How to Keep Showing Up Without Burning Out

IN 2017, on a year-end retreat, the leader asked what descriptive name we might like to claim for the coming year. I thought a bit and said “elder.” When asked why, I smiled: “Because I could share wisdom without taking responsibility.” It was humorous, but serious too.

In my life I’ve had my share of taking responsibility for organizations and movements in ways that have been rare privileges. I was the legislative director for a U.S. senator working against the Vietnam War. I started an institute committed to strengthening churches’ care for the earth. At the World Council of Churches, I directed its work on church and society, including beginning its focus on climate change. Then the Reformed Church in America selected me to be its general secretary. I played a significant role in beginning and directing Christian Churches Together and served as chair of the board of Sojourners and as president of the Global Christian Forum Foundation. All these efforts involved grace and pain. And, at this point in my journey, all have ended.

Now, I wonder where you are in your long journey of soulwork and justice. Maybe you’re in early days, with new roads and big challenges that are so daunting. I want to share that with you because it is your inward journey with God that will sustain you in your outward journey, joining in what God is doing in the world.

The witness of Christian faith in the public square, if done authentically, has always required spiritual alertness. New crises erupt almost daily, tempting us to endless reactivity. You will need inward spiritual grounding that can make a practical difference in political engagement, social action, and outward witness. Your vision, starting point, and disposition will bear the distinctive features of the Christian witness that scripture and prophetic voices have and continue to note. I invite you to tend, sit, read, pray, and act. Let God ground your life. Over many years and many times of chaos, I’ve identified eight elements that contribute to a spiritually alert, faithfully rooted witness.

1. You know this world belongs to God

THE EXTREMES ON the religious right and the secular left share a common assumption: This world is controlled by hostile, evil forces. Fundamentalist religion is convinced that the “world” is hopelessly headed for divine judgment and destruction preceding God’s eternal rule. Some extreme factions from Christian as well as other religious traditions believe that the righteous, violent actions of a committed minority against reigning worldly powers will be God’s instrument to hasten divine vengeance and judgment, creating a purified social order. Both extremes divide the world into clear demarcations of good and evil. Certainty and self-righteousness become nearly absolute.

But you are offered a different starting point. All of life is permeated and upheld by the presence and breath of God. You live amid limitless love desiring to shape the essence of the world’s life.

None of this minimizes the gravity of the threats to human flourishing and planetary sustainability. Our witness should name these threats. But the roots of your response make all the difference. The grounding of your life, at the center of your being, in God’s expansive love, connects you to God’s beloved embrace of the world. As you move from life protected by your self-sufficiency to a life surrendered in belonging to God, you participate in the flow of love through which the whole world belongs to God. From there you confront the evil that besieges the world and shape a compelling vision of a future embedded in the intentions of the world’s Creator and Lover.

2. You engage with the world from a spiritual foundation

IF YOU HAVE been involved in any movement seeking fundamental social change, you’ve recognized that the challenges being confronted require economic, political, and social action. Yet, if you are a contemplative and a prophet, you know that there is more.

The forces that enshrine injustice have a corporate spiritual dimension. Their hold reaches into the hearts and minds of those wielding power. Idolatry, which is the worship of false gods, claims zealous allegiance from those who benefit and defend that status quo. This is what the New Testament means when it warns that we “wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).

It’s crucial to recognize that the social change desperately needed for a liberating future includes a radical transformation of values and attitudes that require spiritual power. An inward spiritual journey needs to prepare us for that level of engagement.

Whether you are praying in the middle of the night or being arrested for a nonviolent sit-in at the Capitol for climate justice, your inward spiritual engagement and outward witness should be woven together seamlessly.

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3. You act on the basis of call

WHEN YOU ARE open to act, whether giving money, doing volunteer work, serving on a board, joining a demonstration, or redirecting your vocational life, the options suddenly are endless, and all of them seem equally imperative. How do you decide what to do?

I first heard the language about acting in response to “call” at the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. The expectation was that a disciplined inward journey would result in clarity about where your outward work and witness should be directed. This would emerge as you began to hear God’s call. That call might often first sound like an impossible or impractical goal. When such a call was heard, it was held seriously and shared with the community. Then, a mission group would be formed of those beckoned to that outward call and committed to hold each other accountable to shared disciplines nurturing their inward journeys.

You will find it difficult, if not impossible, to prioritize the direction of your outward call by trying to decide what is most urgent. Likewise, guiding your outward actions for justice and witness solely based on what makes strategic and tactical sense is not call.

Organizing your social action and witness simply based on what needs to be done will deplete you. Nurturing an inner holding space roots your actions in your sincere efforts to discover God’s call, which will center you with lasting clarity and renewable energy.

4. You are committed to the long term

COMMITTED TO SOCIAL change, you want to see results. Time frames of expectations become constricted, often riveted to election cycles. Yet to become focused on immediacy leads to frustration and even disillusionment when expected results are not forthcoming.

A spiritual holding space that allows your inward journey to strengthen its roots will alter your future horizon and liberate your expectations from pragmatic expediency. You’ll acquire a healthy detachment from immediate efficacy. And that’s crucial for strengthening the steadfastness of your commitment. If you are truly called by God to your outward journey, you are likely to be called toward goals which, in practical timelines, seem nearly impossible. That’s because you’re participating at some level in the work to bring about God’s promised and preferred future for the world. And this coming reign of God’s righteousness and love over all breaks into the world sporadically, and partially, often in unexpected places.

Your resolve and unshakable confidence in the holy significance of your action comes not from short-term results, but from the attachment of your soul to the power of God’s love for this world. That’s why you cannot be shaken. That’s how you will persevere through defeats. That’s the way your work will serve as an inspiring encouragement to others.

5. You display resilience

YOU ARE WORKING to make a difference. So, you devise the most effective strategies and ways to measure your results. But when your goals are linked, explicitly or implicitly, to God’s desired outcomes for a beloved world, and the building of a beloved community as an embodiment of that end, you see a bigger picture and know setbacks are inevitable. Such radical deep change, imperative for life to flourish, is not easily reduced to measurable, immediate quantifiable outcomes.

A retreat leader once described prayer as detachment from the fruit of your actions. Sure, you will always be attentive to the impact of what you do, and search for creative, fresh paths toward your goals. But don’t let your confidence become dependent on the standard measurements of success and failure. More is out of your control than you and others normally imagine. Resilience is the most valuable gift you can offer to the movements and actions to which God has called you.

6. You detach from your ego

SO MANY GIFTED leaders, in my experience, lose their way because they haven’t learned the spiritual and psychological pathway to separate their ego from the results of their efforts. Typically, they haven’t acquired the courage and insight to recognize the shadow side that is embedded within their extraordinary gifts. Unrecognized, it begins to infiltrate the leader’s inner self, which inevitably corrodes their outward actions.

Your commitment to regular and well-curated spiritual practices that include listening and silence, will offer the opportunity to face and defuse the power of your shadow side. You’ll be able to distill the fruits of your actions from the thirst of your ego. You will uncover your inner drives and motivations, facing them with courageous honesty. Detaching these from ego enhancement requires a spiritual journey that deepens your relinquishment of your whole soul to God’s presence and purposes. And that will make a difference. Others will trust you more deeply when they see that the heart of your focus for justice is faithfully and fearlessly riveted to God’s transforming work in the world, not on promoting your indispensable role in that process.

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7. You don't demonize opponents

ONE OF THE most difficult tasks you will have is to hold fast to the prophetic urgency of your call while maintaining an open heart toward your opponents. Our toxic, polarizing political and cultural environment only intensifies this challenge.

When you face those whose power and influence is intensifying the suffering, exploitation, and injustice which you abhor, you feel compelled to denounce and condemn them, regardless of your public persona of spirituality. When justice, peace, and even planetary survival are at stake, your tendency will be to attack, humiliate, and defeat your opponents.

However, you’ve heard another voice, echoed in the words of biblical wisdom and exemplified in the witness of Jesus, which says that this tempting trajectory of innate reactivity, of an “eye for an eye,” leads us down a spiral of death. Radical, transforming change will only come when that cycle is broken. Yet, that is no simple, conscious choice. It requires transforming, inner work.

The only hope you will have to become free from demonizing your opponents without curtailing the strength and integrity of your witness and action is to participate in the embracing love of God, which sees the divinely loved essence at the heart of the one whom you would hate. That image of God is there, even though it is covered with dross. You can only seek to reach out toward the intrinsic, divine worth of your ruthless opponent by experiencing how that same image is imprinted on your soul, beneath all your own dross.

8. You are “rooted and grounded in love”

WHERE DO YOU root your life? It takes courage to ask that question honestly and intentionally — if you don’t ask that question consciously, the surrounding culture will answer it for you through its unconscious addiction to money, power, and individualistic glory. You will be subsumed with a false self, entrenched in that lifeless way of living.

The call is for your inner being to be “rooted and grounded in love” (see Ephesians 3:14-19). And that is a lifelong journey, beginning when you discover, in moments of graced awakenings, that this love has already embraced you. Responding to this call presents you with great risks. You are rooting your life in the hope that this love is at the center of all things. Frederick Buechner’s words are worth remembering: “To say that God is love is either the last straw or the ultimate truth.”

The inner holding space you’ve developed provides the opening to internalize the immensity of this love. This love makes a decisive difference in your outward action because it doesn’t only transform your inner being. It also transforms the world. What it touches, it yearns to change and bring into the fullness intended by God. This love surpasses knowledge. To take hold of this love you must invite it to grip your soul. You will get there, or it will get to you, more through practices of relinquishing than through thinking, more through abandonment than through achievement. It comes as your soul learns to dwell in belonging, connection, authenticity, and trust.

This inner space is like your own monastery or place of retreat. This is the way you are set apart, where repeated practices subdue mental distraction, when silence becomes a welcomed gift, and when your true self finds the space and grace to emerge. There, your soul can find its calling, its ministry, its way home.

Yet, this internal quiet or retreat space is never a place that removes you from the world’s suffering and pain. Thomas Merton, speaking about monastic life in the cloistered community of Gethsemani Abbey explained this: “We did not come here to breathe the rarified air beyond the suffering of this world. We came here to carry the suffering of the whole world into our heart. Otherwise, there’s no validity in living in a place like this.”

The advantage of seeing your spiritual holding space as a distinct place of retreat, preparation, silence, and insight is that you know it always travels with you, and you can reenter it at any time. This treasured, protected space allows you to be rooted and grounded, again, in love. And that makes all the difference in the world, for the good of the world.