A Year

Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

This weekend, we will celebrate our one-year anniversary of arriving in Beloved Detroit. Hard to believe: 52 weekly blog posts capturing a few glimpses of the life and work that has captivated us. Over the past few months, we have sought out wise counsel and prayerful dialogue as we make decisions about the next step during this season of life. We have discerned that our time in Detroit is not over. As mission associates of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, we continue to feel the call to serve, using our gifts and resources to struggle for peace and justice in Detroit, through pastoring, counseling, organizing, writing, laughing, crying and heavy lifting.

In addition to our ongoing pastoral, counseling, and administrative work with St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, struggling for water affordability with the non-profit We The People of Detroit and writing/editing with RadicalDiscipleship.Net, we are excited about more intensive work we will get to engage with MarriageStrong, a pyscho-educational program that we were trained in three years ago. We will be partnering with BCM in this work to minister to couples in both group and intensive settings. We envision working nationally with churches, conducting weekend retreats and workshops.

We are filled with gratitude for all the encouragement and support we have received from friends and family, consistent readers of this blog. As we transition into our sophomore year in Detroit, we will continue posting prose, poetry and photos on this site monthly. If you wish to remain on our email list, please email either Tom or Lindsay. We will not automatically renew anyone because we are sensitive to filling up email inboxes.

The terrain of Detroit is obnoxiously flat, but we have experienced plenty of emotional peaks and valleys throughout. Fueled by a holy blend of analysis, amazement, anxiety, adrenaline, and anger, this year has been inspiring and exhausting, delightful and despairing… and ultimately, it has filled us with a deep hope. The hope that comes from engaging Reality in all its grittiness and grace, and then grieving the death and trusting for new life. Indeed, we have found both in abundance here in Beloved Detroit. We are deeply blessed because you have joined us on the Journey.