… watching for the brushstrokes of God
“Indeed, it is as though Christianity, wherever it went in the modern colonies, inverted its sense of hospitality. It claimed to be the host, the owner of the spaces it entered, and demanded native people enter its cultural logics, its ways of being in the world and its conceptualities.” ~ Willie James Jennings
What does true hospitality look like?
“What exactly does it mean to have a relationship-centric approach to constructive social change? I have come to believe that the answer lies with how we approach and understand relational spaces in a given geography, the fabric of human community broadly defined as the crisscrossing connections of people, their lives, activities, organizational modalities, and even patterns of conflict.” ~ John Paul Lederach, Moral Imagination
What are the “who” connections in your geography?
When our spirits have grown cold, send us the warmth of the Holy Spirit. Rekindle the flame of love within us. ~ Claudia Mair Burney
How do you rekindle?
Hope and despair, truth and lies, narratives colliding, a country in shambles. How can we grow to see the truth of another person’s lived experience? Wonder what is going on inside them? Stay curious to how the world appears through their eyes? What would it be like to walk in their shoes?
Will we then know the things that make for true peace?
“If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare” ~ Amanda Gorman, Inauguration poem excerpt
What is your bridge to make?
“Even as you sit silently, not knowing what to say, your presence is still a gift that shines light in a meaningful way.” Morgan Harper Nichols
Where is your presence needed?
With the Eyes of the Heart 