Vox Veniae Podcast

Joyfully Undone

Is there a part of your life that feels exiled or stuck in a rut? On this third week of Advent, Christopher Mack hears in the message of John the Baptizer, an invitation for our lives to be joyfully undone in the wilderness of waiting. [Luke 3:7-17]

 

Reflection

• When have you experienced a disruption that led to transformation?
• How can this season of waiting re-envision our way in the world?
• Where is there an invitation for God’s newness in this current disruption?

Navigating Uncertainty

What comes up for you when you think about uncertainty? Weylin Lee begins our season of advent with three markers for wading into waiting and uncertainty: discerning with imagination; recalling God’s gifts; and embodying a path of love. [Psalm 25]

 

Reflection

• How might we practice discernment with imagination?
• What are some of God’s gifts that you can recall in this current season?
• What is the path of love you are invited to walk and embody?

Chords and Metal

How powerful can we be when our one voice is not just one voice? Vanessa Maleare tends to our collective healing with four admonitions inspired from Ecclesiastes: grab your people; conserve energy; grab hold of your joy; and make decisions. [Ecclesiastes 4:9-12]

 

Reflection

1. What are my non-negotiables?
2. Who do I have to have around me?
3. What is true for me right now?

Bearing Witness with Whole Lives

What does it look like for you to listen to your whole life? Christopher Mack looks for a way see God in those who see differently than us and how to experience communal solidarity in uncertain and challenging times. [Psalm 146:2-3, 5-10]

 

Reflection

• How might we be centered in God’s Peace this week?
• Where do you find it challenging to bear witness with your whole life?
• How might you reconnect with the larger worlds of creation and community this week?

Resources

1. Book: Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices that Transform Us by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun
2. Website: Hokusai: Waves of Inspiration https://nelson-atkins.org/art/exhibitions/hokusai-waves-of-inspiration-from-the-museum-of-fine-arts-boston/ :

Welcoming Wanderers, Skeptics, and Believers

How do we practice radical welcome? Gena St. David explores how inside each of us exists a wanderer, skeptic, and believer as we conclude our fall series “Who is Vox?” She uses the practice of walking a prayer labyrinth to help us recognize vulnerability, value the winding path, and practice small experiments. [John 3:3-8]

 

Reflection

• What does the wanderer inside you want from Vox?
• Who at Vox do you trust with your inner skeptic?
• How does the believer inside you wish to participate in Vox?

Pursuing Justice

What is Vox’s invitation and practice of pursuing justice as a spiritual community that seeks to embody Christ? Weylin Lee considers our hospitality to the vulnerable, embodied presence for solidarity, and nonviolent resistance for flourishing in our fall series “Who is Vox?” [Matthew 5:3-6, 10]

 

Reflection

• Where are the places we can practice hospitality as an act of justice?
• What are some practical ways you can meet physical needs of the vulnerable?
• How might our nonviolent resistance be needed for restorative justice?

Collective Healing

Do you have fear around showing up in church spaces? Kimberly Culbertson invites us to embody Jesus together by becoming a community of repair and wholeness in our fall series “Who is Vox?” [John 14:18-19, 25-27]

 

Reflection

• Thank you for being part of my healing. Love, Kimberly.
• How might God be healing you in this season, both through and for deeper community?
• Who is God asking you to see or champion or smile on in this season?

Spiritual Community

What is an indicator of a healthy spiritual community? Christopher Mack focuses our fall series “Who is Vox?” on the centrality of community as a rhythm that forms us in the Jesus Way of living, dying, and rising. [John 13:1, 35-38]

 

Reflection

• What wisdom could we learn if we explored the broader history of the church with humility and curiosity?
• Are there areas of Christian tradition that are unhelpful to our growth, and what would it look like to let go of them and explore other areas?
• What are some ways we might embrace our collective imperfection as a community?

The Body of Christ

Nic Acosta continues our fall series “Who Is Vox?” by connecting us to being the Body of Christ by delving into what it might mean to embrace both our  Christian pluralism and our collective imperfection. [Colossians 1:15-23]

 

Reflection

• What wisdom could we learn if we explored the broader history of the church with humility and curiosity?
• Are there areas of Christian tradition that are unhelpful to our growth, and what would it look like to let go of them and explore other areas?
• What are some ways we might embrace our collective imperfection as a community?

Why Vox? Why Here? Why Now?

What’s your reason for getting out of bed? Vanessa Maleare begins our fall series “Who Is Vox?” by introducing our communally crafted purpose statement: Vox Veniae (Voice of Grace) is a spiritual community that seeks to embody Christ by fostering collective healing, pursuing justice, and welcoming wanderers, skeptics, and believers.

 

Reflection

• How have I defined my personal purpose in the past?
• How do I define my personal purpose now?
• What is Vox doing right now that excites me?

Know That You Are Loved

What are ways you know you are loved? On the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Brittany Graves connects our spiritual journey, which starts out  the size of a mustard seed to seasons of growth and embracing shifts, while nourishing ourselves in Divine Love. [Mark 4:26-34]

 

Reflection

• When hearing the text for today, what stands out to you in the parable of the growing seed?
• What spiritual practices are grounding for you?
• What are ways that you know you are loved or you witness the kingdom of God surrounding you?

World Shaping Words

Where might we compassionately reconsider the messages we are embodying and passing on? On the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Christopher Mack wonders how we might learn to use our words to build a more compassionate world for ourselves and others. [James 3]

 

Reflection

1. Are there words of wisdom you can immerse yourself in over the coming weeks?
2. Who is someone whose wise presence you might seek out and from whose practice you might learn?
3. How might you choose life giving words for family, friends, and social media this season?

The Beauty in Tension

What excites you about what Vox is (or could be) creating?  On the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Kimberly Culbertson propels us into creative tension as we consider our communal gait. [Matthew 13:31-34]

 

Reflection

1. How often have you seen yourself as a vital part of the church body versus as a recipient of church services?
2. How does the concept of tensegrity shift the way you think about the Vox value of participation?
3. Do you see Vox as part of a new imagination or new movement of the church? And if so, what does this energize you toward?

The Embodied Practice of the Way of Christ

If our practice of faith is to be aligned with the way of Christ, what are we invited to embody? practice? On the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Weylin Lee grounds us in a nonreactive posture of engaging with presence and intention toward others. [James 1:22-27]

Reflection

• How might our posture of listening facilitate a healthier practice of faith?
• What does a more freeing and sustainable practice of faith look like for us?
• How is our practice of faith being guided by the most vulnerable around us?

Resources

Book: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley

 

Whatever Readies for Peace

What comes to mind when you think of Christ’s power? On the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Christopher Mack examines the armor of the oppressive Roman Empire, and how it was reimagined as strength for creative nonviolent resistance in challenging and tumultuous times. [Ephesians 6:10-20]

 

Reflection

1. How might you practice pivoting toward God’s Peace in this season?
2. What does it mean to experience God’s Peace without detaching from challenges around you?
3. How might we creatively embody God’s Peace for our loved ones? For those marginalized?

The Wildness of Wisdom

When you think of wisdom, what do you usually think of? On the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lilly Ettinger sees in Wisdom not boredom, over-spiritualizing, or dry asceticism, but joy, celebration, and a way of seeing clearly. Wisdom is an invitation to really live. [Proverbs 9:1-6]

 

Reflection

• How does the imagery of Wisdom building a house and preparing a feast invite me to live this week?
• How do the metaphors of Wisdom resonate with my understanding of spiritual nourishment and growth?
• What does the invitation to “Leave your impoverished confusion and live!” (The Message) mean for me?

Resources

1. Quote: “We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.” -9th Step Promises, Big Book AA
2. Quote on Hospitality: “We make sure we always create space to welcome others” -Lilly Ettinger

Discerning Truth

How much do I look to God as I try to discern what is true and good? On the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Kimberly Culbertson acknowledges that to speak the truth requires us to wrestle with our practice of discernment, rather than outsource it to others. [Ephesians 4:24, 29]

Reflection

• What stops me from engaging the practice of discernment?
• What stops me from speaking the truth?
• How can I lean into community as I practice discernment?

Resources

1. Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept that there are things I do not know, The courage to speak the truth I do know, And the Wisdom to know that even what I think I know today may seem wrong tomorrow.”  –Serenity Prayer revised by Kimberly Culbertson

Getting Jesus Right

What are the ways we might impose our own priorities onto Jesus and fail to see him for who he really is? On the tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Nic Acosta reminds us to acknowledge our own biases, how we project them onto Jesus, and how God’s generosity is active among those we consider to be wrong . [John 6:1-15]

 

Reflection

1. What do I find when I engage with Jesus as presented in the Gospels?
2. How might our cultural and political biases be keeping us from seeing Jesus clearly?
3. How can we be gracious and generous even toward those who misrepresent Christ?

Imma Need Space (and Food)

How many of us feel an incongruence throughout liturgy, questioning if we really believe the prayers and psalms passing through our lips? On the ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Vanessa Maleare breathes life into our incongruencies around faith and life by inviting us to make space. [Matthew 14:13-21]

 

Reflection

• What space are you craving?
• What beliefs are you wrestling and contending with?
• What nourishment are you lacking and who might you ask for what you need?

 

Resources

1. Book: A Faith of Many Rooms: Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity by Debie Thomas
2. Book: Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis by Lauren Winner
3. Book: Feminist Prayers for My Daughter: Powerful Petitions for Every Stage of Her Life by Shannon K. Evans

Embodied Joy

When you feel joy… how do you know?  On the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Gena St. David, delves into the relationship between joy and grief and points us to how embodying joy can be an act of sacred resistance. [2 Samuel 6:14-19]

Reflection

1. When you’re experiencing joy what do you sound like? 
2. When your body feels joy, what do you notice?
3. When you want to share joy, what does it occur to you to do?

Resources

1. Book: This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley
2. Article: Why Michal Rightly Despised David, Womanists Wading In The Word by Wilda Gafney
3. https://www.wilgafney.com/2018/07/12/why-michal-rightly-despised-david/