Becca Stevens - Practically Divine

These are the moving stories of broken women and wounded communities healed by the immense power of practical love. No one knows more about redemption than author, pastor, activist, and speaker Becca Stevens. Having herself experienced the trauma of sexual abuse, poverty, and death, Becca has spent decades working for and with women survivors. Its a life spent in unconditional service and joyful faith. Practically Divine is a prayer book, a manual for living with an open heart.

Isabel Allende,
activist and bestselling author

I have a prediction, or rather three predictions. If you read this book, you will: (1) See the power of love in a whole new light. (The real thing, not the Huey Lewis and the News song, though they are both excellent.) (2) You will think, I bet I would be great friends with Becca Stevens! (3) You will visit Thistle Farms and volunteer as fast as you can. How do I know? Because thats what happened to me and dozens of other people Ive taken on field trips to this special part of Nashville. Book your flight before you crack this book open, because once you start reading, its going to be hard to ignore the practically divine.

Jon Acuff,
New York Times bestselling author of Soundtracks:
The Surprising Solution to Overthinking

This extraordinary book just might be Becca Stevenss best... and that is saying a lot! Like the healing oils from her famous Thistle Farms, Practically Divine is gentle, powerful and, yes, very practical indeed. Open these pages and prepare to experience the practice of love, a balm for your soul.

The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry,
Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church and author of
Love Is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times

Beccas experience in building community while creating a justice enterprise make her the perfect guide to lead us down a path toward discovering our own impact. With Practically Divine, she writes exquisitely about the stories of women who have overcome and risen up while weaving in her own mothers sayings with both wisdom and humor. Along the way, she brings her reader into a grounded awareness of the wisdom we each carry within us.

Jessica Honegger,
founder of Noonday Collection and
author of Imperfect Courage

Copyright 2021 by Becca Stevens

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Harper Horizon, an imprint of HarperCollins Focus LLC.

Any internet addresses, phone numbers, or company or product information printed in this book are offered as a resource and are not intended in any way to be or to imply an endorsement by Harper Horizon, nor does Harper Horizon vouch for the existence, content, or services of these sites, phone numbers, companies, or products beyond the life of this book.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan, www.zondervan.com. All rights reserved worldwide. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

This is a work of nonfiction. The events and experiences detailed herein are all true and have been faithfully rendered as remembered by the author, to the best of her ability. Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

ISBN 978-0-7852-4175-1 (eBook)

ISBN 978-0-7852-4174-4 (HC)

Epub Edition July 2021 9780785241751

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021930940

Printed in the United States of America

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I dedicate this book to my siblings, who came through

our childhood with humor, compassion, and the ability to

snap out of it long enough to do the real healing work.

Katie Ruth (RIP),

Sandra Lynn,

Pamela Jean,

and Gladstone Hudson

I love that we carry on Moms work in our stories,

our work, and through our children.

To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON,
Essays, First Series

STANDING IN A GERANIUM field, smelling the dark soil fertilized by rabbit poop, is different from reading about the healing properties of geraniums. Walking beside a woman in a refugee camp holding a rag over her babys face because so much dust rises from the dry, red dirt is different from imagining how hard it is for moms in camps. Experience is nine-tenths of love. The senses of the beholder transform information into compassionate experiences that are holy.

Too much ink is spent on trying to perfect an ideal of love, which is wholly impractical since love is revealed through experience. We learn about loves many facets, including humility, mercy, forgiveness, joy, and grief, through experience. The experiences of the practically divine shared in this book come from love stories I have picked up, like sacred bread crumbs, in which divine love can be seen, tasted, and smelled right in the midst of extraordinarily ordinaryand sometimes extraordinarily horrificdays.

Stories and experiences ground the idea of the practically divine and offer a way for us to glimpse how we all are practically divine and in the presence of great love. Those experiences can sometimes be scary and lonely, but they also leave us knee-bucklingly grateful. In the stories scattered throughout the book, I am sharing the moments I was able to recognize the divine love that was present through it all. Such a recognition can be wildly freeing and creative.

MY MOTHER WAS a great inspiration to me. When I was five, my father was killed by a drunk driver, and my mother was left to care for five young children. Despite being poor and alone, she served as a powerful example of how to find the divine love surrounding us, by tending to practical needs through arts and crafts and in her wise sayings:

Come to find out...

Three moves...

God is lovedont worry about the rest.

Her sayings didnt feel like platitudes but practical bits of knowledge that could keep us going. Some were antiquated, so they kind of lost their punch, like This whole thing is a shambles, since most of us dont know what a shambles is (think mess or wreckage). You will grow up to be a neer-do-well, meant to be a threatening statement to all the kids draped over furniture watching TV, to get us off our butts and help. Her sayings rise in me like fragrance from a lavender sachet tucked away in a drawer. As the drawer is cracked open, all of a sudden you are awash in a scent that stirs your heart. I can still hear her voice, fresh and present like those old lavender buds, thirty years after her death.

My mothers example of showing love through practical means gave me the wherewithal to open a home for women survivors of trafficking, prostitution, and addiction more than twenty-five years ago in Nashville, Tennessee. It was a small house for five women. I said: Come live free for two years with no authority living with you. Live free. I did it because I figured thats what I would want if I were coming in off the streets or out of prison, where people were telling me what to do all day. I didnt do it because of my mom or because of the childhood sexual abuse I experienced at the hands of a church elder, though all of that was a part of it. I did it because sanctuary is the most practical ideal of all.