The Rev. Susan Sims Smith is the Executive Director of the Interfaith Center. 

Rev. Sims Smith was a Jungian oriented psychotherapist for 25 years, and has been an Episcopal priest since 1999. She founded Seedwork, a project to teach people how to listen to wisdom from their dreams and from meditation. She spearheaded the foundation of the Arkansas House of Prayer, an interfaith center for prayer and meditation, and serves as a life-time board member. She started the Interfaith Center in 2011. 

 

Letters of Recomendation

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to have this opportunity to commend the exceptional ministry and faithful witness of the Rev. Susan Sims Smith. I have known Susan, first as her pastor and then as her friend and colleague, for almost a quarter century. I presented her for confirmation and then for ordination. 

I have participated in numerous lectures, workshops, and seminars that Susan has led, including on contemplative prayer, dreams in their spiritual significance, marriage skills, and interfaith relations. I have seen her build an exquisite facility (the Arkansas House of Prayer) and a vibrant institution (the Interfaith Center.) I have asked her to lead numerous events at churches I have served in Little Rock, including lately at Trinity Cathedral, where I am Dean. They are always well attended and the size of the group tends to grow, not shrink, with time.

She is faithful, clear-headed, warm-hearted, and trustworthy. She is psychologically erudite while being personally down to earth and full of common sense. She is a great teacher and, to me, a trusted advisor. 

There are not enough superlatives for describing Susan.

Yours in Christ,

The Very Rev. Dr. Christoph Keller, III

Dean and Rector

Dear Reader,

I am pleased to write this letter introducing the Rev. Susan Sims Smith and her work.  Susan is a friend of many years and it was I who invited her to enter the ordination process in the Diocese of Arkansas where I served as Bishop until I retired in 2007. I wanted her to become an ordained leader because of her remarkable depth of spiritual insight as well as her skill as a therapist and teacher in the growing field of valuing dreams as a spiritual discipline.  That is an interest of mine as well, and Susan and I did a good bit of teaching together throughout the diocese on the value and importance of the inner journey.  She is a popular and gifted teacher with insights her listeners reach for and grasp. She served as my Canon for Special Ministries, an office created to allow her great breadth in her work within the diocese.

Seldom have I known another person as dedicated to her own self-understanding and more willing to let that understanding be distilled into teaching in order to benefit others.  She has remained a dedicated priest of the church even while pushing limits of belief and understandings. 

I heartily endorse her work.  I continue to value what she says and what she does because she is about doing the work of the holy.

Faithfully yours,

The Rt. Rev. Larry E. Maze

XII Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas.