Piloting Faith: If you are falling...
A Word for the Day...
I spend some of my time working with organizations that are facing the end of their lives. Sometimes they are companies. Sometimes they are non-profits. Sometimes they are congregations. Every time they are led by people who, in the process of navigating the death of their organization, have to find the courage to face the unknown. What comes after "this" no longer exists?
Psychologist Joseph Campbell spent much of his career studying the mythic story of the Heroic Journey. If you don't know this story, Netflix has just released an excellent synopsis. The basic idea is that life presents every one of us with a defining "crisis" moment that becomes an invitation to an epic adventure. We choose if we want to accept the invitation. If we do, we go through "refining fires" of hardship. If we persevere, we come out on the other side completely transformed. We become fully Ourselves.
Campbell once gave the advice, "If you are falling...dive."
You may be facing an unknown future. Could it be an invitation to your heroic journey? Could it be that something far more extraordinary is available to you on the other side?
We've heard this story before. It's the rhythm of death and resurrection. I pray you choose the path to new life.
- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight
Prayer for the Week
Gracious God,
We long to know you. But we are so often blind to your presence, your will, and your ways.
Teach us to see you in the world and in us. Teach us to see past our biases, our anxieties, our assumptions and our fear of each other. These days if seems as if the very salvation of the world rests in our ability to wake up to your Love within us all.
So, help us seek understanding as if it was a long lost treasure, waiting and available to all of us. Make us "woke" or keep us searching until we find you and are finally transformed.
Amen.
- (adapted from The Prayer Wheel by Patton Dodd, Jana Riess and David Van Biema)