Transcript: Addressing the Deep Longings of Your Heart Makes You an Effective Leader // Jeff Crosby, ECPA

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“Addressing the Deep Longings of Your Heart Makes You an Effective Leader

May 29, 2023

Jeff Crosby

Intro: A wise man once said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Yes, I believe self-awareness is important for a leader who claims to be a Christ follower. But how do you build self-awareness? This week, our guest is an accomplished Christian leader and the author of a book that will help you understand your deepest longings.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hello, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the book Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being. In fact, I’m thrilled to announce my book is a finalist in the Christian Book Awards for the category of Ministry Resources. And I'm passionate about helping Christian leaders create engaged, flourishing workplaces. And thanks for joining us today.

As a Christian leader, to thrive, you need to be filled up spiritually. And while you are pouring yourself into your team you lead and helping others flourish, you may be withering if you're not attending to your own soul. And so today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, we'll learn from a seasoned leader who has taken the time to listen to the longings of his soul. He's learned to respond to God and to be filled. And so make today's podcast also be a step in discerning your own longings and in being filled.

I'm delighted to welcome Jeff Crosby to the podcast today. Jeff is an organizational leader in the world of words, ideas, and book publishing. Currently, he's the President and the CEO of ECPA, the trade association of Christian publishing. He also serves in various roles and has served in various roles, including InterVarsity Press and Ingram Book Company.

Jeff has been on the podcast before, bringing us leadership insights from his years of experience in the publishing industry. And today I've invited Jeff to share in a more personal topic: his newly released book, The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts. It's an area important to all of us as followers of Jesus, especially when we hear reports of how depleted and weary many Christian leaders are in this season.

Jeff, welcome back to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast.

Jeff Crosby: Thanks, Al. It's great to be back with you.

Al: Hey, Jeff, now that you've settled into your new role as the president of the ECPA, the Evangelical Christian Publishing Association, are there any new trends that you're seeing in the space of Christian publishing? And what are some of the biggest changes over the past couple of years since you've been there?

Jeff: Yeah. Two things immediately come to mind, Al, in the span of two years I've been in this trade-association role. The first thing is the incredible prevalence of remote workers in Christian publishing. Before, it was the exception, and now it's virtually the rule that employees are working all or large parts of their time from remote locations. New employees are being hired with no expectation of a move to corporate offices, and existing employees are able to port their work to a new location across the country or even other parts of the world if their families choose to move there. So I think it has brought a great benefit in hiring talent and also retaining great talent. But it brings significant challenges to building a flourishing, connected culture.

And then, the second major change in the past two years is what seems to be a sudden proliferation of generative artificial intelligence, a technology that is now used to create content without the benefit of an author, an editor, a proofreader, a copy editor, in the long-cherished, long-held sense of that in publishing. And it seems like it is sudden, but this has been going on underneath, behind the scenes, for quite some time. In other industries we’re further ahead of publishing. But it's just with ChatGPT is the technology that has really, for publishing or for content creation, has really brought it to the fore. Our ethical dilemmas and even copyright challenges arising out of that are significant. American copyright law is really connected to human persons. Will it apply to generative AI? That's one of a myriad of questions that are emerging.

So those are the two that really come to my mind. There certainly are others, but those are the biggest.

Al: Yeah. As I think about our listeners and the sectors that they're in, you know, clearly yours is the one that ChatGPT and AI is affecting almost immediately. Every year I talk about the trends of workplace cultures and the remote-worker concept, your first point, you know, is one that clearly has been on the forefront, really, since COVID. But yeah, this ChatGPT, AI, and particularly around content, you know, and I've played with it as many, I know, of our listeners are checking into it. And wow, as you say, from an editor's perspective, you know, what's real and what isn't? Yeah.

Well, you know, Jeff, you've been in publishing, I know, for many years. We've worked together for many years, and you've written numerous articles, you've edited a compilation work, but this isn’t the first book that you've authored, and it's a deeply personal work. So tell us a little more about it. You know, how is it to sit on the author's side of the equation? You know, what felt familiar? What was all new territory?

Jeff: Yeah. You're right, Al. The Language of the Soul is a deeply personal work, and it's brought a sense of vulnerability, if I'm honest with you, the closer that it has gotten to the launch date, which is just a few days off, particularly the chapters on longing for freedom from fear and anxiety and the chapter on forgiveness. As I wrote both of those, I can tell you there were moments when I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to move forward. I was just going to have to find a couple of different subjects that were less personal, that felt less vulnerable. But at the same time, I believe that those two were longings that, if not universal, are nearly so, and I just needed to lean into it and do the work that would give life to the word.

I can tell you, and it probably won't surprise you because you've known me for a number of years, I'm much more comfortable being on the publisher side of the desk. At the same time, I believe that more than 15 years ago I was prompted to write this book. You know, 15 is probably not even—it goes back further than that, but I began journaling and putting words down on paper about 15 years ago. And I allowed it to gestate for a long time before I turned it into a book proposal. I used the time to refine my thinking and my words. At some point it was simply time to let it go. And so with some reluctance, I shared it with a number of publishers, and a few said they were interested in doing it.

So I knew what to expect in terms of the editing process and also the marketing process. That is a benefit that a lot of authors, perhaps even yourself with the Road to Flourishing, it was a little more of a mystery to you. It's not to me because both of those aspects are quite familiar. What is new is to be talking about myself and the content I've written. I like to be a bit in the background, even in the executive roles at IVP, and Ingram before that. But with this project and two others that are being written now, it's important that I step forward and share the message when I'm asked to and when my publisher or I are able to create opportunities.

So it's been fun to see the early responses and the early opportunities. And I think I have very realistic expectations from having been involved in publishing for so long, and that helps me. I don't have a lot of anxiety about, is this book going to reach anyone? It will reach those it reaches, and I just pray that it will be of help to all who do.

Al: Well, I'll never forget sending a proposal to you on the Road to Flourishing, and it makes me smile now that you've been on the other side.

Well, you know, Jeff, the soul work that you invite us to do in your book is deep and may involve pushing past some barriers for some of us. And you've already identified, you know, for you there were some barriers around forgiveness and freedom from anxiety, amongst other things. But the central idea of your book is the longings of our souls, and I love just the concept of it. And you introduce the concept of longing through a Portuguese word. It's first time I've heard of this word, and that's a little difficult to translate, but share with us how you embraced saudade—I think that’s how you would say it—as a way to start exploring this idea of longing that is common to humanity, but it’s hard to define.

Jeff: Yeah. Glad you asked about that word, Al, because it's really foundational to the entire exploration in the book. As you said, saudade is a Portuguese word. It's been called an untranslatable emotion; that is, there’s no precise English equivalent. And it came to me years and years ago through jazz and bossa nova music. I have worked in the world of words, of books, all of my adult life, but I consider music the language of my soul. And I would see these artists such as Joao Gilberto and Ivan Lins and Oscar Castro-Neves and many others, Stan Getz and Yo-Yo Ma, mostly music arising out of or in tribute to the country of Brazil. And they would use that word. And I just, I love new words. I can't just read over them, or if I see them on a compact disc or a vinyl LP, I “What is that?” And so I began to research. It even goes back to pre-Google days, so the mid ‘90s, I suppose, going to libraries and reading journals and things and trying to sort out, what is this word that is so common in jazz and bossa nova music? And so through the process of reading and reflecting and journaling and eventually writing, I connected saudade to the notion of holy longing, longings that are resident in our hearts and our minds and our souls that we as human persons carry with us and which are drivers in our lives, whether we're conscious of them or not.

And one of the people—Al, I don't know if you've met a gentleman at IVP named Joaquim Fragoso, but he has certainly taken part in the Best Christian Workplaces Survey for a number of years at IVP, and he is from a city in Brazil. And one day, as I was doing some of the early writing on this, I said, “Joaquim, I want to say a word to you, and I want to know, what does it mean to you?” I said, “Saudade.” And, Al, tears just filled his eyes. And he said, “You know that word, Jeff? You know that word. That's a very important word.” And he was one of the first people who knew that I was working on this. And we had tremendous back and forth about the word, about what it means to Portuguese-speaking men and women in Brazil and in Portugal. And so it was really Joaquim, who is acknowledged in the book, and I write of him in the introduction, who sort of propelled this whole project along.

I think that music for many of us, including the prompts that kind of reflection, that that word, sing that word, saudade, on all those records and CDs, it triggers an awareness of longings. And so I named ten in the book, beginning with the longing for home and ending with the longing for heaven, which is what I think of as our hearts’ true home. So it's a very important word being talked about a lot more today than in the first 15 or 20 years that I was exploring it.

Al: Well, there's certainly a time in my life where I thought most of my emotions were untranslatable, Jeff. And as I've grown older, hopefully, maybe a little wiser, you know, I've been able to identify and translate some of those emotions. But, boy, I can certainly relate, for sure.

You know, you structure the book around longings that you've identified in your own life, and yet many, if not all of them, are common to our own human experience. I know as our listeners will read the book, you know, they'll identify with them. So, you know, we don't really have time, I'm afraid, to go through all ten of the longings in this podcast. And you've grouped them into three categories, which I find also very helpful: interior longings, exterior longings, and eternal longings. And being children of God in the image of God, I know we have eternal longings, absolutely. So let's start with one of the interior longings, the longing for the undivided life. That's something that, you know, I've been searching for, trying to implement, for sure. So many of our listeners might recognize, you know, this is one of their own longings, and as they balance their public lives, their public leadership, their personal lives, and all of the different spheres that tug at their being. So share with us about this longing—I can't wait to hear your thoughts on it—and give us some insight as to how we can live as whole people rather than, you know, people that are divided into different spheres.

Jeff: Yeah. I do think that especially people, like, probably many, if not most, of your listeners who live and lead and work in visible or onstage roles, if you like, such as I have and you have, we do long to bring a congruity between who we are as people in that context—where we're up in front. We're leading. You know, we have visible roles—and then who we are in the totality of our lives. But many of us, perhaps especially those of us thrust into more public roles in an early age, grapple with what psychologists call the fraud syndrome, the idea that if they only knew the real me, if they only knew my questions, I would likely not be here. And there is a fine dance for leaders between appropriate disclosure and vulnerability and its opposite. And if we don't do that dance well, we come to lead divided lives.

The writer Parker Palmer has been particularly helpful to me in this area. In his book A Hidden Wholeness, he says, “We arrive in the world undivided, integral, whole. But sooner or later, we erect a wall between our inner and outer lives, trying to protect what is within us or to deceive the people around us. Only when the pain of our dividedness becomes more than we can bear do most of us embark on an inner journey toward living divided no more.”

So how can we move toward that undivided life? I think the answers are likely as unique as the number of listeners that you have, Al. But I believe spending time in silence and reflection. Ruth Haley Barton, an IVP author, instructed me very early in my work there that silence is really the seedbed of all of the other Christian disciplines. And so spending time in silence and reflection. Regular spiritual retreats. I did one with Parker Palmer, where the 20 of us who were engaged with him at a retreat center in Wisconsin could really lean into these thoughts. I think journaling is, for me, one of the ways that we can be in touch with this journey toward an undivided life. Spiritual friendships with no-holds-barred conversation. And at times a wise counselor or a spiritual director, I think are wise to pursue.

My hope for readers of The Language of the Soul is that they can be in touch with the longing for an undivided life and perhaps accelerate their journeys toward living divided no more through the reflection that this brings, the questions that are in the back, either for individuals or groups to study together. That's my hope, but then a longing for an undivided life. Whole books are written on this, so one short chapter, I would say, it’s just kind of scratching the surface, and if any of your listeners read that and want more, there certainly are a number of books, including A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer, that would help you go even deeper.

Al: Yeah. I love this, and it's really important to me. I've really implemented silence, reflection, journaling. All of those have really been helpful for me as I try to live a whole life and be a whole person, and so that everybody that I see and work and know see me as the same person. It's just too difficult to have more than one persona for me, that's for sure. Yeah.

Well, you know, another area that many leaders resonate with is the difficulty in forming deep and meaningful friendships—soul friends, as you describe it—not just acquaintances. And you say in your chapter, the longing for friendship, and I think every leader can say, “Oh, yeah.” They feel it in their heart, even as I say it perhaps, longing for friendship. We're living in a day that's hyper connected through social media, but our lives are often marked with loneliness. And especially for leaders known this, it gets lonelier as you move higher in an organization, perhaps. I don't necessarily always agree with that, but that's what people describe. So help us understand this longing for friendship and how God might meet us there.

Jeff: Yeah. Well, I'll start with what you just said about you're not sure if you agree that as leaders, you know, as they elevate to new, you know, new levels of responsibility in the organization, the loneliness follows. I would say, Al, that was my experience. Moving just one step from the head of sales and marketing to the publisher role, I was shocked by how quickly isolation happened and how quickly friendships or collegial working relationships changed. And so I think those five-plus years that I was in the top level executive role there were among the loneliest of my career.

And it was in that time that the pastor of the prairie that I write about in this chapter, “The Longing for Forgiveness,” that's when I met him. And we are the most unlikely spiritual friends that you will ever encounter. He is really tall and bald, and he's a country-music fan, and I am none of those things. You know, he lives out in the country, and I live in the suburbs. He drives a truck, and I drive a Honda Civic. We are just, we're radically different. And yet God met both of us in the midst of this spiritual friendship that came out of nowhere in the first year of my role as publisher.

I think that what it took, though, was a level of vulnerability, of transparency, totally getting off stage. And you know, we would each arrive at our meal. We meet along the old historic Route 66, in a little town in Illinois called Dwight. And there's a diner that has a Route 66 theme. And we would just come together. And it was sometimes one of us had more to sort of unburden and talk about, and the next time it might be the other person. And sometimes it was very evenly distributed conversation. And whichever way it went, that was and is because it's still ongoing just fine. And so I really look at that friendship as God meeting both of us in the midst of seasons of fairly radical change that brought about, you know, good things and also brought about some really challenging things.

And in the book, in that chapter in the book, I talk about the friendship of Henry Allen and Fred Rogers, you know, two much-more-public people than I or my pastor of the prairie, and the sustaining friendship between the two of them that really became in many ways a model. And they each wrote about the other. So all of that kind of dovetails together, just talking about the necessity of friendship. I don't know if friendship is harder for men than women. I've heard some say that's the case. I don't know if that's true or not. All I know is that for me it has been difficult to sustain and to nurture deep spiritual friendships without a great deal of intentionality. And so what emerged for me with J.K., the pastor of the prairie, was that and it is and I suspect until one of us passes on that is going to be the friendship of sustenance for me.

Al: Wow.

I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: Welcome back to my interview with Jeff Crosby, author of the book The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts.

You know, you're right, Jeff. And again, as leaders are listening to this, the higher you go and particularly in the top job, that's a lonely job, which when I say, “Well, I'm not sure is true,” well, it's true unless we do find another source of friendship. And that's the important thing that we should be doing, is developing friendships outside of the workplace, and even better, somebody that doesn't know us at all, perhaps. And Yeah. Well, that's a great story.

Well, you know, even as we discuss just two of these longings, I can see how the book can be one that you're going to read slowly and ponder and not rush through, a really contemplative type of an experience. But let's hit on one or more of the longings in an area related to our own Best Christian Workplace’s experience. I love the way you describe it: the longing for meaningful work. You know, in the book, we talk about life-giving work, and in many ways it's the same: the longing for meaningful work. And I know both of us have had the privilege of, you know, having and finding great meaning and purpose in our work, but it isn't automatic. So how do we effectively wrestle with these vocation questions? And here's the thing: for the leaders who are listening, you know, how do we allow space for community, for conversation, for discernment around meaningful work?

Jeff: One of the earliest influences, I think it was in 1987, that was owned and operated a bookstore, and I stumbled upon a book by Ben Patterson. It was called The Grand Essentials. Ben, whose subsequent books, some of them I would publish at IVP. He quoted a great Scottish clergyman and social reformer. His name was Thomas Chalmers, who said, “The grand essentials of happiness are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” That book and that Chalmers quote really stuck with me from my earliest days of work as an adult professional. Something to do, so work that is meaningful. Something to love, in Chalmers’ case, he was speaking principally about loving God and loving others as ourselves. And then, something to hope for, the sustaining power of hope that all that we do, all that we do, matters. And in the context of the book as a whole, Patterson tutored me on the relationship between worship and work, that our hearts are tutored in worship so that we can go out into where we spend so much of our time and live out the hope and the meaning of our lives.

And I think somewhere in the chapter on longing for meaningful work, I wrote that whether we're young or old or something between, being open to new visions of our occupations, our vocation is renewing. And I have just seen that in my own life throughout the 40-year career of work with books. And my long association with you and Best Christian Workplaces has taught me that employee engagement is a seedbed to creating flourishing organizations. And as I think leaders who can pay attention to that, employee-engagement ingredients that you talk about in Road to Flourishing, like life-giving work and growth and communication; a clearly articulated vision of strategy of where the organization is going, where it's at now, where it's going; I think those elements, I am with you and BCWI. And creating an environment where employees can derive great meaning and joy in their work, it doesn't just happen, you know, to everyone. It doesn't happen without a lot of intentionality.

One of the things that I have seen probably fertilize and water this the most is attention to mentoring relationships within the organization or through a trade association such as the one I work for. Virtually every industry has one. I think mentoring relationships is a key element in cultivating a sense of meaning, particularly, but not only, in the work of younger people. For nearly four decades now, God has met me in this longing for meaningful work. I have never really had a time when I didn't see what I do as having meaning. But I have been around lots of people who lament the way they spend their days. And Annie Dillard's quote that, you know, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. And you just want to kind of grab a hold of folks and say, you know, “Your work can, no matter what you're doing, it can have intrinsic meaning.” And so I've seen the ways in which my work with words, principally others’ words, has had an impact on the lives of other people who engage with ideas. And that has just brought a great deal of meaning.

So some of those areas of focus that you talk about in your book and in the work of your organization, I think are how we can stimulate meaningful work in the lives of our employees.

Al: What you're saying, Jeff, you're seeing positive change in others as a result of what you're doing. You know, and going back to that, something that you do, something you love, something you hope for, and you know, “the hope for” is a vision for the future, yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Meaningful work. Wow.

Well, Jeff, you’ve written—well, you're a word person. You just said that. And you spent your career helping others to share meaningful words. But I know that music is another important means of communication for you. You've mentioned that earlier. You've compiled a playlist—that's interesting—a playlist that comes with the book for the longings that you've included. Talk about how you've grown through using music to access different types of the language of the soul, and how can music help our spiritual formation. I think for many of us in Christian leadership, Christians that are in leadership, how can music help our spiritual formation and access areas beyond the intellectual to the whole person?

Jeff: One of the most significant gifts my late father ever gave me was a guitar and a songbook, I was in the fifth or sixth grade—I can't remember. It was one or the other—and I was a sickly child. And during one extended convalescence, when I couldn't attend school, he brought home this little red and white kid-size electric guitar and an amplifier for me, with a songbook of popular songs of the day, like Cat Stevens and James Taylor, Carole King and Kris Kristofferson. I still have—I don't have the guitar anymore, but I still have the songbook. And I taught myself the rudiments of guitar as a teenager, using that instrument and the songbook. As a teenager, I began to set words to chord progressions on the guitar, and I'm sure if I pulled that folder of songs out that I still have, I would be aghast at how bad they were. But even then, as feeble as my efforts were at songwriting, I believe I was in touch with music being a key element of my make up, a key element of how I came to see the world and made sense of things around me, how I could express my thoughts and my feelings. And I know I'm not alone in that. Corporate worship through hymnody in my local church opens up the reality of Christ's presence in a way that is different from other aspects of worship, like preaching, teaching, communion, the liturgy. It can prompt reflection and memory, emotion and longing.

Indeed, long before I came to know there was such a thing as Christian publishing beyond the Bible, I encountered messages of hope and healing and wonder through music. And as you say, many of the songs that have been most formational for me, not all of which would be seen as Christian—in fact, many of them are not, and yet they pointed me, as someone who didn't begin attending church until my late teens, they were pointers to me of God's general revelation through many of the songs that you'll see there. And so I think that music just kind of, it dives to a deeper place in our hearts and our souls than merely words on a printed page. And it is not at all uncommon in worship. I write about a song that I encountered in the first year of worship at the church that Cindy and I attend now called “Good Soil.” You know, “Lord, let my heart be good soil, open to the seed of Your Word.” I'd never heard this hymn before. And when we sang it that day, I just, I found myself with eyes that were filled with tears. It just touched a very deep place. And so music does that for many of us, probably not all, but it was something I wanted to kind of bridge the two things: the study, the research, the writing, and then offer both in the playlist and in the text itself, some songs that have been particularly meaningful to me.

Al: Yeah. Jeff, you’re making me reminisce a little bit here. Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Carole King, “Morning Has Broken,” “Fire and Rain,” those deeply cause you to think and be in touch with your emotions, no question. Yeah. Love it.

Well, you know, clearly this book is not a checklist to work through for spiritual formation. Feels more like an invitation to a journey, to be on a path. But what mindset does a reader need to make the most of this journey? What cautions or maybe even encouragements would you share with our listeners? It seems like this inward journey isn't necessarily linear, but can uncover some painful longings even, along the way in our lives that may not be resolved. So tell us a little bit. What are your thoughts?

Jeff: Yeah. Well, the writing of it certainly uncovered some painful longings, and the reading of it may as well. I've heard that from a few of the early readers that have reached out to me. But I hope that it will also uncover some memories, some thoughts about the ways in which God has met the reader in the midst of those longings, that on the journey that you just spoke of, they have not been alone, and God has been with them. I don't presume to think that the ten longings that I press into in these pages are the precise saudades that the readers will carry with them. I do suspect that some will overlap and that the ways in which God meets us all in them will be unique. You're right, Al. It's not a linear journey. It's not a step one, step two, step three kind of pattern. But as each of us make time to be connected to our longings, as we ask ourselves, “Am I moving closer to the heart of God, or am I being taken further away in the midst of these longings?” I think that being attentive to that is really all I can hope for in terms of a prompt out of reading the book.

There’s a writer I’ve really appreciated his work for many years, and his name is Ronald Rolheiser. He says beautifully in his book The Holy Longing, “Spirituality is ultimately about what we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope that they bring us.” So longings for home or for peace or spiritual transformation or forgiveness, there may be both pain as well as hope and joy in the midst of those. And I think that always, in terms of cautions, you asked about cautions, always take, you know, what we unearth in the process back to Scripture, back to the wise counsel of friends, you know, what do we understand to be to be true and right and beautiful? And we'll all, if we do that, we'll be okay in this non-linear journey.

Al: Yeah. Causes me to think, Jeff, the importance and leadership of self-awareness. And by understanding, you know, going through kind of discovering some of these deep longings in our heart, we learn about ourselves, makes us so much more effective as a leader and more whole. I think, again, of a quote I've often heard on this podcast and has used it myself that we can only give what we have. And what you're saying, and what I'm really feeling is you're helping to have us build who we are and increase our self-awareness, understand these longings that we might not have otherwise understood so that we can be in a position, really, to even be able to give more because we are more as we discover this. Wow.

This has really been a great conversation, even just looking back as we talk about even changes that you've seen in publishing, some things that we're seeing really in each of our sectors. And as you’ve really identified some of these key issues around forgiveness, freedom from anxiety, how these help us to understand these longings. We learned a new word: saudade, untranslatable emotions, which for much of my life, most of my emotions were that way. So that was really revealing. How we have a longing for an undivided life, how we have longings for friendships, and how we have longings for meaningful work. And how music really can be such a—I just love, “Let my heart be good soil.” Yeah. So we've just uncovered such great things here.

Is there anything you'd like to add that we've talked about, Jeff?

Jeff: Yeah. I think, you know, as we close, Al, I'm just grateful for the work of your organization and also the way that you have elevated a variety of voices, speaking about a lot of different topics through your podcast. So thank you. It's work very, very well done and meaningful to me.

Secondly, I would just say that to the leaders who are listening here, you know, leaders who are flourishing and who are, as you said a moment ago, self-aware, who are in touch with their longings, you all have a greater chance to create flourishing workplaces and teams and departments to the extent that you yourself are in that place. So I encourage you to, you know, schedule time to be attentive to the stirrings of your own soul, schedule time to be attentive to reading, to listening, and to cultivating spiritual friendships. And I pray that this small work will nudge people in that direction. So thank you for having me.

Al: Absolutely, Jeff.

And as we wrap up, I'm wondering if you could speak a blessing over our listeners. This has been a unique time of delving into the longings of our souls. And at the conclusion of your book, you share a blessing called “For Longing” by John O'Donohue. Can you share that with us?

Jeff: I would be happy to. It's been a deeply meaningful blessing for me, and it's drawn from a book titled To Bless the Space Between Us, in the U.S. edition; Benedictus in the U. K edition. It's one I took with me to an ancient monastic community called Glendalough, in County Wicklow, Ireland. It's where I first encountered it. So here is the blessing “For Longing” from John O'Donohue.

“Blessed be the longing that brought you here and quickens your soul with wonder. May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe. May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease, to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take. May the forms of your belongin— in love, creativity, and friendship—be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul. May the one you long for long for you. May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire. May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling. May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world. May your heart never be haunted by ghost structures of old damage. May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency. May you know that urgency with which God longs for you.” Amen.

Al: Yeah.

Well, Jeff, thanks so much for your contributions today. This has been a unique and really very positive time. You know, most of all, I appreciate your commitment not only to excellence in leadership, and I know you're committed to that, but also the authenticity in your spiritual faith as you've shared honestly about your decades of journeying with God. So thanks for taking your time out today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners.

And for those of you listening, this is a reminder that the title of Jeff's book is Language of the Soul, and it's available through your favorite booksellers.

Jeff: Thanks for having me, Al. It's a joy to spend time with you.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al: And be sure to join us next week as I talk with Laura Gardner, the president of Joni and Friends, about the impact of organizational culture on ministry effectiveness.