042 | Unfold
I have sometimes chosen a word of the year, often out of a grand intention of how I wanted to improve some deficiency I saw in myself. Some years the word has stayed with me. Other years it has not. In spite of my spotty history, I am embracing UNFOLD as my word of the year—more as a reminder than a corrective or intention.
I am in my final days as a pastor for the community I have loved and served for 18 years. I am not moving to a new call, at least not right away. I am intentionally investing in an extended time of renewal and discernment, of rejuvenation and listening. My family and Cultivating Sanctuary (SM) will be important parts of the time before me.
For a long time, I was super angsty about what life and ministry would be like post Incarnation (my current community). I wanted to be faithful in following where God’s Spirit would lead, but I also wanted a clear vision of the outcome and all the steps between. I’m learning to step in faith into the next right thing and to participate in the unfolding work of God in my life. Oddly (or maybe not), I am experiencing way more peace in the unknowing than in my quest for certainty before I would act.
I am mindful that “unfold” has been used often in the news and reflections on the events of the first two weeks of this new year here in the United States. We have watched events unfold in our nation’s Capitol and we have been riveted as the details of what went on before and during the assault on our democracy have been gathered and brought into the light. To me this unfolding, this revealing of truth, is also of God. While it is painful, we must face the truth of who and how we are as a nation before we can actively move toward a future that more holistically embodies the possibilities in our nation’s founding documents (rather than the original intent with white men at the center).
I pray for both of these processes of unfolding: that God’s Spirit guides them and that I/we enter in with courage, integrity, compassion, and a fierce willingness to participate in the building of a just society in which each and every person can flourish.
