So much life has been happening and I’m here for it. I’m here for it in all its wonder, its adventure, and its uncertainty.

This pocket of time is one I knew was coming and prepared for. Yes, there have been meetings, text threads, emails, Google Docs, and lots of preparation. But I also prepared in other ways. I leaned even more intentionally into my rhythm of life. Where time and responsibility were telling me that my spiritual and grounding practices were optional for the sake of efficiency, my being was telling me they would be among the most important things to hold onto.

And so I did.

This season of busyness has been the most centered I’ve ever navigated a busy season in my life.

What this has also meant is the invitation to let some ideas go. My hope was to do a Postcard Series like I’ve done in the past and take you with me along the way. I quickly realized that if I wanted to remain truly present, I would need to release that idea. So my sharing in the next few writings will be delayed. But I think that’s better. I’m able to be fully present, allow the experiences to settle into me, and notice how one experience shapes the next.

So for this piece, here are my reflections on something that happened a couple of weeks ago. It’s about an author and artist, a team of women, vines and wine.

It is also a love letter to shared leadership.

She spent years in process.

She wrote the book.

She created the art.

She put in the work, wrestled with the doubt, and followed the energy surges of creativity and discovery.

She is .

She wrote the words and created the images of The Art of Vinemaking.

But the vision didn’t stop there.

She saw the first bud of a journey in the form of retreats that would take people through the vineyards and into an embodied experience of John 15.

I remember being on the phone with her as I paced my backyard—which, if you and I ever find ourselves on a phone call together, is probably where I’ll be. I can still hear her inviting me to be part of the team for a retreat in Sonoma. I can hear her describing the heart behind it, the women she hoped would gather, and the vision she carried.

She said things like,

“I don’t want this to be all about me.”

“I’m looking for a team.”

“I want to empower your voice.”

“I’d love this to be us.”

I could feel the sensations moving through my body as she spoke.

I’ve heard words like these before as I’m sure many of us have.

And, as many of us have also experienced, those words are often aspirational rather than actual.

My body felt tense.

I knew Bette through social media interactions, a few Zoom spaces we happened to share, and eventually phone conversations where we exchanged pieces of our stories. From a distance, I had seen her put her values into practice.

But still.

There is always a question.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the invitation itself was part of the vision. I wasn’t simply being invited to help facilitate a retreat. I was being invited into a different way of leading together.

As I took it to prayer and contemplation, there was a sense that the answer was yes.

Trust.

And take that trust one moment at a time.

And I am so glad I did.

Bette had a vision for a space where women in all of our beautiful shades would have freedom to share our stories, to be seen and heard, to not only be considered but celebrated and championed.

Her leadership team reflected that vision.

The team consisted of women from a variety of backgrounds, ethnicities, leadership experiences, and gifts. We recognized and respected the work Bette had poured into her book and leaned into her wisdom and knowledge around The Art of Vinemaking.

And Bette recognized and respected the work we had poured into our own lives and callings.

Bette is a beautiful white woman. She is highly intelligent, deeply creative, and exceptionally experienced. Yet she never led as though expertise meant she understood every story in the room. She recognized that the lived experiences of women of color and women from different ethnic backgrounds carried wisdom she did not possess.

Rather than assuming, she listened.

Rather than centering her own perspective, she made room for others.

In many ways, that humility became one of the clearest expressions of the shared leadership she hoped to cultivate.

Her posture became an invitation for all of us to do the same with one another.

Bette wrote the book. It would have made complete sense for the retreat and the cohort journey to revolve around her. I wouldn’t have blinked an eye.

She did the work.

But time and again, she redirected the focus.

Where we were thinking about highlighting her, she was asking us how we wanted to show up.

Would you like to speak?

Would you like to teach?

How would you approach it?

What do you want to try?

How can I support you?

The process took longer. And to an outsider, it may have even seemed painstaking at times.

What she practiced was shared leadership rather than top-down leadership.

I saw it.

I felt it.

And I found myself having to learn how to navigate it.

I realized how quickly how much I default to hierarchical assumptions. The concept of flat leadership is a term I’ve heard often over the last few years. But this experience with Bette was the closest lived expression of it I have ever encountered.

And let me say:

Bette, you are brave.

You are patient.

And God’s grace was evident through it all.

I had the great pleasure of focusing on leading embodiment practices for the retreat. It’s a space my soul has been increasingly drawn toward, and I wanted the opportunity to explore what it would be like to fully engage learning in a holistic way.

What a joy it was to offer embodiment practices while also participating in a retreat that integrated art therapy, teaching, and skin-to-dirt connection in such beautiful and holistic ways.

It has fueled my imagination for what might be next.

When I returned home, there was so much I could have written about the retreat itself.

That will be another essay.

But what lingered most was the team.

What stayed with me was the realization that I came to know these women because of the way we led together.

In more hierarchical environments, it is easy to know people primarily by their roles. You know who is leading. You know who is making decisions. You know where authority resides. There can be efficiency in that.

But there can also be distance.

This experience was different.

Because leadership was shared, because voices were invited rather than managed, because ideas were held collectively rather than owned individually, we had time to know one another.

Not just our competencies, but our stories.

Not just our titles, but our hearts.

We witnessed one another wrestling with decisions, offering ideas, changing our minds, taking risks, and creating together.

Flat leadership wasn’t simply a structure.

It became a pathway to relationship.

I found myself lingering in long gazes as these women lived out their passions, gifts, and skills. My ears held the stories of suffering and triumph. I felt high-energy bursts, whimsical pacing, moments of courage, and moments of tenderness.

We were a team in every sense of the word.

We had our roles.

But we were never reduced to them.

And I don’t know that I would have come to know these women in quite the same way otherwise.

The energy I felt from had me stunned. It was the kind of energy I knew I wasn’t going to try to match but instead receive as a gift—and what a gift she is. Her brilliance and love for Scripture are a force, yet with all of that wisdom she remains deeply grounded and genuinely connected to people. She has a way of walking alongside others, inviting them to open their lives as she opens hers, lingering long enough for trust to grow and laughter to find its way into the room.

reminded me that great things often come in small packages. Her story of building a life and creating spaces of welcome in Sonoma carries the beauty of an ashes-to-beauty journey. Through every detail she crafted, I felt warmth, care, and belonging. Her liturgies soothed my spirit, and when she stretched out her arms while leading, it felt as though her presence extended far beyond her physical frame.

I had shared a few prayer calls with before the retreat and always felt drawn to her, though I couldn’t quite name why. Now I know. She carries a vibrant strength and a voice that fills a room with both conviction and care. She notices what others may miss—the posture, the sigh, the hesitation, the shift in tone. Her trauma-informed lens made our work stronger, helping shape embodiment practices that were more inclusive, thoughtful, and attentive to the experiences people carry in their bodies.

And then there was Dave (@bosbdfarming), whom we affectionately came to call Brave Dave. As the only man on the team, he entered the space with humility, respect, and a genuine willingness to learn alongside us. Yes, he had much to teach us as a master vintner, but what stood out most was his ability to listen well and hold the stories of others with care. He brought both expertise and curiosity, and the retreat was richer because of it.

I walked away with more than new colleagues.

I walked away carrying embodied memories of a team that forged a path together.

We learned.

We laughed.

We cried.

We grew.

And we drank wine.

And to this team, cheers.

Until the next time our glasses are raised together, cheers.

He kept asking questions.

About the port. The scuba divers. The patrol boats cutting through the water with quiet authority. One question after another, steady as the tide.

And I — also curious, also ignorant about all things sailing and diving — had no answers to give him.

The questions were reasonable and ones I would ask as well. So why did every question feel like a pebble finding its way into my shoe?

We were away, celebrating our anniversary. A beautiful shore walk. Salt air and mountain views.

We walked hand in hand. He asked his questions. I stayed quiet—not from distance, but from something I couldn’t name yet. Something I needed to follow instead of fix.

We’d been at this impasse before and laughed it away. But I could sense that laughter wasn’t going to be the way for me on this walk. So I did something else.

I started asking my own questions.

Why does this feel like friction? What is this agitation actually about?

Here’s what I’ve come to understand about curiosity: it doesn’t come in just one form.

My husband asks questions to understand. For him, there is a puzzle—and it will not rest until the pieces find their places and a clearer picture emerges. His curiosity is purposeful. It’s driven. It wants resolution.

“Don’t you want to know?!” he constantly asks.

And I can hear in his tone the almost dire need to find the answer.

Mine is different.

I ask questions with a loose grip. I hold them up to the light and then—I watch. I wait. I let whatever wants to surface, surface. If an answer never comes, I’m not left empty. I’m usually still full from whatever appeared along the way.

My husband wants an answer.

I rarely need one.

Neither is wrong. We borrow from each other more than we realize.

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But here’s the thing, I didn’t see until that walk.

I actually spend so much of my life in his kind of curiosity. The need for clear answers, the completing the puzzle type of curiosity.

Not because it isn’t mine—it is, but in its own season. In the middle of conflict, discernment, decision-making, learning—yes, I want to understand. I need to put the pieces together. That curiosity is real for me as well; it has its place. I spend a good portion of my life there. It’s part of what I do.

And maybe, because of that, it also settles on my body as work energy.

Get to the bottom of it. Don’t leave until it makes sense. Hold it until you get clarity.

That kind of curiosity, over time, is exhausting for me. And especially for those who carry not just personal questions but communal ones. The weight of a world that keeps not making sense to us. The injustice that resists our attempts to understand it. The grief that doesn’t resolve, no matter how many pieces we find.

We were not designed to live in puzzle mode indefinitely.

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What I was embodying on that shore walk was something else entirely.

A more open-handed curiosity. Spacious. Unhurried. The kind that opens a window, sits back, and just watches what drifts in. No agenda. No deadline. No pressure to arrive somewhere.

This is the curiosity I’m invited into with contemplation. With wonder. With prayer that isn’t a list of requests but a quiet presence that whispers, I’m here. Show me what you want me to see.

I’m coming to embrace this as a spiritual practice.

Maybe even a form of resistance.

So much of our culture rewards those who have answers—

who can name the problem,

propose the solution,

explain the theology,

articulate the policy.

Choosing to hold a question loosely can become a quiet act of defiance. It says:

I trust that what I need will come. I don’t have to force it into being.

That is not passivity, my reader friend.

That is faith with open hands.

I didn’t resolve anything on that walk.

The patrol boats stayed mysterious. My husband’s and my questions about what we were witnessing mostly went unanswered. The agitation softened—not because I figured it all out, but because I named it. Because I stayed with it long enough to understand what kind of moment I was actually in.

I was in a wonder moment. Not a puzzle moment.

And something in me exhaled.

There is a curiosity that builds understanding.

And there is a curiosity that builds you.

Both are necessary. But most of us—especially those doing justice work, caregiving, leading, holding others—have forgotten the second one exists. This isn’t about shame or correction. When our lives are consumed by so many things that need fixing, of course, we would forget.

Your soul remembers, though.

It’s been dropping pebbles in your shoe, hoping you’ll stop and notice.

With you in this sacred work,

Brenda Renderos

Where else can you find me:

• The Serene-ish Podcast with Brenda and Larissa

• The Art of Vinemaking Journey

• Unhurried Living (Soul Care Guide + PACE)

• Transformation + Soul Care Coaching

• Instagram

“Every old person knows what it is to be young, but no young person can know what it is to be old.”

That line stopped me.

It came from an episode of The Pitt—an adult daughter trying desperately to convince her aging parents to accept some assisted living, while they, just as desperately (if not more), tried to hold on to their independence. In a quiet moment of conceding, just a little, the husband said those words.

I’m 55 years old now, which means, depending on who you are, I may be considered young… or old… or somewhere in between.

I remember turning 50. Not because it marked half a century, but because my father died at 50. I remember becoming aware—almost viscerally—that every moment I lived beyond that age was a moment he never got. At my then age of 24, I heard people say, “He was so young,” and I understood it in theory. But at 50, I understood it in my body.

There’s no shame in that gap. It’s just the honest reality of being human.

These days, my husband and I find ourselves talking more often about the years ahead. Retirement, for us, isn’t about stopping. It’s about how we want to walk that part of the journey. Where might we live? What have we learned about ourselves after decades of hills, valleys, and meadows? We have these conversations together and separately, because even after 32 years of marriage, we are still very much our own people.

And then there are the conversations with our kids.

They’re in their mid to late twenties—fully grown, thoughtful, and still so early in their own journeys. They can’t know what it is to be our age. They can’t know what it is to look back on a life filled with loss and resilience, heartbreak and joy, endings and beginnings. They can’t know what it is to live in bodies that, no matter how well we care for them, remind us of our limits.

And I don’t hold that against them.

Honestly, I’m grateful they don’t know yet.

They will, in time.

So I talk with them—about our hopes, our wishes, even some of our fears. I do it with an awareness that one day we may find ourselves at a fork in the road: them pleading with us, and us holding on. I hope I can be someone who concedes with grace when needed. And I hope they will be able to sit with us patiently in the space of not fully understanding.

All of this has me thinking about more than aging though.

It’s made me think about all the ways I don’t know—and simply can’t know.

I know what it is to live as a woman.
I know what it is to live as a multicultural woman of color.

But I don’t know what it is to live as any other gender or ethnicity.

I don’t live with physical challenges. As an able-bodied person, I don’t know what it is to navigate a world that often overlooks accessibility.

For most of my life, I’ve had health insurance. I don’t know what it is to weigh every medical decision against financial survival.

There are fears I’ve never had to carry. And others I know intimately.

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I can read. I can listen. I can build diverse relationships.
But I cannot fully know what is not mine to experience.

And even my “I understand” has limits.

But those limits are not a stopping point.

They are an invitation.

An invitation to loosen my grip on certainty—just enough to make room for someone else’s reality.

An invitation to say, “I don’t fully understand,” without walking away.

An invitation to stay.

Stay curious.
Stay listening.
Stay open.

Because the truth is, there will always be gaps in our knowing. There will always be experiences we cannot carry, memories we do not hold in our bodies, fears we’ve never had to name.

And while we can spend our lives trying to close those gaps, perhaps the deeper invitation is not to eliminate them—but to approach them with humility.

To resist the urge to rush in with answers.
To resist the comfort of thinking,

we see the whole picture.
To resist the quiet assumption that, if we were in their place, we would do it better.

Would we? Could we? Fully?

But we can listen.

We can bear witness.

We can honor what we do not know without turning away from it.

And maybe that is where compassion becomes most real—not in our understanding, but in our willingness to remain present without it.

So whether we’re sitting across from aging parents whose decisions we don’t agree with, or standing alongside someone whose life experience is far from our own, we are invited into this sacred, uncomfortable space:

To be people who do not give up on one another, simply because we cannot fully understand one another.

To be people who keep showing up anyway.

To be people who trust that listening—that real, patient, open-hearted listening—is a form of love.

And maybe, just maybe, that kind of love bridges more than understanding ever could.

A gentle question to carry with you:

Where might you be invited to stay present, even without fully understanding?

With you in this sacred work,

Brenda Renderos

Where else can you find me:

• The Serene-ish Podcast with Brenda and Larissa

• The Art of Vinemaking Journey

• Unhurried Living (Soul Care Guide + PACE)

• Transformation + Soul Care Coaching

• Instagram

I woke up to the news of Dr. John M. Perkins' passing at 95.

I didn’t know him personally, yet the news carried a particular weight. A quiet kind of grief settled in.

He was many things by any public measure: a civil rights leader, author of numerous books, teacher, speaker, organizer, and founder of ministries and initiatives that shaped generations.

Those are remarkable accomplishments.

But they are not the heart of his legacy.

What he leaves behind are treasured gems of teaching and witness. Yet the most invaluable treasure he leaves behind is not found in the what.

It is found in the who.

Dr. Perkins was a discipler.

I don’t know this because he personally discipled me, but because the deepest impact he had on my life came through someone he discipled.

That is the quiet power of a life poured into others.

When I heard the news of his passing, I felt the loss of a remarkable man who lived a hard and intentional life. A man who endured injustice and violence yet chose reconciliation and dignity again and again.

But there is another loss I find myself grieving as well.

The fading art of discipleship.

Somewhere along the way, we tried to domesticate it. We placed it in workshops. We tied it to reading lists. We cornered it into programs with tidy outcomes.

We formalized it into step-by-step processes that keep everything neat and predictable.

But discipleship was never meant to be neat.

Discipleship is messy.

Discipleship is walking with people through real life.

It is conversation that stretches longer than expected. Listening deeply enough to hear what someone has not yet found words for. Laughing together. Grieving together.

It is invitation.

Introducing people to others who will shape them. Teaching and correcting. Affirming and challenging.

Sometimes it means staying up late in conversation. Other times it means rising early for another moment of presence.

It is walking side by side for a season, and sometimes gently nudging someone forward when they are ready for more than they realize.

Discipleship happens on the road, along the way.

In late-night phone calls. Midday texts. Shared meals and those unplanned detours.

I didn’t receive these moments from Dr. Perkins directly. I encountered him through his writing and through hearing him speak. I remember one beautiful moment during a pilgrimage when a small group of us sat together on a porch on a hot, humid day, listening to his words. They were strong and deeply rooted, carried by a voice weathered by both the battles and the beauty of life. I encountered Dr. Perkins.

But the richest gift I received from his life came through the people he walked with.

One of those people became a mentor in his own right.

He stepped into the work of restorative justice, creating roundtable conversations across the nation where people gather to listen, wrestle honestly, and seek reconciliation.

He leads civil rights pilgrimages that help participants encounter the stories of the African American and Asian American experiences in ways that move beyond history into lived understanding.

And somewhere along the way, our paths crossed.

He has spent time with me on the phone. Shared resources freely. Encouraged both my husband and me.

This person is one of the treasures Dr. Perkins leaves behind.

Not a “what.”

A who.

A who among many.

That is legacy.

That is wealth.

A passing like Dr. Perkins draws me into familiar conversations. And I’m sure this may sound unusual, but I have come to think about death in a particular way.

Death is not hidden in the back of my mind or tucked away in denial. It travels with me like a quiet companion.

Perhaps that perspective comes from experiences I’ve lived through. I can’t say for certain.

But death and I have had many conversations.

We talk about how I hope the end might be, knowing full well that I do not control any of those details. We imagine how it might affect the people I love most and how to lighten the weight they will inevitably carry.

That is the practical side.

The paperwork organized. Accounts settled. Wishes clearly stated.

Those are the what.

Necessary things. Loving things, even.

But they are not the part that stirs my soul.

It is the who.

The quiet reality that accomplishments eventually collect dust. Titles fade. Achievements are archived.

But the lives we have walked alongside keep breathing.

They laugh and cry. They carry what they received into new relationships and new communities. They show up for others the way someone once showed up for them.

That is the kind of legacy that does not sit on a shelf.

It lives.

And if I am honest, that is the legacy I hope to leave behind.

Not a list of accomplishments.

But a circle of people who were loved well enough that they continue loving others in the same way

I am grateful for men and women like Dr. John M. Perkins. For their work, their accomplishments, and the lives they lived.

With every loss like this, it can feel as though we are losing the art of discipleship.

But lately I’ve begun to feel a trembling in the ground. A mild earthquake shaking the foundations of our formalized ways. It makes me wonder if we are slowly awakening to a mistake we made along the way — trading older, relational ways of forming people for the sake of efficiency and measurable goals.

I think we might be.

Could we be rediscovering that classes and programs have their place, but should never replace relationships?

I think so.

I truly hope so.

Dr. Perkins, I didn’t know you personally. Just a shared moment, the memory of your smile, and a brief sitting at the table with you.

But one of the people you walked with did good.

He did real good.

And that good continues.

It has shaped conversations across the country. It has shaped lives. It has even found its way into our own family.

The only way I know to honor those who came before us — and the calling that still lies ahead — is to carry that good forward.

And someday, when death tugs my arm, turns me gently around, and looks deeply into my eyes to say our time has come, I hope I will be able to take my final breath knowing this:

The good I lived did not end with me.

It continued on in the lives of others.

Thank you Dr. Perkins!

Who are the people who shaped you – not through programs or platforms, but simply by walking with you? Feel free to share in the comments. I’d love to hear how they’ve impacted your life

With you in this sacred work,

Brenda Renderos

Where else can you find me:

• The Serene-ish Podcast with Brenda and Larissa

• The Art of Vinemaking Journey

• Unhurried Living (Soul Care Guide + PACE)

• Transformation + Soul Care Coaching

There comes a point when the most tempting response to pain and disappointment isn’t anger, but absence. To pull back. To disengage. To stop feeling the weight of things that once mattered so deeply to us. For many people committed to justice, faith, or community, this temptation doesn’t come from apathy so much as from staying too long without support. The question is no longer whether we care, but whether we can keep showing up without losing ourselves in the process.

This is where the quieter practices begin to matter.

Quiet hope and small refusals ask something more of us than we often realize. They ask for presence without certainty, discernment without urgency, and care that isn’t driven by performance. And while these practices begin within us, they are rarely sustained there.

I was once faced with a heartbreaking situation. Sometimes our desire for someone to get free is stronger than theirs, and the pain of that can be wrenching in ways hard to name. This was a situation my family had been navigating for years. I had been pushing through, staying strong, keeping hope alive, refusing to give up on finding a resolution. I told myself this was faithfulness, this was caring.

Until one day, something found its way up through my body.

Emotions that felt familiar and tired of being ignored surfaced all at once. Anger. Frustration. They were familiar because I grew up around anger that was expressed in unhealthy ways. I had learned early on to manage it, suppress it, redirect it. Noticing is a practice I’m strong in. I could name what was happening quickly. But what I realized in that moment was that my pausing needed more care.

Pausing to explore those emotions felt bigger than me. Unsafe, even. Lingering with them felt like opening a door I wasn’t sure I could close again. And yet, in a moment of unexpected clarity, I knew I couldn’t rush past this. I needed to stay. And I needed help staying.

With all my training, experience, and tools in my toolbox, doing this alone would have been unwise. We can notice. We can pause. We can even refuse performance. But staying with what surfaces when we do, especially when it’s layered, embodied, and long-held, is hard to do alone.

Maybe you know this feeling. You can sense something is off, but you don’t know what to do with it. Or you feel an invitation stirring, but you don’t trust yourself to interpret it clearly. This is often where an old myth sneaks in:

If I were more mature, I’d be able to figure this out on my own.

There’s the myth.
Here’s the truth.

That’s not a deficiency.
That’s being human.

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Wisdom has always been relational. History tells us this.

In ancient Hebrew tradition, wisdom emerged among people. It was carried by the elders, shared through stories, and discerned in community, at the city gates, through shared memory and communal reflection.

Among many Indigenous cultures, wisdom isn’t owned by individuals but held by the people. Elders serve as carriers of memory; knowledge is learned through story, ritual, land, and kinship.

In African philosophy, the concept of Ubuntu, “I am because we are,” expresses a deeply relational understanding of personhood and wisdom. A wise person is not one who knows the most, but one who knows how to live well with others.

My own moment of clarity didn’t come in isolation. It began with noticing, but it took shape through sharing. I spoke aloud what I had been holding with a few people who listened without trying to fix me. They didn’t rush me toward answers. They didn’t minimize the complexity. They simply helped create enough space for clarity to emerge in its own time.

Nothing dramatic happened. No instant resolution. Just a pathway slowly forming beneath my feet.

Eventually, I found the companion I needed for that stretch of the journey, someone who could help me stay present to what was real without numbing or rushing it. This is where hope became steadier, not louder. Where decisions began to feel more integrated and less reactive. Where rest stopped feeling like failure, and action became more sustainable.

There are seasons when quiet hope and small refusals are enough. And there are seasons when we discover that staying human requires more than personal willpower. Some questions are meant to be listened to out loud. Some fatigue needs a witness. Some hope needs to be held so it doesn’t collapse under the weight of carrying itself.

This isn’t about outsourcing responsibility or looking for someone to tell us what to do. It’s about recognizing when discernment deepens through presence, when clarity emerges not from our effort and grit, but from being seen and heard with care.

And perhaps this is where this series gently lands.

And so I draw this series to a pause, not with answers, but with a few open questions worth sitting with:

Who helps you stay present when it would be easier to numb out?
Who listens well enough to help you discern what kind of response this season is asking of you?
What might become possible if your hope didn’t have to carry itself alone?

These questions don’t demand immediate action. They invite attention. And sometimes, that is the most faithful place to begin.

With you in this sacred work,

Brenda Renderos

Where else can you find me:

• The Serene-ish Podcast with Brenda and Larissa

• The Art of Vinemaking Journey

• Unhurried Living (Soul Care Guide + PACE)

• Transformation + Soul Care Coaching

Lent invites us to return, not only to God,
but to the work of becoming whole.

In This Sacred Work, spiritual formation and justice are not separate callings. They belong to one another.

The inner life shapes the outer life.
And the outer life reveals what is forming within us.

Lent is a season of honest reckoning.

We remember that we are dust, equal, fragile, beloved.
We confess the ways we have hardened ourselves.
We examine the systems we participate in.
We turn again toward Love.

This is sacred work.

Not performative repentance.
Not spiritual striving.
But courageous attention.

Attention to what is broken in us.
Attention to what is broken around us.
Attention to the Spirit who refuses to abandon either.

What You’ll Find in This Guide

This free Lent guide offers:

• Simple, spacious reflections

• Embodied practices you can actually live

• Gentle prompts for prayer and truth-telling

• A path from Ash Wednesday to Easter

Nothing elaborate. Just invitations.

To breathe.
To notice.
To soften.
To tell the truth.

Justice begins in the heart, but it does not end there.
Faith lives in the body, and it moves toward neighbor.

From dust to cross to resurrection, we walk this path together, trusting that repentance is not punishment, but reorientation.
Not despair, but preparation for new life.

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An Optional Audio Companion

Each printed meditation connects to a matching audio reflection.

If you prefer to listen while walking, driving, or sitting quietly, simply scan the QR code next to each day in the guide. The audio follows the printed version exactly, just another way to engage the journey.

Download the Free Guide

If you are longing for a Lent that is contemplative and courageous,
tender and unafraid,
rooted in Love and alive to the world…

This guide is for you.

👉 Download the free Lent guide here.

A Lenten Companion For Contemplative Justice

73.6MB ∙ PDF file

Download

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This is sacred work. And you are not walking it alone.

With you in this sacred work,

Brenda Renderos

Connections:

• The Serene-ish Podcast with Brenda and Larissa

• The Art of Vinemaking Journey

• Unhurried Living (Soul Care Guide + PACE)

• Transformation + Soul Care Coaching

We often assume that care, like hope, must be loud, visible, urgent, unmistakable. We’re constantly being asked for more — more urgency, more awareness, more response — it can feel like the only loyal options are exhaustion or withdrawal. Stay alert and burn out, or pull back and risk becoming numb. But somewhere in between those two extremes are small, quieter ways of staying engaged, ways that refuse to let us lose our humanity.

Pausing instead of scrolling past suffering.
Noticing the body before forming an opinion.
Choosing presence over productivity, even just for a moment.

These gestures don’t look like much. They don’t trend. They don’t impress. But they gently resist the kind of numbness that slowly tears away at our capacity to care.

I used to feel inspired by testimonial videos that highlighted ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The person with twenty kids, three jobs, and volunteering in five different ministries. I’m exaggerating, of course, but not by much. I’d sit in the pew, watch those stories unfold, reflect on what I was already doing, and walk away with a renewed determination to do more. A woman on a mission!

And when my inner compass tried to speak, “but what you’re doing is a lot; it’s enough”, I’d shut it down. I chastised myself instead. I needed to care more. I needed to show I cared more. I believed that the more I gave myself to helping others, the more God would expand my capacity. I mean, it was all for God, right?

That inner compass... divine intuition, embodied wisdom, what many in my Christian faith community would call the Holy Spirit, tried to intervene. I wouldn’t listen.

It grieves me now to look back and see how many burned out or burned down along the way. So many people left what had once been a vital part of their faith and heart. Families fractured. Marriages strained. Relationships quietly eroded. Every now and then, I get to witness a faith renewed in a life-giving way, or a relationship nurtured back to health. I’m not saying there weren’t other factors involved. But for those who chased the examples set before us, I wonder how many heard that inner caution. And for those who didn’t listen, I wonder why.

My friend , in The Art of Vinemaking, invites readers to question a culture that “measures fruitfulness by productivity” and instead focuses on abiding, remaining rooted in the vine, so that fruit emerges naturally instead of through striving. Fruitfulness, she suggests, isn’t something we manufacture through our effort or performance; it ripens from a life that is well-rooted.

How often has our attention been so fixed on the fruit? Bearing good fruit. Recognizing people by their fruit. Evaluating ourselves and others by visible outcomes. What might shift if we tended more carefully to the rest of the vineyard, the soil, the vines, the air, the pace of growth?

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This is where small refusals come in.

They are quiet acts of resistance against numbness and against the temptation toward heroism. They refuse the narrative that faithfulness always looks dramatic, exhausting, or endlessly available. And these quiet acts of resistance look different for each person and each season.

Small refusals of hyperspeed:

• Pausing before scrolling to the next story when you face suffering, not to fix it, but simply to acknowledge it. Hold it.

• Reading one article slowly and intentionally instead of skimming ten.

• Choosing not to multitask while listening to someone’s story.

Small refusals of turning people into concepts:

• Saying a person’s name instead of referring to “those people” or “the issue.”

• Holding one face or story in mind rather than collapsing everything into statistics.

• Praying for one person affected by a situation, rather than the situation in general.

• Asking, “Who is affected by this?” before asking, “What do I think about it?”

Small refusals to proving engagement:

• Choosing not to post about every cause you care about.

• Letting some acts of care remain unseen.

• Saying no to one more request when your body signals depletion.

• Refusing to turn suffering into content.

These refusals are small because they have to be. Anything larger would require energy that many of us no longer have. But small doesn’t mean insignificant. It means human. The scale of these practices is proportionate to our nervous systems. They protect us from burnout, yes, but they also guard something deeper.

This is where the conversation moves beyond self-help and into soul care. Self-help is often oriented toward doing… improving, fixing, optimizing. Soul care, on the other hand, is oriented toward being… remaining, listening, attending to what is actually happening within us and around us.

This isn’t about good or bad. It’s about discernment.

Imagine you’re on a hike and you reach a fork in the trail. Two paths stretch out before you, each with its own beauty and challenge. To choose wisely, you don’t just look at the map. You assess your body. How much water do you have left? How’s your energy? What are the weather conditions? Are your shoes right for the terrain ahead?

One path is marked with words like improve, achieve, fix.
The other is marked with rest, reflect, reconnect… with yourself, with God.

Neither path is wrong. But only one will be life-giving in this season.

Small refusals help us pause at that fork long enough to choose honestly. They keep us from defaulting to the pull of urgency when what we need is attentiveness. They help us remain human in a world that constantly pressures us to override our limits in the name of goodness.

And yet, staying present like this, without numbing, without performing, without rushing toward resolution, is not something most of us learned how to do alone.

Which raises the next, necessary question:
If these small refusals are how we stay human, who helps us learn how to practice them when everything in us wants to keep pushing forward?

With you in this sacred work,

Brenda Renderos

Where else can you find me:

• The Serene-ish Podcast with Brenda and Larissa

• The Art of Vinemaking Journey

• Unhurried Living (Soul Care Guide + PACE)

• Transformation + Soul Care Coaching

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You may have heard me mention The Art of Vinemaking Journey, and maybe you’re quietly wondering,

Is this for me?

Is this the right season?

I’d love to invite you into a gentle, no-pressure conversation to explore those questions together.

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