At Sea with Justin McRoberts

One of the conversations that I've been in for many years led to the desire to put together the book, Sacred Strides. And one of the conversations that comes up now that the book is out in the world has to do with burnout; you have most likely been around or been privy to or been in a conversation about burnout. One of the pivotal scenes or moments in the book sacred strides is one in which I point out how many folks actually experienced burnout in the ministry field. That's something along the lines of three out of every five persons who functions as a minister experiences burnout. 60% of the people who work in ministry claimed to admit to experiencing burnout. Usually, with statistics like social stats, the number tends to be a little skewed. Because with something like burnout, there tends to be kind of a shame piece where folks don't want to say they're burned out, so they don't. So if it's three out of five, and if it's 60%, by stats, you can assume there might be a few more folks than even that. Psychologically, when we talk about burnout, we're not just talking about being tired. And I think that's super important. There's one thing to be tired of. And there are certain kinds of tiredness that are actually really good for burnout isn't just about being tired. If you research burnout through the National Institute of Health, you'll see a definition of something along the lines of that burnout is a psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job. So it's not just about the hours we put in; it's not just about the difficulty of those hours or the tasks we're up to. One way to talk about this is that burnout has as much to do with feeling misplaced and misused in our jobs and now in our lives as it has to do with the amount of time and energy we're spending. In other words, I can put in the same amount of time, with the same intensity, in a different place and not feel burned out. Another way to get into this conversation is to talk about metrics. Part of our sense of misplacement in our work lives oftentimes has to do with the metrics we're using for really just success. What makes me successful in this job can be a question that either sets me up for burnout or sets me up for healthy patterns of self-actualization and fulfillment. And so one of the gifts that a regular practice of rest does is it actually gives me altitude, not just to evaluate my experience of my job, but to actually evaluate the metrics I'm using when I think about how the job is going. So a couple of simple examples is I'll work with church leaders, who were trained in the metrics of numbers, and putting butts in seats, or conversions, or some sort of numbers-oriented metric. And because that's the metric they're using to evaluate success, anything that might add joy takes a massive backseat to achieve those numbers. And burnout comes when those numbers don't show up. Even if other aspects of the job that are truly life-giving to me are actually in place and going well. Same Same. I'll talk with artists who are bent on selling, and they're supposed to, or they think they're supposed to make a living, quote, unquote, make a living in the arts. And this will want to two ways with artists one, it'll be that they have a part-time job, or maybe even a full-time job, and they're trying to do their art on the side. And the burnout comes from recognizing, like, I don't want to try to hold both these pieces. And I need to actually take a season and full-blown invest in just my art for a season. Or at least as often. They recognize that tangling up their passion projects with the propensity or the need for sales is actually stealing joy. And they're experiencing burnout. because sales are displacing them, it's the thing they don't want to associate with their artwork. Again, one of the only ways to get out of the tube in our lives so we can pay attention to those metrics and how those metrics are shaping our experience of our work is to take regular time away to take a look back at what I'm experiencing and why I'm experiencing it on one level. Rest can be a place where I can look back at my life and figure out how to do the life I'm doing better. On another level, rest can be a way to take a step back and look at the life I'm living on a grander scale and actually make more fundamental changes that I don't want to try to achieve Some of the goals that I've been seeking to achieve, that's why I'm not happy. It's not like I want to get stronger or better at achieving some of these goals. I need to put some of these goals down, find new ones, and live a more fulfilled, happy, and therefore fruitful life. Friends, success is always, and I mean always, a moving target, and far more often than we allow ourselves. Success is the thing we get to decide on. What target do I want to hit? Well, I get to decide that more often than I'm told, which means it's really worth the time to figure out what it is I want to be achieving with the time, the talent, with the energy I have while I have it. Rest can provide space to figure that out. Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

I have had a somewhat unusual summer. And so far as I've taken a little bit of actual vacation time, I actually don't vacation much. I've never been one to enjoy vacation very much. Which isn't to say I don't like getting away. I do like the getaway; I like having days off. I like adventure, all that kind of stuff, vacation.It just has had historically this really odd association to it.Some of it has to do with childhood stuff, I think. But a lot of it just has to do with the experience I've had when taking vacations, and maybe you're like me in this, that for many, many years, I would be on vacation. And it would I would find it profoundly disappointing or profoundly unsatisfying. And then I'd come home from vacation and feel like I either wasted my time or I felt tired, or I would re-enter my life like something other than refreshed and ready. So the book Sacred Strides actually commits a couple of pages in a chapter to a conversation about vacation and some reflection on our American practice of getting away and taking vacations; I've got some criticisms of how we do it. And I won't read that chapter right now. It's some stuff we'll do later on. But part of what I've figured out as, as I come to those criticisms has to do with the way I have learned to approach time away, time off, and vacation. So here's the thing that I recognize, I learned, and part of why I'm enjoying vacation time in the summer. So when I leave for a vacation, when I'm on vacation, I don't actually like having a plan. That's not to say I don't want to know where I'm going; I want to know where I'm going. I want to have a destination for sure. I want to know that I've got a place to stay, and there'll be food to eat, etc. Outside of that, I really like to keep things kind of loosey-goosey and make decisions as I go along to be stuck with, like, here's the agenda, here's what time you're supposed to be there. Here's what time it's over like. Like, that's how I live the rest of my life vacation time away. I really like not having a plan. But the problem with not having a plan is it leaves me open to impulses. And then the question is about the nature of my impulses. And in the past, this was part of my historical pattern. Because I like my work, and I like my job so much that left to do nothing, I'll just kind of gravitate towards a project or gravitate towards like doing something maybe creatively or even logistically, like that's my natural impulse, my natural pattern, because I've developed that at practice that. And so I'll spend my quote-unquote vacation time tinkering with ideas and with projects or work stuff that I would actually just be happier doing back home, in my office space where all my stuff's available to me. So I would live in this tension like, I'm only half here, the impulses, I'm actually giving myself over to find a deeper, more comprehensive fulfillment when I'm at home in my office.That doesn't tell me I spent some time over the course of years in the practice of rest, paying attention to those impulses in me; why do I gravitate towards work? Some of it really does have to do with my joy. At work, I actually love what I do. But there was this other thing that I didn't recognize in me until I started paying attention.Because an impulse is a momentary explosion of interest or desire, that means that our impulses, which were the way I was thinking about my impulses, have a lot to do with knowing what I want. And in a lot of popular religious culture, all impulse is considered problematic. And sadly, I think that's because, in a lot of our religious contexts, all desire is painted as problematic. And I had spent very little time in my life, slowing down enough to pay attention to different wants in my life. So I could verify I could acknowledge, and celebrate my desire to make something I want to make good things in the world. That's a good thing to want to do. But outside of that, I think I was nervous. Actually, no, I was nervous to ask myself, what would you want for yourself? What would feel good to you? If we weren't doing something productive? We weren't adding to the bottom line. Maybe you resonate with that, that I just wasn't trained and paying attention to my own desire to paint and paying attention to the things that I wanted to my soul is even asking for. It's been in rest and moving away from the normal and very satisfying work patterns that I've learned myself as a person.With desires and interests, it's been in rest that I've had the space to examine and measure the differences between those desires. And those interests, I would be afraid of the desire, in fact, to nap, like it felt guilty like I don't, I shouldn't want to nap, lazy people nap, or to enjoy a nicer meal, not like I don't eat like super expensive stuff, but like, I'm definitely kind of a peanut butter and jelly kind of person most of the days, and so to go out somewhere and actually get a nicer drink and a nicer like, I was afraid to confess to myself that those were things that would actually satisfy my soul in a unique way. See, there are, without question, competing interests and desires in me. And if I don't give myself space and time to recognize them, and examine them, then I can't weigh the one versus the other and actually go ahead and choose better desires over lesser ones or even know the metric by which I'm making that decision. And I think this is where cheap religion and deep religion have their most profound difference. In cheap religion, it's just really simple. You're a corrupt vessel. And the only good in you is what gets injected into you either by your religion or by a Savior who doesn't really like you and tells you we're better than you are already.In deep religion, there are seeds of desire in you that if you chase them, if you follow them, they will lead you to good places because you were designed good by a loving and Good God, who holds your life together, as it is in a posture of joy, and love. And yes, in fact, desire.One of the experiences I have come to in vacation time is I get to be met by the same guy that meets me at work. I get to be met in fun, in recreation, and in that big, fat map.Rest. Far from just being a thing I do between work projects, it is a space in which I get to pay attention to myself and my desires. So that when I separate myself from my life's normal patterns, I can experience joys I wouldn't otherwise know. Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

The more conversations I have about the book sacred strides and dig into the themes in the stories, the more I find myself going back to some of my own source material, which is not to say the stories I wrote about my own life, but the words and the reflections and the teachings of the people who informed that life again, it's not experience that we learn from it is a reflection upon experience. And some of the people I've read over the course of the last 15-20 years had been very, very helpful in clarifying and helping me to learn from my experience, maybe none more, quite as profoundly as Parker Palmer, when it comes to vocation, you may or may not have read the book, let your life speak is really a book about vocation. It's about how we do what we do and who we are in it. In that book, he writes about self-care. And it's linked to service, which is a conversation I end up having, specifically with pastors, but with pastors and artists in my coaching context, but also, again, in the conversations I'm having on the other side of releasing the book sacred strides in a chapter called selfhood, society, and service, he writes this self-care is never a selfish act. It is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer. Anytime we can listen to the true self and give it the care it requires. We do so not only for ourselves but for the many others whose lives we will touch. There are at least two ways to understand the link between selfhood and service. One is offered by the poet Rumi in this piercing observation. If you are here faithfully with us, you're causing terrible damage. And then what Palmer does is he writes his own rendition of that same line, and I like this better. He says if we are unfaithful to our true selves, we will extract a price from others. Friends, I don't make massive sweeping cultural analyses all that often. But I'm somewhat comfortable saying that some of what we're seeing in the disarray of religious life, organized, institutionalized religious life, is not because organized religion is bad. It's not because institutionalizing things that matter; that's not negative in and of itself. Some of what we're seeing in the disarray of organized, institutionalized religious practice in America has to do with the number of false self-actors who are organizing and leading religious spaces, spaces that promise a pathway to the true self. So folks like you and I are showing up in institutionalized, organized religious spaces, hoping, dreaming, and wanting a pathway to wholeness and to belovedness. And those spaces, far too many of them, are being led by persons who are not living out of or even truly pursuing their own wholeness. They have given themselves over to this utilitarian mindset that basically convinces folks like myself when I was living in the pastorate that I can't bring my whole self to the table because it's not what these people want. These people do not want a person who is still in process; they want me to have answers. They want me to have strength all the time. They don't want me to have limits; they want me to be available all the time. That the requirements of the job, the demands of the job, the expectations that people come to that job with and for actually invite me into something more like a divided life. I cannot give you my whole self. I don't really want to, and I don't think you want me to either, but I will give you the best of my false self. Meanwhile, that's going to cost everybody in the long run. And that's part of what we're noticing now is we're going to witness and are witnessing the dissolving of the disintegration of persons and religious leadership. These are not on the whole persons that showed up with corrupted mindsets with ulterior motives. These are oftentimes women and men who showed up to serve in ministry positions. As pastors and caretakers of a place of love. They wanted to do the work itself, and then the demands of the culture and sometimes the demands of the person showing up in the seats in front of them or in the boardroom. asked of them something very different than homeless they asked for a mechanism. They asked for utility. They demanded that their limitations be cast aside. They demanded, in fact, that they not be full people but just be as useful as they can be in the quote, "role of pastor or minister" One of the reasons I wrote the book sacred strides is, well, it's one of the reasons I push my pastor friends, my minister clients towards a regular practice of rest, not because the work itself is corruptive, but because in order to do it well, I have to remember why I showed up. And that comes with time. And that comes with practice. Because the noise of doing things right, the noise of doing things effectively, will drown out the desire and the passion in me to do things well and wisely. And from a place of love. It actually means doing things more slowly so that I can enjoy what I'm doing. And here's the real trick. When I mention false self-actors, running and organizing institutionalized religious spaces, I'm not talking about people who showed up to act; I'm talking about people who no longer believe that it's valuable for them to enjoy their own work. One of the ways we move out of a posture of utility and acting and performance is that we look into our own souls, we pay attention to what's going on in our guts, and we decide it is not just okay, it is, in fact, necessary, that I am fully present to this job. And the surest metric of full presence is joy. What if Joy was a primary metric for success? In order to get there, I have to know what brings me joy. So I have to take regular stops along the way in my work to look back over the last week, last month, last year and say, Where was I most fully alive? Where am I least fully alive? And how do I build my Ellenville vocational practices in the direction of life, not just so I can enjoy this thing, but because I know if I'm experiencing joy, then I am more present? And if I am more present, I'm giving the best of the gift I have, which is my whole self, including my limitations. Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

My last couple of weeks, two weeks really almost at the mark right now, have been turbulent; I would say they'd been rough. But that's mostly just been turbulent. It's been hard. Not because I wasn't a part of and doing some really great things, I was. I had a wonderful time in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and I was in Santa Cruz with Young Life staff. And I was doing things that were wonderful. I was only somewhat present in some of those things. Because internally, I was really having a hard time. And while there are a number of factors to that, one of the main factors is the two weekends ago was Father's Day weekend. And it's almost always a tricky, sticky, and other kind of icky weekend for me; as a dad, I love being celebrated. Obviously, I like being with my kids. But man, as time has passed, I just miss my dad more on those days. The older I get, the closer I get to his age; when I lost him, the harder it is to miss him when I miss him. So it happens more. It happens less frequently than it used to happen. But when it happens, and it's exacerbated by an entire holiday celebrating fatherhood, woof. That was a predominant factor. So in the meantime, I'm having these incredible experiences. And I get to do this incredible work. And I'm with these wonderful people. And I'm living in some form of disintegration, not terrible. And this is part of how we live a lot of the time. I didn't have space. I didn't have room, and I didn't really want it to. I didn't. I didn't have space; I didn't have room to actually deal with all that was going on in me. I needed to be present for what was in front of me. That's part of how we live; that's kind of unavoidable. I can have internal struggles; I can be doing something really incredible and wonderful, but I have to be in both places and both things at the same time. So I live a little bit divided. But I didn't have time to let my soul catch up with myself entirely. This brings me to this; my friend Daniel introduced me to this John Dewey quote, the reads; We do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience. So I don't learn from experience; the thing I'm in doesn't really teach me anything directly. I can have all these experiences; I can receive all this data. I can have all these feelings. And then, at some point, the gift of rest as a practice is I let my soul and my experiences catch up with me. And intentionally, we call this the examine, look through what's going on in me. And then I can learn I just had not until a couple of days ago had the time to let my life catch up with me so that I could be integrated and be whole, which is one way to talk about belovedness. In the book Sacred Strides, in the introduction, I lead out with this story, this image about jogging with my dad for the last time. Their story reads like this from the book. Running together with my dad was a key connection point until I lost him to depression and suicide in 1998. To this day, I still remember our last run. It was really hard. It was hard for him physically; it was hard for both of us emotionally. We barely got into the four miles that we planned to run before he started falling apart. His left knee hurt from a foul he'd taken a few months previously, and he couldn't maintain his rhythm or his pace. He limped back to the car. And I remember him trying to hide his face. So I couldn't see that he was crying. I'm sorry, I can't keep up. He said. I was in my mid-20s At the time, and I was in decent running shape. But I didn't need him to keep up. I just wanted him to be with me. Because I loved him. I know now how hard it was for my dad to believe the simple truth that he was just playing loved. I moved around to his weak side, lightly grabbed his wrist, and threw his arm over my shoulders, and we finished the last half mile that way, arms around each other. Walking step by step together, his weakness meant room for strength in me, which meant connection. And that's all they ever wanted. Wholeness and integration is one of the gifts of the practice of rest that I can let my whole life catch up with me, including the things that are tearing me apart inside. I don't have space for that, and most of my life, I actually have to be present in what's in front of me. And sometimes, if not oftentimes, especially if I'm having a rough time internally. I've got to put that somewhere close to a backburner so that I can be present to the people to the job that I'm doing in front of me, which means that rest gets to be a place where I catch up with my whole self or my whole self catches up with me and I can look at the whole of my life, my victories, my successes, my positive and negative experience and let me be entirely myself and know that I am loved in every square inch of my whole life. Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

I have been, in some way, shape, or form, engaged in conversation about AI technology and our relationship with technology for a really long time. In 1999, or 2000, I read Ray Kurtzweil, his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. And I was shocked if it was way beyond my understanding the terms he was using the vision he was painting of how life would work in relationship with technology like I didn't have a context for it. And then as time went on, and this is part of what good books do as they provide us with language for things we haven't encountered, yet, I started seeing some of his predictions come to life that we would become not just more dependent upon the machines we use, we become more like them. And they would become more like us; it was a fascinating sci-fi-ish kind of adventure for a long time. And now, I'm going to hit pause here for a second because the place I'm not going to go is this place of sort of Luddite ism, where, like, I'm anti-technology; I'm actually not anti-technology; I love that I'm looking around at the tech in front of me and actually love all this stuff I really like having around me. And at the same time, I become increasingly aware, the older I get, of the ways in which the tech around me, the instruments, and the devices around me, and my use of them have actually detracted from my experience of living in my own body. And living as a human. There are ways in which all of this stuff has made my life way better, way easier, and sometimes more enjoyable. And there are ways in which I'm not as fully alive as I could be. If I wasn't as dependent on some of the things that I use technologically. This brings me to this because I'm someone who has been in this conversation and talked about it publicly; folks will send me things every once in a while that they're encountering. And a friend of mine recently sent a tweet thread that they were reading about chat GPT showing up in their workplace. The thread was critical of chat GPT, but maybe not in the way you would think. So Chad GPT had been used to write this vision statement for an organization that this person was working for. It's a charitable organization that helps people in various ways. And the meeting he was in was about vision; it was about who they are as an organization and what happens next. And normally, once a year, once every once in a while. He and the rest of the team and some board of directors types would get together in a room they would talk about, are we on a mission? Are we on? You know, are we living on our vision? Are we who we think we are? It's a very human question. And how do we continue to live that out? And then they would, over the course of time, have this conversation in a meeting, and people would write down these things. And then, they would pass all these notes on to someone who would then write them out. This is who we are. And this is how we're going to execute on who we are. And they would live that out over the next few months or years. This article, though, was put on the table; this document was written by Chet GPT, and someone in the company said I can expedite this process. I can make this faster. I'm just going to plug in the information and make these asks to check GBT, they brought the document, and they were working then from this document that a bot had written a chatbot had run. Now his critique wasn't just that someone's job had been taken by a chatbot. And oftentimes, it would have been him that was part of why he was writing. And normally, he was the person that would impasse these notes. And he'd spend a few hours over the, you know, every day over the course of a week or so to compile them and write a document; he'd been replaced. So there was that there a sense of, like, my job has been replaced, and I'm bummed about that. But it wasn't just about not having the job to do. He actually talked about missing the process, that instead of sitting in the room with these people that he works with, talking about this project that they do together and the joy of the work that they get to do every once in a while. It had just been done. It was faster, it was more expedient, and it saved them hours and hours and hours of time, but he wanted those hours back. He wanted to have done the work. Which brings me to this. I wonder if the real crisis when it comes to our relationship to technology and really, specifically, to the use of and our relationship to artificial intelligence. Intelligence isn't just, hey, we might have our jobs replaced, and we won't make money. I think that's a massive consideration. I don't think it's not, I do think it is, But I think the deeper consideration is this the real joy of work, the real fruit of work, actually isn't that we get to pay our bills if we do it. Well, that's not really the deepest thing. And the deepest truth about what work is, that is a fundamental truth. It's a fundamental societal truth that if you do your job, well, if you work well, part of the reward is you could get to pay for the life you're living. deeper than that, though. The real deep fruit of work is who you become as you are doing it. This is what it's called an axiology, or an ethic, or even a theology or philosophy of work. And I think it is the thing that is primarily missing in our conversation about AI. Not just, hey, what will we do when these machines take our jobs? How will we pay for our lives? But who am I going to be without the work in my life? What the guy who wrote the tweet thread was missing wasn't just the job and what it would pay him. It was the joy of becoming as they did that work. This brings me to this underlying problem when it comes to our understanding of work and its relationship to rest. And part of why I wrote the book Sacred Strides. When I initially set out to write this book for this time of my life. It was a book predominantly about rest. I looked around, and I noticed as I was putting it together there were so many incredible books, but the rest was about Sabbath Keeping. I'm thinking of Mr. Buchanan's book, the rest of God, which actually shows up in my book as part of my story, as does Walter Bergman's book, Sabbath is Resistance. I'm thinking of Lauren winters book, Mudhouse, Sabbath, and I realized, gosh, I don't really think I have a ton to add to that. I'd rather point people to those books. And say this is more quintessential teaching about Sabbath and Sabbath Keeping. And then I noticed this problem that a lot of the culture built around the reading of those books made work an enemy of human flourishing, that rest had become the antidote that Sabbath Keeping was treated as an escape from the drudgery of the awfulness of having to work and I get it. I know this. I mean, if, again, if you've read the book, you know, you know, my dad's whole story around work was rooted in anxiety; it wasn't a story of joy or becoming or love. My dad's work ethic was rooted in the fear that if he didn't do a good job, doing his work, doing his job, he wouldn't hold his life together, he lose his family, etc. I get that. But I've never believed that the real problem in my dad's life was that he was working, or even working hard, or even working a lot. The real problem in my dad's life was the narrative that had been built around him and really specifically about him as a worker that he was hitting the target. If, by work, he held his own life together, that's a terrible philosophy of axiology and a theology of work. What I miss about my dad is not what he provided for me; what I miss about my dad is him as a person; I liked who he was. And that is what actual work does. And that is the actual value of work. It helps us become whole persons.Part of our human flourishing, part of what it means to be fully alive, is to work. So when that gentleman sat in that boardroom and looked at the AI-generated document in front of him, what he was missing, was part of his own human flourishing. I want to be the person who did that, not just because I want the job, but instead because I want to be the person who did that. That's part of who I want to be as a human being. It has been pointed out by theologians and storytellers and preachers far wiser and better than I am that in the biblical creation poems, work is actually a thing handed to us as humans before anything goes wrong. That work was not a thing that we had to do after stuff went sideways; instead, part of Wednesday, what went sideways when things went sideways was our relationship to work, which says to me that part of what it means for us to be on a redemptive journey individually collectively, societally, globally, are we get to need to reorient our relationship to work itself. And if there is a real threat posed to us by the handing off of our work lives to machines, it's that we will lose a sense of the value of our own becoming and the joy of work itself. That will continue to see work and any sort of labor at all, as a kind of evil, as a kind of negative, as a thing that is opposed to leisure and fullness. When in reality, I'm designed to give the best of who I am to the world around me that my heart is designed to love Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

You have used the phrase or heard the phrase, 'let's make some memories' or 'let's make some moments.' If you pay attention to the podcast, you know that for the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about the passage of time. It's one of the things that came up a lot as I wrote the book Sacred Strides. I'm not just thinking about the way we experience time; I'm thinking especially about how we experienced the time that has passed. And I think, less than experiencing time, the way the calendar dictates it in blocks and then lists, I think we experience time more. So in moments, these clusters of emotional explosion, or implosion, in my reckoning, I think these life moments happen in two ways. Or at least for me, they do. There are probably several more; this is just my little spectrum. One of those ways is moments, I find myself in things like birthdays, or finish lines, you will get tired of me talking about turning 50 This year, but I do; I turned 50. This year, it's a big deal for me. I'm having a moment. My son, this week, turned 13 years old. He's now officially a teenager. That's a moment. Finish lines are a moment I crossed the finish line of a half marathon, I was having a moment. publishing this book was a moment. Now these are things in which these are moments in which I find myself that other people, to some degree, have set up; I'm sort of in the moment. But the Publisher Set the deadline for the publishing of the book. And I didn't turn my son like butter until he turned 13. That's just how things happen biologically over the course of weeks, months, and years. Those are the moments that are orchestrated by other people or other systems around us. Sometimes those moments are random; you look up while dancing and think, oh, my gosh, I feel fully alive right now. And you're having a moment. What makes these moments tricky is that they require us to recognize them. They're just happening all the time. Yeah, we can have the birthday on the calendar. But we do that because we know that at that moment, I'm going to want to pay attention, which is to say, I'm going to want to offer myself more completely in that space. Because I want to know that this is important. While it's happening, that's kind of what makes that moment, a moment that I know it's important. While it's happening. Learning to live that way. And to recognize those moments is a practice of awareness and receptivity. And one of the things a regular practice of rest does is it provides space in which I can practice this kind of awareness and receptivity. That before too many days have passed, I can stop, and I can look back at a few days and let my soul catch up with me and say, That was really good, or That sucked. Or, man, I missed that. The sacred book strides are itself a collection of moments; it was necessary that as those moments arrived, and especially in the short times afterward, I actively created space to hold those moments differently, more intentionally. And learning to live that way, in a posture of awareness. And a posture of receptivity is actually what sets me up for the second kind of moment, the ones I get to set up and set out to make with those that I care about. I don't want to live my life more deeply now that I know, or at least think I know, that I experienced my life this way in these clusters of emotional memory. I'm conscious of that in my planning. And I think specifically, I think strategically about how I might set myself up and set myself up with those I care about to have and Sharon, those kinds of moments, the kinds of moments that actually enrich and deepen our lives. It goes really quickly, friends, this life. One of the ways we slow down this passage of time so that we don't look up and think Oh, my God, where did it all go? Because we slow down to recognize the moments we're in, recreate space in our lives to look back at the time that has passed, so that it didn't just pass, we can see ourselves in our lives. We're living right there. And then plan for a future for the next week, the next month, or the next year. These are the people I want to be thinking about when the clock is running out. These are the memories I want to have when I look back on those last few times. And take that deep breath and be thankful that I got to live it all in order to have that end-of-life experience. I have to slow down, recognize the moments that I'm in while I have them, to be thankful enough, not just that I had them, that I would plan to have more of them. So that, the end of all things, I had more fully lived the life I actually had while I had it. That's why I wrote the book. It's not just a way to get my ideas out into the world; it's a way for me to invite you into the practice of slowing down, paying attention, and billing, being fully present to the life you're living a good, deep, rich, beautiful life. That'll take some planning, it'll take some sacrifice, it'll take pulling time away from systems that would just steal every minute of your life for their benefit. It'll take putting down the damn phone. It'll mean thinking really specifically and strategically about who makes you feel alive and who doesn't. And then making plans to spend more time with the people on the first list. So I hope that this podcast, this moment we're in right now, can be a stopping point. And I hope that the book itself can provide a few stopping points for you to look deeply into the beautiful good life you've been handed; I hope to challenge and invite you into the practice of regular rest of Sabbath Keeping. Not so that you can get better for the work that you're doing and not so that you can just wake up more refreshed, to give yourself back to the same machinery, but instead so that as time passes, you would have fully lived the life you've been given the incredible gift of a life you've been given. Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

 It has been said, and I've come to believe this as a truth, that writing for an author is as much as anything else, a process of self-discovery, that one of the things that happen necessarily, in the process of writing, actually writing is that I see myself, I look into my own soul, I recognize things about my own life patterns, history, my moments, I learned me as I write. And I've been asked a few times, including last night at the book release party for Sacred Strides. What are the things that I learned about myself in the process of writing Sacred Strides? And I think there are three there; there's more, some logistical stuff. But internally, when it comes to my soul, there are three things that I've come to over the course of writing this project. And the first one is this, I really do prefer and want to live a smaller life, not just to live the same life at a slower pace; I want my life to get smaller. And here's some of what I mean by that. There are relationships in my life, institutional and interpersonal relationships, that I had thought for many, many years were more central than they actually are. And I've thought they were healthier as more central relationships than they really are. They're not bad. They're not bad places. They're not bad relationships, and they are not bad people. They're not bad institutions. They just can't be central. One, because there's only so much of me. And I can only give so much of myself. While I have time on the planet. And associated with that. I want to give the best of me, to the things, to the relationships, to the institutions, to the projects that I actually give myself to. I want to be more fully present. When I am present, institutionally, vocationally, and personally, that comes with being pickier about where I'm actually giving myself away. And when I'm applying myself to where I'm present, I need fewer central relationships; I look at the model of Jesus, who certainly had the masses around him, certainly had even the 72, who were more regular round and even had the 12. But within the 12, there were really two; I want my life to get smaller so that I can be more fully present in the life I'm living. That's the first thing I've come to, and come to recognize and appreciate and want in the process of writing sacred strides. The second thing is kind of a sad realization, which is that a lot of the agencies, ideologies, institutions, platforms, the environments that I put myself in are not neutral. They have their own agendas. And in those agendas, they're things that are wanted of me that I don't want to give. In other words, I am regularly being acted upon. When I give myself over to institutional settings, to online platforms, to communal settings, that's when I am placed with other people, and I'm actually inserting myself into a sort of tidal movement of agenda of interest of desire. And while that's not a bad thing, I have acted as if my environments, institutional and otherwise, have been neutral, and they're simply not. You can probably see some of the connection to the first learning curve about the smaller life. Some of why I feel the things I feel some of why I fight some of the battles internally I fight is because over the course of many years, my soul has been acted upon by agendas that I did not know I was participating in. I wasn't paying attention. I wasn't listening. I thought I was just somewhere in space, and I wasn't. I was in Tides. I was in flow with agendas and ideologies that weren't always good for my soul, my relationships, and my career. The third thing I can say without question is that I have come to. I've learned I've agreed in the process of writing this book how absolutely wonderful it is to be a dad. And I don't mean that in just this sort of sentimental Hallmark card way. I mean that The deeper I get in the discovery and understanding of who I am at the core of myself as a beloved one of God's, the more being a dad to my kids and even a kind of dad figure to kids that aren't exactly mine becomes a favorite place. And a really, really clear place to practice my own belovedness. And to extend that belovedness, there is a kind of archetypal experience to fatherhood, that as much as I might try to tell you what it's like to be a dad, you really can't compare it to something else being a parent in general, for me, being a dad, you can't compare it to being a coach, you can't compare it to being a teacher, those are things that you would compare to being a parent, it is an archetypal experience, there's nothing quite like being a parent, apologies to dog parents. But now this experience of being aces dad, of being Kaitland stab, of being a father figure to neighborhood kids, and the sons and the daughters of sisters and brothers of mine have unveiled and sharpened and clarified my own belovedness in ways that just I wouldn't have said I wouldn't have seen or even received really otherwise. And in the process of writing this book, I've been able to look at those relationships with a much deeper thankfulness that I get to be here, I get to be this person with foreign to these people. So those are the three things that I can think of off the top of my head that I know I have learned in the process of writing sacred strides. As you read the book, I'd love to hear from you about what it unveils in you, what it exposes in you about maybe some things in your own life that highlights or even down the road. Maybe after you've read the book and slowed down a tad, or pay more specific attention to certain aspects of your work life. I'd love to hear what it is you're learning as well. This is why I do what I do publicly so that we can share these things and learn and grow together. Until next time, Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

If you pay attention to my life in any way, shape, or form, you know that I have a 12-year-old, almost 13, and a six-year-old; she just turned six. My six-year-old, I call her the bird. She has a really unique and interesting relationship with time. And over the last, I don't know, three, four years, I've been paying attention to and learning from the way she actually experiences time. So when she has a memory about something, and it's something that was significant to her, if it's something that was important, or she feels impacted by, she'll say that it was yesterday. That's it's the word she uses. Do you remember yesterday? Now, when I hear her say that, my brain registers this calendar image, and I know that the event she's talking about wasn't yesterday; it was maybe two weeks ago; it could have been a year ago. But for her, the relationship she has to the moment to the memory isn't actually predicated on or measured by some, like, grid of blocks with dates and colored words. It's in her soul. That thing that happened is actually still close to her. She's still holding it right there. In her brain. In her body. She remembers it like it was yesterday; you've maybe heard that phrase; I remember it like it was yesterday. I think part of what we mean when we say that is that this thing that happened, in quote, the past is still deeply significant to me. So here's where Caitlin, the bird's relationship, the time is reinforcing the way I live my own life. Some of the most important things that have happened to me happened many years ago, three years ago, five years ago, and 20 years ago; I'm thinking of some specific things right now. And when my mind orients itself, when my soul orients itself towards those events, they're right there in front of me, quote, as if it was yesterday. And when I tell myself, Hey, that was a long time ago, I realized now that part of what I'm doing is saying, hey, that shouldn't have the hold on you that it does today because of how many days ago or weeks ago or months ago or years ago, it was its distance from this date on some grid calendar should matter more to you than your soul's experience of that event. What I'm doing when I tell myself that it was too long ago to matter is I'm denying my own experience of my own life. Whereas my six-year-old is looking into her own soul and saying, This still matters. Right now, because of the way I'm experiencing it, because of the way I feel it. So while I'm certainly on board with the whole notion that feelings are not facts and that my experience of a thing doesn't define the thing itself. I also know that the way I live my life from day to day, and the way I relate to the people around me, the way I'm postured to give myself to the day I'm in is actually really impacted and shaped and formed by my experience of my past. And I need to grant myself not just permission but actual space to let my yesterday, the yesterday that's still talking to me right now, actually get integrated into my today so that I can be more like my six-year-old, who emotionally is far more whole and present to her life than I am. The calendar shape, its blocks, and its coding inform my soul far too deeply. I'm far too quickly moving from one thing to the next. And I don't let my actual experience of the day before it catch up to me before I'm on to the next thing, which is to say that the practice of rest of stopping regularly throughout the course of my life allows the days before me to catch up with me. So that when I step into tomorrow, I'm more fully integrated. I'm more fully myself. I know who I am because I remember who I was; I can sift between things that mattered and didn't matter to me from the days before so that I can be more completely and wholly who I am in the days to come. The practice of rest is not just a divorce from the drudgery of daily life. It is a way to allow myself to become fully integrated as a human so that I can be fully who I am in the life that I'm living. Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

I talk a lot about seasons, seasons of life, seasons of ministry seasons of work. I love the concept. I love the idea. I love the notion that for long stretches of time, somewhat indeterminate stretches of time, certain things are true certain things work. I like that there isn't a stringent timeline; when we talk about seasons, we can be in a really long season, or we can be in a really short season. One of the reasons we talk about seasons when they come up is because of transition. Not that we don't enjoy the seasons we're in. But normally, when we have a conversation about seasons of life, it's because we're moving from one season to another or we're sensing the end of a season and the beginning of a new one. And I used to think that the energy, the internal energy I needed to actually move me from one season to the next, was about competence and satisfaction that I was satisfied with the work I had done in the previous season. And, or I was confident about what was going to happen in the next season. And this is important because, as you know, we can be in that seasonal transitional moment and not be ready; I can come to the end of the season and not be ready to move on from that season. Or I can be moving into another season and not be or feel ready to start it. I used to think that was always because I was either not done with or not satisfied with the work I'd done in the previous season or not ready for and confident in the work I was already doing to do in the next. I've come to recognize that's actually not true. Because I care about the things I do, I'm pretty much never fully satisfied with the work that I've done; I can look back over the seasons in my past and rethink everything I can rethink top to bottom, and woulda, coulda, shoulda, a, I could have put the cherry on top. And this way, I kind of wish I'd have had this conversation differently; I should have added this element to this project; I can rethink and reinvent, in retrospect, for hours and hours on end every day. Because I care about what I do. Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble

Sarah Billups is a Seattle-based writer who has been speaking at and about the communal practice of religion for a number of years now. Most recently, she's collected a number of those thoughts in a book called orphaned believers. It's a wonderful book actually deeply insightful. And I was thrilled to have her on the podcast to talk not only about that book, but about the history she's had with religion with Christianity specifically, and the things that led to the assembly of those thoughts that make up that book. I enjoyed the conversation. I think you will as well.Check it out. Links for Sara BillupsWebsite - https://www.sarabillups.comInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/sara.billups/Links For Justin:JustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdNEW Book - Sacred Strides (Pre-order)Amazon Barnes and Noble It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble  Links For Justin:Read Justin's SubstackOrder In The Low - NEW Book with Scott EricksonCoaching with JustinOrder In Rest - New Book of PoemsOrder Sacred StridesJustinMcRoberts.comSupport this podcastNEW Single - Let GoNEW Music - Sliver of HopeNEW Music - The Dood and The BirdThe Book - It Is What You Make itHearts and Minds Amazon Barnes and Noble