Viktor Frankl famously identified creative work, love, and courageous action as the ingredients that create meaning and fulfillment in life. Those are the three buckets I’ve sought to fill up over the past year, and they are how I will organize my reflections in this post. Pondering and writing these words over the past couple of days has been a contemplative practice for me—a kind of examen that acknowledges significant happenings of the past year while naming the hopes and desires still at work within me.
This is a longer post, intended primarily for my own accountability, though I hope it might also serve as an invitation for anyone who comes across it. So, if you have the courage to read through it all, bless you! And if you find any shared interests along the way, let’s connect.
Work
Eighteen months ago, I decided to focus my spiritual care experience into a purpose that I thought could benefit others in a positive way. I am extremely lucky to have supporters who share my vision and see the potential and great need to integrate spiritual care into social environments, particularly with the goal of inspiriting caregivers, educators, and healthcare workers. For, our present social context is marked by an increasing unease, discontent, and burnout and it appears these challenges may be best addressed through spiritual care—an intrinsic empowerment of personal agency. Why do we sense the need to care for caregivers? Because the personal and vicarious suffering inherent in caregiving work makes the work unsustainable without an active way of caring for one’s spirit.
And so, Restwork was born—a well-being program for healthcare and caregiving professionals. Restwork is more than a break from work; it is an opportunity for people to learn to live into their best selves. Grounded in the evidence of contemplative and virtue science, Restwork invites participants to rediscover the personal wholeness often lost in the demands of professional caregiving. Through guided retreats followed by sustained relational care, we teach practices of rest, mindful presence, awareness, and compassionate self-leadership, empowering caregivers to live courageously, love deeply, and work purposefully.
The creative and entrepreneurial work required to bring Restwork to life has been both rewarding and challenging. And as I reflect upon it, what a gift it has been to me, and I believe, to others. While we are not yet certain how things will unfold in the years ahead, along with supporters who have joined this mission, we are committed to nurturing the seeds we have planted.
Alongside Restwork, I also have continued to expand my work in spiritual direction. Spiritual direction is a mode of care for those seeking a deeper awareness of their inner life. Also often called spiritual companionship or spiritual accompaniment, spiritual direction is a rapidly growing field that many are discovering helpful amid the current cultural failures of both faith formation and the often shortsightedness of mental health. The inherently holistic, person-centered, trauma informed, and narrative-based ethos of spiritual direction wonderfully matches what the research has evidenced as the effective methods of care for much of the angst, resistances, and disruptions of our day. Spiritual direction is not counseling, therapy, or mentorship; yet, spiritual direction can be a pathway to flourishing and wellbeing.
To enhance my practice, I completed a year-long post-doctorate certificate in spiritual direction—a rewarding and refreshing experience! I currently accompany a dozen or so regular directees and I am open to adding more. (If you’re curious about spiritual direction, links on this site provide more information.) I remain humbled by the courage and vulnerability of those I accompany, and each session adds new and rich meaning to my own life.
What do I want for work in the year ahead? What desire is at work in me? I want Restwork to become a flourishing community of healing and wholeness. I envision both a program and a place for rest, renewal practices, and ongoing relational support. I also want to walk alongside others in spiritual direction who are sincere in their seeking…people who sense something is presently askew within the common postures and practices of our day. And I desire an increase in my own spiritual awareness through nurturing interconnection with all things and people. And last, I sense a pull to somehow begin to engage in the work of teaching and education. Perhaps a teaching opportunity, a training program, or a creative way of integrating spiritual care in an educational environment….I reckon the year ahead will reveal where these desires lead!
Love
Frederick Buechner’s words have echoed in my heart this year: “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
As I listen to my life, I hear how this year has been a season of progress for our family. Samuel, now a college sophomore, is discovering how to live with both grit and gratitude among his many opportunities. Addison, nearing the end of her senior year, is diligently preparing herself for a new era of decisions with applied wisdom and insight; and Anah, our youngest, lives everyday with a joyful curiosity. Watching each of them dream, develop, and rest in their belovedness is an amazing thing. Their joys, struggles, successes, and failures remind me daily that life is exactly what you will make of it. Everything is given…gifts waiting for you to open and enjoy. Everything will have exactly the meaning you give it.
Ashley and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this past year—a testimony of our willingness to seek the good of the other. I suspect we both feel that the changes and challenges we’ve embraced in our years together are more than we thought we originally signed up for; yet we continue to flow with the current of commitment, and grow in our ability to communicate, celebrate, and encourage one another toward being our best selves. It is good, and it seems that better is inevitable.
Yes, I see the bucket labeled “love” in my life is overflowing—with marriage, family, friends, and the people I meet through Restwork and in spiritual direction. I live in an abundance of love, and I’d like to even think, an overflow of love. I believe it is the overflow, not a scarcity, that fosters a ongoing curiosity in me about the kind of deep friendship spoken of in the Celtic tradition. An anam cara friendship was recognized as an honorable social construct saturated with an affection that awakens new ways of feeling and perceiving oneself (John O’Donohue). This kind of friendship is highly intentional, while marked with an intimacy of knowing and vulnerability. Sometimes initially unsettling and perhaps even awkward, this unique connection is known to gradually change one’s depth of self-awareness and transform one’s sense of being in the world. I hold my desire to experience anam cara lightly and with curiosity, while committed to showing up with openness and intention in all my current relationships. I think anam cara is a possible experience for some in life—perhaps for those with great intention and mutual desire to experience Love beyond our transactional habits. I reckon the years ahead will reveal where desire leads!
Courageous Action
This year wasn’t without challenges or opportunities to witness courageous action. My mom’s heart surgery and Ashley’s dad’s accident reminded me of life’s fragility and uncertainty. And, in those moments, I witnessed profound courage—not only from those directly impacted but also from the family and friends who rallied around them. These experiences underlined for me and are still revealing the power of meaning in the face of suffering. How we interpret life’s happenings have a direct impact on how we experience our lives. Not everything is good, but there is goodness amid everything.
In this moment, as I reflect on the past year and give attention to my active desires, I am filled up to the brim with gratitude. No, even more…I am overflowing with gratitude. The accomplishments, milestones, relationships, and experiences of these twelve months have shaped me in ways I could not have anticipated. So, while the future remains unknown, I step into it with hope and intention. For, as Frankl reminds me, meaning is not something I passively receive; it is what I actively create.
To everyone who has been part of this past year—thank you. Here’s to another year of work, love, and making meaning together.
Shane Ash 