Amy Cavalleri
Our faith calls us to love God and love each other. But does our ritual of Sunday morning church services or Wednesday evening Bible Study respond to that call?
Certainly there is value in the weekly gathering, reading of scripture, receiving the sacrament, and sharing donuts and casual chats with our friends at coffee hour.
But God invites us to go deeper. Vulnerability is at the heart of love. Love for ourselves. Love for God. Love for each other. Without introspection, pause, quiet, sharing, and making space for the myriad of human emotions, our faith, and our human experience, become robotic routines.
Thriving Leadership Formation invites us to go deep, get beyond the pleasant chit-chat about the weather, and truly know God, understand ourselves, and see others.
In a TLF small group, we don’t read scripture. We dive in, head first, sit in the unknown and continue to ask all of our questions until our minds are quiet. We sit with the answers, and the nagging questions that remain unanswered, and notice how the Spirit moves us through this sacred text.
We don’t pray. We wrestle with anger, frustration, sadness, and loneliness. We struggle with how to allow those challenging emotions to co-exist with joy, gratitude, and excitement. We look to God for answers and listen intently for His response.
We don’t small talk. We ask probing questions. We squirm thorough giving our answers and listening as others share their responses. We see each other in a new light and get comfortable with the strength of silence as our superpower, releasing the need to fix or advise.
What does this have to do with love? Everything.
What does this have to do with faith? A whole lot.
Proximity breeds understanding and empathy. To know and love another, as God calls us to do, we must get close. We must pause and see each other clearly. We must recognize and embrace the divine in ourselves, in each other and in our midst.
A TLF small group offers an intentional pause to focus on spiritual practices. The space encourages us to be curious, attentive and fully human, warts and all. Together the group leans into life, faith, and scripture and emerges with renewed gratitude and a deeper capacity to love God and all He has created.
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Amy served as a TLF Cohort Leader in 2023/24. Amy resides in Northern California, is a mom of 2, and works in the non-profit field that allows her to support impactful work around the world, including women’s empowerment organizations in Nepal and wilderness adventure programming in the Trinity Alps. She is a Master Trainer for suicide intervention with Living Works and a Certified Group Facilitator with the Center for Mind Body Medicine.
