Dear friends,

The arc of this semester surprised me. I expected coursework, deadlines, and the steady push toward finals. Instead, I found myself piecing together parts of my own story in a way I had not been able to do before. In my last post, I wrote about the religion of my youth, and I can see now that I was circling the edges of this shift without quite naming it. Nothing dramatic. More like a change in focus that let me notice the longer pattern behind the individual moments.

I’ve started to understand how certain experiences formed me, how certain instincts developed, and why I move through the world the way I do.

This shift has unlocked something in me and also settled something. It has helped me trace the connections across my history, and it has clarified the vision for how I want to move in the world. Not a new direction. A more grounded one.

For most of my life, I’ve understood my story in fragments. Separate rooms inside the same house. Childhood and queerness and faith. Pain and survival and reinvention. Ministry, motherhood, and work. I could name the rooms, but I could not always see the pathways between them.

This semester, the walls thinned. The through lines became clearer. Some of that came from the simple act of studying and keeping up with my reading. Some of it came from letting myself slow down enough to notice the subtle movements inside my own life. And some of it grew out of a sense of mysticism beginning to take shape within me. I do not mean visions or escape. I mean what Dorothee Soelle describes in her book The Silent Cry as a way of seeing what cuts through the noise so truth can come forward… a way of paying attention that makes connection itself an act of resistance.

As I settled into that understanding, I also began to recognize that experiencing the divine is not just something I hope for; it is something I strive for and even something that I feel bold enough to expect. It has been a steady thread in my life for a long time. Naming it has helped me claim it with confidence, rather than hesitation. It feels like something true about who I am.

As these threads come together, I am beginning to recognize the roots of my own formation. I see how my story has shaped both my limits and my gifts. I understand that the way I show up is not incidental… It is rooted in something lived and hard-earned.

One of my final assignments this semester was to preach a full sermon for my preaching class. I recorded it in the sanctuary at my home congregation during a quiet window in the day.

The sermon is called “When the Body Says No.” It is not my first sermon on the topic of trauma. The first sermon I ever preached, seven or eight years ago, was in that territory too. But after that, I avoided the subject. I did not have the grounding that I have now then. I did not have the theology I have found myself growing into. And I did not yet understand my own body with the compassion and clarity I carry today.

This time, I reached the end of the semester ready. Ready in the sense that speaking from this place did not feel like reopening a wound. Ready because my voice felt steady. Ready because I trust that trauma is not the whole story. My life has widened. My theology has deepened. And the story I carry now is shaped by agency instead of fear.

This sermon is part of that shift. I hope it gives a flash of the minister I am becoming. Someone rooted in embodiment. Someone willing to be honest. Someone, I hope, who is guided by a spiritual imagination that makes room for complexity, for healing, and for a sense of the holy that moves within and between us.

If you want to watch it, here it is.

Watch the video »

What this semester taught me is that my history does not just explain where I have been; it also explains who I am. It illuminates where I am going. It shapes how I want to move forward. Slower. Braver. More attuned to bodies and stories. More committed to the kind of repair that becomes possible when we stay with one another.

I am carrying that clarity with me into the next season. The work will keep unfolding. And I am learning to trust the direction it leads.

With care,
Rachel