Listening Deeply | Rev. Justin Schroeder | 11.12.23
Rev. Justin explores the idea that life is always trying to engage with us, is making invitations to us, is trying to connect with us, and that a spiritual practice helps us hear those invitations and bids for connections.
Sermon Transcript
This morning, I want to talk with you about horses, spiritual practice, and bids. I realize that may not make sense just yet, but hang with me and I will weave those threads together. I’ll begin in 2009 when I was called to serve as the senior minister of First Universalist Church in Minneapolis, a 1000 member congregation in Minnesota where I still live. I still live in Minnesota. After 11 years at that church, my wife and I, and our two boys made plans for a six-month sabbatical in New Zealand to begin in January of 2020. Part of the tradition in ministry is that every six years or so, the minister is given sabbatical time for rest, renewal, study, and reflection. And I was ready to take a breather before I started the next chapter of my ministry in the congregation. But life, and what happened in my spiritual practice time in New Zealand, had very different ideas for me.
An unexpected turn of events
Here’s what I mean. The Covid-19 pandemic hit two months after we arrived in New Zealand and the country went into lockdown. And instead of being disappointed that we couldn’t travel and do some of the things we’d imagine that we would do, something else critically important began to happen during that time. During lockdown, stuck in this rental house with my family, I caught a glimpse of and began to imagine a different life. A different way of being with myself, with my family, with my children, when I wasn’t working in a congregation. When I wasn’t away for evening meetings, when I wasn’t gone on many weekends. And this imagining, I will tell you, caught me by surprise because I loved the church I served. And I loved ministry. But I couldn’t dismiss this vision of a new life in me that might be emerging.
Said another way. To use the language of the poet Ruth Stone, in my daily spiritual practice time in New Zealand. This time of quiet reflection, and writing, and attentiveness to my inner life, I kept hearing the galloping of horses. And I did my best to catch and write down these fragments of what was thundering toward, and then through me. And it wasn’t poems so much as it was sensations and desires, feelings and images, longings that were racing across the landscape of my heart. What emerged in those fragments that I caught and wrote down were things like this. Maybe I’ve done what I was called to do at the church. Maybe I need to serve a small congregation of four. My wife and my two boys, and the sanctuary is my home on Sunday mornings. I sensed that a new life was emerging in me, wanted to emerge. So when I came home from sabbatical, I met with my spiritual director to discern whether or not to leave the church. I had planned to take a whole year of discernment, but almost immediately this “yes” surfaced.
And though I was surprised at the yes, I trusted the yes because it had been born in, and emerged out of, my daily spiritual practice, time of writing, and listening, and noticing what was happening in my inner life. It was time to leave congregational ministry. Let me pause for a moment here, and acknowledge that you may or may not relate, or resonate with the particulars of the story I’m sharing this morning. And that’s fine. That is normal. And the story has nothing to do with Daniel and his call, and his commitment and connection to this congregation. This is simply my experience that I’m sharing with you, so you don’t have to resonate or connect with the particulars. You’re not ministers, you didn’t have a sabbatical, all those things.
The importance of spiritual practice in times of discernment
But what I hope you are resonating with this morning, what I hope is landing in your heart, is the idea that without some kind of spiritual practice, without some way to hold space for yourself to tap into your own deepest knowing. To notice and to name what is wanting to be born in your life, to catch pieces of the poems, or the images from the horses thundering toward and then through you.
Without some kind of practice like this, the noise and the busyness of the world, the habits of your life, the unrelenting stream of stuff on social media, the calls for justice, and reform, and advocacy, and action, the demands of parenting and caregiving, the stress of an intense job, all of that can overwhelm, swamp, and paralyze you. Without some kind of regular practice like journaling, or meditating, or sitting quietly, you will be at risk of losing something precious. Your inner voice and guide, your connection to Spirit, which can help you navigate life. So that is what I’m hoping you’re connecting with this morning. Back to the thread of my story. In June of 2021, after giving six months notice, I resigned my position at the church. And we had a wonderful good goodbye celebration together.
The RV Adventure
Then my wife, Juliana, and I did the most sensible thing we could think of. We bought a used RV, against the advice of our financial advisor. She was very clear on this, “That is a terrible idea.
In no way is this a good investment. Do not do this.” And I realized this morning as I share this story, and I hear your laughter and sort of chuckling, that this might sound very much like a midlife crisis. I mean the RV is a little off from the narrative of the midlife crisis, but I’ll tell you, it didn’t feel like a midlife crisis. It felt like we were tending to the shoots of something new that was beginning to grow in our lives, and it needed some space and some time. We knew we wanted to travel the country and we trusted that the next steps for our lives would emerge. So we rented out our home, and we set off in Yolo. That’s what we named our RV. Yolo. If you only live once. Cheesy, I know, but also true.
So I’ve always had a daily spiritual practice in my life. But this RV adventure was a time of increased practice, spiritual and otherwise. It was a time to practice living in a very small space with a lot less stuff. And for Juliana and I, it was a time to practice being much more present to our two boys, and to each other. Which to be fair is, it’s easier to be present to one another when you’re in a 10-foot by 10-foot sort of box on wheels. It was a time to practice riding the joys and the hardships, the ups and the downs of being on the road. And there were hard moments. At one point, a few months in to this adventure, we almost bailed. We almost just threw in the towel, and drove home and called it quits, because nothing was working. We were trying to homeschool. That wasn’t working. We were watching our savings get spent down and kind of panicked financially. And we’d been in extremely wet and humid weather in the Pacific Northwest for far too long. It was beautiful, but far too long.
And this funky black mold had started to grow around some of the windows. It was less than ideal. And we wondered if we’d made a catastrophic mistake with our lives, but we kept coming back to our spiritual practices. Giving ourselves time to write, and to listen, and to pay attention, to stay as centered as possible during this challenging and unsettling time.
Bids and Connection
Having this time helped us notice, and pay attention to the bids that life was making to us. And I’m not talking about the bids you might make on eBay. Instead, bids are kind of like the wild horses that are thundering, but they’re not as dramatic, or loud, or dynamic. The concept of a bid comes from the work of well-known couples therapists, John and Julie Gottman. In their framework a bid is a small gesture for connection. It’s a way to turn toward your partner and make a little bid for connection. So a bid might be as simple…
In fact, most bids are very simple. They’re not over the top, they’re not dramatic, they’re not big, they are very tiny little gestures of connection. So you might be out for a walk with your partner and you’re just walking together, and one of you would say like, “Wow, that is a really beautiful cardinal.” Or, “Those leaves on that tree, the orange leaves, look at the color.” And then your partner’s like, “Yeah, that is beautiful. I see that. Thanks for pointing it out.” That is a bid, and a positive response to that bid for connection. And when you have that dynamic, a bid and a positive response, that can bring people closer together. But when you make a bid like, “Hey, I think you might really like this article I read.” And there’s just silence or a dismissal like, “Yeah, I already read that.” Then that creates some distance between people.
Kind of a disconnect between people. The Gottman’s have done extensive research on this. And couples who are happily married or partnered, they respond positively to each other’s bids around 80% of the time. So during the course of the day, there’s all these little micro bids for connection that couples who are in marriages that are pretty filled with goodness and happiness, they’re turning toward each other. So here’s where I’m going with all of this. What if it’s not just people who make bids to one another? What if life itself is constantly making bids to us? Inviting us into deeper relationship, inviting us to pay attention to the places of joy and aliveness around us, inviting us to connect with grief when that is there, inviting us to connect with creation itself. While we were on the road, we learned that if we made space, most often this was in our spiritual practice time. If we made space to pay attention to the bids that life was making to us, a bid to meet up with other RV families.
Or a bid to let go of our itinerary, and see what magic might happen if we just scrapped our plans. Or a bid to stay a few more days in a particular campsite, because the creek captured the heart of our 7-year-old. And then we responded positively to the bids that life was making. We learned we were probably on the right path, even if it was a very different path than we’d imagined for ourselves. While we were on the road, it was these practices that helped anchor us, allowing us to trust what was unfolding. In the summer of 2022, after a year on the road, we returned to Minneapolis. In large part because of the desperate pleas of our then 13-year-old, who was ready to spend just a little less time with his parents.
He was very clear on this. He was like, “We need to go home. We’re ready to go home.”
The Launch of “Holding Space for Change”
We settled back into Minneapolis, and Juliana and I spent the fall reflecting on what we had learned, what we had experienced, what had been alive in us, what was stirring inside. And we realized that together we were feeling called to start a practice called Holding Space for Change. To work with individuals and groups who were in the middle of big life transitions. We knew something about big life transitions, and we wanted to accompany people who were in a similar place. So this past March, we launched our practice. Offering individual therapy, spiritual direction, groups for people in transition, whether that transition is divorce, or a career change, or retirement, a change in one’s identity, or something else entirely. And at the heart of my journey to this new expression of ministry, that’s what this practice is. It’s ministry for me. And at the heart of my life have been these spiritual practices.
An invitation to create or deepen a spiritual practice
So let me take a few steps back just from all of this right now, to very clearly say that this morning, I am not advocating that you leave your job, or you take your kids out of school, or that you buy an RV, or a boat, or that you sell your house, or you become an alpaca farmer. Or whatever sort of dream, some wild dream you have. I’m saying use your discernment and some good practices here. I’m not suggesting you do something wild. What I am suggesting is that no matter how your life is going right now, whether it’s great, or middling, or just not great at all, that you create or deepen a space where you can pay attention to and capture pieces of the wild horses that come thundering toward and through you.
Where you can listen, listen deeply for the bids that life is making to you. Slowing down, and carving out this space matters, friends, because life is constantly and always making bids to connect with us. And a spiritual practice increases the odds that you’ll notice and respond positively to those bids, which is what life wants. Like a partner, or a friend who makes a bid for connection, that’s all they want. A response, a turning toward, an acknowledgement. And life is making bids all the time. Bids to play, bids to experiment, bids to notice, and to revel. Bids to love, to grieve, to be delighted by joy. And when you’re tuned into these bids, you might recognize that an empty journal or a sketchbook in your closet is actually an invitation. A bid to write a poem, or paint an incredible Texas sunset, or just pour your heart out on the page and see what is there.
And don’t worry about having a perfect response to a bid, or a perfect spiritual practice. Life doesn’t care about perfection. Life and people care about connection, real connection. Connection with life, connection with others. That is the charge that animates us. And spiritual practice is how we plug into that charge. You may already have a practice, and that is great. And if you don’t, you can start. You could sit in silence for a few minutes a day and see what happens. You could go for a walk, unplugged, and listen to the symphony of the world around you. You could ignore your cell phone for some vast amount of time, like an hour. And just let yourself doodle, and write, and be in this more contemplative space. You could slow down enough to take three deep breaths before you eat, and notice if that changes the meal or your mood.
So with compassion and curiosity, get to it. See what bids, or horses are at the edges of your life. Begin or deepen your spiritual practice. And don’t let your fear of doing it perfectly get in your way, because life doesn’t want perfection. It wants connection. It wants your connection to Source, and your connection to your own deepest knowing. Because that connection, friends, is what can help us find our way through this wild, heartbreaking, beautiful, and mysterious life wherever it may take us. May it be so. And amen. Amen.
About Rev. Justin Schroeder
Rev. Justin Schroeder has more than two decades of experience in spiritual leadership. From 2009-2021, he served as Senior Minister and Co-Senior Minister at First Universalist Church of Minneapolis. In this role, he led the congregation in centering a racial justice commitment as an expression of their faith. He has counseled couples, led rites of passage, and supported hundreds in deepening their spiritual practices.
Rev. Justin Schroeder and his wife, Juliana Keen, recently launched ‘“Holding Space for Change,” a practice that accompanies and supports people through life transitions. They provide spiritual direction, support groups, retreats, and individual therapy and coaching..
He has an active daily spiritual practice, which includes meditation, writing, and yoga. Justin enjoys gardening, games, biking, baking, running, and spending time with his children.
