Show Notes
On this episode of Nuance, Case is joined by Dr. Barbara A.B. (Bobbi) Patterson, retired professor of pedagogy at Emory University. Together they explore the intersection of spirituality, education, and community engagement, along with the rich history of Emory as a place of learning and faith. Patterson also describes the pilgrimages she has been on, and the deep spiritual growth that occurred. Together they discuss the history of Iona, Scotland and its spiritual roots in Christianity. The conversation concludes with an emphasis on resilience in the face of societal changes and the call to discover one’s vocation in the church today.
Episode Resources:
Building Resilience Through Contemplative Practice: A Field Manual for Helping Professionals and Volunteers: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Resilience-Through-Contemplative-Practice/dp/0367133776/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website: https://wecolabor.com/
Get to know Case: https://wecolabor.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
Picture yourself in the heart of Emory University, standing in the historic quadrangle on a brilliant spring day. Vivid yellow tulips bloom around you, splashing the landscape with color as you take in the sight of ancient oaks and the soft green of well-tended lawns. As you walk through the arches, you hear fragments of conversation, students and professors discussing ideas of faith, ethics, and spirituality with an intensity that marks this place as both a sanctuary of learning and a crossroads of deep belief. The conversation of faith began here in the Methodist tradition and has grown to include the broad scope of religious traditions. Here the air hums with a centuries-old dialogue, a space where questions about the divine, the nature of morality, and the purpose of our lives are as common as the wind that moves the trees. And yet, these aren’t conversations bound by the campus boundaries. They echo outward into Atlanta and beyond, shaping lives and communities far beyond Emory. As you listen, you begin to understand how the explorations here, rooted in rigorous inquiry and compassionate engagement, are part of a broader mission. The insights born in these halls touch the world, inviting others into a story of resilience, empathy, and faith in action. Well, in this episode, you’ll meet one of the voices that carry Emory’s mission outward, shaping a dynamic relationship between scholarship and spirituality that impacts lives in ever widening circles. Here, friends, welcome to a quadrangle of the world. And so with that, it is my joy to welcome my dear friend, Bobbi Patterson, thank you.
Bobbi Patterson
Wow. my goodness, what a very rich description of a place, how places can thrive.
Case Thorp
Well, and such a beautiful place where you and I came to know one another and now even in your retirement, I know it’s a place that’s near and to your heart.
Bobbi Patterson
Totally, very much. I was very formed there, one might say. I grew up there and I have very clear and meaningful memories of watching you kind of grow into your leadership, your capacities, intellectually, spiritually, and with engagement, that element you named in your introduction, engagement beyond the gates.
Case Thorp
Well friends, I want you to know what a delight Bobbi is. She’s one of those true individuals who really does welcome folks even beyond theological and religious perspectives. As she alluded to, this young evangelical in the religion department that I was in a very progressive university. I just appreciated Bobbi as she helped me to grow. And truly Bobbi, you were a joy in that.
Bobbi Patterson
It was very mutual, Case That’s the best recipe.
Case Thorp
So I worked for Bobbi as a teaching and a research assistant. Best job I ever had. And then she participated in my ordination 24 years ago. And so, Bobbi, I have this picture. If you’re listening on podcasts, I’m holding up a picture of Bobbi and I in the fellowship hall at Smyrna Presbyterian Church in Conyers, Georgia. That hot summer day.
Bobbi Patterson
There it is, there it is, my goodness. What a joy to see that. First I just have to really acknowledge, Case and I were in some ways cutting ourselves through a jungle of learning how to ask Emory to support the work of community engagement, which is something this community does. We didn’t have many maps and we didn’t have many tools and Case created them and I loved them and worked with them. But I remember clearly going to Smyrna and when I drive every Christmas Eve to the Monastery of the Holy Spirit for Evensong, I go by that church and you are in my prayers.
Case Thorp
Yes, where I grew up half a mile. Well, old Southern camp meeting, a rich tradition.
Well, friends, thank you for joining us here on nuance where we seek to be faithful in the public square. Please like, subscribe and share helps us to get the word out. Let me tell you a little bit more formally about Barbara A.B. Patterson. She is a retired distinguished scholar and professor of pedagogy from Emory University, and she earned her bachelor’s of arts from Smith, her master of divinity from Harvard Divinity School and her Ph.D. at Emory.
There she made significant contributions to the field of religion and spirituality. And as you’ve heard already in our words, focusing on the unique integration of contemplative practices, but also in community engagement. She authored the book, Building Resilience. I’m going to hold up a picture of the book here, Through Contemplative Practice, a field manual for helping professionals and volunteers. We’ll have a link to that in our show notes. This work offers practical guidance on integrating contemplative practices that fosters resilience among professionals and volunteers in helping roles. Additionally, she’s contributed to various academic publications and journals focusing just in that intersection of spirituality, education, and community, and also an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. Bobby, are you engaging in those skills any lately?
Bobbi Patterson
You know what’s really been a gift, Case, is that I am, I had most of my career as a priest, which was either in the campus ministry or kind of helping a local church when I was no longer in the campus ministry, I would be in larger churches, the big downtown churches or cathedrals. Joe and I are now going to our parish church, our neighborhood church. And it’s kind of small, when I first walked in, I thought, my goodness, this is not a show. This is a small place where it looks like the flowers on the altar came from someone’s garden. Not a forest or even a big forest where your own altar guild makes the arrangements but sometimes it just looks very human. It’s quite small, it holds about 100, we have maybe 85 a Sunday and I am what I call a utility infielder which means sometimes I’m teaching Sunday school sometimes I’m assisting with the Eucharist. I’ll have to say honestly, Case, I’m not preaching anymore. That I’ve given up. I’ve given that up from the pulpit. I am involved in some contemplative practice groups and I do teach retreats, things like that. The parish has really become our home in a way that no other church has been before. The Church of the Epiphany in Atlanta.
Case Thorp
Okay, that’s what I was going to ask because you’re are you in Decatur City limits?
Bobbi Patterson
I am in Decatur City limits.
Case Thorp
Okay, because I think you may remember Trinity downtown Decatur is our family church and my uncle is still there. And when we were in Atlanta recently, we went by and looked around inside and there’s the Thorp window. So I love my Episcopal heritage.
Bobbi Patterson
Absolutely. I need to go see it. Epiphany is just a little bit more toward where our neighborhood kind of flows than Trinity, but Trinity is a fabulous parish, very alive as well.
Case Thorp
Well, listeners, we here at The Collaborative are emphasizing more and more the idea and the experience of pilgrimage. What is pilgrimage? It’s not just travel. It’s travel plus, as I like to say. It is travel with purpose, with meaning, with community, and turning both inward as much as we’re going outward to hear what the Lord would have to say to us.
And so that’s why I’ve asked Bobbi to come and share with us today. Her life has been filled with pilgrimage in many different ways, literally around the world, but also her monastic commitments to a place in Boston, in Cambridge I’ve gotten to visit, and notably a recent trip to Iona.
And so I think this really matters for Christ-centered professionals today that if we’re not nurturing the heart and molding it, we are less effective and resilient in the places where we’re called, particularly the marketplace or education or medicine. So, Bobbi, let me ask you a leading question. As you get to telling us why Iona, tell us a bit about your Christian walk through your life and then getting to Iona.
Bobbi Patterson
Yes, thank you. You brought to mind that partly pilgrimage for me started quite young. It wasn’t part of my upbringing as a Presbyterian, but you brought to mind an image which felt like a pilgrimage the first time I was really working on community engagement. And we had internships and I could tell there was trouble.
I could tell the internship directors in the community from the juvenile justice system, from food closets near Morehouse College, from the west end of Atlanta. There was just, it was…we were not in communication, so I asked them to come to the campus, if you will, for them, a pilgrimage to us, because I knew something about our relationship wasn’t close enough for transformation to happen with students. And I listened to them that day, and then we did go out in a different way with students to the places. And I went too.
We could learn together much more. And I remember that you brought to mind that memory was transformative because when I asked them to come to Emory, I got feedback I would have never gotten if they had been on their own turf because there was such a startling difference about the amount of resources and beauty of Emory compared to what they were struggling with that it opened some doors.
Case Thorp
That’s a component of pilgrimage where you go away and beyond and break down some barriers.
Bobbi Patterson
Yeah, it broke down barriers for sure and then we began to realize we needed to go out more and that part of any interns’ first steps were going to a place that we actually had been to before and knew as teachers and it was a much stronger program.
I actually remember the morning that my classmate at Harvard said, Dick, who became a Lutheran bishop, Bob, I hear there’s a monastery by the river. That would be the Charles River. And he said, they have an 8 a.m. Eucharist, let’s go. And we did. And I met monks very old in their 80s and monks maybe five years older than me. And that was the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Episcopal monastery that did not come to serve Harvard. Where they were on the Charles originally was a railroad yard and they were working, they worked with the working class. They were part of the Oxford movement in England, the revival Anglican movement in the 1800s.
And I don’t know. Something about that monastic setting, the spirit drew me very deeply, very deeply. And I just wanted to be there. They had soup on Tuesday nights after Eucharist, conversation for college kids from MIT, BU, Harvard. And I went to those. And then I began to take retreats, just weekend retreats, which they did not charge me for.
I’ll say to Charles that it was an important moment, there was an elder monk, Charles, that’s where that word came from, that helped me deal with the fact that in those early days, the monastery split over the ordination of women.
Case Thorp
Episcopal monasteries.
Bobbi Patterson
And half of the Episcopal monastery, half of the monks became Roman Catholic monks. And the half that stayed were this elder monk, Charles, and this younger community of monks. So it was an important moment for me to see that change can happen, even deep change. And they, as a monastic community, said, we stand in the love of God, and we move forward in the love of God. And even though it’s very painful, we will move forward and they will move forward. We wish them the best. And it taught me that kind of groundedness, which I have found as I returned to the monastery. Still, I go twice a year if I can.
Case Thorp
And it nurtures your soul. It nurtures your whole life.
Bobbi Patterson
It nurtures tremendously. There’s nothing like, I would say to anyone, there’s nothing like committing to a community where you can grow up in Christ together.
Case Thorp
Well, and that has been camp meeting for me in so many ways, that great Southern revivalist tradition. But I would say, too, being here at my church for almost 20 years, I have walked with so many people through so many phases of life. And to give that up, to start over, to not be known or to know. There’s a lot of things in life that that can’t compare to.
Bobbi Patterson
It can’t compare to, and I think it, you make me also aware that…the pilgrimage of shifting educational models at Emory, including there’s educational opportunity in internships, wouldn’t have happened if that, if there hadn’t been relationships like you’re describing, long and deep, where I could go to a faculty member or a dean who was saying, I don’t understand what we’re doing. You want academic credit for students to go help with a food kitchen. Now, it’s much richer than that. But because we knew each other and loved each other, we could work through that. Irreplaceable.
Case Thorp
Yeah, and we’ve long invested in fellowships, the fellowship model, because I’ll say as a pastor, Sunday school and small groups aren’t going to cut it anymore in terms of the discipleship necessary for resilience for the gospel. So Gotham Fellowship, Orlando Fellows, we have an Arts fellowship. These are long-term, hard, deep, enriching fellowship based, that you know just feeds more than the head. I joke with folks, look at all these holes in my head you know you put it up here it’s just going to leak out but when you shape the heart it’s like that red georgia clay that’s shaped for a lifetime. Tell us now about what is Iona and I’ve been there and you’ve been there and tell our listeners what it is and what drew you there.
Bobbi Patterson
Yeah, great. Of course, Iona is one of the islands in Scotland, in northern Scotland. It’s surrounded by sea, it is an island, and it is part of the ancient story of Christianity. The story goes that in the 400s, so this is when things are quite young in the church and there’s not many of our kind of theological statements about the Trinity, things like that haven’t yet been worked out.
But an Irish monk, Columba, felt a call to go to that heathen space in Scotland where all my people came from, as I was raised a Presbyterian.
And his boat shipwrecked on a beach, which we were privileged to stand on, they say, in the 400s. And Colombo, of course, felt it was a holy moment. And he stayed. He started a monastic order. Eventually, women began to come also in monastic orders on the island. And they were spreading the good news of Christianity from the 400s on.
Iona for Joe and me became a play. Well, I was long interested in pilgrimage and he and I have walked the Camino, the Portuguese path. I saw that. I’m so grateful that we could talk more about that, but…
Case Thorp
Well, I’m going and taking a group next fall.
Bobbi Patterson
We like the idea of kind of putting ourselves in a position where there is a little bit of an edge to get somewhere. And it takes quite a bit to get to Iona. It takes a full day from Edinburgh. So we arrived there and we were actually part of a retreat that our church went, 16 from our church went with John Philip Newell, who is from the Scottish Presbyterian Church. He does work on earth creation. But more than that, I think for me, the long time Christian history through the Middle Ages, through, if you will, Case the Protestant Reformation, which came and destroyed the abbey, tore down the Celtic crosses, ornate crosses of early Christianity there. The island, when you step on it, you sense that deep, long history of us as Christians figuring out how God is calling us now, and that was part of our desire as a group to be. We were often in silence on the island. We did a 10-mile hike of the places, the holy places, hermit sales, things like that on the island. The Abbey Church was rebuilt in the 1900s.
It is a very massive stone, as you know, Stone Church. So it was a great moment for us to really root down for seven days in a spectacular place. Was there anything about Iona that struck you or that I’ve left out for your own story of being there?
Case Thorp
Well, I too felt the depths of the place historically, culturally, and spiritually. Part of it for me was having heard about Iona for so many years from so many seminary peers and knowing it was a bucket list sort of experience. I was surprised and I was only there sadly for a few short hours.
We went back over the island, got on one island to get to the second island. We went back to Oban and stayed overnight in Oban. It was funny when the tour guide was putting things together, she said, well, you tell me, Pastor what you’d like to do. I had taken a group on a Presbyterian history tour and I said, well, I’m a royalist. I love the Royals. So we got to go to Balmoral. She’s like, all right, got it.
And I said, we gotta go to Iona because it’s a dream to do that. And she’s like, all right, I’ve got it. And I said, and I really want to go to the Oban distillery because I like Oban scotch. And she said, you know, I’ve never had a pastor request a distillery. And I said, I don’t know that I believe you on that one, but.
Bobbi Patterson
Awesome! Yeah, I wouldn’t either, but Oban is such a lovely place. Beautiful harbor. There is something about this, and this was crazy, Case. We arrived in classic September weather for Iona. Four foot swells, stormy, just rain pouring, wind blowing.
The next day we woke up and Joe and I stayed in a kind of pod, a little camping pod away from the hubbub of the main area of the island. So it was almost like a hermitage. And we were on the eastern end. It was a little bit of a rise. We woke up to the most magnificent sunrise. It’s just a kind of resurrection moment and we saw the moon set every night and we had seven days of not a cloud in the sky, not a drop. Crazy. It was just a gift, such a gift.
Case Thorp
Come on. Wow. Well, talk to us about pilgrimage. What have you learned are the necessary components and why is it, gosh I don’t even think optional, but necessary for a Christian walk?
Bobbi Patterson
I think pilgrimage helps us incarnate the growth of our life with Christ. What pilgrimage does is it really encourages us to bring the mind into the body and the heart because pilgrimage demands a physicality, an incarnate prayerful physicality that brings us in touch, I think, with other dimensions of our life with Christ. Scripture becomes hands, hymns become feet, fatigue becomes the cry of the heart.
So the Psalms, the texts have a new way of speaking to us. And for us, particularly on the Camino, we had this journey to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. And for us, we didn’t have many days for a particular, it just happened to work out that way. But we were walking somewhere between 15 and 21 miles a day.
My Joe was a little, you know, the first day was a 21 mile day and we were like, whoa, whoa, how are we going to do this? And sometimes we were walking through forests and sometimes we were walking down a neighborhood street. The Camino is a living place like our life with Christ and what used to be a path in a wood is now a suburb of a city. that was also a kind of the context of our lives was with us. I will also just name the last piece, Case, is to say pilgrimage puts you in the body of Christ on the move.
So we were walking with other pilgrims. Now there are people who go to Santiago because it’s become a thing to do. But we happened to be often in the neighborhood of a Catholic group from California and five of their pilgrims were in wheelchairs.
And to watch over rocks, over tree stumps, in mud. There was 12 to a team. Sometimes the chair could make it, sometimes they had to carry the chair. And when you saw their devotion, and we saw each other in Santiago, and you just have such joy being together and a sense of the power of the body of Christ on the move. And I know that so much of the work you all are doing in the Collaborative is about being engaged with your work, with your calling, and if you will, being on the move. Pilgrimage is a prayerful way to get at the depth of that in Christ.
Case Thorp
And it’s not easy. It shouldn’t be. The strength is in the struggle, as I’ve often heard said. And you don’t always get along. The dynamics of being in the body of Christ comes with the brokenness as well.
Bobbi Patterson
Yeah, and the body breaks down. And so sometimes you have to help each other. I’ll carry your bag. The Camino has even on a route, the Portuguese route has multiple trails and you can take one right by the water, which is often a little less demanding because it’s beaches. It’s not going up and down. So sometimes you could, you can veer a path. And again, what an amazing thing to be able to recognize. The spirit understands your heart is heavy. Make the yoke is easy. Find the easy path. And I’ll just say this popped into my head. Another dimension is you are in the middle of history, contemporary history, but sometimes you look over and there’s a Roman bridge.
And it’s still there. It’s incredible. It was a grace and it was, you’re absolutely right, it was hard. Very hard work. We slept very well.
Case Thorp
In your book, I’d like to read a bit of a passage and have you expound more for us. You’re writing on at this point, Teresa of Avila, the medieval theologian and contemplative, faced similar struggles as she founded a contemplative order that broke away from certain traditional forms of monastic life. Certainly not a short-term venture, her project faced countless unknowns or pitfalls and problems. One major source of this instability, she believed, came with the people trying to participate.
She referred to these distracting and sometimes destructive expectations and assumptions as the, quote, reptiles that we bring in with us. Not repulsive, but cunning companions, reptiles stood as her metaphor for ways we lose track of our big goals by giving our major time and energy to the smaller details that plague us.
Bobbi Patterson
Wow, who wrote that? That’s relatively coherent. That’s great, yeah. I love, I love, love what she, I believe, literally says in the text is, and then there’s all those reptiles you’ve brought in with you.
Case Thorp
Tell me more about reptiles on Pilgrimage.
Bobbi Patterson
To the first level of her nine level interior castle, which is her metaphor for our life with Christ. That especially as we begin the path, and of course we’re always beginning the path, we’re bringing with us kind of creatures of habit, ways we like to understand God’s mercy, ways we like to understand the texts of Christ. The ways we like to be very Christian about how we control others or control ourselves, these are, they can come out in very small ways, like this is the only way to interpret a text, or this is the only way to pray.
And she’s saying that when we are starting to live in a monastic life together, we have to, we’re going to bring our patterns, our little reptiles with us, but let’s keep looking at the larger picture, which is the heart of Christ, calling us into this new and deeper work. Just to quickly say, you know, Case that she, she radically changed women’s monasticism in her era because many of those who were in monastic communities were daughters of rich, powerful people who had not found a spouse. So they had their beautiful dresses and they were living with servants with them, and in the monastery. And they had tea in the afternoon with their friends and their friends from outside. And Teresa was quite stark. The Carrolite order with John of the Cross and Teresa. It’s a pretty stark job. Well, that will really bring out your reptiles. Wait a minute. Where’s my tea time? Where’s my mattress? Where’s my ball gown?
Case Thorp
Yes it will.
Bobbi Patterson
And those were metaphors of that era for our era. It’s a good thing for all of us to think, what is the reptile you’re still that slithers in the room? I think she used reptile as a playful, so not to be so judgmental. So you don’t have to feel like, I didn’t do it right, but goodness. There’s that little reptile of mine that really likes my interpretation of this text, my way of praying, and I need to be open to where God’s calling us in this order, right now, right here. Yeah.
Case Thorp
I can imagine someone listening might think of their own workplace and who the reptiles might be, naming the reptile and others. But the emphasis here is more on recognizing the reptile in us.
Bobbi Patterson
No question, no question. It’s the, I used to say when I would have little staffs, the Myers-Briggs talks about whatever format you use, I’m a person who likes decisions. I like to decide, get it off the table, decide off the table. I need, and that’s a kind of reptile of mine.
It’s a habit and I love that because you get a lot done. And you check the box. I have to hire someone who says, but you know, we might before we take it off the table, we could think about it this way or we could change the outcome just slightly that we’re trying to design. Maybe we could consider adding this piece. They’re so good for me.
Case Thorp
Yes, check the box.
Bobbi Patterson
And it really makes me crazy. And that’s where I want to hold on to my reptile. But I’ve learned that I can bring it in the room. I can bring it in the meeting. But to really open up to who else has great ideas. And maybe the Lord is present in this. And we can see a door opening, a new idea coming. Teresa was, she was good at that.
Case Thorp
Could the Lord be… the Lord can be present in pushback.
Bobbi Patterson
Push back.
Case Thorp
You write about resilience theory. Talk to us about what is resilience theory and why is it a good thing or how is it at work in a Christian’s life?
Bobbi Patterson
Yeah, you know, I think what I say now, just encourage everyone listening to bring this to whatever texts you’re reading in your own quiet time over the next week. Resilience, as I thought of it, tended to be either or. You are resilient or you’re burned out or you’re not.
What scientists have learned and now sociologists, psychologists, we’re all beginning to realize that resilience is actually an ongoing adaptive stance. And there are phases of resilience, but the number one thing to take in is that change is critical to resilience. Many of us think of resilience as stability. And stability is a nice place, but as you’ve learned as a pastor, as you’ve learned…
Case Thorp
It’s stasis. And then entropy.
Bobbi Patterson
Yeah, stasis ends up being entropy. What we have to have to be truly resilient is the capacity to adapt, which means when change comes, we may not buy every piece of it, but we know, okay, time to change. Sometimes it hits us like a boxing glove. Okay, things just fell apart. Okay. That’s the sweet moment. That’s the sweet spot when we can say, okay, what I thought was gonna happen is shifted, maybe the Spirit’s onto something here that I need to listen to and you begin to kind of look at what’s left in the rubble of what you are planning and notice that of course God is faithful. They’re going to be embers. You can begin to light a new fire, make some adjustments. Maybe you even bring in some aspects as people in this group have always done and your church is doing now with these year long, what do you call them? Not internships, fellowships, that you begin to do something new. You bring in something you hadn’t expected. so resilience is constantly adapting. And I think that’s a really important understanding and it helps us understand that when I get caught, for instance, in wanting to hold things as they are willfully, I need to remember to willingly open up to God’s in prayer, listen to the direction of the spirit, read my texts and say, you know, I’m willing to let this change.
Case Thorp
Well, one of my convictions in terms of why pilgrimage as a discipleship component is because it builds resilience and it’s a bit of a workshop and an artificial means to then make that jump to one’s whole life and the whole of one’s life. And I think that as the church declines, especially in America, as society evolves and frays in many ways, its moral undergirding changes. If we don’t have resilient disciples, we won’t have a thriving faith in church.
Bobbi Patterson
That’s absolutely right. And we see a lot of kind of holding on to some stasis, some non-changing, but you know this is really ignoring that the mystery of God is that God is so close. God is in the thickness of every day and change was part of the journey you read in the the Bible all the time. God is doing a new thing. I’m doing a new thing and yeah you’re not aware of it. So, I think what we’re really going to be called to, as you say, as the forms of church that we’ve grown accustomed to, even the successful forms, God is still unfolding. God is working. God’s purpose is out. I remember well singing that old Presbyterian hymn as a child. Yeah, I’m so grateful that you’re in tune with that. Many of us resist the spirit’s power.
Case Thorp
The historical part of some pilgrimages is when they go to historic places. Like you see that Roman bridge. You see the church in all times and places. And you can’t help but be faced with the necessary change that had to occur along the way for the gospel to remain relevant. And how do we fight the golden calves and the idols of our faith today and not recognize the way of evolving to the context. That’s a big reformed principle. Once reformed, always reforming.
Bobbi Patterson
That’s a beautiful statement. I think one of the moments I saw in the Cathedral of Santiago, and boy, is it from a past day. Yes, Massiforifer and the amount of gold around the altar is the signage of a global power, Spain going around the world, gathering other people’s gold and placing it on the altar. But what happened at the service when we were there, was there was a youth pilgrimage of 50 young people between 17 and 23. And they had done the long pilgrimage over the Pyrenees, and they gave the sermon that day, they read the scripture that day, they were alive and well and as you say, the pilgrimage theme for them was vocation. What is my vocation in the church today? And it was very moving to us. For us, you know, for me it was why I go back to the monastery is that continual path of how is God engaging my gifts and heart now. I’m in a place in my personal life, and I’ll be quick about this, just to say I have been very busy with some boards and I basically…
The book came out the year I retired, giving lots of talks on that. And then these boards, I haven’t really settled into what is the calling for me. And I do feel more called to contemplative retreats, to contemplative work, because that’s the grounding source for me. It can be, and that’s, so over the four years since I retired, I’m still on pilgrimage.
Case Thorp
Well, the R word is not in scripture. The R word, “retired.” Your vocation is for a lifetime.
Bobbi Patterson
Well, I love that, I love that. And it’s taken more than I expected for me to slow down and become more still so that I could hear where I could best follow the path of Christ.
That’s taken some time for me. So whether I was in my work or whether I’m now in retirement, to build on what you’re saying, I’m listening for the call. All the while. And for me right now, that’s partly I have to put down some baggage. I have a little too many bags, too much baggage.
Case Thorp
Well, I think our enjoyment of one another is because of such similarities with liking to get stuff done and putting it away, but also for me it’s an unnatural thing to be still. And so the challenge of the contemplative life makes me lean in and forces me to go there with the Lord so that I am more at peace and more whole and have more purpose.
Bobbi Patterson
I think it’s, you know, we know Jesus did it. He went away. So that’s good enough for me. And I’m grateful you’re going to be trying a Camino and maybe getting back to Iona.
Case Thorp
That’s good enough for me, yes.
Well, if you’re listening and you would like to learn more about the Camino, go check out our website because we’re going in October of ‘25 and would love to have a good group to go. Bobbi, thank you. Thank you so very much. It’s great to see you.
Bobbi Patterson
What a joy to see you. What a joy to see you and I’m so grateful for the work you and all are doing at the Collaborative and all your other work and it’s been great to reconnect.
Case Thorp
Well, friends, I want to encourage you to check out Bobbi’s book, Building Resilience Through Contemplative Practice, a field manual for helping professionals and volunteers. Well, thank you for joining us today. If you found inspiration here, hit like or share, help us spread the word and reach more listeners on the same journey. Drop us a quick review wherever you listen. We’d love to know your thoughts. Be sure to check out collaborativeorlando.com where you’ll discover a treasure trove of resources, including our 31 day faith and work prompt journal. Yes, we’ll send you one straight to your door free of charge. Connect with us also on social media across the platforms. Also for a dose of encouragement each week, tune in to Formed for Faithfulness, our 10-minute devotional crafted for the working Christian that follows the seasons of the liturgical year. A heartfelt thank you to our sponsor for today, The Stein Foundation. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
