Where are your feet? A conversation with Rev. Angie Mabry
“I’m looking down at my feet, and they are behind my desk where I am now, but my body is leaning forward, because I am getting ready to take the next step. I am in both places at once. This is a threshold.”
Retreat House Spirituality Center recently visited with Rev. Angie Mabry, a Presbyterian pastor and friend of our community. Mabry, along with Rev. Dr. Lil Smith, co-founder and director of Retreat House, will lead a time of personal visioning for 2022. Together, they’ll offer a two-and-a-half-day workshop Threshold Into the New Year, a time to celebrate and to seek freedom from experience in 2021, to listen to Source within for guiding words, and to create an image that will draw us to peace and light.
Mabry shared some of her sacred story with us which includes her desire for peace, quiet and solid ground. We feel inspired by her brave vulnerability and grateful for her offering to hold space for those seeking freedom and clarity.
Keep reading to discover more of what she has to say:
Retreat House: Why/how did you decide to host Threshold into the New Year?
Mabry: I decided to host the upcoming New Year’s event Threshold into the New Year at Retreat House out of an offering from Retreat House. I look at this as a giving back. Last New Year’s Eve, I was on my own.
Before the New Year came around, God had already given me a word last year – grounded. But I felt like I wanted more. I wanted to explore this word and what it meant for my life. I really wanted to spend good time in reflection.
I wanted to create a vision board for myself. To help prepare myself to create this, I spent time writing an Examen, and I spent a whole lot of time listening and quiet. Retreat House invited me to come as myself on New Year’s Eve.
Retreat House: I know the Examen was centric to your time last year at Retreat House on New Year’s Eve. Will you share some of what this format provided to you and for you?
Mabry: I gave myself permission to go to place where I could be honest with myself. I tried to not judge myself, my thoughts, my feelings. For me, being a party or a dance club in New Year’s Eves past, the noise of these atmospheres drowned out my own voices. It’s definitely more fun in the moment, eating, drinking, and being merry. But then, I would wake up the next morning feeling groggy, having a headache, and having to lay around all day to recover from the night before. Unknowingly, I began each new year stuck in the same patterns that kept me trapped and unhappy, with no new clear path forward.
My New Year’s Eve 2020 at Retreat House couldn’t have been a more stark difference. Me, all alone in the holy silence, with only God, the Examen, and the art supplies as my company. It was refreshingly welcome.
Retreat House: What type of questions does the Examen pose and how did it create such a rich space for you?
Mabry: The Examen I worked with last year provided guided questions that helped me reflect on the entire year. We will be doing that for participants in our New Year’s Eve Threshold into the New Year this year. Participants will be invited to reflect on their past day, month, quarter, year and even lifetime. What moments, situations, activities, relationships gave you life? What sucked the life out of you? Participants will be invited to consider these four elements when exploring these questions: God, others, creation and systems and structures. These questions are what prompted me to create my vision bord, and that’s my hope for folks who attend the workshop. We’ll have Retreat House set up in a way that allows participants to free flow with desire and to notice the Holy threads in their life. Each room will be open - art room, library, labyrinth as well as the spiritual direction rooms upstairs.
My vision board really ended up serving as an anchor throughout the year for me. Whenever I needed a reminder of my rule for life and my path forward, I could look at it.
“My time at RH last year on New Year’s Event set the tone for my year in such a powerful way. It definitely helped ground me, it helped ground me a lot.”
Retreat House: You’ve mentioned grounded a few times, and I love the word GROUNDED on your vision board. What does grounding mean to you?
Mabry: This goes back to when I was in seminary in 2003. We were required to do an intercultural immersion experience. I went to the Arizona/Mexican border and visited a church that was providing sanctuary. It was a bold move back then. We walked into the building, and the first thing that I noticed is that the worship space was in the was in the round. Immediately following I was keenly aware that we had to walk down to enter the space. The Lord’s Table was in the middle, in the lowest spot. “The building was designed and was built this way purposefully,” the pastor said. “Coming down to commune with God, staying connected to creation, within our own bodies, and to each other, as opposed to ascending up and escaping - it’s quite a different way than many western Christians are accustomed to,” pastor said. He explained that it was inspired by the native culture who first lived on the land and still considered it sacred. And these indigenous groups understood being in relationship with the divine through the land and all of nature.
Disney kind of nailed it from Pocahantas with the song lyrics listen for the colors of the wind. Hearing this pastor talk about God like this was really unique to me at that time. God was always up there. Up, up. up.
The idea of feeling closer to God by grounding really stuck with me. I have been active in yoga for a while but grounding and being connected to the earth is my language — God’s body as part of God’s creation.
There’s a poem by Rumi on my vision board:
“Be Ground
Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.
You've been stony for too many years.
Try something different.
Surrender.”
- Rumi
I think of a meat grinder. The idea of taking something solid to something you can get your hands in. It makes me think of taking meat and making meatloaf and meatballs. If you have been stony, then you are not able to be broken down and crumbled. You cannot be broken down and go through this process of transformation.
This idea of crumbling is significant, because soil allows for color and growth like flowers to pop through. That cannot happen if the ground is stony.
Retreat House: How do you hope your offering of Threshold into the New Year will offering grounding to those who attend?
Mabry: Three years ago, I experienced a time of desolation in my life. I will offer some intimate details of my story at the workshop. However, I will share that after this time, I was forced to pause and reflect on my own patterns. Part of me being at RH last year on New Year’s Eve was preparing me for my year of healing, of detoxing, in so many senses of the word.
Retreat House: What has detoxing meant to you?
Mabry: Detoxing to me means living intentionally to clear out all of the gunk. It encompasses self-awareness, purpose, spiritual practice, and internalizing God’s grace. God gave me a phrase for this next year (2022) let it go. My oldest daughter is 17 and graduating from high school. Time for her to fly on her own. My parents are aging. I need to accept where they are with their health. This is the natural part of human decay. Bodily decay. And I’ve got to let go. And I have a choice. Do I want to fight it and worry.? Would I like to have an attitude and acceptance?
“How can I find the sacred and holy in these moments? I can’t fight them.”
My youngest has had struggles of her own. I can control neither the situation nor the outcome. I’ve got to let it go. I’m an interim pastor, and my contract expires in June. I don’t know what God has for me, and the possibility unemployment terrifies me.
I’ve got to let it go.
I wouldn’t have been able to let go if I hadn’t grounded down and allowed God in. Part of the reason people are afraid to detox is because they haven’t allowed themselves to feel indwelling and connection with the divine.
Retreat House: What is your word for people?
Mabry: I was on a Zoom meeting, and one of the women was struggling with idea of a higher power God. She was having a hard time trusting and letting go. She said, “It is hard to let go, because what if God effs it up?” (except she didn’t say eff). Here I am a Christian pastor. And I’m like Yes!
I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I’ve hit rock bottom. When you hit rock bottom, you realize you can’t do it on your own. We need the Divine, and this is part of letting go.
“Because all of those distractions were not there, it was me and God, and the Holy Spirit. The creativity found in this grounded place, birthed the vision board and gave me the quiet I need to envision my next year.”
Retreat House: Why is the word threshold significant to this offering, this time of year and to you?
Mabry: Because I have never been good at liminal space. I started realizing the way I was living this life was all about the in between. I was not fully living because I was waiting until I GOT THERE.
I cannot wait until my daughters are walking…
Once Easter is through, I can finally……
I can finally breath once I get done with this counseling…
But with this way of living, I began to realize I wasn’t really living, I was holding my breath.
When I think of idea of threshold, I think of a door. I think of the outside and inside. For me, the threshold is represented by the door being open and me looking down. I’m able to see both sides. The grace of God and gift of Spirt or available to me at the same time.
A friend shared with me a phrase that has become foundational for me:
“Where are your feet?”
That’s to remind us that we are standing in today. Take one day at a time.
Mabry reminds us to stay present. Ask questions. What do you see, feel, what are you experiencing right now? Because right now is what we have.
When you are on a threshold, you have the ability to see both here and there. She invites us to welcome all, to listen, ponder and create, to invite the Spirit in so we might see what lies within and ahead.
Sign up! *
Thursday, December 30 from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. (Virtual and in-person spots available)
During this evening session we will review 2021, savor the life-giving moments, and begin the process of listening for a vision to step into 2022 with a guiding purpose.
*Those not able to attend Thursday evening will be able to do this step on Friday morning.
Friday, December 31 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (virtual and in-person spots available)
Retreat House is available to all participants: labyrinth, art room, library, private rooms for prayer, kitchen, coffee bar and snacks, essential oils, and more. You will be able to invite all of your senses to the experience. The expanse of time is an invitation for you to connect the feelings, words, and images in a vision board/rule of life that will be a conversation partner with you during the year.
At 5 p.m., there will be a time of sharing and blessing the visions.
Cost: $50 includes instructions and materials, lunch on Friday.
You do not have to attend the entire time. However, the guided instruction times will be Thursday 6 to 9 p.m. and Friday 9 a.m. to NOON.
*Retreat House is an interfaith community. This offering is open to people of all faiths and those of none.
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his interview and article was prepared and written by Emily Turner. She is a trained spiritual director and writer living in Dallas and works closely with Retreat House to tell the many sacred stories of this community. To connect with Emily and/or learn more about her work and ministry, go here.