We're Back... (and We Have a Pretty Good Excuse)
Well. It has been a minute.
If you have been checking the blog since May, wondering whether Spirituality with Skin quietly wandered off into the sunset... first, thank you for checking, and second, no. We are still here. What actually happened is almost too fitting to admit out loud: a blog called Spirituality with Skin went quiet because the "with skin" part got really, really busy.
Turns out you can spend so much time trying to love your actual neighbors on your actual blocks that you forget to tell anyone about it. (We are working on that. Slowly).
The last stretch has been a full one for JL-GNO... gatherings, the podcast, deepening partnerships, and yes, the deeply spiritual art of grant paperwork. All good things. All things that kept pulling us off the page and into the room. And one of those rooms is exactly where I want to pick this back up.
On June 17, the deacons of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana hosted a full-day gathering called "Serving Others: Multifaith Perspectives on Compassion in Action" at St. Augustine Episcopal Church in Metairie. More than forty people from a range of Christian denominations and other faith traditions spent the day exploring what it actually means to serve... comparing notes across traditions rather than one tradition talking at everyone else.
I had the honor of being one of three presenters, alongside Aaron Bloch of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans and my friend and partner Paige Davis of the St. Charles Center for Faith + Action. Aaron shared his story, Paige shared hers, and I brought the talk I had been working on all spring... "Curious Faith, Practical Love." My whole piece came down to the thing this series has been circling all year: curiosity comes first. Before the answer, before the fix, before the program... the honest question.
Now here is the part that made me grin. I did not write the recap of that day. Someone else did (Archdeacon Charles deGravelles, for the diocese). And tucked inside a reflection from one of the participants, a woman named Kristen Canezaro, whom I had never met, was this: her favorite takeaway was a conversation about practicing "infinite curiosity"... meeting people with real curiosity rather than assumptions.
Which... yeah. That is the whole thing. That is "Curiosity is Just Love leaning in," handed back to me by a stranger, in an Episcopal newsletter, said better than I said it myself.
So rather than retype the whole thing here, I want to point you to the source. It is a genuinely lovely write-up of a genuinely lovely day, and it belongs to them, not to us.
Read the full article on the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana site.
And then... we pick the rhythm back up. In the next post, we stay with curiosity a little longer and get practical about it: "Questions That Make Room." Because the right question, asked the right way, can become a doorway... and the wrong one can quietly close it. More on that soon.
It is good to be back.
Wishing you grace, peace, and every good...
Sam
