Sown deeply in the Word of God, in Whose Precise Image I was made,
I AM GROUNDED
Where once I bowed my head, now I boldly stand. And, in the image of an all-wise and loving God, I sing the Magnificat. What I learned over the last several years, what I now practice on my journey, is Mary’s subversive and revolutionary Song.
Singing, I embrace the Spirit of God within me, in the words of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the “hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.” We were never meant to do anything alone.
He writes,
The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings.…This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols.1
My song, Mary’s Magnificat, is a dare; a declaration. Push me, if you dare, but my stability does not originate from within me. Rather, my roots reach deep, delivering stability not easily disturbed. In the words of the old hymn, my One Foundation,
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation
By water and the Word:
From heav’n He came and sought her
To be His holy Bride;
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.
We Are the New Creation. It’s Time We Started Acting Like It.
This year, I shed false humility. This year, I release the shackles of Imposter Syndrome. If Mary could proclaim the greatness of our God and the favor with which God gazes upon us, then so shall I. If 2020 taught us anything, it is this…
It’s Time to Quit Playing Small
This year, I am at home in my body, comfortable in my radiant bronze skin, my wild and woolly locs flowing like those of the God of Revelations. I am planted deeply, disengaged from the winds and storms, firmly anchored.
Grounded in Faith, the Ancestors Declared, We Shall NOT be Moved.
I mastered it in dance. It was reinforced in yoga and in meditation, but it all began in church. By what mooring are you held?
In 2021, I take back everything my own fear and the world’s lies tried to steal from me. What did I declare as my word and affirmation for the first year of the new decade?
GROUNDED.
Do not fear me; fear the God that I serve. Fear that holy boldness unleashed in me, finally, as I declare that nothing shall uproot me from the Love of God.
NOTHING.
God’s got me. God’s got the whole world held and my roots are deeply, firmly, GROUNDED. This is the first year of my deconstruction. Of my decolonization. This is the year that my priorities straighten out, align.
From this moment forward, my gaze is fixed, firmly.
AHEAD.
I. AM. GROUNDED…AND I SHALL NOT BE MOVED.
1 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. I Stand at the Door and Knock: Advent and Christmas Sermons, edited and translated from German into English by Edwin Robertson. United Kingdom, 2005.
Image Credit: Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash
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I am a very serious person, so I laugh a lot. I write because it helps me understand the way I feel about the world. I married my high school sweetheart, and together we made two exceptional people and raised a dog so remarkable, I wrote a book about the faith lessons he taught me. I envision a world where each of us embraces the Perfect, Precise Image of God that we are, naturally, at every given moment, even as each of us exists in a liminal state.
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