Hi friends,
I’m excited to share that after listening to a lot of your feedback and comments, I’ve finally decided on our Field Notes summer deep-dive series.
Below, you’ll find the background for this summer series, the details of how it works, and what you can expect as well as how to sign up to join in. So keep scrolling for all the info you need to anticipate what’s coming next.
Like a lot of us, I was taught that if I wanted to be close to God that I should definitely:
go to church every time the doors were open,
get up early in the morning for “devotions” AKA devos,
read my Bible,
pray in an acceptable fashion, and
read a faith-based book and
maybe with a bit of “service” or “tithing 10%” tossed in as well.
If we did those things, we were promised we would experience spiritual growth, complete certainty in all things, success, a clear complexion, healthy relationships, sturdy mental health, and a cheerful disposition! Guaranteed!
Annnnnnnd cut to burning it all down in deconstruction.
(That part can take years.)
So now we’re here.
As we live into our evolving faith on the other side of that clarifying experience, we’re ready to start rebuilding. We’re ready to reimagine a faith that works, not only for us, but for this world that God so loves. A lot of us are experiencing a yearning to purposely reconnect with God that surprises us but somehow those old familiar pathways - read your Bible, pray this way using an acronym, read approved books - feel a bit hollow at best, maybe painful at worst. We need to find that elusive spot between ancient practices and new experiences, sturdy order and a bit of healthy chaos too.
We’re left wondering, how do I purposely make room in my life for the pursuit or experience of God without doing the same things I used to do? How do I feel “close to God” now? What spiritual practices are still available to me? Are there other ways to connect with God than the ones I was taught? There has to be something between Performing All The Spiritual Disciplines As Before and Doing Absolutely Nothing.
Basically, this series is for the drop-outs of Quiet Time. It’s for the ones who burnt out on carefully-completed Bible studies. The ones with a Bible highlighter. The ones with a stack of earnest journals from their younger years, filled with confessions and pleas and prayers that kind of hurt your heart to read now. The ones who were the Faithful Ones, the ones who were the leaders, the ones who were the Bible nerds and small group hosts and life group leaders and club presidents. This is for the ones who used to love their Bibles so much and now hardly ever cracks that spine open because of all the baggage it brings. The ones whose faith began evolving not because they were losing faith but because they were so incredibly serious about their faith.
I think it may be for you.
I don’t think any of us are under any illusions about how much of a demand the world is placing on us right now. In addition to all of the stresses and complexities of our own lives - and I know that we have a lot of deep needs in our community here, we’re also facing a lot of trauma, stress, demand, and intensity from the world around us. It feels like we’re all being depleted on the daily.
Basically, it is taking A LOT to stay a person right now.
So it’s no small thing to make room for any kind of unlikely spiritual practice that fills your soul back up. In fact, I’d argue that there is no better time to cultivate a rich, resilient, beautiful interior life than when everything else is on fire.
This series isn’t about earning stars on some mythical God Behaviour Chart that God is secretly keeping in heaven. This isn’t about earning a Best Christian Award. We’re not measuring spirituality or trying to win favour from the Bank of God. It’s not about going backwards in your own faith formation to try to reclaim one moment when you felt close to God because of a worship album on nightly repeat. No, this is about moving past survival during this season and making some room for your own soul’s practice and wisdom and energy to be honoured. It’s about honouring your own need for gentleness, faithfulness, and flourishing in these very days.
Our daily practices and our posture towards possibility genuinely do shape our souls. And I believe your soul deserves a fresh infusion of life, permission, grace, and even joy right now.
I’m excited about this series for a lot of reasons but chief among them is my hope that we can recover a sense of relaxation about our relationship with God: not striving, not earning, not performing but living within the reality of God’s presence and love. Julian of Norwich once described God as “completely relaxed and courteous.” I love that description because of it’s record-scratch reset for us: the notion of God being relaxed seems so far from our understanding of spiritual practice, doesn’t it? But it’s true.
So that’s the unofficial foundation for this series: relaxing into our relationship with God and making room for joyful, loving, beautiful, playful, and light spiritual practices - even if those practices look a bit different than we once expected.
You will receive a brand new, not-available-anywhere-else essay from me every week for the next 5-6 weeks. Each one will have one or two practices, some reflection/community questions, and an audio version.
I’m aiming for Tuesdays but given the amount of study and writing this requires, don’t be surprised if it shows up on Wednesdays instead.
To start us off next week, I’m planning on an essay about what makes something a “spiritual practice” and expand that definition a bit for our purposes. I’ll tell a bit of my own story, too and offer us a blessing for the beginning of this.
Then we’ll spend a few weeks on that spiritual scavenger hunt together.
We’ll wrap up with a big community conversation, maybe even a synchroblog/post prompt if you’re a fellow writer, and then a blessing over the whole endeavour.
I have a loose outline prepared for the series that is making me very excited about all that is ahead, but I’ll be writing these essays in real time as they arrive in your apps/inboxes, week by week so honestly, I may be as surprised as you at what develops over the coming weeks.
I am under no illusion that this will tackle every question, possibility, practice, and opportunity about spiritual practice. This will just be ordinary me, writing every week about the practices that have surprised me and been meaningful in my own life, not as theory or an exhaustive treatise but as my own practice and a neighbourly invitation. In fact, as we work through this series, I think half of what we’ll do here is simply name, honour, expand, and bless the ways you are already experiencing a spiritual practice.
My hope is to create something every week which will bring some goodness to your own faith practice, ask a few questions, open up a few new paths, and maybe even encourage you to give something new a try.
Yes, indeed, I will dust off my old podcast mic and record the audio version for these essays for you. It will actually be me, reading - maybe preaching? - these essays for you. I know a lot of us prefer listening to reading these days so hopefully this will be helpful!
I’ll post the link for those episodes in every week’s essay along with instructions on how to listen to that in your preferred podcast app once they’re published.
One of the best parts of series season around here is the comment section. So plan on leaving comments, replying to each other, and being part of the kindest comment section left on the Internet. I am always in the comment section, too, and we’ll have time every week for you to respond and reflect together.
This special series, like every deep-dive series, is exclusively for paid subscribers of Field Notes.
If you’re already a paid subscriber, you’re all set to receive this series: you don’t have to do a single additional thing. Well done, you. You will automatically receive new not-available-elsewhere essays from me along with the audio version from our Secret Field Notes Podcast in your Substack mobile app or email inbox, depending on your settings/preference. It will also live here at Field Notes in the archives. You’re set.
But if you aren’t a paid subscriber yet, you will need to upgrade your subscription to access this series.
Field Notes costs $6 CAD/month, which is just over $4/month USD or - very, very good deal alert - $40 CAD/year, which is under $30 USD/year according to my rough exchange rate calculations, for the entire year of Field Notes, which gives you about five months of content for free.
And as always, if you can’t afford a subscription, we have got you. Just email assistant@sarahbessey.com to put your hand up and we’ll set you up with a paid subscription, no questions asked and zero justification required. The paywall here isn’t meant to be a barrier, just a way to create a quieter corner for thoughtful conversations and to support me in creating this kind of more-time-intensive and demanding content for you.
(One note there: My inbox-helper processes all these requests in the edges around her actual full-time job, so don’t panic if it takes a few days to be confirmed! It’s coming, promise.)
You are also very welcome to give a gift subscription to a friend, too. ⬇️
Okay, that’s it for this week! I’ll be back next week with our first essay in this new series plus the audio podcast for you. I’m excited to relax into this summer series with you and I’m looking forward to learning from you all, too.
With the spiritual-disciplines-drop-outs,
S.
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The Angry Breath Prayers: I refuse to believe that I have to tidy up my humanity to be in conversation with Creator.
In Praise Of: A litany for today
In which I visit the seashore in the dark and have a few thoughts about love: We do see through the glass darkly, that’s just true, but we are experiencing love anyway and it is utterly sufficient for me.
Maybe this is why gentleness is a sign of God’s love: I am beginning to bless them all, even all the ways I’ve loved God without their permission
This is for the things we don’t post: This blessing knows there are depths to which we descend alone.
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