Next In-person walk: Saturday, March 14, 9-10 a.m.
Covenant Presbyterian Church back parking lot, 2222 at Mo-Pac, Austin
Next Zoom discussion: March 14, 2026 10:30 AM Central Time (US and Canada), Zoom link is here.
By Janet Davis
Walk In: Losing our Lives by Grateful Release, Sending with a Blessing
This Day We Say Grateful
A Sending Blessing
It is a strange thing
to be so bound
and so released
all in the same moment,
to feel the heart
open wide
and wider still
even as it turns
to take its leave.
On this day,
let us say
this is simply the way
love moves
in its ceaseless spiraling,
turning us toward
one another,
then sending us
into what waits for us
with arms open wide to us
in welcome
and in hope.
On this day,
in this place
where you have
poured yourself out,
where you have been
emptied
and filled
and emptied again,
may you be aware
more than ever
of what your heart
has opened to
here,
what it has tended
and welcomed
here,
where it has broken
in love and in grief,
where it has given
and received blessing
in the unfathomable mystery
that moves us,
undoes us,
and remakes us
finally
for joy.
This day
may you know
this joy
in full measure.
This day
may you know
this blessing
that gathers you in
and sends you forth
but will not
forget you.
O hear us
as this day
we say
grace;
this day
we say
grateful;
this day
we say
blessing;
this day
we release you
in God’s keeping
and hold you
in gladness
and love.
Questions
An essential movement in the dynamic of transformation is the release of our old life, our old way of being in the world, at times, even our old identity. Often, the “old” way is not bad or wrong, simply too small in some way for the larger goodness God is wooing us toward.
This day, what aspects of your life or path or past or self are you turning away from?
What coping strategies (that perhaps even saved your life at one point) no longer bring life? Examples include vigilence, people pleasing, achievement, competence, control, rightness, even caregiving.
What aspects of your belief system or theology feel too small now?
What is ready to be sent forth with blessing and gratitude?
Center: Meeting the Holy One in the Holy In Between
“In monastic tradition, statio is the practice of stopping one thing before beginning another. It is the acknowledgement that in the space of transition and threshold is a sacred dimension, a holy pause full of possibility. This place between is a place of stillness, where we let go of what came before and prepare ourselves to enter fully into what comes next.
When we pause between activities or spaces or moments in our days, we open ourselves to the possibility of discovering a new kind of presence to the darkness of in-between times. When we rush from one thing to another, we skim over the surface of life, losing the sacred attentiveness that brings forth revelations in the most ordinary moments.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul’s Slow Ripening
“The mystery of God hugs you in its all-encompassing arms.”
Questions
There is something about a pause that we often resist. Sometimes we fear losing momentum, failing to recognize that momentum is a force that holds us in ruts of the past, disallowing transformation.
Interestingly, our bodies invite us to see the benefit of tending a pause. For example, our sympathetic nervous system is calmed by box breathing (inhale, pause, exhale, pause).
How do you tend to feel about pausing?
Do you sense a readiness to engage the practice of statio? What might that look like at this moment as well as in days ahead?
In the pause, seek to open to the embrace, the all-encompassing arms, of God.
Walk Out: Saving Our Lives by Opening to the Unknown Before Us
“This is the scary part, and probably why we unintentionally block God’s efforts to renew us. For God, in making us new, may make us unrecognizable to ourselves as we are today, as Jesus was after his resurrection. We think we know who we are, and we want to remain recognizable to ourselves. We think we know what our personality, our gifts, and our limitations are. We think we know who we want to become. When things get hard and we suffer, we think we know what healing would look like. We imagine a restoration of things back to the way we like them to be, and we even pray for this.” …
“In God we are becoming a new creation, and by faith we cooperate with the Spirit to bring about what is yet unknown to us. … What is required of us is radical openness. This is what faith really is, a radical openness to what God might be asking us to become.”
Fr. Brian Taylor, Becoming Human (p. 207)
Questions
It is often a surprising thought that we are not completely in charge of who we are becoming. As Fr. Brian notes, if we were, we would likely choose regression, returning to a previous version of ourselves that feels safe.
What would it be like today to open to transformation that you cannot yet envision, create, or control? The parts of the path beyond what you can see? What feelings rise with that possibility? What practices might help you open to and tend that level of change?