Reflection Roundup: Inhale Grace, Exhale Compassion
Each week we gather news stories, notable pieces, and other important items for Christian leaders today. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but may not concur. Here are 10 things worth sharing this week.
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1. Check out the much-anticipated “Breath Prayers: When the Heart Speaks but the Mouth Doesn’t,” the most recent iteration of Intersection: Where Theology and Practice Meet, a series of conversations offered by the Siburt Institute for Church Ministry. Houston Heflin engages the listening audience with the material surrounding his book Pray Like You Breathe: Exploring the Practice of Breath Prayer. Beginning with noting the communal aspects of prayer and the daily provision of God, Heflin posits the benefits of matching these reflections with our breath rhythm and the potential for slowing and focusing on God. Continuing this topic, join Jackie Halstead’s upcoming Intersection, “The Listening Side of Prayer,” on March 30.
2. Recent violence catches our breath once more. “How long, O Lord?” Flora x. Tang, a recent graduate from Harvard Divinity School, asks in “Purity culture, racism and the violence against Asian women in Atlanta” for America: The Jesuit Review. Tang “echoes the lament of the psalmist and the cry of many others in the Asian-American community” and asks that we face the hard questions of objectification and stereotyping that crimes of this nature require.
3. “These Christians relocated during the pandemic. Finding a new church home is a challenge.” James and Candice Wiser, who recently moved to ACU from Southern California, generously open their story to The Christian Chronicle’s Bobby Ross Jr. in “Faith on the move.” Breathing the new air of transition and settling from their move, the Wisers share what it’s been like to have the ability to remain connected to their home church in California, almost as if they’d never left. They also offer perspective on the ironies of creating community and beginning relationships in virtual space.
4. None of us is merely the product of what we do, but the drive to produce those products and evidences can be difficult to release. In “7 Habits I Avoid to Become Highly Productive,” Anthony J. Yeung reminds us of some things we know and suggests some things we may not have considered before. None of us needs reminders of all that’s vying for our attention, yet ordering our steps and remaining cognizant of our goals and the real flow of work by which they are actualized can be quite liberating.
5. On Being podcaster Krista Tippet interviews clinical psychologist Christine Runyan on “What’s Happening in Our Nervous Systems?” as they (and we) lay ravaged by the constant activated response the pandemic has triggered in all of us. “We became a danger to each other by virtue of our breath.” Physiological isolation for sake of mere survival has yielded unexpected fruits of empathy loss, skin hunger, and a ruminating cycle of “why?” Runyan simply unpacks how relieving naming and allowing are as human responses to conditions that simply are rather than chewing on the question, “What’s wrong with me?”
6. “Our brain is not capable of being defensive and empathetic at the same time.” Josh Irby writes “What Jesus Had And How We Can Get It Back” for Relevant on Jesus’s empathy for those within his proximity, mostly those outside his circle, and how he accomplished this loving truthfulness. A “perfectionist posture undercuts empathy.” Irby begs us to consider nearness to those whose viewpoints, mindsets, and contexts seem in opposition, remembering the Jesus who dwelt among.
7. We must admit the sanctification of our own perspectives – this idea that our experience, our expression, is the best because we chose it. If it weren’t we’d choose otherwise, right? Brite Divinity School professor Oluwatomisin Oredein applies this idea to our churches, writing “We need to talk about white belief” for Duke Divinity’s learning resource, Faith and Leadership. White people must recognize the cultural teachings of predominantly white churches and take note of problematic attempts to “assimilate racial minorities into white assumptions of church and belief.” Oredein compels readers to connect their hearts with their verbal commitments and suggests they bring front-of-heart and mind the terms and priorities of those with whom they desire reconciliation.
8. Cheryl Mann Bacon, Christian Chronicle correspondent and Siburt Institute consulting partner, writes “A Sunday morning miracle: Cinderella ACU earns its glass slipper just after midnight,” highlighting the holy experience that has been basketball for the university over the past week. Bacon offers a front-row seat at the tournament through her eyes and those of her family, a breather in a difficult moment not only in the world but close at home in Abilene amid personal losses. Bacon cites oft-quoted UCLA coach John Wooden with, “Make each day your masterpiece.” Whatever we’re facing, pray up and let’s do this.
9. Here’s another breath prayer offering courtesy of Edible Theology. It takes all of one minute and offers something different, unnatural, for the hearer and those continuing to breathe the prayer’s message into the circumstances of the day, the week, longer.
10. Healthy, complex, and actively engaged. These are Mia Nacamulli’s descriptive “Benefits of a Bilingual Brain,” which I first saw here. It’s never too late to exercise our cerebral matter in this way! Is there a bilingual worship service in your town you might consider checking out?
