Lacy Finn Borgo
12 min read ⭑
“As often as I can, I watch the sun come up. Most days begin with an hour of silence and prayer. There are days that I need to see the movement from dawn to sunrise. It reminds me that not only are God’s mercies new every morning, but these mercies carry hope for the future and life that is bigger than what I can sense.”
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to a meal than palate and preference. How does your go-to order at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
We didn’t eat out much when I was a child. So the hometown restaurant was our kitchen table, and my mother was the cook. Nightly, my younger brother and I cleaned off the table, giving my mother, who had worked all day, a small slip of rest. Although my mother is an incredible cook, most meals were meant to fill us up, not “wow” our taste buds. A particular meal holds a powerful memory for me, as what occurred happened only once and never again.
I was in my mid-teens and hyper disgruntled with life. My younger brother had the uncanny ability to head to the bathroom after dinner and miraculously emerge just after I had finished the dishes — cue annoyed teenager vibe. As usual, as our meal finished up, my brother left the table and headed for the bathroom. I sat pouting and trying to decide if I should start the dishes or go and bang on the bathroom door protesting my plight.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a grape rocketing in my direction. I looked up to see a smile spread across my mother’s face while she reloaded her spoon with the fished-out onion bits from my brother’s plate. I returned her smile and held up my napkin as a shield while trying to load my own spoon with the tiny leftovers that littered the table. I was shocked, delighted and, for just a moment, relieved of my teenage angst. Flinging potato and onion bits at one another offered a break from my troubled thoughts, and it connected me deeply to a side of my mother that life had worn down. I will never forget that feeling of connection and freedom, a grace to take myself more lightly.
Alexander Grey; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests, but we tend to hide them. What do you love doing that might surprise (or shock) people?
I love listening to the stories of others. For years I gathered women at my house once a month for something we called “Dinner and a Book.” My children were young, and I was super lonely while simultaneously never being alone. So I made hearty food and invited women to read if they could, but really to come and connect through shared story. Hearing another person’s stories is a profoundly sacred act. In the telling, complete with voice inflection, wandering illustrations and variations on delivery, we catch a glimpse of what moves within another. We hear threads of joy, sorrow, fingerprints of God and invitations to being really and truly alive.
Still now, when I sit with folks in spiritual direction, there are moments in the hearing when awe surrounds us and tears spill out. What has happened is beyond the words and beyond the body’s mechanisms of speech and hearing.
It also happens in everyday moments, like the conversation I shared with the guy who helped load dog food and chicken feed into my car last week. He mentioned the rising cost of eggs and how he kept chickens. I asked about his own little flock, and he shared about his morning ritual of feeding them before he came to work and how their clucking and coos soothed his soul when he arrived home. I, too, felt their soothing sounds and turned to catch his gaze. We paused and nodded together, sensing the weight of the moment, so tender with the unnamed Christ who compared himself to a mother hen who longed to gather her chicks.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
I am stupidly attached to people pleasing. Several years ago I was leading a retreat with three of my dear colleagues during a season of paralyzing doubt. Just before this event I had a series of nightmares where every time I stood to lead, someone from the audience was shooting at me. I woke each time in a cold sweat, heart racing, terrified to show up — much less speak.
Knowing that what rises to the surface rises to be healed, I took these nightmares to my spiritual director and even my therapist. These nightmares were directly related to my compulsion to make people happy and to keep them that way. As a woman who has chosen to shape my life by the life of Jesus, this is just not possible. My faithfulness to Christ and the Christ-way often falls in contradiction to the people-pleasing status quo, especially as I am a woman. Continuing to encounter Jesus in the Gospels has given me a sense of not being alone in this faithfulness, and his life continues to shape the vision of how I long to be.
Silence and solitude have been essential to the continued healing of my deep wound. I have boundaries concerning social media and reading reviews. (God help me.) I have a yearly retreat time and daily time in silence. I have learned that I need a spacious place to encounter God. I have learned to be gentle and patient with myself as it takes time to shed the layers. God has gifted me with a few trusted friends who love me with truth about my own faithfulness; they remind me of who I am in Christ when the destructive voices are just too loud.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
In the autumn of 2022, I turned 50 years old, my last kid left for college, and I sensed an invitation to step into some inner work through encounter with Jesus. I headed to South Africa to live with Carmelite Sisters and take the Ignatian 30-day Exercises. What emerged from this time is that the ministry of being with people in the deep places of their lives is where I continue to be called.
It is a sacred honor to accompany folks (adult folks and children folks) in their lives with God through spiritual direction. When I accompany adults in their lives with God, we cooperate with God in the holy process of healing and wholeness.
My work with the children at Haven House continues to inspire and inform the research that I am doing around our sense of belonging and how it is nurtured through encountering God in the great transcendentals like goodness, beauty, connection, awe and wonder. I wrote the children’s book “All Will Be Well: Learning to Trust God’s Love” for children who have lost a grandparent, drawing on my own experience of losing loved ones. It is an invitation to bring real feelings around death into God’s tender and very near presence.
As the Student Care Coordinator for the Renovaré Institute for Spiritual Formation, I get to walk with people as they intentionally seek God and discover that God has been seeking and continues to seek them. My newest book, “Faith Like a Child: Embracing Our Lives as Children of God,” is my attempt to take Jesus seriously when he says to become like children. The implications of following Jesus lead us through childhood wounds and wonder and childhood gifts such as imagination, play and humor.
I continue to teach spiritual direction with children through the Companioning Center, using my first book, “Spiritual Conversation with Children: Listening to God Together,” and oh so many others. Children have been some of my best and most honest teachers.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
My first memory of God occurred in a colony of Aspen trees in the La Sal Mountains of Utah at around five years old. It was the early 70s and my parents weren’t very helicopter-ish, so I wandered off and into the midst of the trees. The Aspens mesmerized me by their golden-orbed leaves, and I had a sudden sense that I wasn’t alone. Someone I couldn’t see was with me, and this Someone was good.
Being in nature continues to be a place of deep encounter with God. While wandering around our little hobby farm in Western Colorado, I know my place as a creature among creatures, deeply loved by the Creator. I hear God’s song in the mountain bluebirds, I feel God’s presence in the wind as it sweeps over the Uncompahgre Plateau, and I see God’s majestic presence in the San Juan Mountains.
When I am feeling the weight of life and my creativity has dried up, it’s a cue for me to go outside. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is not far from me, and I will pack a lunch and spend a day there walking its cliff edges, learning from birds riding the thermals and letting the older-than-dirt granite speak to me of the slowness of things. I also intentionally seek to keep humor and play alive and well within my life. Asking God to show me the absurd and humorous (even and especially within myself) blows a little oxygen into spaces where there is little. Whether it’s watching my favorite stand-up comedian with my spouse or sending funny memes to my college kids, cultivating play helps me to hold lightly that which might threaten to overwhelm. I know God is in it when my desire to control lessens and my capacity for compassion increases.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Some people divide things sacred and things secular. But you know, God can surprise us in unlikely places. How do you find spiritual renewal in so-called “nonspiritual” activities?
As often as I can, I watch the sun come up. Most days begin with an hour of silence and prayer. There are days that I need to see the movement from dawn to sunrise. It reminds me that not only are God’s mercies new every morning, but these mercies carry hope for the future and life that is bigger than what I can sense.
During this time, I meditate on a story from the life of Jesus. Right now, I am living in John 9, wondering a bit about the blind man’s parents. There seems to be a lot of fear coursing through these parents as well as parents today. What traumas and sorrows have they encountered as parents of a blind child? What does the compassion of Christ look like for them? For me, this is not a time for study, but a time to accompany Jesus and those he accompanied. Seeking to encounter God in each story keeps it real and fluid, and I wonder what guidance it might offer to my life and my times.
Most days end with a review of the day. Sometimes I use Roy DeLeon’s “Praying with the Body: Bringing the Psalms to Life,” and sometimes I use a yoga app. While moving my body through various postures, I think back through my day and notice the moments where I was awake to God and also the moments where I was unaware. The last two movements of my review, I notice (while moving my body) where I might be anxious, excited, worried or weighed low for tomorrow — those I also bring into the healing Light of Christ. And lastly, I lay in a fetal position, remembering that I am always and forever a child held in the loving care of my Mothering-Father.
It takes no more than thirty minutes, but it helps me stay awake and alive to God’s presence, to myself, and to others.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are three of your favorite resources?
About fifteen years ago, I was given Sarah Bessey’s “Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women.” I read it immediately and thought, These are all the things I’ve hoped for but had never heard from religious leadership. It brought all kinds of freedom and healing to my life with God and my marriage. We both felt so much freedom from the box that clearly did not fit.
South African writer, teacher and spiritual director Trevor Hudson wrote a book called “Discovering Our Spiritual Identity: Practices for God’s Beloved.” It helped me to begin the life-giving work of noticing and surrendering my picture of God. We do become like the version of God that we worship. Our picture is related to the intimacy we allow God and the way that we see ourselves and others. The practice on writing a “Beloved Charter” is worth the price of the book!
The children’s picture book “Heart Talks with Mother God” by Bridget Mary Meehan and Regina Madonna Oliver and illustrated by Betsy Bowen, Barbara Knutson and Susan Sawyer was one of my early exposures to God as Mother. We know that our picture of ourselves is tied in some way to how we see ourselves reflected in God. When I first happened upon this book, I cried. Oh, that God is Mothering, too! Oh, that I can see a vision for my life in God! Yes, yes, yes!
This book is out of print now, but there’s a new one on the same topic, and it’s just as wonderful: “Mother God” by Kim Pecinovsky and illustrated by Khoa Le.
We all have things we cling to in order to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season — and tell us what it’s done for you.
In tough times, I cling to poetry. I’ll read it in the Bible — Song of Songs in particular these days. I’ve also prayed the poetry of the Psalms quite heavily in the past. Brian Doyle’s “proems” remind me of what holds when nothing else does. While poetry can be savored alone, it’s best when shared with others.
My way is to wander into used bookstores and read poets that are new to me all the while turning the worn words of old favorites over and over on my tongue. I read it to my family or to the dogs (the cats don’t care) or the goats (surprisingly attentive). There is something in the cadence and expressive thought and feelings that reminds me of the unseen work of God. I am encouraged that there are and have always been listeners to what stirs in the deep.
Last month while I was visiting my oldest kid at college, we wandered together into a used bookshop, and I found “Swan” by Mary Oliver. Immediately, I flipped through its pages and found her poem “Don’t Hesitate.” I read it aloud to my kid, and we shared a moment of profound presence as we acknowledged the pain and sorrow of our world. This kid is studying to become an environmental engineer, and the news is mostly bad. The poem speaks to us that even as we stay present to that sorrowful reality, we are invited to submit to joy when it presents itself. Yes, we nodded together with Mary: “Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
For years (like nine of them) I have been wondering about children’s experience of God and their sense of belonging. Honestly, I see this theme in adults as well. We bring our experiences from childhood into our lives with God as adults. These realizations and experiences run deep.
Recently I had the chance to listen with a diverse group of children at a school in South Africa. I learned so much from the children around the importance of connection in spiritual experience and how it forms their own sense of being and belonging. While I have been listening with children at Haven House for nine years, I am beginning to wonder what wisdom and insight children from other countries, especially children on the margins, might be willing to share.
There are a few opportunities emerging. I’ll be teaching on the subject at the International Association for Children’s Spirituality yearly conference in July. As I reflect and prepare, I sense my own growing curiosity and desire meeting God’s. What might we discover about God that only children know? How do children sense God near when they suffer? How do children understand beauty, wonder, awe, goodness and connection?
When imagining traveling to countries to listen with children, I am aware of unrest in our world, and I am aware that children’s voices and their experiences are often silenced, overlooked and discounted. I am cautious and prayerful around exploitation. I don’t know what the outcomes are; I’m just wanting to follow one faithful step at a time.
When was the last time you were able to intentionally sit in quietness? Lacy reminds us that beginning our days in silence can help create the ability to truly listen — to God and to others. Lacy also reminds us that we can grow in our childlike approach to God, that he invites us to come to him as children, and that nature, humor and play are all vital to our spiritual lives. In Mark 10:15, Jesus welcomes the children to him and says, “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” How is God inviting you to approach him as a child in new ways today? Maybe it’s with wonder, awe, humor, surrender, lightheartedness, playfulness. Ask him to show you how you can grow in childlikeness in your life this week.
Lacy Finn Borgo is a member of the Renovaré Ministry Team. She teaches and provides spiritual direction for the Renovaré Institute for Spiritual Formation. Lacy also teaches courses on Spiritual Direction with Children through the CompanioningCenter.org. She has a spiritual direction ministry for adults, and provides spiritual direction for children at Haven House, a transitional facility for families without housing. Her recent books are Faith Like a Child, Spiritual Conversations with Children and the children’s picture book All Will Be Well. Lacy lives on the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains and worships with a local Quaker Meeting. You can find her at www.GoodDirtMinistries.org.
