Wes Granberg-Michaelson has spent many years following a religious observe that at the beginning appeared overseas to him, having been raised as a conservative evangelical.
As soon as an aide to former Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield and later an government on the World Council of Church buildings, Granberg-Michaelson was impressed by an ecumenical church within the nation’s capital to start out journaling. Church of the Saviour emphasised methods “to combine our inward religious journey with our outward name to motion and mission,” he stated. Frequently amassing his ideas with pen and paper turned a quiet type of self-examination.
Now, he has written a guidebook on how religion leaders can undergird their public activism with personal spirituality. The Soulwork of Justice: 4 Actions for Contemplative Motion was launched by Orbis Books on Sept. 24.
“It’s a strategy to course of your ache and your grace and to get a long way from it and to mirror on it,” he stated of journaling throughout a e-book speak Monday at a non-public reception hosted by the Catholic Mobilizing Community on Capitol Hill.
Granberg-Michaelson, 80, is former common secretary of the Reformed Church in America. At the moment, he’s a member of the advisory council of the Catholic Mobilizing Community, which seeks to abolish the dying penalty, and serves on the boards of Sojourners, a social justice advocacy group, and the World Christian Discussion board, an ecumenical initiative that features Catholic, Orthodox, evangelical, Pentecostal and mainline Protestant church leaders. He at the moment co-leads an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the place he and his spouse are each serving one-year contracts as pastors.
In the course of the top of the COVID-19 pandemic, Granberg-Michaelson’s spouse, Kaarin Granberg-Michaelson, additionally an ordained RCA minister, urged he learn by his writings within the journals that crammed their dwelling’s bookshelves. Initially, he thought that 12 months of studying would result in pearls of knowledge to share with their two youngsters. However his agent for a earlier e-book satisfied him his private classes ought to attain a wider viewers, he stated.
“My life has been an outward life,” he stated of his ecumenical, political and denominational work. “However what actually issues once I mirror again are my struggling makes an attempt to determine how do I’m going inward and discover the premise of grounding and actually settling in that embrace of God’s love that captures you. And that then connects you utterly to all of the world’s ache and struggling.”
The e-book, which incorporates excerpts from his journals, encourages readers towards 4 shifts: transferring past self-sufficiency to discovering a way of belonging; transitioning from a deal with certainty to larger connections; transferring from grandiosity to authenticity; and going from management to belief.
“Loyal, indefatigable dedication to a trigger, with prophetic urgency, is the catalyst for social change,” he writes.
He then provides a warning for leaders to not comply with examples which have triggered some church leaders to be enveloped in scandals: “However in the event you enable such a trigger to smother consideration to internal motives, vulnerabilities, and ego wants, you’ll pay a private value.”
John Carr, retiring founding father of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown College, stated the teachings of his colleague’s e-book reveal the form of management Granberg-Michaelson has modeled for others.
“Wes is among the most devoted, persistent, constant non secular leaders of our time,” Carr stated in an interview with RNS, “and to have his reflections on how you can maintain collectively the spirit on the planet is invaluable in powerful instances.”
Granberg-Michaelson urged utilizing journaling, retreat facilities within the mountains or desert, and instruments such because the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs persona checks for inside discovery, in addition to worship and prayer.
As he mirrored on his journals, he recalled a busy life in D.C., saying, “Washington was doing me in.” He ended up retreating to Missoula, Montana, developed his curiosity within the atmosphere, began a nonprofit for environmental stewardship and ended up on the World Council of Church buildings main its work on ecological points.
“I’d by no means anticipated that, and it simply occurred due to the shifts that I made that have been pushed by my inside life,” he stated, when requested what shocked him most about rereading his journals. “Once I learn again by all of it, I noticed simply how consequential that was.”
He additionally recommends a selected deal with resilience in work and religious life.
“I don’t know what number of strategic plans I’ve led, and I inform folks I’m by no means going to do one other one as a result of occasions merely wipe them out,” he stated. “COVID wiped it out. George Floyd’s homicide wiped it out. Local weather change wipes them out. What we want is resilience, and I feel in our religious life, it’s the identical method.”
In his speak, Granberg-Michaelson, who has opposed insurance policies of President Donald Trump, famous he accomplished the e-book earlier than Trump gained the presidential election for a second time in 2024. The creator stated that on account of Trump administration insurance policies, some social justice advocates “are in organizations that really feel like 25 years of labor has simply gone down the drain.” He hopes these activists can discover methods to hold on with a larger sense of grounding.
“We’ve bought to determine how we’re going to be on this for the long run,” he stated. “I imply, it’s not simply the midterms, not simply one other election. It’s how are we actually rooted in a distinct imaginative and prescient of what God intends for this world, that’s not simply in our heads, however that’s rooted in our souls?”
He pointed to examples of the Eucharist at Catholic Mass or the Communion service he oversees at his ELCA congregation.
“While you do this act, you’re saying you can’t separate what’s inside with what’s with out,” he stated. “It’s introduced collectively. And I feel that that’s what we have to nurture in our lives going ahead.”
His recommendation has been welcomed by others who’ve labored on faith-based advocacy within the nation’s capital. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, wrote within the e-book’s foreword about how he took the creator’s recommendation to do a silent retreat, throughout which he decided it was time for him to make a profession change.
“In lately of rising polarization, many people battle to seek out group and belonging, surrounded as we’re with social media pressures, growing acrimony, and the burgeoning use of AI,” Taylor wrote. “These perilous instances name for the form of braveness and resilience that’s so typically present in and renewed by the inward journey. And more and more that journey have to be linked to the outward witness and activism that shall be so desperately wanted within the months and years forward.”
