One of our deep passions as an organization is the spiritual wellness and vitality of leaders. This strategic focus lies at the heart of what we do in our writing, our speaking and our training. There is a way of following Jesus that grows in us a restful soul and a fruitful vocation.

This podcast is a closing message as part of the Unhurried Collective. In working with this group, as well as the core of our ministry is on contemplation. We feel feel this is critical, and why I unpack it in...

When I was young, there was a season of years when my parents cared for foster children. Over the course of about five years, thirteen children flowed through our home. These babies, toddlers and kids (always younger than me) came from extremely broken homes. Their parental abuse ranged from addiction to drugs and alcohol to physical abuse. 

It’s a brutal reality to see a child with their hair pulled out and bruises on their abdomen, and even harder to hear that this was done by...

Welcome to an *Inhaling Grace* audiobook episode of the Unhurried Living podcast. Here are the next three devotionals from [Inhaling Grace](https://www.unhurriedliving.com/offers/Gc3VZGnS/checkout). May you sense the real presence of God shepherding you as you listen.

One morning last week, I was enjoying some moments in morning prayer when I came across these lines in Psalm 90:  

Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:10, 12

It’s sobering to think that, at 58, this verse says I might have only another 12 years (or 22 if my strength endures!) to...

The desert has always been my least favorite geography. I live within 25 minutes of a beach and within 90 minutes of the mountains. I am also about 90 minutes away from the desert, but I had to look that up on a map because I purposely do not go there. The desert is hot and dry and sand colored. Plus, there’s cactus. I know that people have worked hard to bring water into the desert and there are plenty of oasis-type places there. But the desert is still the desert. So the question is...

Many years ago, when I was in the toughest part of my counseling experience, an image emerged in my imagination that perfectly illustrated the difficult dynamic I felt. Picture a dark room and at the center is a banquet table with a black tablecloth on it. On the table are scattered items that represent the various memories and stories from your past. 

Each week, in a one hour session, my counselor and I would pick up one of the memories, look at it, take it apart, put it back together...

Welcome to an Inhaling Grace audiobook episode of the Unhurried Living podcast. Here are the next three devotionals from Inhaling Grace. May you sense the real presence of God shepherding you as you listen.

One of our core values and key practices as Unhurried Living is learning to live and lead from the intersection of deep-rooted inner life and more-fruitful outer life. Prayer and work are not separate menu items you have to choose between. They are not a swing on which you go back and forth between two extremes. 

They are, instead, an integrated, organic, living reality. They are not two things. They are one thing. We pray in the midst of our work. Our work is a way of living in...

Last Fall, Alan made an eight-day silent retreat at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester, Mass. While there, he came across a book he’d read a long time back: Parker Palmer’s The Active Life. He read some of it while he enjoyed those prayerful days in November, quietly sitting next to a little bay on which this retreat is situated. What he learned is today’s theme: Cultivating a Productive Rhythm of Action and Contemplation.

“Sylvia in Austin has learned that she is in control not of life, but of the story about her life.“ (Mary Pipher in Women Rowing North)

After our return from Africa, I could personalize this line like this: “Gem in Amsterdam has learned that she is in control not of life, but of the story about her life.”

I am going to try to make a long story short, so put on your seatbelt. This is the glamour of travel. On our way to Africa, we were re-routed from Newark due to...