“It is time now, it is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well1.”
Lately, I often catch myself singing these words by Karisha Longaker of the folk-duo MaMuse. As I think about the practices that sustain me and my ministry, I have reflected increasingly on the metaphor of “digging our wells” rather than “filling our cups.” Where else will we get the water to pour from our cups, anyway?
Last spring, a professor asked our class if spirituality is important for leadership, and if it can ever be a hinderance2. Our spiritual practices, I reflected, are well-digging practices. They deepen our lives so that we can draw out the water we pour into and out of our cups – water that nourishes both ourselves and the people we lead. We practice spirituality so that we have the capacity to give ourselves a drink and give others a drink too, neglecting no-one.
These practices also ensure that the water we draw is in fact nourishing. Sharing this metaphor with another leader of our faith, she reflected that spiritual practices are necessary acts of maintenance, so that the water we draw is clean and refreshing rather than mucky and polluted3. Tending to ourselves and others requires care and attention. Life spreads us thin. In big and small ways, this increasingly complicated world asks so much of us. That is why these practices have never been so important. When the world asks us to spread our lives wide, we must also balance this by going deeper. Indeed, digging deeper gives us the capacity to answer life’s broad requests.
But how can these practices get in our way? If spiritual practice can hinder our leadership, it is when we dig for digging’s sake. When we don't ground our spiritual work in some wider framework, especially a communal one, then spiritual pursuit hinders leadership. If we work so intently on ourselves that we neglect our relationships with others, who exactly are we leading? We run the risk of digging our well into Narcissus’ pool, falling deeper and deeper into self-possession. None of us, especially as leaders, can exist in isolation.
I have long thought of the distinction between religion and spirituality as one of context. Religion is the deepening, tending work we do as a collective that connects our community to something greater than ourselves. Spirituality is a necessary complement to this, as the “homework” we do to bring our best selves into community. Leading a religious life without spirituality is a shallow pool; spirituality without religion is an isolated one. A deepened life asks us to lead ourselves and one another into the Well, which we draw from to fill our many cups.
1. Karisha Longaker, “We Shall Be Known,” MaMuse, accessed January 10, 2025 https://www.mamuse.org/new-page
2. Kathryn House, “Ethical Leadership,” (streamed lecture, Meadville Lombard Theological School, February 26, 2024).
3. Nancy McDonald Ladd, “Creating A Nurturing Community In Stressful Times,” (lecture, Meadville Lombard Theological School, Chicago, IL, September 9, 2024).
A realization has slowly dawned on me: I have crossed into a magic circle.
I was sitting in a gathering – a literal circle – of ministers in Colorado one October afternoon. We shared the joys and challenges of our ministries, dreamed and worried about our futures, and took comfort in each other’s company. This was in many ways a familiar gathering, and yet something felt noticeably different.
I joined my home state’s ministerial cluster before I left, and the content of our online gatherings was much the same. We shared joys, concerns, and asked how we could support one another. I stepped into this circle after I became a ministerial aspirant in our tradition a few months before, and was slowly becoming a colleague in the presence of colleagues. Yet at the same time, I felt like I had only one foot inside that circle. I had another foot inside the circle of my fellow religious educators, and for a time walked between these two similar but different worlds of ministry. My colleagues in religious education had been my first colleagues as a religious professional, and their circle felt most like my own. As I began stepping into the circle of ministers, I felt at once like I was and wasn’t quite one of them.
What was different in Colorado? In moving, I left the two circles behind, and in time stepped into a new circle with my mentor’s invitation. The circle felt familiar, but this time I felt different. Sitting in that room, I felt like I had become a peer without realizing it. To my astonishment, both feet were firmly planted inside it. Perhaps it was the ability to be physically present with my colleagues. Perhaps it was the length and depth of time we spent in each other’s company. But no matter where the feeling comes from, I have stepped into something new and subtle. There is a magic, a power here I haven’t felt elsewhere.
My formation is full of visible signs and markers – the achievement of aspirancy and candidacy, the progression of semesters, the beginning of an internship. But the feeling I encountered in that room points to a deeper and more subtle transformation. I am writing to you from inside some place new. It is a magic circle, where seers of sorts call the future into being. It is a necessarily imperfect circle, because we are necessarily imperfect creatures. It is a circle whose edges are sometimes warped, whose dreams are sometimes misplaced, whose true power is often ambiguous. Human. Yet here from inside the circle, life calls me to find and channel the magic here to transform life itself.