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Lynn Batcher

Soul Pathways

Day 14 in Lent, page 46.

If you’re among the St. Paul people planning to pick up a blue-gray book called 40-Day Journey with Parker J. Palmer during Lent, you’ll be on the same page: “We all have an inner teacher,” writes Palmer of the spiritual life, “...and we all need other people.”

Months ago, Lynn Batcher scanned the Book Corner shelves for a book to guide her morning devotions. She recalled Lent 2009. She had liked the 40-day format of writings, scripture, and questions to ponder. She was familiar with Palmer: A teacher at heart, a widely-published author, a Quaker who has influenced the American spiritual landscape.

Lynn started reading, day by day. As she read, she journaled her reflections. “I journal a lot,” says Lynn. “For me, it’s the way I pray. I’ve always been someone who needs to write things down to learn them or to make things real. My journal is really my prayer book. If I start writing, it turns into a prayer, and it almost always ends in ‘Amen.’”

Parker Palmer became a trusted companion for Lynn at an “unsettling” time in her life. The director of pastoral care at Trinity Medical Center, she is approaching retirement.

It was Palmer’s consideration of “soul and role” that particularly resonated with Lynn. Other readers may be drawn to quite different aspects of what Parker calls a “hidden wholeness.”

In June, Lynn will walk away from her role at Trinity. “When I realize I’m not a chaplain any more, I will grieve it. Yet I know it’s time to do this.”

Ministry “has been the most authentic, most real way to be with people,” she says. When she “sits with someone who has a new cancer diagnosis or who has had a baby, I can represent something above and beyond whatever is going on in their lives. It’s an opportunity to communicate something of who God is. There is no greater gift or privilege.”

Lynn has listened to so many stories. “Soul-to-soul encounters,” she calls them. She has witnessed people, in the most dire circumstances, call on the resources of faith. “Even in terrible times, people are able to express how blessed they are.”

And now what’s in store for Lynn? How will she understand “soul and role” in retirement?

“Throughout our faith journey, we wonder who the person is who God created me to be,” she muses. “We ask, how much of what I have become is not consistent with that? What is God calling me to do now? More importantly, to be now?”

With Parker Palmer as her morning guide, Lynn “looked back to painful mistakes” in her life, “to things I wish I’d never done.” Yet she found mercy. “What hit me is that the real soul that God created is precious in God’s sight.”

Soon Lynn will step into Lent 2010, knowing that this person of faith named Parker has already made an impact on her. During this transition in her life, Lynn will bring to the Lenten journey her “anticipation, fear, restlessness, and, over everything, gratitude.”

In a small group, she’ll join other St. Paul people, each on their own soul journey. “It’s a chance to open up some possibilities and to recognize that the soul of each of us is good, is precious, is loved,” she says.

And along the way, perhaps “something about our true selves will emerge, so we can know what God is calling us to do in the world.”

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"We read the word so that the word can become flesh and have a whole new life in us." ~Henry Nouwen, priest and author