healing moment: book excerpt 🤩 (erin jean warde)
I'm offering an excerpt from Sober Spirituality for this week’s healing moment. I hope this inspiration and care meet you somewhere on your path, to offer encouragement. <3
I’m offering an excerpt from Sober Spirituality for this week’s healing moment. I hope this inspiration and care meet you somewhere on your path, to offer encouragement.
from Chapter 1 — Waking Up: An Unexpected Invitation to Joy through Sobriety
I never would have told you I was “drinking away” my life, because I never looked into my glass thinking, “I do not want to feel this and I do not want to be inside my body, so I will drink myself out of this feeling and this body.” I lived as a priest with a foot in each world, so numb to both I could barely feel my feet on the earth, could barely notice the divinity begging to be palpable if only I would take the greatest risk by being awake to both worlds, for the greatest reward, living in them the way God wished for me to live.
I got curious about mysticism and fell in love with Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman. The first paragraph became the cornerstone of my sobriety, the prayer that calls me back into the depths of my decision. Thurman writes:
“There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island and on that island there is an altar and standing guard before that altar is the “angel with the flaming sword.” Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority. Nothing passes “the angel with the flaming sword” to be placed upon your altar unless it be a part of “the fluid area of your consent.” This is your crucial link with the Eternal.”
Getting sober looked like traversing an inward sea, with sobriety offering me an island, a refuge, a way to get shipwrecked and saved at the same time. The altar here reminds me that even though sobriety has become my greatest healing, I didn’t lose the calling to be a woman who lives her life in proximity to holiness, to sacred things, to these altars that gather outward, visible, hurting people like me in order to give us inward graces.
🚨 NEW WEBSITE 🚨
Amidst the joy of book release, I am also releasing a new website! I’ve worked with an incredible website & branding duo — Corinne & Mary Ann of Corinne Consulting, who I cannot recommend highly enough — and I’m thrilled to share the new design of my site. My website is important, because it helps me find the people who might best connect with me and my work. Sharing myself with integrity also helps people discern if we’d be a good fit, and my new site shares my joy and passion in a way that feels so true to my heart.
Enjoy the site and share it with anyone you encounter who is curious about my work!
🚨 UPCOMING EVENTS 🚨
I hope you’ll join me and the Stevenson School for Ministry on April 26th from 7:00-8:30EST!
This workshop will explore the importance of hospitality in Christianity, name the current challenge our culture faces with alcohol, and talk through fun and thoughtful ways churches can grow in showing compassion toward those who don't drink. Churches growing in hospitality to sober people serves not just to change our churches for the better, but to grow them, as churches can become safe places for sober visitors and their friends.
This workshop will meet for 90-minutes on Zoom. The Rev. Warde will share her experience and offer resources. The content presentation will be recorded. A brief question time will also be included at the end and will not be recorded for distribution.
The cost of this workshop offsets the operating costs of the Stevenson School for Ministry. SSFM is dedicated to the lifelong learning and discernment processes of all Episcopalians in the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania and beyond. This workshop has a price tier option. Whether a complimentary ticket, $15, or $30 fee fits your life - everyone will receive the same experience.
For questions contact ssfm@diocesecpa.org.
Waco friends, come hang out with me May 3 at 7:00PM at St. Alban’s! I’m really excited to be talking about my new book and seeing friends, both old and new. There will be books available for sale if you don’t have your copy yet and would like to get one!