Hello and welcome to restoring soul, a podcast dedicated to helping you close the gap between what you believe and what you actually experience on your producer Brian Beatty. Thank you for listening. The practice of honoring the Sabbath has received quite a lot of attention in recent years. And if you're interested in learning more, today's conversation will be a perfect complement to your journey. On this edition of the podcast, Michael welcomes Dr. Ruth Haley Barton to restoring the soul. Ruth is an author, spiritual director, teacher, and founder of the transforming center in Wheaton, Illinois. In October, Ruth's book, embracing rhythms of work and rest, from Sabbath to sabbatical and back again, was released in hopes to ground us in God's intentions, and giving us the gift of the Sabbath, and providing practical steps for embedding Sabbath rhythms in our lives. So as a result of today's conversation, we hope you'll learn how to think about Sabbath as a gift. And that Sabbath helps us live in our true identity. So Now without any further delay, here's your host, Michael, John Cusack. Dr. Ruth Haley Barton, I want to welcome you to restoring the soul. Thank you so much. We, we had a conversation 10 years ago that never made it to actually being recorded. But you've written a number of books, your newest book is embracing rhythms of work, and rest, from Sabbath to sabbatical, and back again, so congratulations on that. Thank you very, very much. Before we get into the book, and I want to give you the chance to share your passion and the depths from which you wrote all about the book, can you take a little bit of time, and just talk about your journey into spiritual formation in the deeper life in Christ, because you are a high achiever and a high functioning high performance church? And then now you run the transforming center? And what's that journey of a to be? Wow, it's a long one. But, you know, my journey into all of this has to do with my own need. I mean, it's very humble admission to say that I came into this deeper journey, because I needed it. And because I was longing for something more in my own spiritual life, I'm a pastor's kid. So I've been in and around the church, all of my life, and in and around spiritual things. And certainly the church was the place where, you know, in our family, that was a place where you did your achievement stuff, you did it in the church, my time in that high performance setting that you mentioned, was one of the places where I got in touch with a couple things. One is that you could be very successful on the outside, but be very tired on the inside. I saw that a lot in that environment. But also, part of my job description there was to do formation and soul care for staff. And of course, the staff at that church was like 500 people, it was the size of a medium sized church. It was there that I really did clarify my own calling to want to work with leaders, you know, and given my own background as a pastor's kid and my own familiarity with the church. And given what I saw there in the midst of outward success, the inner emptiness, sometimes it was there, and if not, that, a longing for more, you know, just a longing for more in the spiritual life. And so my journey from there was to expand into a ministry that was for pastors, and Christian leaders more in general versus just working in that one setting. Was it difficult for you in that environment to begin to prior to starting the transforming center? Was it difficult to be to begin to make space for silence solitude and spiritual rhythms? How hard was that to create that? Well, I had been on that journey before I joined that staff. So I didn't, I wasn't trying to create it for the first time in the middle of being in the end of that pace. I had already established that rhythm in my life. So I experienced challenges to that, once I joined that staff, but I had already established that practice, in my own life. And in fact, you know, I, I think I told this part of the story in the book is that I dropped out of church to enter into solitude and silence and then it was after that, that I, you know, came on staff at this high performance church where that I was seeking to bring some of the things that I had learned and experienced into that setting. Okay, and it's interesting that you mentioned dropping out of church because you wrote in the new book, embracing rhythms of work and rest that although we sometimes will blame the secular world for standing in the way of Sabbath that your experience has been. And as you've talked to leaders, that's often the church that most students are aware that it is. And that was a very disillusioning moment. When I realized that there was a point where after I had left staff, you know, in the big church, and then I was founding the transforming center, we were attending just a normal church, and I thought, Oh, good, you know, now we're gonna get to practice Sabbath as a family. And I discovered that in that setting, as well. Sunday's were the busiest day of the week, and they loaded everything into Sunday's small groups, choir practices, congregational meetings, youth groups, everything, they load all of it into Sundays. So our family was just busy coming and going all day on Sunday, not because of the secular culture, but because of the church. And it was highly disillusioning. Because at that point, I was longing for the Sabbath rhythm, and I was longing for a community that would support it, versus me having to figure it out. Just as one individual I wanted a community that was ordering its life around Sabbath, and that would help me and support me and my family in practicing Sabbath. Well, I want to disclose and by way of confession, just say at the start of our conversation, that as I read your book, I was very, very convicted. You know, it was a great book, I have always loved your writing, you write with a depth and an authority that is just very compelling. But apart from how I was nourished by it, I was convicted and I just thought I have misunderstood the Sabbath. For all that I've taught and done and ministered about spiritual formation. This feels like just an area of my life that's been neglected. And I found that it awakened something inside of me and I loved how, oh, by the way, Ro ro Heiser wrote the foreword for the book. And that was just just a treat. That's a little kiss from God, isn't it? Yeah. He's one of my, one of the least, the most underestimated writer in some of the conservative Christian circles that we've been in the past. But he made the statement that it's better to focus on what is bitten by the Sabbath, B, A, D, D, E, N, as opposed to what is forbidden. And a light just came on, as I as I then started your chapters that I've always thought of the Sabbath as what is forbidden, what you can't do. So can you talk a little bit about that? Even though those are ROMs? Words? Yes, yes. Well, it you know, it corresponds very much with what I was what I've tried to do in the book, and that is to talk about Sabbath as a gift. Because I being raised in a pastor's family, we practice Sabbath, but in a very legalistic way. And it was all about what we couldn't do. And that's all I remember about it. I don't remember anything about delight or joy, or, you know, real rest, we as a pastor's family, we always entertained on Sundays. And so the females in the family worked very hard at that. And so there was nothing about the Sabbath, it felt inviting or winsome to me at all in the way I experienced it growing up. So I understand that whole orientation towards the forbidden. And in fact, you know, as you just said, I, I spent 10 years learning and working with people in the area of spiritual practices while actively kicking Sabbath to the curb. And saying, I don't, I'm not doing that one, you know, like actively resisting the Sabbath. I'm not doing that one. And so it's been a surprise in my life to have gotten so strongly invited by God in the depths of my heart, there was just a real invitation from God at a particular point. And a longing to the invitation came through my longing, I began to long for a way of life that worked, I began to wait long for a way of life in which I was not so tired, I began to long for deep rest, not just physical rest, but rest from the striving and achieving and performing and producing and all of that. And so it's it's been quite a surprise to me to have God just completely redeem the Sabbath for me and give it back to me as I would say, now it is God's greatest gift outside of Jesus Christ Himself. You made that statement in the book. That's a surprising statement. And yeah, it's a surprising statement. And it is true and it's true every week. Every week, I fall in love with God again, because of the Sabbath. You know, because of, to think that God loves me enough and loves us enough to give us a gift that is so so so good. Every single week, I fall in love with God again, because of the Sabbath. I love that phrase, fall in love with him again, it there's a lot of freedom in that, like there's something about the other six days where it can kind of wear away. And there's almost an expectation that we need to just always be in this wonderful space of union. Yeah. So it's so important to you, because as your opening sentence in chapter one, says, You said I'm quite certain that I wouldn't be alive today. If it were not for God's gift of Sabbath. Can you you unpack that in the book a couple chapters later, but tell the story of why you wouldn't be alive. Yeah. Well, I just have such a hard driving high achieving personality. Eat that. I think I would have kept driving and driving and driving until I wasn't well anymore and and the Sabbath has saved me from that the Sabbath has saved me from myself. The Sabbath has saved me from the hard driving nature of my personality. And every single week, I need it every single week, I've rarely accept any sort of speaking engagement or anything that has me away on the Sabbath. If it's on a Saturday, I say, I'll do it. But I need to be home by the set. I need to be home on Saturday night so that I can practice is out on Sunday. I mean, I am, quote, you know, pardon the pun, I am religious about it, because I need it every single week to stay alive, you know, to stay well to stay healthy. And it's not an overstatement for me to say that, you know, the other spiritual practices have their function in my life. But the Sabbath has saved me, and it keeps saving me. And you, you write with eloquence, from the Old Testament, and you quote a lot of theologians, particularly Jewish authors, Rabbi Abraham Heschel how it really was a kind of salvation for the Jews, because for them, right, salvation was not when you die, you'll go to heaven, it was that ongoing sense of God's rescuing an intervention. And this was a kind of rescue on that seventh day. Right. And I do think that we have sold the Sabbath short when we make it all about rest. And we don't talk about liberation. And the fact that, that Sabbath, Sabbath was signed symbol and the lived reality of the Israelites liberation from oppression, that puts it in a different category doesn't I mean, that puts Sabbath in a different category. And it is about rest. It's more about ceasing. I mean, the literal word is to cease to cease our normal labors. You know, we cease our normal labor, so then we can rest. But it's also about liberation from all kinds of oppression. And back then it was liberation from their oppression, under the rule of the Egyptians and their captivity. But I believe that for us today, we are in bondage to, we are in bondage to life, in our culture, we're in bondage to our own inner driven us, we're in bondage to trusting in ourselves for our survival. And the Sabbath is our liberation today, from the driven pneus of life, in our culture, on the distraction of social media and technology. And then that's why I say on so many levels, the Sabbath saves me every single week. And I love this little quote from Jewish literature that says more than the Jews have, have kept Shabbat, Shabbat, has kept the Jews. You know, I love that. Isn't that beautiful? It is. One of the things that's impacted me that you've done is in your book, strengthening the soul of leadership that you wrote 1012 years ago, perhaps maybe 15 years ago, I think, I think so. Yeah, that was the book for a long time that I was most familiar with. And that's where you had the inventory called, How is it with your soul? Right? And some of those questions are so revealing where you're supposed to check the box and say, you know, you strongly identify, and one of them, although it's actually not checked the box, it's placed yourself on a continuum. Thank you, you know, you place yourself on a continuum, because it's just a little bit. It's just quite so bounded that way. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't want to make it sound rigid in that regard. Yeah, the the question that stood out, in my mind was something like, I'm at the grocery store, and I see somebody from my congregation, and I turn and walk in the other direction. And that didn't get to that talked about more about the inner world and the exhaustion, so pairing, that work that you've done around thinking about the inner world of leaders, and then you made the statement in the book, I dreamt of a life that wasn't so exhausting. And I imagined that there are pastors, missionaries, parachurch, workers, Christian leaders, spiritual directors, people that are doing the work of God that are just dreaming and fantasizing about a life that isn't so exhausting, but they can't get off of that treadmill, or they actually believe that that's what God has for them. Yeah. Talk a little bit about what it was like to be so exhausted and to, to not know how to get to the other side. Yeah, yeah. I talk about and I call it a guilty pleasure, you know, that I would read books about the Sabbath, and I would just enjoy them and savor them so much. And sometimes I would even cry about the beauty of that kind of life, but but I couldn't imagine it for myself. And when I experienced a biking accident, where I collided with a van and the van drove over my legs. That was the moment where I heard God saying, this is this is a stopping point. You know, there's, there's this is this is the come to Jesus moment right here. You want this and I'm here to tell you that you can have it just I think the experience then was to believe that there was something in that desire and longing that was real. And that if I gave into it that God would meet me in that place and show me how. And I think many people, their first response to Sabbath is oh, you know, I couldn't possibly, and then they go off and all the reasons why they can't have a Sabbath? Well, you know, you're gonna have to let yourself free fall into your desire for it, and trust that God's going to meet you there. And that God's going to show you how, and I don't entertain anybody's excuses anymore, because I had many of them myself. But when I was willing to let myself want it badly enough, God met me in that desire and began to lead me and guide me in some very practical ways of having it in my own life. Can you say a little bit more about what it means to free fall into your desire, it's to give into it versus continuing to resist it, and to say, I can't have that I can't possibly have that. I'm too busy for that my family life won't allow for that my work won't allow for that. You know, I had to give into the desire versus fighting with it, and saying, it's not possible for me, I had to give into it. With God, I mean, it was a, it was a place of surrender to God to say, okay, you know, if you have offered this up, I'm going to trust you that you're gonna help me find a way. It was more of a surrender to the whole thing. You know? Yeah, I think so many times our desires for that are suppressed because they are. If it feels like something that's unobtainable, we just push that desire down. And we orals, we have messages from family of origin or further from the culture about oh, what a slacker who gets to take a whole day every week, you'll you'll just be a slacker, do you know other people are going to pass you by with their achievements. I mean, there's all sorts of negative talk that comes in to that place of desire. And so very quickly, before we even let ourselves fully feel it, we began talking ourselves out of it. Yeah. And I just want to commend your book, longing for more for a moment. So anybody who's listening, that's not familiar with kind of your whole catalogue of books and writing, longing for more. It's the beginning especially deals with the idea of desire and longing, and that that's a gift from God. Not something that we're so often taught, our desires are bad. I want to read a quote from Wayne Mahler, who's kind of classic book, Sabbath you you draw from, and specifically after the story of your cycling accident, you quote him saying that then there was a sentence from Wayne Mahler's book Sabbath that kept buzzing around in my head, like a pesky fly, buzzing against a windowpane. And he says, if we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath, or pneumonia, or cancer or heart attack our accidents create Sabbath for us. I read that and I thought, oh, my gosh, is that true in my life, but as a psychotherapist, and somebody that does soul care and counseling for leaders, we see that all the time, so that people just can't function anymore. And then it's not a Sabbath, because they're desperate and trying to survive. Have you seen that as well? Yes. And there's a certain kind of desperation, you know, that is it? Is it work there, right? That if we can even get into our desperation, our desperate need to be healthy and whole, and see those moments when God stops us in our tracks as being painful and difficult and alarming, but also moments when God can get our attention. And we can start to maybe have a little bit more resolve. And to say, this is the result of my lifestyle. I can't keep going like this, because this is the result of my lifestyle. And the Sabbath is what could begin to save me and bring me out of it. So yes, I mean, at first, I think, you know, for many people, one day of Sabbath is not going to touch the level of exhaustion that they're feeling, you know, and they might need, you know, more of an expansive break. But then eventually, when we're living well in sacred rhythms, you know, this weekly Sabbath keeps us in the game. It keeps us in a healthy range. You talked about how Sabbath is more than just rest and you spoke of liberation. Can you talk about other things that it is you talked about in the book, for example, delight, and that was a word that really caught my attention? Yeah, yeah. And that's a biblical word. I mean, from Isaiah 58. If you call the Sabbath, a delight, then you will ride upon the heights, you know, so the word delight is a biblical word associated with Sabbath. And it is a game changer, to start to think about Sabbath through the lens of delight, because I believe that the Sabbath exists, it's given to us for worship rests in delight, and that on the Sabbath, because we are stopping work, but we're also stopping are consuming. I mean, that's one of the things that I suggest and recommend is it that we cease consuming in the normal ways on the Sabbath, and instead settle into God's good gifts that can't be bought and sold. You know, every store you're going to go into is going to be structured to sell you things. You don't need to To sow dissatisfaction in your life, that's just the basis of marketing, and consumerism. And so we cease that to on the Sabbath. And instead we settle in and savor God's good gifts to us a gift of the home that we've been given the gift of our family, the gift of friendship, the gift of the outdoors and nature, the gift of a meal that's been specially prepared the gift of reading a book for pleasure, that the gift of going for a long run, because we love to run and don't have time for it during the week, the gift of a pickup game of basketball, the gift of fishing, I mean, you know, so many things that are gifts to us that get lost in the shuffle of our lives, to have a day where we're actually instructed to order it around the things we delight in. Whew, that is a pretty good gift right there. And it certainly does make the day very special. Yeah, and if we heard the command, and I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with what God said, or how it's been translated, but if we heard it as an on the seventh day, you shall delight or you shall engage in the things that bring you joy, or invigorate you people wouldn't think about it the way that they do. Yes, yeah, exactly. So you mentioned worship, rest and delight. And I think people would think of those initially, like three separate words. But the way you're talking about this is that worship can be delight, you working in your garden, and planting, for example. Yes, in fact, I talk about a Sabbath progression that I've experienced in my own life. So when I finish up my work week, oftentimes I'm so I'm too tired to delight in anything. You know, it takes energy to actually be present and delight in something. And so we've all experienced this, you get to the end of the workweek, and you love your spouse, but you're so tired, you snap at them, you know, you can enjoy that gift, because you're just too tired, or grandchildren or reading a book, you can't keep your eyes open, even though you love to read, I love to read, but when I'm too tired, I can't enjoy reading. And so when I get to the Sabbath, sometimes I'm so tired that I can't delight in anything. So I allow myself to rest and then I rest until I have a little bit of energy to delight in something. And then in that delight, I feel gratitude, my heart filling up with gratitude and gratitude is really close with worship, I mean, then all of a sudden you're worshiping in your heart, even in a beyond words way is just lifting yourself up to God. And you're just acknowledging the God who has given you these good gifts, it's very seamless, it's it's almost imperceptible, how the process moves itself along on the Sabbath. And so I've just experienced that many, many times. And so now I, I had never, you know, judged myself for being so tired on the Sabbath, that I can't delight in anything that said, I just let myself rest and I know how the process works. Eventually, I will have enough energy to delight in something. And then as I delight in what I've been given to delight in, I'll start to feel gratitude for the life that God has given me or for specifics that God has given me. And then how that gratitude worship begins to emerge, and I'm oriented towards God, and who God is in my life. And it's all very beautiful, and it's not effortful either. You don't have to have a lot of effort to experience what I just mentioned. You just have to give yourself to it. Yeah, and it sounds like for many, there might be a lot of inertia to make it happen. And you've written multiple times through the book about how it requires courage, but that giving itself to it, like as I read the book, and as I'm thinking about it, now in talking with you, I'm like, Okay, I've got to move some things around, I have to, I have to reprioritize some things, and I've got to get my laundry done. Not that laundry can't be part of it. Right? Especially if that brings me joy, because you make the distinction between work and labor, which I want to come back to, but like, I can't just do everything that I would normally do the way I do it, if I'm actually going to make space to rest and to delight, because there's just too much to be done. I mean, this weekend, it was like, gotta get the Christmas tree up. Nope, gotta get to Christmas trees up. Gotta fix the lights on the Christmas tree. And then suddenly the weekends gone. And I wonder why I don't have joy with God. On Monday and Tuesday. Yeah. Yes. And one of the points that I make in the book is that in order to practice Sabbath, it's not just one day you have to actually orient your whole life towards the Sabbath. So your whole week is oriented towards the Sabbath. And the Sabbath is the king pin the Sabbath, the Sabbath is the climax of the week. So that means that your paid work has to be contained within the five work days, the Six Day has to be devoted to the work of being human because, you know, there are there's all sorts of work and tasks associated with being human Christmas trees being one of them. And you know, for some people, I'm sure that that's a pleasurable experience and can be considered delightful. And it is but it's also hard work. So you have to kind of discern that for yourself. You're what you're describing is kind of work. You know, human work. And then with the sixth day having been devoted to the work of being human, then the seventh day can be the day of rest, but you have to plan the whole week for that day. When you talk about the gift of being inhuman that brings up the whole category of limits that you talked about that we have to have limits. But Sabbath allows us to experience that gift of limits. Talk a little bit about that. Like, there's a unspoken belief that if I am, quote, spiritually mature, I actually become less human, more spiritual equals less human. That's not at all biblical. That's not at all true because of the incarnation and so much more. But talk about that gift of being human. Yeah, well, I'll tell you, I just shut down the Jesuits says that we are not human beings trying to become spiritual, we are spiritual beings trying to become human. That that is the incarnational journey. And it is the journey that Jesus took Jesus was the ultimate spiritual being who became human. And that's our journey as well. And we follow Christ in being on that journey and figuring out how to be the best human we can be. And I feel I believe very strongly that the way that a tree glorifies God is by being a tree, the way that a flower glorifies God is by being a flower, and the way a human being glorifies God is by being a human. And so the Sabbath, I think one of the reasons we resist Sabbath is because it does bring us up against this idea of limits. And some of us want to pretend, at least for the early part of our lives, that we don't have limits, and that we can go and go and go and go and go, and we'll be okay. And so it confronts us with one of the deepest places of resistance that we have. And that is actually Adams issue, right? That we want to be like, God, we want to be that being that doesn't have limits, but it's not possible, because that's not how we were created, we are the creature, and God is the Creator. And the Creator doesn't have limits, but we do. And in fact, God created us with those limits, you know, it's part of our creation. And so to live well, within our limitations, is actually I think, a very glorifying thing that glorifies God, because we're being the being that God created us to be. I find that really encouraging myself. Yeah, it's so permission giving, and back to the challenging, but it's also encouraging. Yeah, liberating back to that word. Yeah, good segue to the fact that you write about how Sabbath also helps us live in our true identity. Talk a little bit about that aspect of true identity. On the Sabbath, we're reminded of who we really are, and especially in our relationship with God, and who God is to us and who we are to God, we're reminded that we belong to God, that we are living on God's terms for us versus the cultures terms. For us. It's a powerful experience of being loved. I think, I already mentioned falling in love with God all over again, every Sabbath. And one of the reasons for that is because I feel God loving me, you know, I feel how much God loves me as I do those things that give me delight in this, I allow my body to rest, and I allow my soul to feel safe, because I'm not out there, you know, publicly doing a life out there. I feel cared for. And so I come back to that place of my core identity as being a person who is beloved, who is loved by God, I feel loved and beloved, on the Sabbath day. And I experienced that as being my true identity, far beyond any of the deep things that I do in this world, and far beyond productivity, and achievement, and all of that. So it it's a time for remembering who I am, who God is, and who I am and who I am in relation to God, as I live on God's own terms for me. Yeah. And in relation to community. And that's the last question I have for you. Because Sabbath is not just self actualization, in the secular sense. It's a communal process, and always has been. So talk about a why the communal aspect is really essential. And then what has been like for you, personally, to incorporate it as a communal practice? Yeah, well, I think part of the reason that people can't envision Sabbath for themselves is because they're not part of communities that are championing this and teaching and guiding it and creating space for it. And so we've got a bunch of individuals who are trying to figure out Sabbath on their own. But that's not as you said, it's not the way Sabbath was given. Sabbath was given to a whole community of people who practiced it together in some very specific ways. And that's what enabled them to actually do it. And so when you write a book on a topic that other people have written beautifully about, you have to have an understanding of what you're saying that you feel might be a new offering, or a fresh offering. And in this case, this is one of the things that I wanted to offer in this book was I you know, Mueller's book, Rabbi shields book. They don't talk about the communal aspects of it as much as I needed to see, to figure out how it might work. And so I really wanted to drive a big stake in the ground in this book around Sabbath as a communal practice and to challenge churches and communities and leaders to actually champion Sabbath as a spiritual practice as significant as solitude silence Bible reading, confession. You know, self examination. I mean, it's right up there it should be. It's one of the 10 commandments. After all, I do not know why we don't live this together, how we have set this aside, as Christian people. And people say, Well, you know, Jesus didn't teach about it. So maybe it's not for today. And I'm like, really Jesus practice Sabbath, He was a practicing Jew. So he practiced the Sabbath with his disciples, and many of his miracles were performed on his way to the to the temple on the Sabbath. Now, he reframed the Sabbath in some significant and wonderful ways. And in fact, he named himself as Lord of the Sabbath. But he didn't dismiss it. He didn't, you know, say it's not for today, he actually practice it faithfully as a practicing Jew. So part of my intention in this book is to challenge leaders and communities to begin to identify this as a very important formational practice and to begin teaching it guiding it, and creating space in the church's schedule to make Sabbath possible for the congregants. Because, you know, it's really, really mean almost to preach on Sabbath and then not do anything with the church's schedule to make that possible. I mean, that's really that's bad. That's just bad, bad bad. Ruth, talk about the transforming center, I want to make sure that our listeners understand what it is how they can learn more about it. Yeah, the transforming Center is a ministry that exists to strengthen the souls of pastors and leaders in the congregations and organizations they serve. And we do that in several different ways. And one of them is through transforming resources, we have an imprint and a brand, that is designed specifically to empower pastors and leaders to live out their formation, that personally but also in their lives, in congregations. And so this book fits in that line really well, because it's, it's teaching and empowering pastors and leaders to lead these things, you know, in their communities, our core offering is the 27 month transforming community experience. So it's nine quarterly retreats over 27 months, and a cohort of leaders come together and commit themselves to their journey of transformation in this community for those 27 months. And so, we're getting ready to launch our 19th Transforming community, which is just shocking. But we've been doing this for 20 years. And so we're getting ready to launch transforming community 19 in June. And it's a very confidential experience. It's it's a place where we maintain each other's anonymity. It's focused around spiritual practices, but the personal communal and leadership applications of each practice that we work on together. So the transforming community is a really important part of our offering. And then we also have, you know, standalone events, if you want to call them that are becoming a transforming church, pursuing God's Will together, which is based on the book by the same name, where we invite whole teams of leaders and groups to come and learn corporate leadership discernment together. So you know, those are some of the things that that we try to offer. We also have an online directory for spiritual directors. And those are people who have been through our transforming community, and they've also had training in spiritual direction. And we've been discovering that, in this period of time right now, when leaders are so beleaguered and confused and needing discernment that our spiritual director, listing is just going gangbusters because people are looking for spiritual directors that can help them with discernment. During these very confusing days for pastors, very challenging and very exhausting days for pastors still. Yeah. And with all those challenges, just information about God is insufficient. People are hungry for real experience, experiences. Yes, yeah. And that's what that's what it seems that you're about is, it's important for our listeners to hear and tell me if I'm wrong, but that this is not where people come and just you teach your books and they leave. It's experiential, it's relational. It's formational. And then there's cohorts where people are interacting in between those sessions. And it really is a journey and I can personally not have been through it. But I've got a number of colleagues and associates that have done the program. And then our Tia, Lillian Chardon, who's a dear friend, she has gone through your program, and it's just it's just transformational. Congratulations on 20 years of being up and running. And would you agree that from 20 years ago to today that there's been a sort of revolution might be too strong of a word, but embrace and deeper acceptance of spiritual formation spiritual direction, and maybe some words that have been put to the hunger for the deeper life? Yeah, and sometimes I laugh about the fact that I was doing this step before it was popular. You know, and I was doing it when you know, you could actually be persecuted for when I started entering, you couldn't do it without people thinking you are a Buddhist or right you know, a new age philosopher. I mean, people were really scared of this 20 years ago. So it was a very lonely time for me actually to be living into these things and exploring these things. When the people around me were very, very suspicious and afraid of what was happening. So it's it's nice to be where we are now. And I hope that that spiritual formation is not seen as a trend, I also have have a little bit of a concern that it'll be seen as a trend. Because I don't think it's a trend. I think it's much deeper than that, I think it's a fundamental promise of the Gospel is that we can be transformed into the image of Christ, we can be fundamentally changed. That's a promise of the gospel, it cannot be a trend. It is the reality of what of what the gospel produces in our lives, if we can figure out how to open to it. So I'm glad I'm glad for the changes in the shifts. And I pray that we take it seriously is more than just a fad. But as one of the foundational promises of the very gospel that we preach, amen. Jim Smith is a close friend of mine. And I've been at the apprentice gathering last two years. And I saw that you will be a keynote speaker there next year in September. So I just want to do a call out for our listeners that if you want to hear Ruth's speak, and I'm not sure if you're doing any workshops there, but that the apprentice gathering is a great way to go deeper with this. And I just want to thank you for your time. I know you're very busy. I know that because of the limits that you wisely set that you don't just do every podcast request that comes in and I really feel honored to talk with you. And thank you for your ministry. Thank you for the courage 20 years plus back to step into that into that place of willing to be misunderstood for the sake of what was your calling. So bless you. Thank you. And the same to you, Michael. Thank you so so much. So we've wrapped up another episode of restoring the soul. We want you to know that restoring the soul is so much more than a podcast. In fact, the heart of what we have done for nearly 20 years is intensive counseling. When you can't wait months or years to get out of the red you're in you're in of counseling programs in Colorado, allow you to experience deep change and half day blocks box. To learn more visit restoring the soul.com That's restoring the soul.com