Ordinary Time 2022: a sabbatical, a book, and my deepest gratitude

Ireland, 2016

Dear friends,

I want to let you know that in the normal course of ministry soul care, I'll be taking a sabbatical for the months of July, August, and September. If you've walked with me for over a year you know that I typically take off only the month of July for rest and vacation with my family. This year, however, I'm privileged to join Brian in a ministry sabbatical that our church generously and wisely provides for our clergy every seven years. We'll be taking time to rest, play, read, travel, and cease our normal rhythms of work and productivity. (You can read a little bit more about the sabbatical here.)

Picture this as an extended "selah pause" that we’ve shared in our daybook meditations and retreats!

I won’t be active on social media during sabbatical, so I plan to use this space for any photos or updates I just can’t NOT share with somebody. In a very real way, your membership is acting as a kind of patronage for our sabbatical and I look forward to sending you a little thank you post from the various beautiful locations in the US and UK providing us rest in the coming months.

I may also want to share progress on a very exciting dream project God sent my way just in time for the coming months of rest and creative renewal - MY FIRST BOOK!

Pardon the messy cuticles. I’m not a hand model, that’s for sure!

Last week I signed a contract with Herald Press to publish my first book, The Spacious Path: Practicing Rhythms of Rest in a Fragmented World, due to release in spring 2023.

The Spacious Path is about orienting our days in a disorienting world.

It’s a personal, practical, and pastoral guide to a Rule of Life as a way to move in the direction of Jesus, others, and our own souls.

More than an instructional resource or inventory of personal habits and goals, The Spacious Path will offer companionship in a book format to help you practice a Rule of Life as a way to integrate what’s already true about your life with what’s always true about Jesus’s life.

To put it simply in the words of a spiritual leader who has influenced me deeply: “Look for God in the reality of your life.”

So I’ll be offering stories about how taking Jesus seriously when he offers for us to come to him for rest looks in my own life. Whether we’re at work or rest, enjoying a season of quiet living or pacing the hospital hallway, Jesus says we can rest. For me, no other practice helps train me better to receive this invitation than a Rule of Life. Maybe that could be true for you too.

I’m so grateful to this membership for being part of the earliest seed of this book back when I was using the Patreon platform and then last year in the 31-Day Guide to Cultivating a Rule of Life & Rhythms of Grace series. I look forward to sharing more of this journey with you as I focus my creative energy in the coming 3 months on writing this book.

In the meantime, I care deeply about the reason you are a Daybook Meditations member in the first place. While I won’t be adding weekly devotional posts through the sabbatical, I’ve created an archive for you to access every Ordinary Time devotional post I’ve ever written. You might choose to follow along weekly from the appropriate liturgical week or select at your own pace whatever seems to be drawing you to linger with Scripture, art, and prayer. You can also download one, two, or all three of the Ordinary Time retreat guidebooks I created last year as a companion guide to the Ordinary Time chapters in Living the Christain Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God by Bobby Gross. If you’re looking for a resource to share with a small group of friends this summer, I highly recommend the retreat guides. Please feel free to share them privately with your close friends.

What a gift your devotional companionship is to me! Thank you for caring deeply about worshiping God, loving people, and enjoying beauty with me. Peace of Christ to you, friend. May your feet carry you on the spacious path today.

Peace,

Tamara

p.s. I’ll be closing down my email inbox on July 2. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out in the next few days.