Today (at writing, maybe not at reading) is Ash Wednesday. It is the beginning of the season of the liturgical year that is most antagonistic towards the type of energetic, innovative, optimistic, forward-driving work that we do best at Ministry Incubators. Our work is characterized by timeboxing, by rapid iteration, and a bias towards action. That’s who we are as an organization, and it’s the role we’ve discerned we’re called to play in a church landscape that is often plagued by paralysis, by nihilism, and by a lot more talking than doing. 

And yet, Lent arrives every year, confronting us. Lent calls us to slow down, to take an excruciatingly long 6 weeks to ponder, fast, confess, and pray. It is a season that is defined by sobriety, restraint, and quiet contemplation. I am not alone among my coworkers, or likely among you reading this, to confess that I am not particularly pre-disposed to sobriety, restraint, or quiet contemplation. 

But it has its place. I was recently working on a project with other action-biased leaders with a pretty short time frame. We cranked through ideation exercises, problem definitions, and planning and walked out of a half-day session with 5 big new ideas and our next steps for knocking them out of the park – wow! 

In the weeks that followed, questions about internal conflict in the organization, about budget instability and staffing changes, and about a lack of shared understanding of the organization’s role meant that a lot of those ideas will need some pretty serious reconsideration, or even to be shelved entirely. I felt conflicted. I had done what I was asked to do, I had stepped into the role where I was invited, but should I have hit the brakes? Should I have asked more questions? Was there something more sustainable, more aligned, that that group could have been called to that would have emerged if I was willing to let us spend the first 2 hours of a 4 hour block digging more deeply? 

I’m not sure, it’s just as likely that the 2 hours would have grown into 4 hours of discussion and we still wouldn’t have learned as much as we did by just trying things. But in this season of Lent, this season that resists easy and fast answers, that calls us into reflecting not just on what’s in front of us and ahead of us, but what’s inside us, it’s worth the wondering. 

I like jogging, but I got out of the habit for a while this winter because of work demands, travel, and bad weather. I started again last week and realized how much I needed the quiet miles, the time spent only moving forward in the most literal of senses. Time spent waiting, wondering, not working, not playing, just being and focusing on every breath, every footfall. Time spent focusing on nothing at all. 

There is a phrase in Latin that our founder, Kenda Dean taught me (and has mocked me for consistently butchering) – Solvitur ambulando, or ‘it is solved by walking.’ It’s often attributed to St. Augustine, and I was taught it as an embrace of learning while doing, starting on a journey trusting most problems are better solved along the way than hypothesized and agonized over. It’s a phrase I’ve said (probably incorrectly) to clients and friends who hesitate to make the moves they need to because they are unsure of every step. 

This morning, frustrated over a problem at work I couldn’t resolve, anxious about a situation I couldn’t control, and heart-heavy over a late night phone call from yet another ministry friend suddenly without a job, I put on my sneakers, and ran. My throat felt hoarse from cold air and weeks of missed runs, my newly-34 year old legs were sore from chasing toddlers around, but in heavy, slow footfalls in the dark, I felt a stillness in my mind, a quieting of the hum, like the feeling when your ears stop ringing. It would be fine. Just ask a few more questions, do the best you can, be there for your people. 

Sobriety, restraint, quiet contemplation, found with loud music, and lots of movement. Solvitur ambulando. It is solved by (running).

This week, as we enter this season of fasting, prayer, confession, contemplation, may we find the ways to carve out space for ourselves to breathe, to think, to slow down enough to truly wrestle with who we are and who we’re called to be in the world. This season, may we find whatever contemplation looks like for us, and be willing to turn away from the noise in the world so that we can finally hear the voice inside of us, calling us deeper into the arms of a loving God.