Letting the Easter Light In

 

I want to continue to invite you to explore, embrace, expand, and encounter your inner artist.  This exercise comes from The Artisan Soul by Erwin Raphael McManus.  He encourages us to think of the voices who have informed and impacted your life – good or bad. 

Make the list right now.

Parents and grandparents; aunts and uncles; sibling or cousins – family who influenced you.

Teachers.

Preachers.

Friends.

Now, look at the list, for each person, ask how has the words of this cloud of witnesses left a soundtrack in your soul?  Again, in positive ways and painful ways.  Perhaps the teacher who cheered you on and the one who scolded you for coloring outside the lines.  Perhaps one of the above people encouraged you to pursue your passion, to stay open to your curiosity.  Perhaps someone else responded to your career choice by saying, “For the love of Pete, you’ll never make any money doing that!!”  The point is to interview the list of people to see the good, the bad, and ugly in the relationships that formed and fashioned us. 

Naming and noticing who were the cheerleaders and critics helps us in many ways.  First, we start to see the role nurture (or lack thereof) played in our lives so far.  Second, we can ask, why give more power to the armchair quarterbacks?  Why let someone else having editing power over the artistic project called, “Your life”?

Take time today to practice patient attention.  To be open to God who is meeting you in the presence tense of this moment.  Right here where you are, right now in this moment.

By the way, today is Star Wars day, (“May the fourth” sounds like "May the force be with you"), so may the force of God’s grace and love be with you now more than ever.