One summer when I was in high school I volunteered at our local care center. I sat with a group of older women who gathered weekly to quilt. As a group they drank coffee, told stories, ironed and cut fabric, planned out designs, lay batting, and hand stitched what were essentially scraps into beautiful artistic quilts. I didn’t possess any quilting skills (other than the drinking coffee and talking part), but I had an important job: help thread the needles. These women were passionate about their craft and wanted to quilt as long as they were able, but because most of them struggled with their eyesight or had stiff fingers, they needed someone like me (young eyes, nimble fingers) to be there ready to deal with the tiny eye of the needle or the thread they just couldn’t grasp. 

I consider the work I do as a spiritual director to be, in a way, similar to my time with the quilters long ago. Like those women creating quilts, your spiritual journey is yours to design. Your faith, how you listen to the divine voice in your life, and where you feel God is calling you is uniquely your quilt to make. As a spiritual director my role is to be there to help you thread the needle and pick up the threads that sometimes feel invisible. I’m here to listen, to ask questions, to look at the variations in color and arrangement with you, and guide you to find the tools you need to bring your quilt to life. This is your quilt, your path, your story. I’m here to help you thread the needle along the way.  Maybe you are at a transition point, or discerning changes you want to make. Maybe you feel stuck, need to process this past year and a half, or need help listening for God’s voice. Consider spiritual direction to be your quilting time, time to set aside everything else and focus on the unique design of your life. 

Every couple of weeks I gladly go to my allergy clinic, roll up my sleeve, and get my allergy shot. I’ve been doing this for years and consider it a great gift that helps me function at my best. The shot takes approximately 2 seconds, barely enough time for me to read the whiteboard opposite the shot desk that lists the daily pollen counts. I’m not sure who that board is for, frankly, since most of us visiting the shot desk can tell you exactly what is in the air based on our itchy, sneezing, sniffling selves. But there it is, a list of what is in the air. 

Pollen isn’t the only thing we can detect in the air; it just happens to be measured.  Love, fear, hope, and change in large enough quantities can be in the air, and can seem almost as contagious as the virus aerosols we have all become well versed in during this time of pandemic. Those of us who feel particularly intuitive might be tempted to put masks on or get shots to ward off fear or change in the air, but paying attention to what is up is one more piece of information we can use to decide how we are going to live this day as children of God. Maybe what is in the air is global in scale, or it might be nearby in the lives of those closest to you, or it might be what is going on inside of you. Paying attention to what is in the air is a kind of spiritual listening, helping us pay attention to how we are being called to respond to life.

Can you remember a time when you felt love in the air? 

Can you remember a time when you felt fear in the air?

Where was God in the midst of those feelings? 

How does what is in the air shape your prayers?

Coffee grounds, tea leaves, orange peels, pistachio shells. That’s what is in my compost bowl as I pull on my boots and make the trudge out to empty the bowl into the compost bin. The scraps of what nourished me through a zoom meeting, a planning session, and an attempt to write. These scraps could just as easily be thrown in the trash, but because of habit and hope, they go into the compost bin even in winter. 

Coffee grounds, tea leaves, orange peels, pistachio shells. Composting in winter is an act of habit and hope. The process of decomposing and becoming black gold for my summer garden isn’t possible in these freezing temps, but I have faith that the frozen bits of what got me through long zoom meetings in the depth of winter will once again heat up and the magic will begin. Compost seems like magic, doesn’t it? Time, air, sun, and the right mixture of stuff somehow becomes a part of the resurrection story. The ultimate in the death to life cycle sitting in a bin in the backyard, now accessible only in boots.

Coffee grounds, tea leaves, orange peels, pistachio shells. Sometimes the prayers I lift, the psalms I read, the hours spent in meditation feel like collecting compost scraps in winter. I do them, but at times my practice remains frozen in place, unable to turn over something new in me. And yet, because of habit and hope, I keep practicing because I know that when the sun’s angle in the sky shifts to heat up the hardness of winter I will have something in me that is capable of fueling growth. The Holy Spirit works within the time, air, sun, and mixture of stuff that feeds my body and soul. The winter compost bin reminds me that faith holds seasons of sleep and growth, planting and harvest, each season lived with faith that our prayers, psalms, and meditations will bring us into a new season of life and we will once again know resurrection deep in our bones.