It can be hard to ask for help. Those of us gathered on Sunday affirmed that it’s usually easier to give care than it is to receive it. We reflected on how hard independence and “I can do it myself” mentality is pushed in our culture, and brainstormed ways to embrace interdependence instead. We took our counter-cultural musings back to the subject of rest, and wrestled with how capitalism encourages bigger, faster, and more; we turned back to Jesus for ways to move more sustainably.

How then might we here and now hear anew, as the Psalms might put it, the voice of the earth?  This timely and weighty question was recently wrestled with by a diverse group of participants in a workshop sponsored by Confluence, a local community of radical hospitality that engages in practices of sacred story telling and contemplative prayer.  The event took place on November 8th in the appropriately named Confluence Center, located at the Headwaters Foundation in downtown Missoula.

The labyrinth as a meditative practice offers so many invitations. Once you enter, there is no decision to be made, you are walking a meandering path that leads to the middle and then leads back out again.

We began with welcoming each other, settling in, holding silence, and pouring water into a bowl to remember its sacred movements through this mountain landscape.

Celebration is an intentional activity and as such, is a human endeavor that differentiates us uniquely even as it is a common ground of unity. Each of us has our own tolerance for making merry as we mark special events in our own lives. We live within family traditions of birthdays and holidays; our faith communities enfold us with their local customs of religious observances.

In answer to that perennial question of “who is the savior God to me,” is the ongoing need to create space enough in our interior selves such that our inner witness can sense and respond to the mysterious presence of Love Divine in our hearts. Drawing connects us with our non-rational selves, such that we might be surprised by bodily apprehension of wisdom beyond words.

These walls are not worthy of a king, little one,

but your kingdom is not of this world.

-Laurie Gauger, mother of the composer

I wonder about how my bodily selves – the interconnection of elements -- belong to autumn. Fire with its smoke stains the waning light into tones of blood red at sunset. Earth melts into mud and hardens until it is like iron. Water slows its movement and settles into a skin of icy stillness. Air continues its sky dance: trees bend, wave and sometimes fall with in company with the colored leaves.

This summer Confluence invited our members to be attuned to the stories of the sun and the stories of our lives that are made under the sun. Here are three short stories from the Confluence Leadership Team from the Summer of 2024.

In that moment, the first time that I had sung this music among my new choir - strangers - people who were far more skilled singers than me, I found my own refuge.  In the music, in this community singing profound words.  The words, the music, the people… held me. And it was from that place of being held that I could begin to imagine how this music could speak to a kind of refuge far beyond my choir folder.

This story is about intentions. The vast inland ocean we call Flathead Lake holds the manifestations of past intentions. It holds present intentions yet to manifest. And it holds those intentions yet to be set. 

The canyon walls are never the same. Some days dark and stagnant, others robed in radiance. When I pay attention, I realize that often my internal state is intricately linked to the external aesthetic of the moment at hand. It reminds me of my inherent connection to these spaces that I often disregard as I sail past at highway speed.

I remember doing bricolage and collage in my elementary school art class. Around that same time, decoupage was also in vogue and I was gifted with some objects embellished with glue and colored patterned paper from my grandmother. That same Christmas I gifted my sister with a decoupage wooden box. She was not impressed with the found object that I had beautified by my artful application of an owl. I however, felt satisfaction about re-purposing a simple wooden box that had been abandoned in my dad’s basement workshop. I liked the process of giving something new life through glue and patterned paper. I imagined my sister would enjoy that box practically every day.

This season with Confluence has been a rich one, filled with compelling ideas that leave much to ponder well after our gatherings end. A few weeks ago, I was thinking about the prophetic imagination and its power to speak about things yet to come. With this in mind, I penned a poem weaving together the way things are, the way things were, and the way things might yet be. As one of my poet friends shared with me, reading poems about dreams brings them one step closer to reality.

Who is here among us? Perhaps this is not so much a trick question as a tricky one. For its answer, if we are to take seriously the traditions of faith and prayer in which Confluence is rooted, is everyone. Look around you and know it. Everyone is here. And the roll call of attendees includes, perhaps especially so, the dead.

As elemental creatures we emerge from creation itself. We are created from this water and that mud. We draw breath from winds that favor a certain landscape and its waters. We live entangled in the intersecting truths of inner and outer landscapes, in the unity of sacred nature that is this wildly diverse world.

We are connected, as earth beings, across space and time: expressions of life in relationship with ourself.

Welcome to the Confluence Blog! A new place for sharing musings, ideas, and creative inspiration for spiritual nourishment.