Embracing New Beginnings
The page has been turned. We have arrived into the new year whether we have been prepared for the crossing…or thrown headlong over the threshold.
While there is nothing particularly magic about the clock striking midnight on January 1st, our culture’s penchant toward reflection at this time of year can be an aid in our discipleship if approached less as a fad and more as a spiritual practice grounded in grace.
At this time of year, I often return to a well worn book of blessings that has been on my shelf for a number of years now, To Bless The Space Between Us by John O’Donohue. In his opening chapter on beginnings, he writes these words about time:
“The Greeks believed that time had a secret structure. There was a moment of Epiphany when time suddenly opened and something was revealed in luminous clarity. There was the moment of krisis when time got entangled and directions became confused and contradictory. There was also the moment of kairos_; this was the propitious moment. Time opened up in kindness and promise. All the energies cohered to offer a fecund occasion of initiative, creativity, and promise. Part of the art of living wisely is to learn to recognize and attend to such profound openings in one’s life.”_
It is all too easy in the new year, out of frustration, to place our focus on the changes that seem most urgent. It is all too easy to slide into change out of obligation, what Pastor Anthony has well termed, “compulsion to change.”
However, what if this year we spent just a bit more of our reflective energy scanning the horizon of our lives for the moments of kairos – for the openings that need less force and perhaps only bigger faith.
In what ways is time opening up to you this new year and inviting your creativity? What do you need to begin not with force but with faith?
In our church, we are hopeful that we are inside of a kairos moment. This past Sunday, we fully launched regular worship at both our morning and evening locations. Since August, we have been intentionally engaging a new set of community values:
radical friendship
revolutionary justice
relentless curiosity
restorative play
rooted improvisation
Moreover, during the past month, we have been slowly including the words of our new vision and mission statements in our weekly services.
This Vision, as discerned by the leaders of this church as fit for this season, is:
To embody a more beautiful gospel that announces collective liberation and the renewal of all things.
Our Mission, discerned in the same way, is:
Cultivating communities of authentic belonging following in the prophetic, thoughtful, and radical way of Jesus.
In the weeks to come, you will hear more about our vision and mission on Sundays and in this newsletter. But what is important to name is that there is a profound and beautiful opening occurring in our life together.
We don’t know exactly where these beginnings will take us in 2024, but we do ask that you join with us in faith and prayer that we all might be enticed into growth and beguiled into the grace of new beginnings.
In this new year, may we each have the faith to embrace the profound openings that the God of all hope has placed before us.
Rev. Tonetta Landis-Aina
Pastor, The Table Church
