Why You Can't Think Your Way Out of Stuck

I was just saying, that's just magical.

That was beautiful.

Good morning.

Welcome to Friends Church.

You guys do not know that 24 hours ago this place was trashed.

There was scaffolding up.

There was dirt everywhere.

Don't look too carefully because there's still dirt everywhere, but it's a little less dirt.

The temple and all their crew have been working around the clock.

They finally got all the scaffold.

Well, most of the scaffolding up by seven.

They started cleaning after that.

So the fact that we're in here is I don't use this word religiously, but a miracle.

So I am happy to be here.

I'm happy to have the wall black.

Isn't that a nice wall?

They yeah, nice black wall.

Uh they also cleaned, they've painted the entire inside of this building.

They cleaned all the hoops.

It's really lovely, isn't it?

A month of being on the other side doesn't seem worth it, but whatever, we'll put that aside.

So happy August long weekend.

Um, one of Friend Church's values is this we value each person's unique spiritual journey.

We didn't all start at the same place.

I sorry, I'll let me say it more carefully.

I don't believe we started at the same place.

I don't believe we're going to the same ending where our spirituality is.

And our journey is as unique as everybody in here.

So when I talk to people, one of the beauties of my job is I get to talk to people and say, tell me about your spirituality.

What does it look like for you?

Show me where it's different from mine, show me where it's uniquely you.

And it was in that conversation that I met our speaker today.

Her spirituality is beautiful and incredible and deep and so different from mine.

I love it.

The first time she's like, Can I pull your tarot cards?

And I was like, sure.

I don't actually know what that means, but let's do it.

I still have I owe you my birth time, I think is what I owe you.

Originally, when I first talked with her, again, she opened my mind to so much more.

Ways of connecting, ways of experiencing something, ways that are meaningful and matter.

When I did on Christmas Eve this year, I talked about the shepherds, no, sorry, the wise men being essentially astrologers.

And the first thought was, wait a second, I know an astrologer.

I'm gonna bring her up on stage and have her reference in real life what these characters are.

And when I heard her talk there about her spirituality and what it looks like for her, I was like, we need more of Angie on stage.

So can we give Angie a big Friend Church welcome?

Please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for the warm welcome.

Good morning, everyone.

Have you ever been stuck?

I'm not talking about indecision.

I'm talking about you've made a commitment to something.

You're going to do it.

And as you go along, you realize you are stuck.

You might have experienced this in your relationships.

You've met your person, everybody's happy to see each other, they light up when you come into the room.

And as you go along in the relationship, suddenly it just feels stuck.

Sometimes you might encounter this with a workout program.

You start a new program, you're excited, you've got a routine, it's working for you, you're lifting heavier, you're feeling stronger, and your clothes are fitting better, and then you're expending all this effort, and one day you realize you haven't added weight in a long time.

You don't know what to do next, but you know that you're stuck.

One more place you might see it is in your work.

You work so hard to get a job, and you get the job, and you're in it, and you're loving it, and you're excited, and then the politics creep in.

And then it starts to feel like drudgery, and you gotta drag yourself out of bed every morning.

You know you're not gonna quit, but you don't know how to feel alive again.

So, as Vince was just talking about my big expanse of spiritual life, that's true.

But the place I got the most stuck was actually in my spiritual practice.

My spiritual practice, I kind of joke about it as being like a full contact sport, right?

Like, you know, if it's hard, if it's suffering, if I'm challenged, like that's the party for me.

That's the good time.

And you know when I was in my early 20s, I had this moment of clarity where I wanted to be a priest.

And that's how I serve in many of my for back up here.

I've been part of Friend Church since 2019, but I'm part of many spiritual communities.

Again, it's a big, big, big part of my life, and so I'm part of many communities, and I serve as a priest in one of those communities.

And back in 2019, I had that clarity.

I want to be a priest.

And from that moment until actually becoming a priest was 17 years.

And it was hard and it was challenging, and it was, you know, exalted and wonderful, all of those things at the same time.

And throughout those 17 years, I was moving forward, I was growing, I was changing, I was doing what I set out to do.

And then came the big day.

It's an ordination, is what we call it in my tradition, but you can think of it as like a graduation.

You complete a program and you graduate.

And that day was amazing.

I had friends and family there, the feeling that I had been trying to capture, you know, the love that I felt for my community, for my practice for the whole 17-year journey was all present in that moment, and I loved it.

And I was like, this is what I want to do.

And about a week after that, all of that momentum, all of that love and joy ground to a halt.

I was stuck.

I would go down to my meditation room, sit quietly, and nothing.

I mean, it's one thing to like be fighting with something, but it's another thing.

I affectionately refer to this as the dead zone, right?

It's not toxic, but it's not happy either.

It's just dead.

So I go to my meditation, it's dead.

I go to do the rituals that I had spent 17 years to have the privilege to do, and dead.

And I go to my community, I love seeing the people, but there's something, there's something missing.

So this goes on for a week, and I think ebbs and flows, you know, this is part of the normal life.

And one week goes by, then we're heading into weeks territory, then we're into months.

And when we when I hit the year mark, I'm like, if this is what I ordered 17 years for, like, was it even worth it?

Like, what what did I do all of that heartbreak for?

And I was just past that at this point.

Like, again, nothing.

And I continue going on because again, I've made a commitment and I I don't want to quit, but I don't know what to do.

And in my tradition, we go to conferences regularly, and I pack my stuff up to go to a conference.

I know that I'm gonna see people that I like, and so I'm excited to see them, but I'm also questioning like, what am I going to bring to this conversation?

I've done nothing for the last year and a half.

So I show up, see my friends, and I meet a man named John.

And I've never met John before, but John has been a priest in an adjacent tradition to mine.

He's not part of my community, but he understands the flow.

And he's been doing that since the 1980s, so he's been around the block.

And and I start opening up a little bit about all of my journey that I've been through, and then I'm stuck and I don't know what to do.

And he just very calmly listens.

And he's one of those wise people that's unbothered by my panic.

Like he just he just listens and receives me.

And and again, he's not trying to solve the problem, he's not trying to fix it, but his presence is very grounding and deepening.

And I touch base with him through the conference, and and it's great to get to know one another.

But then right near the tail end of the event, I'm sitting in a room with my friends.

We're drinking wine, we're having a nice time.

There's a cacophony of conversation happening, and I'm talking to Scott, my friend, and I stop the conversation in the middle of all of the chaos, and I go, it's back.

That life that I had been missing for the last year and a half, like I felt it come into my chest, into my body, and expands, and I could feel my breathing again, and I didn't know what the details were going to look like, but I knew the life had come back.

And I go home and I'm enjoying it.

I'm reading spiritual books again, I'm able to engage in my meditations.

It feels rich, it feels deep, it feels like what I wanted it to feel like.

And I pick up a book called The Valkyries by Paulo Coelho.

And it attracts my attention because the main character, Paulo, he's like me, he's one of those spiritual adventurers.

So he's going on this big journey.

He lives in Brazil, he's going to the Mojave Desert.

It's a big, big deal.

And he takes a spiritual practice very seriously.

And so he has these rituals and these performances, and you know, he thinks of himself, this is, you know, he's doing the real work.

And he brings his wife along with him.

And he's thinking about his wife, and he's like, she doesn't really do what I do, but she can come along.

You know, it's an adventure.

And as they get on the journey, he starts ruminating.

He's turning the situation over and over in his head because he is stuck.

He's not moving forward, he's not making any progress on what he set out to do.

But he's looking at his wife, and she is having the time of her life.

She's doing what he wanted to do, she's getting understanding, she's having this whole thing revealed to her, and she's excited.

And as they're going along, he gets more and more jealous and frustrated, and he thinks harder and tries to push more and do more and tries to solve the problem.

And then one day he softens.

And he realizes that she's the key.

That the person that he labeled as outsider, the thing that didn't belong, was actually the key to solving what he had been looking for.

And what I loved about reading that book is it gave me the language to finally understand what had happened at my conference with John.

John was an outsider to my practice.

He didn't know me, he didn't know my tradition, but he saw me and understood me.

And he was able, just his presence and my vulnerability, we worked together, kind of like the song, side by side, to unlock that thing that had been stuck for so long.

And when I read that book, I was like, oh, that's what happened.

And it was so helpful to see that like other people had gone through the same thing and solved this problem in a similar way.

And it's easy to think, like, oh, this is this is a really modern problem.

Like we're busy, our lives are chaotic, we have distractions.

No, no, this is a very old, old problem.

In the New Testament, we learn about Peter.

Now, Peter was a follower of Jesus.

And at this point in the story, Jesus has died, and he's told Peter, hey, this is your job to carry this thing forward.

And Peter does his best.

He's grew up in the Jewish tradition.

Jesus was Jewish.

He follows his tradition, he follows what he knows, he followed what he learned from Jesus, and he's, you know, doing everything he can.

He's putting all of his heart and all his effort into making this thing grow and happen.

But he's stuck.

He doesn't know what to do.

And he gets this message from a man named Cornelius.

Now, Cornelius is Roman.

This means they are enemies.

Like they're not supposed to be talking.

They are opposed to one another, complete enemies.

And Cornelius says, Hey Peter, I have something I need to share with you.

And so Cornelius shares his message with Peter, and Peter realizes, oh my God, this is the thing that I've been missing.

And Peter is changed, and the Christian tradition is changed from Cornelius, and Cornelius also gets baptized.

That's the thing that he needed from Peter.

And these two outsiders come together and complete this thing for one another.

And then they go away.

And so this pattern of when we get stuck, when we start pushing and pushing and pushing, trying to solve the problem ourselves, it's the outsider that can really help lift that burden from one another.

So my question for you this week is where are you stuck?

Where in your life might you need help from the outsider?

The outsider might be somebody you hire, like a therapist, right?

Sometimes we're trying to solve the problem over, you know, all of our best thinking dug the rut we're currently in, right?

So that thinking cannot get us out of being stuck.

So hire a therapist.

Get an outside perspective.

If it's your relationship, share with your partner what's going on.

Be really deeply vulnerable.

Let yourself be seen.

The person right next to you might be the outsider you've been looking for.

There's also a really magical outsider that I would invite you to look for.

I've had this experience, and I know other people have had this experience where you're moving along your life, and a complete stranger will come up, say something that completely rocks your socks off, and then walks away.

You never see them again.

And you get to hold them in your heart knowing that they helped you.

But again, if we're just trying to solve it all on our own, we're not gonna see the outsider.

So look for the outsider.

Find where you can let yourself be helped.

And so you never know where they're gonna show up.

Can I get an amen?

Amen.

Thank you.

That was beautiful.

There's something profound in that, isn't there?

I remember when I was in school, we had a book.

It was out of print.

It was every spiritual tradition both needs the outsider and is unbelievably scared of the outsider.

This idea of looking for that person outside of you to do that thing that nudges you out of that place, the stuckness.

I don't know.

I needed to hear that today.

Okay, let's take a deep breath for a second.

Because you know what goes with having an outsider who challenges you to step out of the rut?

Sugar and fat.

I don't know why, but I'm Mennonite.

Well, actually, I know why I'm Mennonite, because my family's Mennonite, but I don't know why.

Mennonites believe that food fixes all problems.

Doesn't matter what's going on, food helps the problem.

Yes, I'm seeing a bunch of people who are also either Mennonite or Mennonite in their hearts.

So let's do this.

We ended the service a little bit early, deliberately.

So if your brain's going, I have to leave, I have to do something else.

No, you don't.

We're here early.

Go outside.

Get as much ice cream as you can put in your body.

Put a bunch of sprinkles on it.

Don't worry, it's been blessed somehow so that it's not bad for you.

It's like good ice cream or something.

I don't know how that works.

If I'm crossing prong, I apologize.

Spend some time together.

Don't run away.

And I'm looking at some of you who are gonna try and run away.

Don't run away, just hang out.

Get some ice cream, let's hang out and be a community, okay?

Thanks, everybody.

Let's give Angie another big round of applause.