Archived issues of The Second Mountain newsletter.

“Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in this world. “ —Fleming Rutledge

Do you have a plan for how to support your team during these difficult times? Do you understand how the team may be affected the loss and grief one member is experiencing? Here are the top five things you can do as you manage and support your team through grief.

I learned to appear calm and collected in the presence of anger, fear, and sadness. It was the way I kept blood off my hands and tears off my cheeks and at times it served me well. But I’ve often wondered if the way I coped with the world around me actually did violence to the world within me.

Our cultural narratives often tell us to look within ourselves to find hope so we can make it through our suffering. Science—specifically brain science—tells a different story.

“I might bring my guilty self to you. I won’t bring my shameful self to you. I need you to come find me. And this is the story of the gospel.”

Emotional Intelligence has lots of benefits in the home, the workplace, church, or any place we connect with others. Yet few of us learned what to do with our feelings in our families of origin. Most of us learned to suppress them.

“Why bother going through the motions of all the work it takes to be with other humans if we are not actually showing up in a meaningful way?”

A playlist of songs for grieving.

A poem about music and grief written by the American poet Hanif Abdurraqib.

Which songs make up the soundtrack of your story?

That is the only way to prepare for death…to bit by bit tear away the armor you’ve built around your heart so you can feel the full sting of death’s arrows.

Frederick Buechner on the occupational hazards of Christian ministers.

Can we offer ourselves the same compassion we are called to extend to our neighbors?

We live in a culture that doesn’t know how to grieve. What if we chose to tend to the broken places instead of ignoring them?

“What if we saw counseling as a preventative measure the way we do diet and exercise? What if we emphasized health instead of illness?

“Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from…”

Have you discovered that the strategies you developed in the past are not working for you today? Do you need someone to bear witness to the pain you’ve experienced and help you process?

Books, conferences, and podcasts are great. But to be sustained in leadership for the long haul, you need more than information—you need a face. You need someone to empathize with your wounds and attune to your story.

We are hardwired from birth to look for the face of another and to find them turning toward us, offering their face in return. What happens when we behold the face of God?