Angie Arendt

I've been a preacher, teacher, mentor and community creator for more than three decades--creatively getting people to pause and pay attention to the sacred stuff under their noses, connecting with each other as they do. These days, I mostly get people of all kinds to gather around tables (online and/or in person) to wonder about God and Good and what it is to be human and practice the kinds of things that inject a bit more reverence into relationships and communities and places people work. Reverence, I figure, leads to all kinds of other things: blessing, grace, forgiveness, curiosity, awe, wonder. I'm not just rooted in the Christian tradition (ordained minister here) but in the old-school philosophy of the Enneagram as a practice for spiritual growth (have been teaching that system for twenty five years) and in the teachings of folks like Parker Palmer, Richard Rohr, Anne Lamott and Natalie Goldberg--all of whom have been helpful in my own practice of slowing down and paying attention to the sacred stuff under my nose. I'm curious about ritual these days: as people become less and less church-involved, how do we do funerals and weddings and other rites of passage in ways that are grounded in The Bigger Picture, provide a place to both grieve and celebrate? Grief matters.