing can connect us with outside forces, as our words become channels for other voices speaking in the universe. C.S. Lewis said, "I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say." Others take a more earthy approach when they claim they don't invent a story, rather they excavate it. They imagine themselves as literary archeologists, discovering a story or an idea that has been buried deep within them yet cries out to be found.

Some writers seek to renew our belief in muses, those ancient spirits that inspire the creativity behind great works of art and music and literature. Elizabeth Gilbert says that in ancient cultures people themselves were not considered geniuses, but they had a genius who sparked their creative impulses. In a different spirit, Stephen King envisions his muse as a fat guy living in his basement, smoking cigars and admiring his bowling trophies and pretending to ignore you. But, says King, "the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There's stuff in there that can change your life."

Some people may consider the writer's tendency towards madness and mysticism as one and the same. But from what I can see, the first leads to restlessness and despair while the second moves toward peace and freedom. Gilbert hopes that resurrecting the muse will give writers a necessary distance from their work, releasing them from the destructive side effects of the creative process.

As much as I appreciate Gilbert's views, as a Christian I am not ultimately satisfied with her solution. I agree that there is another power that overlaps with our creative efforts, but for me it is the Holy Spirit. I won't reduce the Holy Spirit to a muse, but I do believe that the same influence that inspired the apostles to preach and write is also, in whatever lesser form, present in my work, even in the very messiness of the writing process. I consider writing a spiritual discipline. It is one of those ancient practices that unfolds our souls and opens our hearts and minds to the God who speaks to us, with us, and through us.

The ancient muses, it was thought, helped create works of art and literature. But the God in whom I believe is about creating certain kinds of people, shaping them into men and women who believe, hope, and love. While I do think God cares about the works we create, I believe that God is more interested in the process and its effect upon us. God is in the dying - the struggle and the wounds and the agony, just as much as he is in the rising - the gleaming product at the end. Out of the chaos of the writing life, God is forming us to be people who are humbled, disciplined, persevering, surprised, grateful. And if, through the writing process, we allow ourselves to be shaped into new kinds of people, then perhaps writers will come to be known for more than just being crazy.

A Counter-Cultural Quiet in Advent

2017-11-28T15:00:00.000-08:00

For some people, the Advent season on the church calendar is one of the most anticipated times of the year. For some, there is no other time in which their love of God is stronger, there is no other time in which they are more aware of God's mercy in their lives and in the world, there is no other time in which their hearts go out to others with such affection, and there is no other time in which their joy is more profound.

I am not one of those people.

For me this time of year has always been a spiritually dry time. There is a line in a Counting Crows song that says "You can see a million miles tonight, but you can't get very far." That is my experience during this season. Every year I anticipate it with everyone else, hoping that this year will be different. Maybe this year the earth-shattering experience of God will take place, and I'll be able to take in the seismic joy that should result from the knowledge that God entered the course of human history to reclaim it as his own. But by December 26th, I'm left with disappointment, another year of not getting very far.

I experience a deep division within myself during Advent. My inner world stirs with longings for deep experiences of grace, for moments of pregnant silence, for times of candlelit reflections on the fullness of deity wrapped in a child. But my outer world is harassed by the rampant activity, the hurried crowds, and the consumeristic clutter of the season.

I think my personal division reflects a broader cultural division. I'm willing to suspend my cultural cynicism for a moment and speculate that at the root of American consumer Christmas is a deep-seated desire for meaning. I may be way off on this, but I suspect the decorations, the music, the saturated social calendars, the capitalistic flurry, and the caloric overload are attempts at finding something true, something significant. Hopes for discovering community and transcendence. There is a neighborhood near my own that puts on an unbelievable show of lights, music, and decorations for the weeks leading up to Christmas. Cars line up for blocks to meander through the illuminated streets and residents sit in their driveways around firepits and chat with the passersby. Aside from laying a carbon footprint likely visible from outer space, it is a powerful display of community spirit.

The problem, I think, is that our culture doesn't know how to truly celebrate. Overconsumption and overstimulation are the only ways we know how to mark a special occasion. Even though most of us implicitly know it doesn't work and that we're going to wake up with a hangover, it's all we know how to do. When there is a significant event, we commemorate it by scurrying around, spending absurd amounts of money, gathering a crowd, and turning up the volume. If we're not weighed down by anxiety and insomnia, then it must not be a very important occasion. Our holiday "celebrations" therefore seem destined to only get bigger and bigger, because we have built up such a tolerance.

Many of us in the church live in the tension of this religious and cultural ambivalence. Our Christmas Eves are often a confusing recipe of ingredients like these: the onslaught of relatives, massive food preparation, stressful and boisterous dinners, hurrying everyone into the car, attending a hot, packed Christmas Eve worship service in which we light candles, and sing lyrics like:

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

Then we rush home, hustle the kids into bed so we can finish wrapping gifts and stuffing stockings, because they'll be up in five hours. Sleep in heavenly peace indeed.

I was originally asked to write about this topic because I have written a book called Introverts in the Church, those in the church who prefer a quieter, slower, more contemplative lifestyle and who, for those reasons, often find themselves on the fringes both of the culture and of Christian community. I saw a blog post recently that called January 2nd "Happy Introverts Day" because of the notorious nature of the holiday season for those of us who find social interaction tiring and sometimes stressful. But the truth is that the need for a quieter, less cluttered, more reflective Advent season is not restricted to introverts. The clatter of the holidays has caused people of all temperaments to turn from the inner places of our souls, contributing to the superficiality of our spiritual practice during this season. We need to find a new way to celebrate.

In the early centuries of the Church, celebrating Christmas was a counter-cultural activity. It's unclear whether the church fathers chose December 25th to co-opt the already entrenched pagan festival of the Unconquered Sun, or whether the pagan holiday was established to rival the Church's celebration of the birth of Christ. What is clear is that Christmas was a subversive event, providing an alternative to the mainstream culture's celebration.

In our world, quiet is counter-cultural. I'm not only referring to quiet on the outside, but also quiet on the inside. In fact, it may be easier to shut out the external voices than it is to silence the internal noise. It's often those inner voices, especially the unacknowledged ones, that compel us to fill our lives with movement and agendas and spending and eating. Our behaviors and hurry are echoes of our inner doubts about our worth. Sadly, in many ways the nature of our holiday celebrations reveal how incompletely we have embraced the actual message of Christmas.

In contrast to the dizzying nature of our cultural celebrations, the biblical narratives about Jesus' birth speak in hushed tones about simple, unsophisticated scenes. The baby of prophecy, the King of kings, is born in a quiet town in an inconsequential region to unremarkable people and placed in a trough in a barn. Yet by the grace of God this spot becomes the center of the universe, the matrix of hope and redemption and salvation. The quiet, ordinary place becomes the beginning of the dramatic climax of the great Story. The birth of Jesus incarnates the promise that we are not alone and that we are loved beyond measure, recipients of a love that brings peace and stillness to our souls.

The birth of a child is both a time of poignant gratitude and a time of quiet anticipation. I remember how friends of mine described the day they brought their first child home from the hospital. They placed him in his crib, in the room they had been preparing for months, and watched him sleep. For hours they sat in contented silence. My friend said, "It was unlike any other moment in my life. It was the greatest moment of love we'd ever experienced, more intimate than even our wedding night. There was nothing else in the world we needed that day -- we had everything." Yet he also said that as he looked into his son's eyes, he was full of anticipation. Who will my son be? What will he do in his life? Who will he marry? What will be his gifts, his calling? Like Mary the mother of Jesus, my friends stored up these things in their hearts and silently wondered who their child would become.

Advent is not only a season of reflection on events past. It is a season of quiet hope, as we await the second advent of our Lord Jesus, who will come and complete his reclamation project. Our celebration during this time of year is necessarily incomplete. In this season we must prepare small, quiet places in our individual souls and in our communities, still longing and waiting for the fulfillment of Jesus' work and the rebirth of creation.

I'm still struggling with Advent, still reaching for something that I haven't found yet. I do know that if there is any chance for deep experiences of God's grace and love in this season, we need to open spaces for hope and attentiveness in our hearts. We can't compel God to move, but we can clear away what distracts us from hearing his gentle voice. We can reduce the external clutter of the season by simplifying our celebration. We can slowly savor the biblical prophecies of the coming of the Messiah and the narratives about Jesus' birth. We can devote time to silence and solitude as well as to corporate celebration. We can learn to say "no" when we find ourselves spinning from all the invitations and seasonal stimuli. We can listen to the voices of people who are not often heard over the cultural shouting -- the poor, the hungry, the suffering around the world. We can prepare a quiet place for God to renew his love and rebirth his hope in us.

In an Extroverted Church Culture, Silence is a Homecoming for Introverts

2017-09-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

There is an ancient and beautiful monastic ritual called “The Grand Silence.” For centuries, at the conclusion of evening prayer, monasteries have called a full halt on speech, to be observed except in dire emergency. This silence endures through the night until the first prayers the next morning, when as the sun introduces the new day, the quiet is broken by the singing of Scripture.

I first encountered this tradition on retreat with several of my ministry partners while I worked as a college pastor. They were a fervent group of extroverts, and for them, the nighttime silence was less than “grand.” They squirmed their way through that first evening, contorting their faces every time they had a thought they had to stifle. By the second night, though, they started to enjoy it and acknowledge the value of the silence. If we’re honest, too much talking can be a slow leak on even the most extroverted soul.

For me, the lone introvert, not even the most haunting chants of the Psalms that resonated through the chapel at daybreak could compare to the transcendence of the Grand Silence. Monasteries may be homes of asceticism, but each night their members feast on a gluttonous banquet of quiet. I anticipated and relished those hours, often going deep into the night to savor the stillness. For my extroverted colleagues, the grand silence was a vacation; for me, it was a homecoming....
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Read the rest of this excerpt from the "Introverted Spirituality" chapter of the Expanded and Revised edition of Introverts in the Church at Introvert, Dear!

Psychology Today and the New Introverts in the Church

2017-06-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

I was honored to interview with Psychology Today writer Nancy Ancowitz last month, and all three parts of our conversation about listening and introversion are now up on the Psychology Today website. That link will take you to part one, and here is part two and part three. Part one focuses on listening to others, part two on listening to ourselves, and part three on the specific opportunities and challenges for introverted listeners.

And, this is one more gentle reminder that there is a revised and expanded edition of Introverts in the Church hitting my publisher's warehouse on July 7th. Here are some of the changes in the second edition. It should be shipping out of online retailers by mid July, with the official release date in early August.

Introverts in the Church, Revised and Expanded

2017-03-06T13:35:00.001-08:00

Now 40% More Introverted!!!

About a year ago, I cracked open Introverts in the Church for the first time in several years. Contrary to what some may believe, we authors don't cuddle up to our books on cold nights. I had moved on to other topics, namely The Listening Life, and some other writing projects.

I had been wrestling with questions, once again, about how to approach some new relationships in my life as an introvert, and I thought to myself, "You know who's an expert on this topic? ME!" So I dusted off my copy of Introverts in the Church and immersed myself in chapter 5, the Community and Relationships chapter.

What I found is that while my advice is helpful, some of it already feels outdated. It is astonishing how much things change in 8 years. In 2009, when the book was published, everyone in the church was talking about postmodernism; now, I almost never hear that word. In 2009, I didn't even know the phrase "social media," and the iPhone was just starting to flood the market. I started writing Introverts when I was 29 years old, even though the book wasn't published until I was 33. I will be turning 41 in a few months, and needless to say, I have changed, as a person, as a writer, and as a believer.

I was a decent writer when I was 29, but I am much better now, and one of the things I noticed, ironically, is that the book is just too wordy. I can tell I was dealing with what they call "Imposter Syndrome," a common struggle with a first book, and I wanted to prove to everyone, myself included, that I was qualified to write a book. I dropped in all kinds of theological knowledge and research that just wasn't necessary and was, in some cases, distracting. That, combined with the outdated time stamps in the book, compelled me to approach InterVarsity Press last summer and ask if we could release a 2nd edition. I wanted to write a new version that had a more timeless, and succinct, feel to it. And I thought I could make the book a lot funnier.

Today, I am thrilled to announce that the Revised and Expanded Version of Introverts in the Church is now available for pre-order. Here's what's new: each chapter has been thoroughly revised, both in content and in flow. I have written a new introduction. I have interspersed more discussions about the struggles of introverted parents and ministering to introverted children. I have incorporated the new research that has been conducted in the last few years about introversion, neurology, and sensitivity to stimuli, as well as some recent studies on the effectiveness of introverted leaders. And I have brought in the work of the Queen of Introversion, Susan Cain.

There are also some new endorsements. Scot McKnight wrote the forward, and he says "the first edition was exceptional, the second even better, at least by half, perhaps more than that."

Jenn Granneman, creator of the popular introverted community, Introvert, Dear, writes: "Introverts in the Church is thoughtful, validating, and charming. It’s the book for any church-goers who have ever wanted to disappear into their seats when the pastor said, “Turn and introduce yourself to three strangers.” Adam teaches an important lesson: Spirituality should not be measured by sociability. The introvert who quietly reflects on her faith is as true of a believer as the extrovert who preaches exuberantly to others."

There are also endorsements from Susan Cain, Lauren Winner, John Ortberg, and many others. I echo Emily Freeman's hopes when she says, "I have a hopeful vision that the giftedness of the next generations of introverts will be honored and celebrated thanks to the fine work of Adam S. McHugh in this timeless, important book."

You can now pre-order the revised version of Introverts in the Church on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Pre-ordering guarantees you the best price, as the price will decrease at times over the next few months, and it is a helpful way to draw the attention of retailers and reviewers. The official release date is August 7, 2017, but if you pre-order the book you will have it in your hands around mid-July. While the new edition will be of particular interest to new readers, those of you who read the first edition will find plenty of new content.

As always, I am deeply grateful for all of you who have read the book, recommended it to others, and sent me emails about it. I liked the first edition of Introverts in the Church, but I like the 2nd edition much, much better. I think you will too.

The Listening Life CT Book Award

2016-12-22T23:58:00.000-08:00

I am deeply honored that Christianity Today has chosen The Listening Life as the Best Book of The Year in the Spiritual Formation category! It is one of the greatest honors that a book can win in the Christian publishing world. It was also the Logos Book Association's Best Christian Living Book of 2016 and a Religion category finalist in the Foreword Reviews' Indiefab book awards. Thank you so much for reading and listening.

If I'm being totally honest, I do not think that we as a people did very well at listening in 2016. I can only hope that my book might play a small part in changing that in 2017. Will we embrace the gift of listening? Will we choose to listen to those voices that don't sound like ours?

Speaking of next year, you may have seen my previous post that I will be releasing a 2nd edition of Introverts in the Church in the spring/summer of 2017. I have been working on it all fall, and I have written a new introduction, added a section in the leadership chapter on ministering to introverted kids, and did a thorough revision of each chapter. The book will have a new cover and a new foreword. It has been an enjoyable project. A lot has changed in church and society in the 8 years since it was published. I started writing the 1st edition when I was 29. The 2nd edition will be published when I am 40. Did I mention that a lot changes? I must say that while I liked the first version, I like the second version a lot more. And I think you will too.

Happy Christmas and New Years to all of you.

Imagine a society of reverse listening, where those who would normally expect to be heard, listen, and those who would normally expect to listen, are heard. I dream of a place where leaders listen to followers, adults listen to children, men listen to women, the majority listen to the minority, the rich listen to the poor, and insiders listen to outsiders. -The Listening Life

2016-12-13T16:03:00.001-08:00

Introvertia

noun. The resistance introverts feel every time they consider going to a social function.

-from the 2nd edition of Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture. Coming spring 2017.

Seasons of the Soul

2016-10-27T12:40:00.002-07:00

...When there are few changes in the outward seasons, it is easy to neglect the shifts required by our internal seasons. When you live in an unchanging climate, it’s tempting to try to match it with an unchanging life. External seasonal cues can remind us to transition into something new and to live differently. The reason why people historically have celebrated the month of October so extravagantly is not only because it’s harvest time, an ancient time of gratitude, but because they sensed on a primal level that the world was slowly closing, the sap was gravitating back toward the soil, the darkness was encroaching, and the natural world was going dormant. They knew their daily lives were going to change along with it: it was almost time to go inside, build a fire, and wait out the winter.

My longing for seasons feels like a desire for the permission to change, to slow. I don’t believe we are built to move at the same pace, do the same activities, and feel the same feelings all year round. Humans, just like the natural world, are meant to cycle through seasons of dormancy and new life, activity and contemplation, celebration and sadness, blossom and harvest, openness and closedness, austerity and abundance. I believe the seasons serve as a lesson book for the soul, instructing us when to move fast and when to slow down, when to act and when to rest, when to focus on the world outside and when to hibernate and go down deep. If we ignore the lessons of the seasons, we may feel the pressure to try to be “up” all the time—always going, ever energetic, constantly gleeful. We may find ourselves restless and exhausted without having any idea why.
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To read all of my new article on Quiet Revolution, entitled "Seasons of the Soul," go here!

The Best Things in Life are Fleeting

2016-10-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

Wisdom tells us to pursue what is lasting, to center our attention around what will endure, to anchor ourselves in longevity. But maybe what is fleeting in this lifetime gets a bad rap. Maybe the truest, most real experiences in this life are fleeting.

Take falling in love. Every day you breeze past hundreds of people who are of little consequence to you, but then in a moment one person becomes everything to you. Your life was perfectly full before you met her, but somehow now you have a cavernous void at the center of your body that can only be filled by her presence. Once you had life dreams about what, but now you have dreams about who. It's like the the universe has whispered a tightly guarded secret to you, and you are now in possession of the knowledge that this is the most excruciatingly beautiful woman the world has ever known. You can't figure out why the entire world isn't knocking on her door, why everyone can't see what you see, why she's not on the cover of every fashion magazine, why scientists aren't clamoring to study her brain and heart, why her text messages aren't winning the Pulitzer every year.

Yes, those intoxicating feelings become more sober over time, but what if the experience of being in love is a glimpse into the true reality of who that person is? What if it's about more than brain chemicals that swirl in your brain when she's near or an evolutionary tactic to preserve the species? What if in those smitten days you have been given a revelation from On High about who this person, at her core, truly is? She is an image-bearer of God, a beloved daughter, a breathtaking unity of body, soul, mind, and spirit tenderly shaped by the Creator, apple of the Father's eye, and therefore stunningly, heart-piercingly, life-changingly beautiful. What if what you have experienced is a truth about a person that is more true than all the lies she has been told about herself are false?

Perhaps the experience of falling in love is not unlike the transfiguration. When Jesus went up the mountain and was transfigured before the disciples, it wasn't a stage trick. What Peter, James, and John saw was the true glory of the Son. In his face sparkling in the sun, they beheld Jesus for who he truly is. They learned his true identity, one that will become fully clear when we meet him face to face, when his countenance will never cease to glow. Perhaps when you fall in love, the other person is transfigured before you, and for a brief time, you see and experience and love who she truly is. She is not the only one who is changed.

The problem with the transfiguration is that the disciples Jesus took with him couldn't handle it. Peter tried to control the situation. Maybe if I build a few tabernacles up here, he thought, I can find a place to put all this Glory. That's what we do in the fleeting moments, when we encounter something, or someone, that makes us feel small, powerless, or overwhelmed. We try to regain control. We make a tent to stick Jesus in, or we distance ourselves from the feelings, or we dismiss or judge the in-love feelings of others. I even have a suspicion that we invent rules for how women should dress and act so that men will not feel so overpowered by the dizzying splendor of a woman.

I did a similar thing every time I visited wine country for a couple of years. I would experience those fleeting moments where I was so pierced by the sheer beauty of the place, so moved by the pattern of the vineyards stretching across the hills toward the ocean, so inspired by the buds breaking on the vines that would one day be crushed to fill my empty glass, and I would have absolutely know idea how to absorb them. So I ate and drank. And I over-ate and over-drank. I literally tried to take the beauty of the land into my body, and I discovered that my body did not nearly have the space to contain it. Others try to contain natural beauty by taking hundreds of pictures, but they find that even the most wide-angle shot does not compare to the inexhaustible panorama of the place, and they may even find that the camera in front of their face shields them from the wonder before them.

You know what else is fleeting? Emotion. So we have been taught not to trust our emotions, because they are capricious and therefore unreal. We tell people in pain to get over things. We point out their emotional contradictions and try to fix them and make them "consistent." We tell them to ignore their feelings and trust the eternal Word of God, even though the Word is full of emotional people, not to mention a few fruit of the Spirit that sound strangely emotional. Scripture would seem to tell us that when feelings like peace and joy surface in our hearts, they are indications of God's presence with us, and there is nothing more real than that.

The Celtic Christian tradition heralds "thin places" - those locations on earth where the clouds that would separate us from the awareness of God break and we are surrounded by Presence. I also like to think of "thin moments" - those brief windows of time when the veils of our hearts are peeled back and we experience Reality as fully we are able. Nothing is more fleeting than time, and yet that does not make this moment any less real. Perhaps in the thin moments, we dance in step to the music of the future, echoing backwards for a few songs. It doesn't mean that the rest of life isn't real, but maybe in the fleeting experiences of falling in love, of being captured by beauty, of swooning in deep emotion, we are moving to a deeper rhythm, a heavenly soundtrack that will have its grand climax at the renewal of all things.

Listen to Your Life

2016-09-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

In chapter 8 of my new book, I throw out the crazy theory that if we want to hear God's voice and receive his guidance, maybe we don't need to ascend to the heights of heaven, into ethereal and abstract realms, and seek all the hidden gnosis. Maybe we can start by listening to our lives.

It starts with this: what takes place in you matters and has meaning. Your thoughts, emotions, impulses, desires, values, passions, dreams, recurring questions, and bodily responses are significant, are trying to teach you, and are all interconnected. It sounds simple, but some will resist. Occasionally I hear Christians say that the path to spiritual maturity involves “forgetting myself” and directing all my attention toward God, making little of me and much of him. While we aim to glorify God in all we do, the way of following Jesus is not self-abdication. Yes, we set aside what is passing away – the old ways, the old life, the old self – and then we become fully alive by taking on our new creation life, our truest and deepest self. We do not forget ourselves; we become fully ourselves. As St. Iranaeus in the 2nd century said, “The glory of God is a human fully alive.” We are not fully alive until we love God with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength, and we cannot love God with all of ourselves unless we are well acquainted with our minds, hearts, souls, and bodies. I believe that Christians should be leading the way in self-knowledge, because as John Calvin instructs us, “without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.”

The internal voices are telling you what your life is like. The voices that you choose to listen to are shaping what kind of person you are becoming. You can try to ignore them or avoid them, but if you do, you will be acting out of them unawares, sleepwalking to the step of your unconscious internal world. The realities that operate beneath the surface always hold the most sway. Instead, let’s wake up to what is taking place inside of us, to listen to it, honor it, and let it shape us into whom we wish to be. As Parker Palmer has said so well, “Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.” If we are going to take the doctrine of the indwelling Holy Spirit seriously, we must be open to the idea that God is speaking within us, not only from places and words without us.

Deep things are stirring inside of us. Will we listen?

And we can take this in another listening direction as well. I believe that good listening starts at home. How you listen to yourself will determine how you listen to others. Do you dismiss your own emotions? Then there is a good chance you will make a regular habit of dismissing the emotions of others. Those who are able to discern their own emotions will be most responsive to the emotions of others. Those who are unable to reflect on their own behaviors, patterns, processes, and belief systems will be unable to get sufficient emotional separation from others to listen well. They will devote too much conversational energy to defending themselves and trying to persuade others to live and think like they do. They will project their own experiences, anxiety, and beliefs onto others. Self-discovery is not the ultimate end of listening to your life; love is. If we want to listen to others with compassion, gentleness, and attentiveness, then we must learn to listen to ourselves with those same qualities. If we do the work in the quiet spaces, our compulsions will come out less when it’s loud.

Praying with the Waves

2016-09-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

I have always been a mountain kind of guy. Not in the catch-salmon-in-your-teeth-for-dinner sort of way, which I've only done like 4 or 5 times, but in the relish-the-dry-and-bracing air sort of way. I like pine trees more than palm trees, chipmunks more than crabs, skis more than speedos, and martinis more than margaritas. The problem with mountains is that they have no rhythm. They just can't dance like waves can. And it's the rhythm of the ocean that has become the center of my newest prayer style.

My friend Lara is drawn to the ocean. She took up surfing a few years ago, and it has become an act of worship for her. As she puts it, "When you are in the ocean you quickly realize that you cannot conquer it. It’s too powerful. If you fight it, you will lose. But if you are skilled enough, what you can do is move in rhythm with it. It’s just like God. You will never overpower God, no matter how hard you fight, but you can learn to move in harmony with him."

Personally, I have an irrationally intense fear of jellyfish, so I prefer to stay on the beach. The picture above is from the Santa Barbara waterfront, which I have the opportunity to walk to every week. One of the deficiencies of my spirituality over the years has been a sharp divide between my spirit and my body. My spirit I have consider the realm of God and my body the realm of physical necessity. I have not paid much attention to my body except perhaps when I felt pain or hunger. I am working to change that. I am slowly accepting the embodiment of my life and learning that I am not a mind and soul with a temporary physical housing, but a unity of spirit, mind, soul, and yes, body. I am learning to love the Lord my God with all my body. I am learning to taste and see that the Lord is good with the literal tongue and eyes that he has given me.

I have let go of prayers that issue from a disembodied spiritual realm, and I am learning to pray with my body. No setting has helped me to embrace a new embodied prayerfulness like the ocean. I have taken to sitting on the beach at sunset, and yes I realize I am privileged to live in California with its never-ending coastline, and pray with the waves. There is nothing original or novel about this in our great Tradition. Many have "prayed with the elements" over the centuries, particularly my Irish ancestors, the Celts.

My own adaptation of this tradition borrows from Ignatian spirituality. I sit on the sand at dusk and I pray the consolations and desolations of God as the waves dance. As the waves crash, I inhale and receive the Lord's consolations, his goodness, mercy, and presence. As the waves flee, I exhale and I release the desolations, the places where God does not seem present and the parts of my interior life that I do not want. It goes a little like this:

The tide waxes. Inhale. Breathe in the love God.
The tide wanes. Exhale. Release the hurt.
Wax. Breathe in the Presence.
Wane. Breathe out the regret.
Crash. Inhale his tenderness.
Flee. Exhale the heartbreak and grief.
Approach. Take in the fresh air of grace and new creation.
Depart. Surrender the black cloud of sin and guilt.

I will sit for 10-15 minutes letting the ocean shape the rhythm of my prayer and the rhythm of my body.

The ocean is healing my prayer life, and helping me to listen to my body.

A Matter of Motivation

2016-09-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

The defining feature of introversion is where you find your energy; introverts, even though we may enjoy social interaction, even though we may really like people and be socially confident and skilled, lose energy in the outside world. We retreat into solitude in order to be restored.

But as I have continued to learn more about introversion, I have also come to see that there is a motivation factor for many of us. Introverts have rich inner lives and we can spend hours in our worlds of impressions, thoughts, reflections, and in the other dimensions of our inner life. From a neurological point of view, introverts have more brain activity and brain blood flow than extroverts, and we have less tolerance for the dopamine that is released from social interactions and activity. So in many cases it actually may be more pleasurable - in terms of the good feelings released in the brain - for us to be alone or at home than it is for us to be at a party or a church activity. In other words, we are more motivated to be alone than to be in a crowd. It's not that we don't like people or are anti-social or standoffish, it's that it actually feels better for us to be alone sometimes. Reading a book on a Friday night may feel better than a night out with friends, especially when we have spent the week in a socially charged atmosphere at work. In that case, it's not that we are choosing out of something, it's that we are choosing, joyfully and purposely, another activity.

Often, in Christian circles, we idealize those people that have a "passion" for community. Those people who constantly want to be around other people and who love organizing and mobilizing social events are often considered those people who have the most "love" for people, and by derivation, God. And, let's be clear, those people are absolutely indispensable for the formation of relationships in a community. Those churches that don't have those people suffer because of it. At the same time, let's also acknowledge that there is more than "love for people" that is happening here. For those social galvanizers, it feels good to be around people and to see people connect with one another. They are thriving on the dopamine that is released in their brain from those experiences. And that's how God intended it for them.

Love for God's people does not have to look for everyone like an overt, uncontainable passion for being with others. Love, as we know from the scriptures, is self-sacrificial, in which we lay down our rights and place the good of others ahead of our own. Thus, it can be a great display of love for those of us who relish our inner worlds, to lay those things down sometimes and be present with others, when we might otherwise prefer to be alone.

Introversion as Gift, Not Liability?

2016-09-12T21:59:00.002-07:00

I have been writing about introversion for 10 years now. That’s a surprising number of words about being quiet. It seems that a lot of introverts are finding their words these days. With so many of us taking up our keyboards in recent defense of our disposition, I would wager that there are more words dripping with introversion than ever before.

While I, of course, celebrate that, I am troubled when introversion conversations drift in a particular direction, and that is in pointing out what we are not. I cringe when I see links to articles with titles such as “Why Introverts Hate Small Talk” or worse: “I Am an Introvert, Leave Me Alone!”

My concern is that we are giving the world the impression that ours is an orientation defined by what we lack. We aren’t gregarious, excitable, or charismatic. We dislike crowds and loud stimulation. We have less energy. Sometimes it’s even implied that we don’t like other people. It seems that extroversion gets to be defined by what it is, but introversion is too often defined by what it isn’t.

I know the confusions circling about the introverted temperament in an extroverted society, and I understand why we introverts can feel defensive about our social patterns. But our temperament is now part of a broader cultural dialogue, and my hope is that we can move away from a defensive posture into a more constructive one. Now that we know that up to half of the population falls on the introverted side of the spectrum, we no longer have to fight like we are backed into a corner.

I think it’s time to shift the conversation by celebrating the positive side of introversion. The more I have settled into my introversion over the past few years, the more I have come to appreciate its gifts. At this point, I wouldn’t want to be any other way.
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To read the second half of my article, and to learn about some of the gifts introverts have to bring to the world, click here to go to the Quiet Revolution website.

Why I am a Listener

2016-09-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

"Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others talk."
-Lee, from Steinbeck's East of Eden

There may be no discipline in our culture so highly valued but so seldom practiced as listening. Every relationship self-help book kicks off with the panacea of better listening. Every marriage can be fixed, every work conflict resolved, every wayward child brought home with more and better listening. Preach a sermon on listening and every head will nod and every knee will bow.

But in truth, there is no glory in listening. There is more glory in talking about listening than there is in practicing it. It is the New Years Resolutions of relationship disciplines. Listening is not glamorous, dynamic, or sexy. Listening will never be the next big thing. There is no money on the listening circuit. There is no listening circuit. People who have been well heard aren't even aware of it half the time.

The ministry of listening is quiet. Preaching happens center stage from a pulpit in front of hundreds of people. Listening happens in corners and coffee shops and late-night phone calls and hospital rooms. People don't line up at the door of the sanctuary to shake your hand after you have listened. The ministry of listening is small. It happens in one-on-one settings, maybe in an occasional small group that has prioritized listening to one another. The ministry of listening is slow. There is always more to learn about another person, no matter how long you have known them. There are more layers to unpack, more stories to hear, more emotions to usher us into trembling silence. It requires significant time and meaningful waiting.

I am not naive enough to think that my listening book will sell many copies. It will not bring me money and it will not bring me fame, and that is okay. Because a listener does not seek the spotlight.

The reason I am so dogged in my pursuit of a listening life is because listening is making me into the kind of person that I want to be. I want to be the kind of person who helps others find their voice by listening along with them. I want to be a story-listener more than a story-teller. I want a listening heart, one that seeks to give, to learn, to welcome, to serve. I want to believe that the way to be filled is by giving away. I want to release my power so that others would be exalted. I want to set aside my agenda and my desire to control and to let the heart and words of another, maybe even Another, direct the conversation. I want to be the kind of person who submits, the sort of man who is subject to others out of reverence for Christ. I want to be the kind of person who has the capacity to be present and attentive, and I want others to feel loved, respected, and valued by my attentiveness. I want my listening to remind people who they truly are.

I don't just want to listen. I want to be a listener.

The Origins of a Listener

2016-09-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

How I ended up working as a hospice chaplain is still a bit of a mystery to me.

When I let go of my plans to attend law school after college and instead traveled from California to New Jersey to attend a seminary, I had visions of teaching, writing, and headlining speaking tours. One of my favorite authors, Susan Howatch, wrote a book about a Catholic priest called Glamorous Powers, and I was sure that my glamorous powers were wrapped up in the quality, the insight, and the impact of my words. My first job after school landed me behind a pulpit, and everything was going according to plan. I stood up in front of a congregation every Sunday, and I talked real good.

In order to get ordained as a minister, I had to intern as a chaplain at a local hospital. Believe me, I put it off. My gifts were in preaching and teaching; what was the point of me visiting patients in hospital rooms? In other words, I was terrified. I think even then I suspected that the cloak of insight I wore was merely shabby protection from the realities of fragile human life. I am grateful that my glamorous ambitions to ordination prevailed back then because they led me into a season of life that would destroy those ambitions forever.
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To read the full article at Quiet Revolution, and the story gets very interesting, click here!

A Mere Lump of Humanity?

2016-08-30T10:23:00.001-07:00

I sat at my desk on a Monday morning and perused the telecare reports from the weekend:

The patient needs a refill on meds.
I need to talk to a social worker.
When will they remove the equipment?
I colored three pictures today.

Without looking, I knew that the last call belonged to Jimmy.

Jimmy was the first patient that I met as a hospice chaplain, and as I reflect on those years, he is definitely the most memorable patient that I met as a hospice chaplain. The memory of our first encounter is emblazoned on my mind: the nurse, the social worker, and I ascend the stairway to the second floor of a bleak motel to Jimmy’s room, his permanent residence. Jimmy greets us in a black Homer Simpson t-shirt and shiny red shorts, eyeing me suspiciously. As we cross the threshold we are hit with a fog bank of cigarette smoke. Jimmy says few words, usually in broken sentences and non-sequiturs, while our social worker in her most gentle voice attempts to explain his medication to him and how to call hospice from his cell phone. He nods his assents but looks thoroughly confused. This is not the first time this exchange has taken place, nor will it be the last.

This was one of the few times I ever saw Jimmy, even though he was on our service for several months. He was extremely uncomfortable around men and thus all of the hospice staff who attended to him were women. Jimmy’s story is filled with mystery, sadness, and profound isolation, yet his last months of life revealed glimmers of belonging, hope, and even a childlike contentment.

We were never able to identify a single one of Jimmy’s relatives, and he never spoke of his family or his past. He had no known friends, to the extent that we had to list his motel manager as his primary care giver. The source of his fear of men was unknown, though clearly traumatic. We could only speculate that in his life he had been hurt, physically and emotionally, by men. Some of his nurses spoke of him as a man-child, as his emotional intelligence was at the maturity level of perhaps an 8 year old boy. We conjectured that Jimmy had undergone severe emotional trauma at an early age, and though his body had continued to grow into that of a man, his mental and emotional capacity had frozen at that age. Others wondered if he was autistic, as he rarely made eye contact, spoke in monotone, and had limited facial movement. In the eyes of some outsiders he would have been a mere lump of humanity, misunderstood, anonymous, discarded, dying in an out-of-the-way motel.

But to our team, Jimmy became a son. During the 4 months that he was with us, we spoke of him more frequently than any other patient, often with a kind of fascinated laughter. He brought out the maternal instincts in our nurses and home health aides, who not only cared for his routine medical needs but also bought him a toaster and a small refrigerator and regularly brought him his eclectic lunch of choice, a vanilla milkshake and a fish sandwich. Nothing brought Jimmy as much joy as his toaster, the first he had ever owned. He had a phone conversation with his nurse Donna the day after receiving this gift:

Donna: Hi Jimmy, whatcha doing?
Jimmy: Eating toast.
Donna: How many pieces have you had so far today?
Jimmy: Six.

Our team secretary posted on her cubicle wall one of the many pictures he had filled in, from his Sesame Street coloring book. Jimmy treated the hospice phone number more as a friendship network than an emergency hotline, and he quickly became a hospice celebrity. Most if not all of our telecare nurses and patient care secretaries were well acquainted with him, whose calls ranged from genuine medical concerns to how many pictures he colored in an evening. Our records showed that he called telecare over 300 times.

During the course of our time with Jimmy, he became more friendly and open. He began to learn that it's possible to trust people, and I think he even slowly began to realize that he was loved. Likewise, we were also changed. His childlike simplicity humbled us. His authenticity and his unabashed willingness to express his needs challenged us.

That May we lost Jimmy. I had the opportunity to lead an informal memorial service, which was more of an occasion for storytelling and laughter than it was for a ritualized service. The table in front of the room was adorned with the standard flowers and a candle, but also with a basket of the toys he had been given and a picture that had been taken on his last birthday. The picture even betrayed a slight smile on Jimmy’s face.

At this gathering Jimmy’s parents were not present, but there was the man from his bank, the one man that Jimmy had trusted over the years, and his nurse Sam that had loved him like her own son. She was the one who taught him what a hug was, and though at first he was extremely uncomfortable with this display of affection, by the end he would not let her leave until she hugged him. There were no brothers and sisters, but there was his doctor and social worker and team manager and secretary and chaplain, who all spoke of him fondly. There were no lifelong friends, but there were new friends who would remember him all their lives long.

It is not mere sentimentality to say that our team and others around him became Jimmy’s family during his last days. One of the hospice commitments is that parents and families come first, but this was one occasion in which those two groups beautifully intersected, and when we lost a patient we also lost a beloved family member.

Updated Speaking Page

2016-08-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

Listening, Introverts and Church, Christian Spirituality

Are you interested in having me speak at your conference, retreat, school, or church? Because I am a self-acknowledged introvert, some people assume I'm a train-wreck of a speaker, but in reality, I'm more of a fender-bender. There will be some damage, but you'll still be able to drive home afterwards. Actually, some have called me a "dynamic" speaker, but let's keep that under wraps, because introverts aren't supposed to be dynamic. I am passionate about Christian spirituality, contemplative forms of prayer, a leader's inner life, and listening to people in pain. I have a number of talks prepared on introversion and church life and how to become a listening community.

Here are two sample talks:

The Goals and Perils of Community Life
Rejoicing in Suffering

Wine and The Spirit

My newest passion is on the spirituality and history of wine. Do you know that the modern wine industry, whether in the old world or in California, owes its greatness to the monastic and missionary traditions of the past? People immersed in the scriptures and in the grand Christian tradition have placed wine at the center of their rituals and tables for millennia. In addition to being an ordained minister and spiritual director, I am also a sommelier and will be taking the Certified Specialist of Wine exam in the fall, through the Society of Wine Educators. Currently, I lead wine tours for Santa Barbara Coastal Concierge, and if you are interested in visiting Santa Barbara wine country, be sure to request me as your guide. Or I could tailor a wine tour or retreat for your group; I even have access to a gorgeous house up on a hill in wine country.

I have led two "Wine and The Spirit" seminars at the Glen Workshop in Santa Fe and have a series of lectures and discussions on:

How To Taste Wine
Pairing Food and Wine
Wine and Christian Spirituality
Wine in the History of the Church

These subjects, of course augmented with actual wine tasting, would be ideal for church retreats and conferences.

Email me for more information.

Upcoming Events

September 30, 2016 - Someone To Tell It To Banquet, Keynote Speaker, Harrisburg, PA

Adam's Speaking Highlights:

August 2015 and 2016 - Wine and Food and Spirit, seminar at the Glen Workshop, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

January 2014 - World Vision International, Monrovia, California.

April 2013 - Ferment: Winemaking and the Creative Process, Hosted by Image Journal, Napa, California.

February 28, 2012 - Guest Chaplaincy, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington D.C. Aired on CSPAN.

April 2012 - Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

July 2011 - Laity Lodge, Leakey, Texas.

April 2011 - Glenkirk Church, Glendora, California.

October 2010 - Irvine Presbyterian Church, Irvine, California.

September 2010 - World Vision International, Monrovia, California.

Blood from a Stone

2016-08-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

In 2010, inspired by Peter Mayle’s book A Year in Provence, I spent a week in Provence, in the south of France. I was eager to tour the papal palace in the stone-walled, water-wheeled city of Avignon, home to Pope Clement V after he relocated the papacy from Italy to France in the early 14th century.

But let’s not kid ourselves. I didn’t go to Provence for the history. I went for the wine.

A day after the palace tour, things got serious as I stood in the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the “new house of the pope” in honor of the French papal era. There, surrounded by rows of vineyards bearing thousands of clusters of the Grenache grape, are the ruins of the Avignon popes’ vacation home. With the half-collapsed structure in the backdrop, our wine guide explained the unique feature of the soil in the appellation. A layer of large stones sits atop the clay soil, absorbing heat and helping maintain moisture, and the appearance is that the vines sprout miraculously out of rocks. He then said this: “You can now understand the local expression that making wine is like squeezing blood from a stone.”

Blood from a stone.

Never has a phrase so captured my attention. I lost track of what our guide said for the next 10 minutes, as the long tendrils of the phrase curled around my mind.

Blood from a stone….A heart of flesh out of a heart of stone….Blood dripping down on Golgotha…Water out of a rock….A letter written not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts….A stone rolled away to allow Life to burst forth.

This is dramatic, but for me it was nothing short of a conversion. This was my Damascus road, my Augustinian “take and read” experience, my holy shit moment.

Blood from a stone is not just the story of wine. It is the story of humanity. It is the story of God, pressing stony hearts to produce lifeblood, raising a cold, hard corpse to blood-pumping resurrection life.

Blood from a stone is my story.

After that trip, wine was no longer my hobby. It was an irresistible call. Vineyards would be my sanctuary, wine pilgrims my congregation, and the fruit of the vine my everyday sacrament. I knew that my days working as a hospice chaplain were numbered. But perhaps wine is not the abolishment of ministry. Perhaps wine is the fulfillment of ministry.

Life and ministry for me up to that point had been strangely disembodied. I was a floating head. Sure, I had a body, but I dragged it along as the necessary housing for my brain and that was about it. And my brain pulled off some great things. It got me lots of scholarships and degrees, it wrote a couple of good books, and it won me some awards. But my body had no voice. You’ve heard of extra-sensory perception? I had under-sensory perception.

The normal sequence is that youth is lived bodily, a time for physical exuberance, and that growing older slowly moves us into our minds as our bodies become less reliable. Well, I’m 40 and my brain just isn’t doing it for me that much anymore. It seems intent on protecting me from pain and on mind-blocking me from intimacy. It is time that I meet my body and experience myself as wholly embodied. If I’m going to love God with all of myself, then I best become acquainted with all of myself.

Wine is largely considered a heady thing, reserved for elitists, pretentious snoots, and those who aspire to elitism and pretentious snootiness. For me, wine has become a way that I am getting in touch with my sensuality. The nature and complexity of a great wine is so transcendent that we must experience it with our most basic, earthiest senses.

The discipline of evaluating a wine is really about getting all your senses involved. I behold the color and transparency of a wine with my eyes. I swirl the glass not only to unlock the aromas but to hear the movement of the liquid. I stick my nose as far into the glass as I can to root out the layers of aromas – the blackberries, the violets, the damp earth, the toasty oak. I allow the wine to linger on my tongue and I pay attention to how it hits every part of my palate. What does it taste like? What does it feel like? – the “touch” of a wine. I notice the warmth at the back of my palate and the lightness it brings to my body.

My quest to explore the flesh and blood of wine grapes is also my quest to explore my own flesh and blood. Wine is introducing me to my body. I am learning to pay attention to its desires and to listen to its voice. It is surprisingly talkative these days. It turns out that the things I have often given it are not what it needs and the things I have neglected are what it craves. I am exercising and lifting weights. I am sleeping more. Long walks are no longer merely a setting for deep thoughts; they are exercises in paying attention. I stop to pet the horses and donkeys on my way to work. I am spending less time with people who make me feel heavy and more time with people who make my body feel lighter. I am learning how much touch I need in order to feel loved.

When it comes to my body, blood is slowly being squeezed from a stone.

Quiet Revolution

2015-11-13T10:17:00.002-08:00

Hi everyone, I am happy (and relieved) to announce that my new book, The Listening Life, is now available for sale on Kindle and other ebook readers. The months of buildup to book release, I swear, seem interminable. The official release date for the paperback is December 6th, but if you buy the paperback online you should have it before Thanksgiving. Thank you, friends. I am excited to share it with you.

You have may heard that the Quiet Revolution website launched a few months ago. This is the brainchild of Susan Cain, author of the bestselling book Quiet, who was kind enough to endorse my new book as well. I have written a few articles for QR, and I want to link to them today.

The Gifts of Introversion

"I think it’s time to shift the conversation by celebrating the positive side of introversion. The more I have settled into my introversion over the past few years, the more I have come to appreciate its gifts. At this point, I wouldn’t want to be any other way."

How an Introvert Does a Book Tour

"Introverts write lots of books. We relish life in the underground, and few activities give us better opportunities to luxuriate in the quiet than writing. When I tell people I can’t go out with them because I’m tired, they object. But when I tell people I can’t go out because I have to write a book, they relent. Even though writing means blood, struggle, and agonizing introspection stretching toward despair, it’s still better than Tuesday happy hour with the co-workers you already spent all day with."

Why Listening Can Be a Gift

"I had learned that it is in quiet that we honor the sacred and painful moments of life. I had learned that presence is more than speaking, and that words can be barriers that separate us from others and from entering the moment we are currently living."

Thanks for reading, everyone! ~Adam

The Listening Life

2015-06-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

In 2009, at about 4pm on Christmas Eve, as I lounged on the couch watching A Christmas Story, I was jolted by one of those creative revelatory shock waves that come along about every 6 years, if I'm lucky. I had published my first book two months earlier, and after the requisite phase of "I'm NEVER writing another freaking book again!" I was of course starting to think about my next project. I've heard that women have a mechanism in their brain that helps them forget about the pain of childbirth, so people will have more than one child. I'm pretty sure that writers have a similar coping mechanism, to help us forget about the agony of publishing the first book.

I had spent much of the afternoon walking, trying to burn some anticipatory calories before the next 24 hours of gluttony, attempting to conceive of an idea for book #2. Direct thought usually leads me to nothing but frustration and hopelessness. So with one eye focused on the movie and another eye trained on despair, I mumbled a prayer. "Lord, I've got nothing. But I think you've called me to be a writer. So, I'm listening."

LISTENING.

As soon as I muttered the word, it did a U-Turn right back on me. My second book would be about listening.

Over the remainder of the holiday season, as I tried to avoid relatives, a plan fell into place. I would devote the next season of life to writing about listening. I had devoted the last ten years to the practice of listening, and now it was time to share what I had discovered.

I dove into the project, and read everything I could find on listening. I interviewed friends and colleagues. I even hired a fancy agent.

My book proposal was rejected by 10 publishers. Listening wasn't an edgy or eye-catching topic. One editor said, in a phrase that will haunt me to my dying day, "Your prose is workmanlike but uncompelling."

One publisher disagreed. InterVarsity Press, the publisher I never should have turned from in the first place, offered me a contract.

It has been a tumultuous 6 years, and I am excited and relieved to announce that my second book is available for pre-order. The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction will be published in December.

I have some things to share with you. First, the back cover copy:

Be quick to listen, slow to speak." ―James 1:19. How would our lives change if we approached every experience with the intention of listening first? In this noisy, distracting world, it is difficult to truly hear. People talk past each other, eager to be heard but somehow deaf to what is being said. Listening is an essential skill for healthy relationships, both with God and with other people. But it is more than that: listening is a way of life. Adam McHugh places listening at the heart of our spirituality, our relationships and our mission in the world. God himself is the God who hears, and we too can learn to hear what God may be saying, through creation, through Scripture, through people. By cultivating a posture of listening, we become more attentive and engaged with those around us. Listening shapes us and equips us to be more attuned to people in pain and more able to minister to those in distress. Our lives are qualitatively different―indeed, better―when we become listeners. Heed the call to the listening life, and hear what God is doing in you and the world.

And second, I am exceedingly grateful for my endorsements.

"Listening is one of the best gifts we can give or receive. Listening changes things. Listening, the way Adam McHugh describes it, could just change the world." Ruth Haley Barton, founder and president, Transforming Center, author of Life Together in Christ

"Adam McHugh is a voice worth listening to. His new book will be a gift to anyone who wants to cultivate what Jesus called "ears to hear" - John Ortberg, Senior Pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church

"The Listening Life is the kind of book that made me at times not want to turn the page because I needed to! What the book did was still my soul and remind me to be still before God -- to silence the noise and open the closed doors to hear, and in hearing we learn that in listening to God and to one another we enter into the graces of love. On every page Adam McHugh offers wisdom that slowly marches us into a deeper kind of life, one marked by listening to God in a way that teaches us how to listen to one another and to ourselves. There are two kinds of people: those who talk and those who listen -- the former need to read this book slowly and listen well to the lesson about reverse listening, while the latter will discover fresh light on a discipline now deepened." -Scot McKnight, Julius R. Mantey Professor in New Testament, Northern Seminary.

"If it was possible to combine the voices of Dallas Willard, N.D. Wilson, and Jim Gaffigan, then what you would get is Adam S. McHugh. His writing is profound, lyrical, and self-deprecating in all the right ways. There are few books I want start again once I've finished. The Listening Life is now one of them. I adore this stunning, important book and want to give it to everyone I know." -Emily Freeman, author of Simply Tuesday: Small-Moment Living in a Fast-Moving World.

"Adam McHugh has been a significant contributor to the conversation about how introverts experience the world. His new book The Listening Life has the power to reshape how both introverts and extroverts make space for deep listening in a world that swims in the shallows. Highly recommended." -Susan Cain, author of Quiet.

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I realize that listening isn't the sexiest topic, but I believe it to be an incredibly important one. Everyone seems to be seeking to find their voice these days, but who will help them listen for it?
Thank you, everyone, for your continued support over the last few years. And thank you for helping me to tell others about my new book.

Thank You and Goodnight

2015-04-30T13:54:00.002-07:00

It has been 3 years since I finished my work as a hospice chaplain. But I never stop thinking about it. Today, as a Throwback Thursday, I thought I would revisit my post after my last shift.
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Tonight I worked my very last shift as a hospice chaplain. It is midnight, my shift ended 11 minutes ago, and I am writing a blog post while my thoughts are fresh. I'm planning on going deep into the night, just as I have so many times when I've been on-call. And then on Friday I'm going to resume my previous life as a morning person.

I'm wearing my badge around my neck, for the very last time, as I write this. As another nod to sentiment, I just returned from a late night Del Taco run, which I have done probably 50 times between the hours of midnight and 6am in the last 2 years. Many times I circled the drive-thru just because it comforted me to know that other people were working at that time of night. While most of you have been oh-so-selfishly sleeping in your warm beds during these shadowless hours, some of us had to keep the world running. Big Fat Chicken tacos don't make themselves, you know.

I also just left my last voice mail for the team I worked for tonight. I ended it with "Peace out suckers!!" No one will laugh when they hear it. Hospice workers just aren't funny.

It's all but impossible to capture the experiences, the feelings, and the interactions that have formed these last 25 months. There is no way that I can fully describe what it feels like to go to bed with a beeper (yes, a beeper) next to your ear, and have it scream you out of sleep at 3am, like a rooster who's been doping. And that's only the preface to the terrors of what comes next: "Adam, there is a family who lost someone tonight and they're not coping well. The nurse needs your help for spiritual and psychological support. Oh, and their house is 50 minutes away from you, in east L.A. Tell us when you're finished, because we may have another visit after that for you."

When I told people I was a hospice chaplain, they would give me one of two responses. Either they would be absolutely mortified and look at me as though I were an alien from outer space, or else they would be incredibly moved and give me a hug. One time an old couple bought me a bottle of Syrah and a 20oz Rib eye after they found out what I did. One time a woman scowled and walked away after she found out what I did. One time a child yelled "I hate you!!", stomped on my foot, and ran away. I might have made that last one up.

But the extreme responses I received from others only echoed the contradictions that I experienced within myself. Hospice has been the best thing that ever happened to me. Hospice has been the worst thing that ever happened to me. Sometimes I feel like I have seen too much. Sometimes I feel like I have seen exactly what I needed to see. I feel like my heart grew 3 sizes. I feel like I left pieces of my heart all over Pasadena, and Monterey Park, and Pomona. I had days where I felt like taking off my shoes because I stood on holy ground. I had days where I felt like putting on layer after layer because I felt naked.

I have holy memories, and I have haunted memories, and they mingle in my mind, like a wedding attended by two families who hate each other.

I remember the man who threatened to commit suicide at 2am, and how I kept him on the phone for over an hour until he promised not to do it that night.

I remember the woman whose heart stopped beating the moment I said "Amen."

I remember the brothers who got into a fist fight after their dad died.

I remember Livia, who I sat with for hours and talked about her childhood in Italy.

I remember the family who complained bitterly about my service, even though I gave everything I had to that visit.

I remember Katherine, who told me what it was like to grow up in London during the Blitz.

I remember the woman who told my supervisor, "Either he needs to learn some goddam respect or else get another mother*%$ing job!"

I remember the people who said "You have been with us in the most important time. You are part of our family now."

I remember the time I was called 4 times in an 8 hour shift, and how I spent the next 3 days on the couch, depressed.

I remember the old woman at a nursing home, who answered my "Good morning" with a brazen flip of her middle finger.

I remember the time when I sat in a nursing home with a grieving woman with early onset dementia who had just lost her mom. She asked me the same exact question every 4 minutes for 2 hours.

I remember the late night drives to the City of Industry, where very little industry happens aside from strip clubs and prostitution. I remember the late night drives to the City of Commerce, where very little commerce happens aside from strip clubs and prostitution. Don't go to the City of Industry or Commerce late at night.

I remember the first time I was the first person to inform someone that a relative had died. It was my very first death visit.

I remember Eulogia ("blessing" in biblical Greek), the 99 year old woman who had lived in her house for 80 years. Shortly before her 100th birthday her family moved her into a nursing home. When I visited her the next day, she saw me and immediately burst into tears and said "I didn't think you would know where to find me!"

I remember the time that I prayed for a man who had been unresponsive for three days. When I took his hand to pray, his fingers closed around mine. It was the last time he moved anything voluntarily.

I remember the two sisters - young, smart, attractive, and blonde, with dream lives in their crosshairs - and how they watched their mother succumb to breast cancer.

I remember the girlfriend of the dying man who sat by his bedside all Christmas eve and all Christmas day, when his family wouldn't come. They had been dating for 3 months. He was perfectly healthy when they started dating. They met at church.

I remember the men of older generations who didn't feel comfortable expressing emotions. They slowly died on the inside while their wives died on the outside.

I remember the time that I threw my beeper across the street and had to hunt for it in the dark for 10 minutes. I remember the time that I managed to turn off my beeper while asleep. I remember the last time I ever turned off my beeper. It was an hour ago.

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The apostle Paul tells us to "give thanks in all circumstances," and as I penetrate through all the memories, all the late night drives, all the pop music I used to keep me awake, all the agony and the joy, all the holy and the profane, all the cursing and the praise, all the solitary walks around Pasadena City Hall, all the graveyard Del Taco runs and daybreak Starbucks runs, I uncover gratitude. I am grateful to be done, yes, but I am grateful for all of it.

Thank you for teaching me about pain. Thank you for teaching me not to run from it, but to sit with it.

Thank you for the sacred moments, when I was able to hold a patient's hand as he took his last breath.

Thank you for teaching me about death, that it is always awful and sometimes beautiful.

Thank you for opening my heart to family, who may war with another but almost always show up in the same room when they need to.

Thank you for showing me that my dreams and desires will not always pulsate within me.

Thank you for teaching me about depression, that it often shows up at times of transition.

Thank you for clarifying my priorities, for showing me what is significant in life.

Thank you for teaching me that my most profound thoughts fall completely flat in moments of life and death.

Thank you for making me a better person than I was 2 years ago.

Thank you for showing me that neither life nor death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

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When you spend as much time around death as I have over these last 2 years, when every day on the calendar is Ash Wednesday, you learn that ultimately life offers no happy endings. Every life ends in sadness and grief and pain and silence. And all we can do is struggle and work, believe and doubt, hope and fall, run and wrinkle. Every person has both a victor and a victim inside of her. You have more fight and strength in you than you ever imagined, but you also have more weakness and vulnerability than you ever thought. Your bodies will decay and ultimately lose the fight, but you will battle valiantly and courageously. I have seen it time and time again from people you wouldn't think would be so strong.

When you work in hospice, you spend a lot of time with people who are waiting, suspended in that interim period between light and darkness. But whether in life or in death, we are people who wait. We anticipate a Day when the deathbed will be transformed into the cradle of resurrection, when the last gasps of death will be modulated into the cries of new life.

Until that glorious daybreak, we pray with the Church every night:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ, give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love's sake. Amen.

Goodnight. Thank you.

Bud Break

2015-03-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

It's spring time in the vineyards, which brings with it the most awaited moment of the vineyard's life cycle. In early March the days get hotter and the vine begins to wake up. The heat triggers the reproductive rhythm, the sap flows upward from the root to the vines, and then that annual miracle happens: bud break. Even those vineyard workers who have seen it 60 times wait with anticipation and some anxiety for this moment, and praise the heavens when it happens. Bud break brings hope, it brings life, and it brings the promise of abundance, livelihood, and harvest.

I wondered for a long wintry season if the buds would ever break in my life. Everything felt cold, dormant, and desolate. I was burnt out, stretched thin, in a job that was choking the life out of my soul, stuck in uncertainty about my future. I could hardly remember the last harvest, when my life had felt full and rich. I had lost my passion for writing, and I struggled with bouts of depression. Even the holiday season had been lifeless and empty. I wondered if the earth had stopped spinning under my feet, and whether I would be stuck in eternal winter.

I got serious about wine after I started visiting the Santa Ynez Valley, about 45 miles north of Santa Barbara, in 2004. I first visited after seeing the movie Sideways, and I quickly learned two things: first, this is my favorite place on earth, and second, don't mention the movie Sideways to locals. I quickly became a regular, making the drive up here 10-12 times per year, and I began to nurture a dream of living here and spending my remaining days writing, sipping the plentiful nectar of the land, working at a winery, and living a big life in a small town.

The Santa Ynez Valley became my promised land, a place where wine flows like water, where beauty lifts and calms my soul, where it takes an hour to get out of the grocery store because everyone in line chats happily with checkers and baggers, where life moves at the pace of the annual vine cycle, where the farmer's market is three blocks long in a six block town.

But every promised land has giants as well as grapes. There were significant obstacles keeping me from the entering the land. It is expensive to live in wine country, and my hospice resume wasn't exactly conducive to getting a job in the wine world. My dream was so near and yet so far away, and I lived for many seasons in that far away nearness. I was in the wilderness, and I didn't know how to get out.

In April 2013, I attended a conference in Napa hosted by Image Journal called "Cultivate," and the theme was winemaking, art, and the creative process. I had left hospice a month before, and was suspended in an in-between world, walking a tightrope between two cliffs, trying not to look down. It was an unsettled, anxious time. One morning at the conference, I spoke on my own search for "place," and especially how elusive true place has been for me. I longed for a place where I felt I belonged, a place that I could call home, a place where God visited. And for me that place is Santa Ynez, but I felt like Moses in that I got to see my promised land but didn't get to enter it.

But buds are relentless and inevitable. They may look fragile when they first emerge, but they will not be denied. Even if a spring frost comes and freezes the nascent buds, new buds will shortly take their place. The vines will flower, they will produce leaves to make sugar and protect the flowers from the summer sun, and clusters of grapes will develop out of the flowers. Sugar levels will increase, acidity levels will decrease, and come the fall the grapes will make wine.

Last July, I was offered the assistant manager job at one of my very favorite California wineries, Au Bon Climat. Last fall, I took another part-time position as a winery tour guide in Santa Ynez, combing my passions of wine, history, and Santa Ynez. About the same time, I figured out that downtown Santa Barbara is the right spot for me to live.

There have been some dark and cold nights. There has been loneliness and sadness and desolation. But once again, buds are breaking all over the place here. They will not be denied, not even by the coldest winter.

Slow and Quiet

2014-11-05T11:26:00.002-08:00

Well, hello there. It has been a while since I wrote in this space. Then again, I'm the guy who wrote a book about introversion, so when I disappear from public life, it probably isn't all that surprising. My favorite moments are still the ones I experience in solitude, and my favorite thoughts are still the ones that I think and write in the quiet.

There have been lots of life changes since I last wrote, and I handle transitions and adjustments best through slow thoughts, lazy stares, and long walks. Long walks come easily in downtown Santa Barbara, where I now live and work. I walk to work, I walk to coffee shops, I walk to the grocery store, I walk to friends' houses, I walk to wine bars. I may have walked away from professional ministry over a year and a half ago, but I think it took about 18 months for professional ministry to walk away from me. I am now settled in as assistant manager at a reputable winery in Santa Barbara and a wine tour guide in Santa Ynez. But I still think there is more continuity between my old life and my new life than others might think. What I tell people is that as a hospice chaplain I used to listen to medicated people, and now as a wine educator I still listen to medicated people. They're just a lot happier now.

After 3 1/2 years, I did finally finish the manuscript for my second book. Turns out that major life changes are not the best context for fast writing. It turns out my brain is not the best context for fast writing. But I am happy with the book, though while I wait for my editor's feedback I have already come up with another chapter to fit in there. I really love the title, "The Listening Life," and I hoping IVP will agree. We should have an official release date before long, but I anticipate it will be early next fall, the most wonderful time of the year. Book writing is slow, book editing is slow, book publishing is slow. No wonder I thrive in it. If you weren't patient before you got into writing books, you will be by the time they're published.

Here are a couple of announcements. Our favorite introvert, Susan Cain, author of the mega-selling Quiet, (now $2.99 on kindle) is founding a website called "Quiet Revolution," which will feature all kinds of introvert-related material. She asked me to be a regular contributor, and I will be writing a monthly column starting soon. My first article will be about the motivation that led me to write a book about listening. Preview: Listening makes me into a particular kind of person.

Second, in a beautiful collision of all my worlds, I have been asked to lead a seminar on wine at the Glen Workshop in June. The Glens are for writers, artists, and musicians - a workshop and retreat rolled up into one - and they are sponsored by Image Journal, my favorite Christian print publication.

My seminar will be called "Wine and Spirit," and here is the description:

To the ancients the process by which grape juice was transformed into wine was a sacred mystery. Wine was a gift of the gods, a holy offering, lifeblood that unites us to the deep things of the universe, an elixir that makes a hard life just a little bit easier. You see, wine was not invented or created; wine was discovered, an accidental miracle stumbled upon by a gatherer of wild grapes. Even now, when modern science has discovered the building blocks and chemical reactions that catalyze the fermentation process, we put wine at the center of our tables and our altars, a sacramental reminder of invisible realities. In this workshop Adam McHugh, ordained Presbyterian minister, spiritual director, author, and yes, sommelier, will lead us into the mysteries and meaning of wine. Through discussion and wine tasting, we will let wine slow us down and teach us how to pay attention to the everyday miracles in front of us.

Glen East is June 14-21st at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts. There will be scholarships available, which will be forthcoming soon on their website as they update it for the 2015 editions.

We can all eagerly anticipate my next blog post, which will likely come sometime in the summer of 2015.