Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada

These past few days I have been thinking about notions of success and timing.  The two are often connected or collapsed.  So while we might really appreciate a particular outcome or accomplishment, we can be less than satisfied with its timing.  In my own case, I usually want something now- or at least by the time I think it should have materialized.   Now this should is my clue to realizing that I have gotten hooked somewhere along the way.  I am no longer in the flow. I am rather in the business of getting the job done or forcing an outcome.  

This line of reflection has come to me on the heels of participating on a leadership retreat with the leaders of Dunbar Heights UC.  The facilitators did a great job of inviting people to imagine together the future that Dunbar wants to live into.  What struck me the most was the gentleness and elegance with which the facilitators encouraged leaders to name the areas that were previously listed as priorities but had not received much attention, energy or concrete action in the past few years. This was not an easy process and yet people were able to name several areas that were still important to them but were not being addressed due to a lack of time, energy or resources.   

I then noticed an interesting energetic shift in the room.  After being clear about what was and was not happening, the energy increased and people started talking about ways that some of these important but neglected priorities could be addressed in new ways that might not feel so draining or difficult.   A Hospitality Ministry had been one of the important but overlooked areas that had been named, yet by the end of the day, people were generating new ideas for how Hospitality as a ministry could emerge at Dunbar Heights. What will emerge remains to be seen, but the work undertaken by the leadership group to imagine the possibilities was inspiring.