“It is far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism. In times such as these, it is no failure to fall short of realizing all that we might dream – the failure is to fall short of dreaming all that we might realize.”
from AI Commons 

The FaithX team is gathered this week to do a bit of planning and community building.  We are looking at how we’ve spent our time and energy in 2023.  We want to know where we’ve had the most impact and where we feel like we might be spinning our wheels too much. We are looking at the “bottom line,” and we are also looking to honor our vocations (both individually and as a non-profit). What is it we feel called to do in this world right now? In what configurations might our unique gifts, skills, dreams and visions, and our robust products be curated in ways to serve our communities and churches more profoundly? Is there a new vision, a new dream to which we need to be paying attention?  Stay tuned.

One of the first things we did as we gathered on Tuesday morning was to ask ourselves, “what’s working?”  The four of us who make up the staff of FaithX live far afield from one another – from the East coast to the West coast and into the upper mid-west. In short, we don’t get together often in person (it’s been 18 months since we did this kind of face-to-face planning).   It felt important to slow down, to remember, and perhaps to discover anew who we are as a unique cast of characters.  

We did move on to planning for the future, but this deeper work of slowing down and reflecting grounded us, and this time provided a touchstone as we talked about our work with clients and the kinds of products we might offer in the future.  In the book Presence, Brian Arthur writes, “Traditionally, Chinese and Japanese artists sit and look at a landscape.  They might sit on a ledge for a whole week just looking at the landscape, and then move to paint something very quickly. It’s the same with martial arts. If you have to think in martial arts, you’re dead. The twenty or thirty years of training you’ve had mean that you internalized lots of possible patterns and can direct all of your attention to what is happening right now.”  For the FaithX team It felt like the “planning” piece of our work flowed quickly and with purpose following our time spent in grounding, AND we are becoming increasingly adept at working together (we’ve had a lot pf practice).

In the background of all this naming and appreciating our gifts and seeking wisdom as to how to work together in more transforming ways, are all of the the anxiety-provoking events happening in the world:  war, poverty, floods and the polar vortex, political instability, systemic racism.   Violence and injustice and distrust is part of our reality too, yet it feels important to remind ourselves and our clients that we have resources in one another and all around us to act wisely, not just urgently.

Here are my takeaways from this time with my FaithX team.  Perhaps these may be helpful to you too: slow down, pay attention, build on your strengths, see new patterns of possibilities… then choose a path, discern a plan of how you will move forward, gather and pack the necessary resources, and, by all means, don’t go alone! Take your trustworthy companions with you and always be on the lookout for new ones.

If there are ways FaithX might accompany you in empowering ways, please reach out at info@faithx.net.