Beauty Refreshers features those who inspire me and give me and others hope. Charlotte, who is based in Birmingham, is a writer, spiritual director, and gatherer who cultivates sanctuaries of exploration, acceptance, and connection.
I asked her, "What do you want to give the world?"
Charlotte answers, "Because so many people feel alone and on the periphery, one thing I desire to give the world is a greater understanding of belonging.
All of my writing and spiritual direction work are ultimately concerned with the ways art and other good things help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world.
When I meet with my spiritual direction clients, some common topics of conversation include how to honor the impulse to write and make art, how to discern if there’s an overall movement towards freedom and away from oppression, and how to establish practices for spiritual growth and healing."
Her first book, The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other, was published by Broadleaf Books in 2020. She is currently writing a book about Spiritual Direction for Writers® which will be published by Eerdmans in 2025. Charlotte's essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing and a certificate in spiritual direction.
To learn more about Charlotte and her writing and work, visit charlottedonlon.com.
A New Offering: Spiritual Direction
What is a “spiritual director?”
A spiritual director (also called a spiritual companion) invites you into a safe space where you experience deep listening and insightful questions as you explore your faith journey. It is unlike counseling that deals with life problems and emotional healing. It is different from discipleship, mentoring, and coaching where the emphasis is on instruction, development, and goal setting. Spiritual direction focuses on the relationship between you and God and seeking the Holy Spirit together.
What led me to train to be a spiritual director?
In this season of life, the best gift I can give people is a safe place, an attentive ear, gentle questions, and prayer to allow them a space to process, struggle, and grow in their faith. I desire to be a “soul-tender” walking alongside people, helping them hear God’s voice and find their own.
What can you expect?
Spiritual direction begins with an introductory session to find out what I offer and if it will be a good fit for you. Sessions take place in a home-office setting or by video chat for about an hour, usually once a month. We will begin by quieting ourselves through a reading, prayer, or a moment of silence. The rest of the time is yours to explore, pray, wrestle, and rest. My role is to listen and help you hear from God. It may end with a prayer or a suggested exercise.
Why try spiritual direction?
“It is difficult to find a place where we can speak openly and honestly about our self-perception because we fear looking self-centered, unworthy, or inadequate. Trusted friends may try to ‘fix’ us or comfort us when really we need to address our thoughts by speaking out loud about them and by taking them into our prayer. Looking clearly at things in the presence of God brings clarity, health, and growth. Spiritual direction conversations provide a setting in which to do this.” Jeannette Bakke, Holy Invitations
Want to give it a try?
Email me at nancy@nancywcarroll.com or call or text me at 205-276-6848 to ask questions!
Put Yourself in the Path
Bill reserved a hotel room for April 7 in Fort Smith, Arkansas almost a year ago. Eight hours away. Because it was on the edge of The Path of Totality.
I wondered if that was a famous rock band.
No. It’s the last full solar eclipse in the United States until 2045. Hotels closer to us in “The Path” had already sold out. As a photographer, Bill started buying special filters, borrowing cameras and tripods, and researching f-stops and time lapses.
I wondered what there was to do and eat in Fort Smith.
We don’t usually plan anything that far in advance. But when you reach our age, if you’re going to do something, you can’t wait until the “next time,” especially if it’s 21 years away. I was glad Bill researched so I could just go along for the ride wearing an awkward shoulder wedge sling after shattering my shoulder.
Would 16 hours on the road, wounded and weary, be worth it?
People tried to describe the difference between being in a partial and total eclipse. Annie Dillard wrote, “Seeing a partial eclipse bears about the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane.”
I tried to stay open-minded.
On our way, we found a room in Little Rock. It cut off two hours of our drive. Other people on the hotel elevator whispered to us, “Are you here for the eclipse, too?”
So, maybe it really was a thing.
Bill figured out the best places in the area to see the eclipse. Two key factors: a wide view of the sky and access to bathrooms. The next morning, in a quiet park on the Arkansas River, Bill set up three cameras on tripods. At 9:30 a.m. there was one other car. The eclipse would begin about 12:30 p.m. and hit totality at 1:52 p.m.
By 1:30 p.m. it looked like a low-key SEC tailgate party.
Almost every parking space was filled. People set out camp chairs, cranked up music, and passed around snacks. Kids played tag. Parents scrolled on their phones.
Bill handed me mylar eclipse sunglasses (much better than the flimsy paper ones below). I put them on. The world went dark. I could see nothing except the sun. At 12:30 p.m. I noticed the slightest dent on the lower right side of the full circle of the sun. By 1 p.m. it looked like a pitted olive. At 1:30 p.m., a crescent moon. By 1:40, the sun looked like a thin toenail clipping.
But as I took off my glasses and looked around the park, everything appeared the same. The sun was that strong. If I didn’t know what was happening, I’d wonder why people were looking up at the sky in those weird glasses.
But then, at about 1:50, with more than 97 percent of the sun blocked, the light changed. It was like looking into a fish tank with an eerie green-gray thick algae glow. The street lamps popped on. The air cooled. The birds settled. The crickets chirped. The sky turned deep indigo blue. Cheers, gasps, and claps erupted in ripples up and down the riverbank. I took off my glasses, looked up, and nearly dropped to my knees.
My eyes welled with tears.
The moon won, sliding over the sun, and locking a lid on it. Then in a few seconds, I saw the perfect circle halo glow. Almost as quickly, the sun glinted out the other side, like a glittering diamond ring.
I looked around. Sunset glowed along the edges of every horizon. Burnt orange flames along the edges of the world with the rest of the sky a deepening cobalt blue bowl with a pulsating white ring at the top. (Here's a Facebook link to an image from Brandon Bodendorfer who recorded the 360-degree sunset.)
The drama only lasted 2.5 minutes.
Then the lights flipped back on. Street lamps turned off. Birds flew. Some people stood in a daze. Most started packing up. A woman next to us looked at her watch.
“We’d better go. The restaurants will be packed.”
All eclipse photos by Bill Carroll
We kept watching through our eclipse glasses as the moon slid off the sun for the next 45 minutes with the same half-moon shapes in the opposite direction. Then we packed the gear and drove home through hours of eclipse traffic all converging on the bridge over the Mississippi River in Memphis.
Had it been real?
We had the photos to prove it. If not, even though I had been there, I may have doubted it. My too-distracted life with its all-important to-do’s may have tried to check it off or box it in. I’m glad we made it an “event,” and we let ourselves pause and experience it.
It was worth it.
But it made me think. What other holy moments have I missed or dismissed? How can I let myself be awed by our supernatural universe? There’s not much time left to put myself in the path of wonder. Maybe I need to create an "awe-some" app to schedule and record those moments, especially the simple ones close by. Take wonder walks with my macro-lens camera. Clap at sunsets. Breathe in fresh basil. Relish every bite of warm chocolate chip cookies. Listen to baby giggles. Play with golden retrievers.
Don't wait until the next time.
When have you experienced a moment of awe or wonder that took your breath away or changed you? How will you put yourself in the path?
Recalibrating Practices: Live a Life of Wonder
My bucket list has shortened as the years go by. Maybe no marathon or New York Times best-seller. But hold me to this goal: I want to keep clapping until the very end. I never, never want to lose the sense of wonder.
We recently returned from a trip to Seabrook Island, SC, one of the three places in the world where dolphins “strand fish.” The mama dolphins teach their calves to herd fish and push them up on shore. I got to see it. I clapped and hugged strangers. (Yes, they backed away. Yes, I apologized.)
If I had to choose only one word from my acronym G.R.O.W.L (Gratitude, Resilience, Obedience, Wonder, Laughter), it would be wonder. Because I shiver when I consider what’s the opposite of wonder: boredom, cynicism, apathy, joylessness, weariness.
Wonder is a choice.
“Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!” Matthew 6:21-23 MSG
Wonder = Worship.
How can you make living a life of wonder a spiritual practice? Think of “wonder” as both a noun and verb.
Wonder as a noun: Live in wonder. Slow down, pay attention and observe the world around you. (At least once a day.) Clapping is optional but find your own way of saying “Wow!” back to God.
Wonder as a verb: Ask yourself (with a stress on curiosity, not doubt), “I wonder what God is doing here?” Breathe in a God bigger, more beautiful and better than you, whose ways are not your ways, whose timing is not your timing. Practice wonder-worship in all your waiting rooms. A wonder which embraces mystery and lives in the questions, not the answers.
In this midst of these dark and despairing days, Wendell Berry shows me how to practice wonder so I can “for a time I rest in the grace of the world.”
The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Pray that the gospel will never lose its wonder for you. Sing “And Can it Be?” and other hymns to remember the wonder of it all God has done for you through Jesus Christ. Scripture shouts of the wonder of God and his world.
“We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us. . . . He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.” Col 1:11-12, 18-20 MSG
Apostle Paul never lost the wonder that Christ saved him. It reminds me of this quote from John Newton, the former slaver and writer of the hymn, Amazing Grace. “Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.” I’ll be the one clapping as I follow Christ leading the Resurrection Parade.
(Photo credit: Bill Carroll)