contemplative

Alumni Spotlight: Lydia Strand

Name and pronouns: Lydia Strand (she/they)

Cohort years: 2013-2015

Where are you living now? I’ve been in Boston since Life Together and live in Jamaica Plain with my partner, Cicia Lee (2014).

What are you doing now?

I’m working part time with Life Together as the Prayer and Wellness Partner – supporting the fellows and their community as they navigate their lives through the program year! I’ve enjoyed re-steeping in some of the core material and commitments of Life Together’s to a life of community, prayer, and action–and learning about how the program and fellows over the last several years have developed and evolved conversations about each of these pillars.

And, I’m also working with a project born out of the “Nuns & Nones” group that is building an interfaith and interspiritual community of people across the country committed to shared study, prayer, action, and celebration. It draws inspiration from relationships with communities of women religious–nuns in monasteries across the US. In some ways, there are similarities to the Life Together program in that it’s an attempt to build an alternative lifestyle in which spiritual practice, justice, and relationship is at the center.

How has Life Together impacted your life?

The greatest impact that Life Together has had on my life is through the relationships and friendships that have shaped the last decade of my life. I’ve been in community with people who have been so creative with seeking lives of spiritual community, of social change, and of self-knowing. From building various informal intentional communities, to pursuing contemplative retreats, and trying out learning the various crafts of community organizing and political action, the people I’ve met through Life Together have helped me keep open the call and dream of a life full of Spirit-led connectedness and transformation. I’ll soon age out of the identity of ‘young adult,’ but the experience that was seeded in Life Together of a life of prayer and action has been nourished and strengthened through these relationships. I’m not done with the experiment!

And, I hope it is a lifelong one. I was introduced to Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk and Christian meditation teacher, by Ethel Fraga, a mindfulness and contemplative practice teacher who taught with Life Together about a decade ago. He writes:

“It is a real challenge to find a new way to express our Christian life. It is so easy to get into rules and organization and so to narrow the freedom of the Spirit. The essential thing that Jesus left the church was the Spirit. It is by learning really to trust the Spirit, in our prayer and meditation, and to share this trust with one another that a new language will gradually form.” -- Bede Griffiths, from The New Creation in Christ: Christian Meditation and Community.

I hope to keep deepening in awareness of the always-evolving leading of the Spirit–in and through new and old experiments in living into the transformative and redemptive teachings of Jesus.

"I am Thirsty" by Elizabeth Marshall

"I am Thirsty" by Elizabeth Marshall

This past weekend, I was blessed with the opportunity to be sent on a contemplative prayer retreat in New Hampshire.  On Friday afternoon when I was packing my bag to go, I wasn’t feeling too blessed about it though.  I was feeling slightly resentful about the fact that I was being highly encouraged to go on a retreat when I had spent the majority of the three weeks before retreating in my bed and getting over mono.  I felt that the time would be much better spent working my way through my long to-do list of items that I needed to catch up on in order to relieve some of the anxiety of feeling behind.

"Laundry Love" by Tori Laskey

"Laundry Love" by Tori Laskey

Tori is a South Coast fellow serving at Grace Episcopal Church in New Bedford.

I almost want to say it was a series of accidents that got me to where I am today: a Life Together fellow working on the South Coast with Grace Episcopal Church, New Bedford. I started my undergraduate career at Wellesley College, and then found myself graduating from Indiana University two years later. I grew up Roman Catholic, and then found myself being received into the Episcopal Church last spring. I was planning to serve abroad this year, but I found myself in the Life Together – South Coast program. And, finally, I was supposed to be serving at a different site placement this year, but now find myself as the intern at Grace. I could not imagine a better place for me! All of these things I originally perceived as accidents, mistakes, or missteps, but looking back on how they have all fit together in the narrative of my life, I see that all of them were necessary for me to find myself where I am now.

"I am really here" by Mia Benjamin

Mia is a Micah Fellow serving at Grace Church Medford. 

"Yes, Jesus comes back. But not permanently, not to fulfill whatever revolutionary dreams the disciples had for him, and not even to erase his death. He comes with a dual purpose. He comes and binds himself to this broken world and its people yet again. He comes and shows us not a way out of grief and disappointment, but a way through..."

"Seeking reconciliation" by Will Harron

"Seeking reconciliation" by Will Harron

Will is a Micah Fellow serving at St. Mary's Dorchester. The following is from a sermon he preached on March 22, 2015.

"Whenever we stand before God and confess our sins - the things that keep us from God's will of Love - whenever we admit our faults of thought, word, and deed, whether out loud, in writing, in the quietness of our heart in prayer - whenever we admit these things, and ask for pardon and the strength to do better, we receive that love. We receive freely and we ought to receive joyfully. Whenever we pray the Our Father, asking to have our trespasses forgiven, we are given the daily bread of forgiveness, that nourishes us to forgive our trespassers, to love them, and to build the Body of Christ with them..."

Where Are They Now: Alum (2009) Megan Anderson

Where Are They Now: Alum (2009) Megan Anderson

In my 12 months of Life Together I grew from a shy California girl, who wanted nothing more than to follow the rules and blend into the walls, into a woman who stepped up to claim her voice and calling in a community of people doing the same. During my time at Life Together, I worked for the Trinity Education for Excellence program. I also worked on a community organizing team, served on the Trinity Copley Square Altar Guild, and worshipped with the Crossing Community.

"bright wide miraculous abyss" by Matt Gesicki

"bright wide miraculous abyss" by Matt Gesicki

Matt is a Micah Fellow serving at The Crossing.

When the time for the distribution of ashes arrived, however, a deep thing within me was struck—a resonant chord, an ancient gong. The ministers of The Sanctuary initiated the ritual in a mode at once alien and yet freeing in its minimalism, its lifting of the pressure for a climactic encounter with radiance. The name of Christ was alluded to merely once. It was only that raw touch of ash to flesh, the evidence that I am mortal...

"He Was going on a journey..."

"He Was going on a journey..."

A sermon by Deanna Roberts. Dee is a South Coast fellow serving at Church of the Holy Spirit in Fall River.

A journey. In many ways, my year in the Life Together program has been a journey—an exploration of the self and community. This journey has been intense, rewarding, aggravating at times, but overall worthwhile. I've experienced times this year where I have been pushed to grow and become more aware of my surroundings. There have been moments where I wanted to give up and walk away. There have also been episodes in my life here where I know that, no matter how difficult the journey, there is a call to continue onward.

January Training Report: Vocational Discernment

Life Together’s January Third Friday Spiritual Activism Training focused on the theme of vocation. It was led by the Rev. John de Beer (see below). The goals of this training for Life Together Fellows were as follows:

a.) Learn to use a biblically based model of vocation to articulate and strengthen Fellows' own particular call at this time in their lives.
b.) Experience themselves as known, cherished and claimed by the Creator of all
c.) Receive as gifts their own innate abilities, those things that they do well and love doing.
d.) Explore their passionate connection with the world as a key to participation in God’s mission of justice and reconciliation.
e.) Develop an understanding of maturity as commitment, as they discover the freedom that comes from doing what they love in service of their deep desires.
f.) Strengthen their sense of partnership with God.
g.) Learn to support others to strengthen their own sense of call.