RHYTHMS | PRAYER, PRACTICE, PLACE
Vol 3. Issue 20
Friends,
This issue focuses on how we work, with voices from our friends at Denver Institute. Included is a Prayer for the Beauty & Burden of Work, a Practice of Circles of Responsibility, and a Laundry Service as a sacred Place.
Denver Institute prepares people to serve God and others in their daily work so workplaces and cities are transformed. Their 5280 Fellowship restarts in January 2026, providing theology for work discussions, spiritual formation, and practices like the one included in this issue.
All blessings.
Jared Mackey
PRAYER | DIRT: A HYMN OF PRAISE
By Michelle Stinson
Glory be to God for Dirt—
For backyard soil
as dark and dense
as the midnight sky.
And for all the creatures
who make this ground
their earthy home—
the wiggly ones
and leggy ones
and the tiny ones
our eyes can’t see.
For muddy puddles
on neighborhood paths,
beckoning little feet
to jump and splash,
and little hands
to squish and form
hand-packed mud pies
(nature’s finest!)
for a friend.
For that Garden ground
first lovingly made,
now put to new use
when scooped up
in the Creator’s hands.
Dusty-earth made alive
with divine-breath.
Humus-formed humans,
crafted and blessed.
For dust you are
and to dust you will return.
And so, in the meantime . . .
May we learn to see and love
those creatures, small and great,
who inhabit our neighborhoods
as their earthy abodes.
May we be quick to share,
with neighbors (known or new)
our garden plenty
or just store-bought greens,
being ever astounded
by the gifts of sun and soil.
And on this dust-to-dust journey,
may our hubris
give way to humility,
remembering always
with gratitude and awe,
our humble beginnings
in this simple gift of dirt.
Amen.
Michelle Stinson finds herself delighting in this present season of writing, speaking, and getting her hands in the dirt. She regularly speaks and writes on food, hospitality, land care, and the Psalms. She is a trained Spiritual Director and a Visiting Scholar in Old Testament at Denver Seminary.
PRACTICE | CSA
By Margo Wanberg
“When you join a CSA, you agree to share in both the risks and the rewards of farming.”
Practice
Step 1: Identify a challenging situation where navigating relationships or decisions feels overwhelming.
Step 2: Draw three concentric circles on a piece of paper, labeling the inner one “Control,” the middle one “Influence,” and the outer circle “Concern.”
Step 3: Write down the details about this situation that belong in each of the three circles.
Step 4: Reflect on the appropriate and loving actions you can take given what is in your circles of control, influence, and concern.
My family and I joined Monroe Organic Farms’ CSA this past year. Each week, Monroe would drop off a handful of shares at a neighbor’s home and everyone would come by to pick up their share. Along with getting big bags of beautiful produce each week, I got to know the Monroe family more deeply, along with Mary Ann, my neighbor who sat in her garage for two hours every week distributing the shares.
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It’s a mutually beneficial partnership between farmers and consumers. By purchasing a share of the harvest in advance, members support the farm upfront and in return, receive regular portions of fresh, seasonal produce throughout the season.
When you join a CSA, you agree to share in both the risks and the rewards of farming. A challenging season may bring smaller yields, while a flourishing year overflows with abundance. At its core, a CSA is about joining the journey with a local farm. Advanced payment gives farmers the stability they need to plan, plant, and nurture the season ahead of time. It’s a way of saying, we value your work, while choosing local, nutrient-dense food and the farmers who grow it (rather than lettuce shipped from 2,000 miles away).
A CSA is also a beautiful way to connect more deeply with the individuals who grow your food, the seasons we all live within, and the land that we live on. As farmers ride the whims of the growing season, we get to ride alongside them… choosing people in our community and the shared purpose of supporting local food that carries far more meaning than a grocery run. When we eat carrots harvested by someone whose name and story we know, those carrots take on greater purpose. Sitting down to a meal made from the hands of farmers we’re in relationship with transforms the table itself and the food becomes more than fuel - it becomes connection, gratitude, and community shared with everyone partaking.
Then there’s the lovely mystery of the vegetables that show up in my CSA box each week! Sure, I can only eat so many potatoes and squash at a time, but the abundance pushes me to get creative. And sometimes, creativity looks like giving. When there’s more than my family can eat, I love cooking up the extra produce and blessing neighbors with warm meals from our kitchen. In an odd way, both giving and receiving a meal feels vulnerable. Cooking for someone else means exposing your food, your style, your skill (or lack thereof). Receiving a meal means opening yourself to eat something you didn’t plan, shop for, or prepare yourself. And yet, that exchange is where the beauty lies… food as a bridge that is both humbling and connecting us in ways nothing else quite can.
Over the time frame of the CSA, the pickup host, Mary Ann, ended up learning my kids’ names and asking about them, providing advice about my job, and getting updates on the many house projects I had going on. I learned about her grown children, her travels, and her passion for CSAs. Picking up food from her home each week wasn’t just about the produce, it was about fostering a new relationship with a neighbor while receiving stunning, seasonal food from farmers I was learning to deeply love. It was about learning from others how to slow down and sit in the driveway, listening to strangers and grounding ourselves in present company and locally grown food. Buying into a food ecosystem is driving a connection to the person, the seasons, and the land. It’s a beautiful rejection of the fast paced food world we’ve come to accept and we’ve become addicted to. And it's surrendering to the good design of nature’s pace.
Brian Gray is the VP of Formation at the Denver Institute for Faith & Work, where he hopes to influence people to integrate their faith into workplace excellence and acts of love.
PLACE | CAFE 180
By Jared Mackey
“I think that’s what God usually does. He takes very normal people, very normal things, and he makes them holy.”
“The joke is I didn't do the laundry at my own house before we bought this business, and now I'm responsible for over 30,000 pounds of laundry every week.” Matt Barnes is the owner of Professional Touch Laundry Services, the most trusted commercial laundry and linen service in the city. Matt communicated in our conversation a compelling vision for how a blue-collar business does the ordinary work of a laundry service while seeing the sacred in the everyday.
Professional Touch Laundry Service was founded by a couple with industrial laundry experience in the late 1990s. In the process of narrowing its focus to laundry of linens for hospitality and events, they developed a durable family business. Professional Touch has weathered challenging financial seasons and storms over 25 years and has become known as the best linen laundry service in the state.
Matt’s approach in buying a business was to find a platform to pastor people in the workplace. “I was looking for a really well-run family business that had history on the front range. Fundamentally, I was looking for a business platform to do more pastoral work.” Matt brought a holy conviction about the culture of a business and the care of its employees. “A desire of mine was to run a business where I could shepherd and care for a population of blue-collar service workers.” That commitment resulted in moving the laundry service from three W-2 employees with a majority of temporary and seasonal staffing to a staff of eighteen W-2 and 1099 employees working directly for the company. “When you give an employee, especially a lower wage employee, some belonging, you can start to build the culture of a business.” Matt’s conviction is crystal clear as he continues, “The culture of the business was a decent, safe, and uplifting place when I took it over. Now it's a joyful place where people have upward mobility and responsibility…they are part of a living cultural organism that is thriving and growing. And…I would argue it's better for profitability.
The laundry service has grown from a 2,500 square foot space, to inhabit a 13,000 square foot warehouse in an industrial complex in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Matt’s vision for the culture in the workplace extends to the neighboring businesses creating a shared social responsibility for the industrial complex. The roofers from the roofing company next door provide as a sense of safety for the primarily female workforce of the laundry service. The plumbing business and mechanics from the motorcycle repair shop in the complex have been invaluable with plumbing emergencies or machinery issues. Together the blue-collar businesses are good neighbors who collaborate toward a common good.
Matt offered a compelling Kingdom vision when asked how the story of Professional Touch could inspire readers to love our neighbors who work in blue collar businesses in our city. “Well, for the 99.9% of people that may read this that will never use our laundry service, I would say we do a very normal set of activities with excellence, and we compound trust and service in a way that's really holy.” He continued with resolute conviction, “I think that's what God usually does. He takes very normal people, very normal things, and he makes them holy.” “We need more vocational, committed followers of Christ just taking normal, ordinary things and making them beautiful, because that's what God's always done.”
A blue-collar business owned and operated with conviction about the value of culture and care for the employees is a shining example of the tangible love of neighbors in a workplace. Professional Touch provides clean commercial linens for the city, and equally compelling, provides a place of belonging and becoming for every employee. The laundry service is a sacred place.
Thank you to Matt Barnes for the conversation about the business and his conviction in leading a blue-collar business for the good of his neighbors and the neighborhood.
PARTICIPATE | ART & PLACE
Enter a place where visual creativity and attention to geography meet.
Art & Place explores how visual art connects us deeper to place.
On Thursday, October 9, attend the opening gallery at Anthology Fine Art to celebrate local artists whose work is shaped by place.
There will be artist panels exploring the often unseen influence of place on art, and asking how art can inspire us to love the people and places around us.
Signature cocktail, wine, and hors d'oeuvres will be served.
Reserve your space to spend an evening celebrating the beauty of art and place.
More rhythms to root your faith in place.
Sacred Place provides a beautiful bi-weekly publication to share the rhythms of a Prayer, Practice, and Place as simple ways to help cultivate love for our neighbors and neighborhoods.
