It feels apocalyptic right now. A worldwide pandemic, a potential break-down in food distribution systems, cataclysmic weather patterns, violence, economic struggles, and now something no one expected, killer hornets! It’s enough to make us go crazy. That is, if we didn’t already have a story to guide us through. A story that tells us there is not only a way in the wilderness, but the wilderness is the way.
“Stories hold the world together,” as storyteller Michael Meade has said. There’s a wonderful story hidden in the Bible that can help us find our way through these chaotic and uncertain times, a story of the woman clothed with the sun with the moon at her feet. She wears a crown on her head of twelve stars and she represents the people of God, the goodness of creation itself. We come across her in chapter twelve in one of the books most of us have spent our lives avoiding, Revelation. She appears on the scene just as a war is breaking out in heaven, giving birth to something new while fighting off evil in the form of the world’s most powerful dragon. He was so powerful, in fact, that he had seven heads and he swept a third of the stars from heaven with his tail.
Just as she gives birth to a son who is to be a great leader for the nations, the dragon tries to devour her baby. But God saves him, and gives her the wings of an eagle to fly off into the wilderness to be nourished there, for a time and times and half a time, as the story goes. This is when the dragon gets really angry and declares war on the world. But the woman watches from the wilderness, where she is strengthened and nurtured by God. While God and all God’s angels fight the war in heaven, eventually defeating the dragon forever, the death of evil .
She is nourished in the wilderness, and so are we. This motif is in many stories in the Bible. The way is made clear, not in the heat of battle, but in the forced retreat to the wilderness. None of us go there willingly, or so the story goes. Hagar is banished to the wilderness and finds the way, led by God. The Israelites escape to the wilderness and find a whole new future. Jesus is forced into the wilderness by the Spirit and finds the strength to carry out his mission there. We are tested in the wilderness, but it is also the place we are taken to be nourished, nurtured and learn to depend on a power greater than ourselves. It’s the place where we let go and learn to trust in God who shows us that there is not only a way in the wilderness, but the wilderness is the Way.
The Wilderness is the Way.
It feels like we are all on a very long wilderness journey, thanks to COVID19. The days are long without much direction, we are anxious about how our needs will be met and often wondering what to do next. We need a story to guide us, to hold us together, to tell us who we are, to ground us in something bigger than the evidence of the day. The woman clothed with the sun steps into this dark book of revelation and into the darkness of our world, and reveals something new. This something new can be a navigation point for all of us as we try to figure out what to do with each day’s chaos. God is doing a new thing, even and especially in the wilderness, in the uncertainty of our days, in the chaos of our world.
We may feel like we are at the end of a story, but the woman clothed with the sun shows us it just may be a new beginning. This feeling that we are doomed and that chaos is the only thing that rules the day is actually a trick the seven headed dragon, and the chaos monsters of our world, play upon us. The darkness of chaos is always trying to convince us that the world is full of doom and gloom and that our best days are behind us. But the woman clothed with the sun tells us, “don’t fall for it.” Resist and wait, resist and pray. God will surely come and give you rest, nurture and a way forward. Giving you the uplift of eagle’s wings just when you need it the most.
The seven headed dragon would have you believe that chaos is in control, it exists to create the chaos of uncertainty in the world. But it also feeds off of our lack of faith, our fear. Revelation tells us that God wins the war in heaven and it’s the death of evil, forever. It’s a scenario that plays out a million times a day, all over the world. Though the dragon takes its bite, love always wins. Love is the most powerful force in the universe.
This story shows us that God walks through the dark hills of our lives, too, lifting us up when we have no more strength to fight. Saving the evidence we have created out of goodness. God gives us rest and nurture, even in the middle of the fight. God not only makes a way in the wilderness, the wilderness becomes the way itself. To new life, new creation and the experience of God’s love invading the world.
Trust that God will meet you when you face the chaos monsters of your days, and give you what you need to find rest, renewal and peace. God will even fight the battle for you, when you are ready to let go.
Check out more hidden stories of women of the Bible in this free resource, click here to download the free PDF
There are little sprouts coming up in my garden from seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago. It’s kind of a miracle. Since I planted these seeds, my garden has experienced torrential downpours, a tornado and even frost. These sprouts shouldn’t be appearing, and yet new life is bursting into view. The seed has abided in the very substance of it’s being, the ground, and together, they are forming something new – nourishment.
The word abide comes to mind as I watch these tiny miracles spring from creation itself. To abide means to continue without fading or being lost. To take refuge and root in that which is greater than ourselves. In so many spiritual traditions, this is the core concept. abiding in the Creator, in God, in the Great Spirit. Jesus speaks of abiding in God as God abides in us. There is a oneness at the core of this abiding, a merging with that which gives life that allows us to “continue without fading or being lost.” A Power greater than ourselves meets us in the darkness of our world and nourishes us, turning us into something new, giving us the strength to nourish others.
To turn towards the practice of abiding is to turn towards something greater than the winds that toss us about or the events of our lives that threaten to lead us down pathways of despair. We need this nourishment each day of abiding, it is the very thing that keeps us spiritually alive. It is the path of life, our very refuge.
It can be difficult to practice the very thing we need the most when all around us seems chaotic and driven by fear. But remembering to abide can be a practice that not only saves us in these times but changes us on the other side. Taking some moments throughout the day to develop this practice can provide a rootedness that can carry us through our lives and through difficult times. In fact, these thin spaces of our lives, when the veil between heaven and earth is cracked open through suffering, can be the perfect time to begin or perhaps begin again.
Here is one of the practices I use to abide. Feel free to adapt it or develop your own.
Centering Prayer: This is a practice that has been used by monastics for hundreds of years, but Fr. Thomas Keating really brought this practice into the mainstream. There are many videos of him discussing it on Youtube and you can readily find them by doing a search with his name + “centering prayer.” Sometimes, I listen to them while driving. He is the real pro and I recommend learning the art of the practice from his videos. Being a musician, I like to innovate a little. I adapted my version of this practice several years ago. You can use a word or a phrase that helps you feel connected to God. I often use the word, “Creator” but it can be a word such as “love” or “grace” or “peace.” The important thing to remember is that anyone can do centering prayer, it is available to us all. Sit in a comfortable position, breathe deeply for a few minutes, slowly. As you breath in you say the word at the tip of the inhale of your breath, say it in your mind. Then breathe out slowly. Repeat this for 10 to 20 minutes (or however long) as you seek to connect with God. If your mind drifts off, just gently get back into the practice. It may take a few minutes for the mind to settle. When I have trouble settling my mind (often), I add a little soundtrack of Tibetan prayer bells, which again can easily be found on Youtube. The bells help my mind to sink into the breath. Somehow, the vibrations of the bells are very calming.
Maybe you are like so many people and may have problems with the God concept. So many people have been raised to believe that God is wrathful and punishing or indifferent and uncaring. But God is unconditional love itself. Something that is hard for us to fathom. If you have trouble with the concept of God, try this acronym: G.O.D. – Good, Orderly Direction. God desires to move us to a place of sanity in a world that sometimes feels like it is overwhelmed with insanity (Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results).
We need new practices to solve old problems, to confound old narratives of hurt and pain. Or maybe taking old practices and making them new. Centering prayer, as Thomas Keating has said, is a form of “Divine Therapy,” that over time, quiets the mind and helps us connect to the heart. In other words, to abide, to continue without fading or being lost.
As we return to God throughout the day in prayer, we discover a miracle. God abides in us, giving us strength, growing our internal resources, giving us hope even in times of uncertainty.
Here’s a little piece of a song I love, created with Rumi’s poetry and a wonderful composer, Conni Ellisor. It’s called “Kiss the Ground” and the lyrics really remind me of the importance of being grounded in that Power that is greater than myself. Enjoy!
Tis the season of the longest night. Darkness arrives earlier and the sun takes its time waking in the morning. We are worn out by the Christmas rush and feeling the long stretch of winter’s yawn, inviting us into stillness.
In this time of speeding up to slow down it is not uncommon to sense feelings of sadness creeping in around the edges of our hard earned joy, once we slow down, that is. But if our first instinct is to chase the sadness away with some kind of distraction, we would be robbing ourselves of the hidden gift of winter. The wondrous gift that is given silently in this season of the longest nights.
Ancient holy people referred to this time of year as “thin space,” a time when heaven moves a little closer to the earth. Whenever this time of year approaches, it can be both wonderful and frightening.
For Christians, it’s also the season in which we celebrate the birth of the Christ child. Another event of the heavens that prompted the angels to inform humans that even though the whole world was about to change forever, there was nothing to fear. Tidings of great joy delivered into frightful times.
Following Jesus’ birth, Matthew’s gospel tells us that the infant boys were
massacred throughout the region of Bethlehem by order of King Herod. But, as the
angels said, we simply have nothing to fear.
I’m not sure why heavenly events are also terribly fearful, or why the
emotions of sadness and loss accompany supposedly joyful holidays, but these
are things I’ve come to accept…sort of. Or let’s just say, I’m working on it.
I suppose it’s all about perspective. When I can view winter solstice
and the annual always-coming-before-I’m-ready re-birth of the Christ child as an
opportunity rather than a burden, things get better.
I’ve come to realize that each of us is given the tools of our lives, and when we begin to apply these tools to our partnership with heaven, we soon find that we all have one material, a very necessary one without which we can become nothing at all. It is our own woundedness. Our wounds hold years of stored loss, sadness, and layers of grief. Like a big gray, cold, blob of hardened clay sitting there inside of us, uninvited, wanting to be expressed, wanting to become something useful. Often stuck and keeping us from moving forward.
But Old Man Winter brings a unique opportunity with his spinning wheel
of transformation, always turning. It’s a great season to go sit at this wheel
of time and learn how to work with the material of our pain. Reaching in to
pull out a little evidence, a little substance to offer up to the spinning
wheel.
Stubborn pain and loss sits there, shapeless and dark, and has become a
constant reminder of what has not happened in our lives. We need to take it in
hand and shape it into something, but we have no idea how to do that. We would love
to believe that our lives could become a vessel of good, but we don’t know how
to work with it, we are not artisans of our pain. We’ve never worked with
anything so stubborn and hard, so unwilling to be molded into something practical.
We reluctantly pick up our blob of pain, we spin the wheel, we poke some
holes. We cry, we get therapy, we join a 12 step group, we do yoga, we go to
church, it gets worse, it gets a little better, maybe our pain is becoming
something more than pain. At least we are willing to acknowledge its existence.
The point is, it will never move if we just let it sit there, we have to
touch it, throw it on the wheel of transformation, scream at it, caress it
gently, add water, pray to God to show us what it is to become; pray to God to
give us a clue about what to do, the master potter, who knows our pain by
heart.
We need a Higher Power to help us sort out the information of our grief
and lift from us the burdens, the overwhelming emotions that are too heavy for
us. What happens in this process is nothing less than amazing. Season by season
of working with grief, we see God, the master potter, working with us and
turning it into a vessel we can use, a vessel that can be filled with joy to
pour out to others.
Eventually, the season that we dreaded so much becomes a springtime. And
we have something forming on the wheel of our lives, a new thing, a vessel,
that we can use to hold love.
If we see grief as something we need, if we understand it is our grief that holds the vital information we need to move forward, then we can accept this winter as being one of the greatest transformational periods of our lives. If we don’t seek to distract ourselves from it. Rather, taking the risk of turning into it. With God’s help, and with the help of a group or a community, we can see this winter as an opportunity.
God takes the information stored in our big blob of grief and turns it
into something we can use to hold our wholeness and become that fully alive
person God intends for us to be.
It will get messy, no doubt, you will get your hands dirty, there will
be ugly tears, and sorrow, but each time you press against the edges, it takes
a different form. As you identify your grief and offer the layers to God to be
lifted, something new begins to appear, a hollowed out place within, big enough
to store joy, peace and love.
This is God’s promise to us and it will be met as we become willing.
At the heart of this season may be a dark night of the soul, but it is
also the place where we find God looking back at us, ready to meet us and get
to work with all the various materials of our pain. Saying, just as the angels
said on the dark, silent night in which the Christ child was born, “Do not
fear, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy.”
Each Christmas is an opportunity for the Christ child to be born anew in
all of us. From the churning chaos of the wheel of time, out of the elements of
pain, comes joy.
“How Silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.”
Occasionally I meet a holy family. This is my term for a homeless family with a baby. I call them holy because I always think of the traveling Mary and Joseph, rejected and forced outside, exposed to the elements, with the task of doing something Divine.
Such a family walked into the community meal with a baby boy, not quite a year old, with blue eyes and blonde, curly ringlets. The couple had become newly homeless and were living in their car. I tried many different techniques to help them get into housing, working with other agencies, helping them with paper work, but nothing stuck. Even with all my best efforts, it seemed I was unable to find a solution for this family. The layers of their predicament were thick and seemingly impenetrable. They would appear and disappear with great irregularity.
Randomly, they would come into the meal, covered in grease, dirt, and the fatigue of the streets. I would hold the baby, give them supplies, sometimes put them up in a hotel—and my heart would break again. The church did as much as we could financially to help them but after a year of coming and going, they just couldn’t get on their feet. It was so discouraging.
One Thursday night, one of my new mothers from the church came to the meal and noticed that the baby, now almost two years old, had blackened feet. She took a wash cloth and some soap from the kitchen and washed his feet. I had bought two gallons of milk for the meal that night, and she filled a bottle with fresh milk and fed him. The baby laughed at her, feeling safe in her arms. She noticed the dark circles under his eyes, and how tired the baby seemed. She called me that night after the meal, crying.
“I don’t know what to do, I can’t stop thinking about this baby,” she said through tears. “He just looked at me with his eyes, it was like he was crying for help and I just feel like I have to do something.”
I tried to console her. I knew she had made a connection with the baby boy and that he reminded her so much of her own little boy. Her heart was genuinely breaking over the situation.I assured her I would check further into what some of the options might be, though there didn’t seem to be any great ones presenting themselves immediately.
There was the Department of Children’s Services that we could call to come and investigate options for the baby’s safety. I explained to her that I’d done everything in my power to try and get them to commit themselves to the family shelter, but they would have to split up and they refused to do so.
She wouldn’t let it go, her heart had become involved. “I have some money if you think it would help, I can get together some supplies for them, whatever you think.”
“I’ll look into it this week,” I said, and thanked her for her generous offer.
The next day I made some phone calls, tried to track down the couple, but they were nowhere to be found. They had no address other than their car, no one seemed to know them, they were part of a hidden population and they were hidden well.
After church on Sunday the young mother lingered, sitting in the back of the church crying.
Now there are few women in my church from Africa, they are refugees of war-torn countries like Sierra Leone and Sudan. They knew something about the dangers of being homeless with children in tow. One of the mothers, Sarah, from Sierra Leone was forced from her home during a rebel invasion. Sarah’s baby was ripped from her arms and murdered in front of her. The atrocities they have lived through put our problems in perspective.
These two African now American mothers, Josephine and Sarah, began to comfort her and talk with her about this baby’s condition and what might be done.
“In Africa, we would never let a baby live on the streets,” Sarah said. “He would be taken to an auntie or a cousin. Someone would take him in. I don’t understand how we let this happen here in America. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Like this story? Find more like it here in Sherry’s new book, click book cover to go to Sherry’s Amazon page.
The three of us were standing around the young mother who was sitting in the pew, trying to comfort her and come up with a solution. I shook my head. “I guess in America, we are a different kind of village. We have to have the system step in, if we call DCS, the baby will be taken into state custody and then put into the foster care system, it’s not guaranteed that the baby will have one home, it may have many in that system, it’s not perfect, it’s just the system we have, but it does often work out in favor of the child’s safety.”
“I just want to take him home,” the young mother said. “I want to feed him and bathe him and make sure he feels safe. It’s killing me that he’s not.”
“We have to do something,” Josephine said. “We can’t just let these babies live on the streets, we have to intervene.”
The women reasoned through the situation and decided that we should, as a church, call DCS. The only problem: there was no way to locate the couple, and she was expecting another child, due in two weeks.
The next community meal, the couple did not show up. Perhaps they intuitively knew something was going to happen. I haven’t seen them since, and as I asked around—no one knew where they went. I had no words of comfort for the young mother. Only, that these are just the kinds of situations we encounter when we do this type of work. It’s hard, but sometimes all we can really do is pray and keep searching for some kind of miraculous solution, giving what we can give, doing what we can do while we wait. Sometimes, even I have a hard time heeding this advice because my heart breaks, too.
I grew up in a very small town. In a small town, there is a culture of remembrance. People remember your personality—the things that made you unique—and your family. There is a deep well of recognition. Even in this day and age, there are no homeless people in my hometown.
But in the city, people fall through the cracks. I don’t know where they go. There are places to hide, even in plain sight, where no one will ever find you. It haunts me just like it haunted this young mother that a baby did not have what it needed to survive, that a little one so tender could be at risk in a great big world. This precious, new life, in danger of slipping through the cracks.
As an urban pastor, I’ve tried to create a culture of remembrance, but it’s hard because sometimes I feel as if my one, precious life is slipping through the cracks, too. There is something exciting about being in a city with its opportunities, but if you are from a culture of remembrance, it’s difficult to stay in that forgotten place.
I often admire the African refugees in my church because they stick together. They are surrounded by their culture here in the city. Even though they joke with me that they have “left the village behind” to fit into the urban culture, this is not really true. The village lives inside of them like my hometown lives inside of me. It guides them to take care of their neighbors’ children, to look out for one another, to be kind, and to protect the vulnerable. They have always carried the village in their hearts and as long as they do, they will never feel lonely.
I’ve learned so much from them and they have become the very heart beat of my church and ministry here, they have so much to teach us about how to love. They are so grateful to be living in what they call a “great country,” free from the kind of violence that drove them from their homeland. Here, they can use their gifts, pursue their humble dreams, educate their children, and make a life for themselves. And yet, they do not understand why we have so many holy, homeless families.
I’m not sure what will happen to the holy, homeless family but I pray for their safety and for the well-being of the babies. I pray for a new world in which we cherish all the sacred, holy families in our communities. I have learned that the only home we truly have is the one that is carried in the hearts of others.
About the Author:
Sherry Cothran, M.Div., is a speaker, musician, author and ordained minister. In addition to her ongoing work as senior pastor, Sherry has been featured in USA Today, UMCorg, been the keynote speaker at several conferences and performed her songs and stories on many stages. She has received two grants from the Louisville Institute for her creative projects in Bible, faith and spirituality. She was the Artist in Residence at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. Her sermons and blogs have been featured in Good Preacher, Abingdon Women, Interpreter, Ministry Matters, Alive Now. An award winning recording artist, her most recent collaboration with indie film maker, Tracy Facceli, “Tending Angels” can be viewed on Youtube.
We all have a soul, we are created from sacred stuff. But many of us struggle to make a connection to it.
We may even be seeking that soul connection with our new year’s resolutions, craving more spiritual order in our lives this year, and that’s great!
But often, when we get a few weeks into the new year, we find that our energy seems depleted, the spark has left the agenda. We get busy with our lives, the demands of our current reality. We feel bogged down by the state of the way things are in our world, sucked into the gravitational pull of chaos. Connecting with soul slips way off the list, down into the netherworld.
When you spend any time in the news or dwelling on our current reality, it’s easy to become overwhelmed, here’s my brief synopsis of what I call the dark stew we’re all swimming in.
The Dark Stew:
Anxiety over unstable political environment.
Fear over increasing violence and disaster in the world.
A sense of aloneness, lack of support or community.
The feeling that you will never become who you were meant to be, that the odds are insurmountable.
Restlessness over a lack of resources such as health insurance, medical attention when needed, job, financial, etc.
Collective trauma
It’s really not our fault that we feel the invasion of the dark stew. We’ve been trying to control it for a very long time, and that tactic just doesn’t seem to work anymore. Sometimes, we even make our new year’s resolutions from a determination to control the chaos in our lives. From a young age, we are usually taught that we can gain the upper hand on chaos if we just learn techniques of control. And maybe for a while, it has worked.
But the stew is out of control.
More often than not, controlling the chaos through the various tactics we learn, working harder, becoming a huge success, being good at producing more, consuming more, etc., may help us “get ahead.” But we discover, eventually, that more is never enough. We have to work harder to keep up, our modern lives often leave us feeling depleted, experiencing identity loss and wondering where our promised sense of peace, hope and future lie. These traits may make us good producers in the world but often fail to bring us the deep sense of wholeness we crave. What’s even more confusing, is that these traits make it inside of our religious experience where they prevent us from connecting with the spiritual core.
What are we here for anyway?
We all may have had moments when we have glimpses of the sacred or soul within, like an elusive fox crossing the road in our headlights. We often ask, did that really happen? What was that? A moment of natural beauty or joy. Our instinct is to follow it, but we often have to just keep driving on, we have somewhere to be, something to do, we have an agenda, a set list of goals, or a plan we must follow. Or, if we don’t stay distracted, we are afraid we might get swallowed up in the experience of the dark stew. It’s so ironic, we often miss the soul journey because we are too busy making plans to thrive in the world, all the while thinking we are headed in the right direction. Or keeping ourselves distracted from our feelings. But the blueprint for our thriving is already within us, if only we would take the time to go within.
Our little glimpses of soul are often lost as we get sucked into the gravitational pull of chaos.
Consider these teachings about the soul from ancient traditions:
Lakota spirituality teaches us that we all have a story written upon the walls of our souls, our lives are about living out this story. The story is given to us by the Creator for the good of our community and the betterment of the world. As a young child, the soul is brought before the Great Spirit to discover its path. The role of the family and community is the help the child nurture this soul journey into the world, along with spiritual practice, rituals and traditions.
In the Christian journey, we believe that we all, at one point, are to experience the soul’s awakening to the Divine power within, this is the presence of God to which Jesus referred when he said, “the kingdom of Heaven is within” (Luke 17:21). Jesus’ presence in the world is the Holy Spirit, giving us the power to enter into and sustain a life lived from the soul’s purpose. “Abide in me and I will abide in you” (John 15:4) is an invitation to experience life from soul center. Jesus becomes the stabilizing force within you as you let go of the “learned” survival traits (control over the dark stew) and awaken to your gifts and talents for the betterment of the world. You take on the Spirit that is Christ, unique in all the world. Christ’ teaching on love, radical love that transforms hatred, is utterly unique and transformative.
This time of year, we all become particularly vulnerable to the urge to control chaos in our lives, or distract ourselves to distraction sickness. We crank down on control to make a new start, get the upper hand on the disorder or perhaps take the bait on that old sales pitch that “get the life you always wanted.” But the pathway to the soul is one of surrender, letting go of control, awakening to the wholeness within and experiencing restoration to your natural self.
There is no secret tunnel, no hidden formula, and there are no short cuts, just a lifetime of daily practice and surrender to what is already within you. Someone once said that the soul journey is about subtraction, letting God remove the barriers to God’s presence in you.
We don’t ever get rid of life in the stew, the gravitational pull of chaos will always be there, but we don’t have to be swallowed up by it or live at the pace it demands. As we learn about the Power that brings sanity, sustainable peace and manageability into our lives, God, Creator, Higher Power, we come to experience a new way of living in the world. We learn to surrender and let the internal blueprint take over. We become more connected to all that is sacred in us and in the world. This connection stabilizes our lives over time as we become less and less attracted (and attached) to the chaos, and more drawn to the peace available to us through our connection with God. Ironically, because we are changed, miraculously, by our experience of God, the world around us changes, too.
So why not take a close look at those new year’s resolutions that call for more control, or setting unattainable goals that force you to enslave your body and spirit to impossible amounts of work. Why not be guided by a higher cause, the soul’s journey? Perhaps your deeper yearning, what you’re really searching for, is a deeper connection to your very own soul.
If you’d like weekly resources to help you on your soul recovery journey, take a look around my site and sign up for my email list below, I’ll send you once a week inspirations to help you on your soul journey. If you’re interested in the 12 step spirituality, check out my recovery blog, leadkindlylightblog.wordpress.com.
And, if you like this blog, share it with others! Send me your thoughts below. What do you think about soul? Are you finding ways to connect with your soul journey this year? Share your inspirations!
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Grace and Peace,
-Sherry
Rev. Sherry Cothran is the pastor at St. John’s West UMC, Nashville. An award winning singer/songwriter, former lead singer of the popular late 90’s rock band, The Evinrudes, and upcoming author, Sherry writes about soul, recovery, women and faith, and the spiritual journey. Sherry’s new CD, due out in early Feb., 2017, “Hundreds of Ways to Kneel and Kiss the Ground” contains her alternative interpretations from the spiritual wisdom of Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Egyptian, and Native American practices. Her writing and music can be viewed here: www.sherrycothran.com
Sherry Cothran, M.Div., is a speaker, musician, author and ordained minister. In addition to her ongoing work as senior pastor, Sherry has been featured in USA Today, UMCorg, been the keynote speaker at several conferences and performed her songs and stories on many stages. She has received two grants from the Louisville Institute for her creative projects in Bible, faith and spirituality. She was the Artist in Residence at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. Her sermons and blogs have been featured in Good Preacher, Abingdon Women, Interpreter, Ministry Matters, Alive Now. An award winning recording artist, her most recent collaboration with indie film maker, Tracy Facceli, 