Vox Veniae Podcast

Lenten Maturation

As we continue in the season of Lent, Gideon Tsang reflects on what maturation looks like for us personally and collectively [Exodus 3:1-15].

Reflection

• How can you sit with a part of you that might be flaring up, ready to mature?
• What can you do to listen to the parts of you that need healing this week?

Resources

• Podcast: Experts on Expert - John Gottman
• Art: Brown State of Mind
• MWG: Discussion Guide

Spiritual Practice

• What do you sense flaring up in your life?  Sit with it like a campfire without judgement.  How might it be a part of you, ready to mature?

 

Hens and Chicks

As we continue in the season of Lent, Jason Minnix explores the role of permission in our journey and reflects on the ways we may have been stuck in our faith [Luke 13:31-35].

Reflection

• Who have I given permission to love me?
• Where does my trust need healing today?
• How am I being invited in a gathering love?

Resources

• Video: The Natural History of Chickens
• MWG: Discussion Guide 

Spiritual Practice

• Four Responses to our Demons.  Acknowledge, Validate, Compassion, Share
• Attending to the Craft of Spiritual Intimacy.  What creates movement now towards spiritual intimacy for you? What was once helpful that you’re now finding no longer helpful and need to let go of?

 

Jesus' Vulnerability

As we enter Lent, Matt Inman explores the temptations of Jesus and what that means for how we engage our own temptations and vulnerability this season [Luke 4:1-13].

Reflection

• What role does shame play in your current temptation?
• Where might your vulnerability in life right now lead you to acts of courage and love?

Resources

• Podcast: Inefficiency
• Video: SNL - Devil Can’t Write No Love Song
• MWG: Discussion Guide

Spiritual Practice

• Jump into Barton Springs.
• Pick a temptation or fantasy and extend it out from the point it usually ends. What comes of it?
• Journal about a relationship where you get stuck consistently testing the other person. Find solitude and reconnect with the part of you that feels threatened.

Our Struggle for Hope

As we near the beginning of Lent, Gideon Tsang invites us to consider what we hope for in our maturity and transformation [2 Cor 3:12-18].

Reflection

• What are your hopes for Lent?
• Who allows you to be fully who you are when you are with them and what does that feel like?

Resources

• Book: A Hidden Wholeness (Parker Palmer)
• Video: Jim Carrey - What it All Means
• Video: Yayoi Kusama - Infinity Mirrors
• MWG: Discussion Guide

Spiritual Practice

• List the characters you’ve played.  How did the characters begin? Which characters are you ready to let go of?
• Consider fasting.  How does this restriction lead to freedom?  How does this reconnect me to myself and God?

Rethinking Incarceration

Dominique DuBois Gilliard explores the history and foundation of mass incarceration. And, reflects on how Christians can pursue justice that restores and reconciles. [Acts 16:16-40]

Reflection

• What is our relationship to the good news when it comes at a cost to our ability to offer participation?
• How can you take a step in using your privilege to hold systems and structures accountable that dehumanize others?

 

Turning our Hearts

Kelly Cutbirth reflects on how it’s easy to lose heart and our connection with who we really are, and invites us to look at what it means to turn our hearts towards God and reconnect. [Jeremiah 17]

Reflection

• How are we hiding our hearts from ourselves, God, and each other?
• When was the last time your heart felt nourished by someone?

Spiritual Practice

• How am I hiding my heart from myself, God, and my community?
• When was the last time someone gave you the gift of nourishing? Remember what that felt like. What did they do?
• How might you offer that to someone this week?

Our Nets

Chris Morton encourages us to look at the nets we are caught in and to consider the nets we can weave together of love and abundance. [Luke 5]

Reflection

• What net are you caught in?
• What net do you want to be caught up in?
• How can we weave a net together?

Resources

• MWG: Discussion Guide

Near Love

Jason Minnix invites us to acknowledge our need for love and how receiving it helps us to see others as they are. [1 Cor 13]

Reflection

• What am I being invited to receive today?
• What younger places in me need love this week?

Spiritual Practice

• Acknowledge our Need and Receive:
  • Name an area where you get stuck in your thought world, an emotionally raw place and/or a bodily addiction.
  • Confess your need for God’s help, for grace today.
  • Receive acceptance.
  • Listen for and receive the words of love you most need today.

Our Bodies As Christ's Body

As we celebrate and give thanks for our new home, Gideon Tsang invites us to consider how we are all an indispensable part of Christ’s body, both in our strengths and weaknesses. [1 Cor 12]

Reflection

• How can you remind yourself this week that your being is pre-approved?
• What does it look like to embrace your limitations in order to participate in collaboration?

Resources

• Book: The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life (Helen Palmer)
• Homily Slides: Our Body As Christ’s Body

Spiritual Practice

• Pick a body part as a reminder of your pre-approval this week.
• Try entering a conversation from or about weakness.

 

 

Good Wine - John 2

Jason Minnix reflects on the deep and little welcome that creates spaces of belonging and hospitality [John 2:1-11].

Reflection

• What does receiving welcome look like for me today?
• How am I being invited to engage in small welcomes?

Resources

• Video: Spider-Man Into the Spider Verse

 

 

Spiritual Practice

• Welcome someone to Vox in the next couple weeks.
• Host your expectations.  a. Consider an area of disappointment right now.
  b. Welcome any emotions here (grief, sadness, etc)
  c. Am I getting too overwhelmed? Take a 1/2 step back.  d4. Have I pulled too far back and need to re-engage a little? Take a 1/2 step in.  How can we live in the tension of what we hoped for and what is, together?

 

 

A Beloved Community

Virginia Cumberbatch and Gideon Tsang dialogue around what it would be like to see our city of Austin as a beloved community [Luke 3:15-17, 21-22].

Reflection

• How can we continue to ask questions about our city with intention and humility?
• How can we enter spaces of discomfort to form connection?

Lectio Divina - Luke 1

As we continue the Advent season, we’re invited to explore the Scriptures through the contemplative practice of Lectio Divina [Luke 1:46-55].

Reflection

• What words or phrases stood out to you from this passage? Why?
• How does this text speak to you in your current situation and environment?
• What is the text calling you to do or become this week? (How do I need to live in light of this scripture?)

Dressed

As we prepare for the new year, Jason Minnix explores what we put on in our lives and how we can be dressed in the essence of God [Colossians 3:12-17].

Reflection

• What have I received that I need to let go of?
• What small part of God's essence would I like to receive and extend in the year to come?

Resources

• Podcast: On Being (Walter Brueggemann)

 

Spiritual Practice

• Putting On a Little Bit.

1. Grow quiet and take a couple deep breaths
2. Listen for one bit that really resonates with you.
3. Take your word and breath it in. Let it fill your whole body as a gift from God.
4. Let Go of having to manage any of it on your own.

5. Set an intention to receive this once a week in the year ahead.

 

An Expansive Vision

As we start the new year with our first liturgy in our new building, Gideon Tsang invites us to consider how we might need to expand our spiritual vision to see love in ourselves and others  [Matthew 2:1-12].

Reflection

• What if God continued to expand our vision of love for ourselves and others?
• How can I welcome all parts of myself?

Spiritual Practice

• Vesper.  Remind ourselves nothing can add to our intrinsic value.

Peace of God

As we continue the Advent season, Matt Inman reflects on how the love of God brings us the peace of God [Philippians 4:4-9].

Reflection

• Who has loved you really well and helped you appreciate your real self?
• Who in your life is out beyond their comfort zone right now and needs gentleness and love?

Resources

• Video: Humans of New York

 

 

Spiritual Practice

• When you feel like yourself or a family member is close to their edge, introduce a gentle mercy into the dynamic.
• Take the emotions and thoughts you had during today’s clip and bring that into your prayers this week.  Where might the love and acceptance of God bring a greater sense of peace?
• Where do you feel the peace of God in your life? Write out a list of who and what helps you turn your focus back on what is good and true.

 

Rough Ways

As we continue the Advent season, Jason Minnix reflects on the invitation to interior preparation to get ready for eventual peace and a return to who we really are [Luke 3:1-6].

Reflection

• What would it look like to let go of who I think I am (unworthy, selfish, controlling, etc.) and reconnect with my deep self? (loved, compassionate, curious)
• How can I relax into the flow of God loving me today?

Spiritual Practice

1. Welcoming Practice.
   1. Breath deeply
.
   2. Notice emotions, thoughts, body sensations & sink in.
   3. Welcome anything you notice.
   4. Let Go of having to manage any of it on your own.

   5. Become aware that everything is being held and accepted.
2. Listen within the spaces you feel lost and empty.
   1. What is my wilderness now?  (It may be a change, good or bad, that you haven’t processed yet: someone you miss, or something you miss, maybe your body has changed. Name and acknowledge what’s hollow.)
   2. Take a minute to feel what’s there.
   3. And in this space of grief, listen, see what else is there.
3. Receive transformation through curiosity and compassion.
   1. What emotions arise as I consider this season?

   2. Practice validating and having compassion for the presence of those emotions and thoughts.

 

Attention

As we begin the Advent season, Gideon Tsang reflects on what we are paying attention to during this Advent season [Luke 21:29-36].

 

Reflection

• What would you like to pay attention to in this advent season?
• How can you slow and quiet down your life to experience God's gentle nearness?

 

Resources

• Video: The Secret Rhythm Behind Radiohead’s “Videotape”
• Book: Heart and Mind: The Four Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation (Alexander Shaia)
• Book: The Gift of Being Yourself (David Benner)

 

Spiritual Practice

1. Reflect on your season of faith.  What season of faith are you in? Meditate on the gospel of your current season (Matthew - fall, Mark -winter, John -spring, Luke - summer). Start a seasonal book club.
2. Reflect on God’s stillness.  Create an advent sound journal.  What’s the noisiest part of your life?  How can you turn it down or hit pause?

 

Remembering

Chris Morton reflects on how we can be intentional with our memories and how remembering God’s provision is important for our growth [Deuteronomy 6:1-9].

Reflection

• What legacy will you chose to remember?
• What truths do you need reminders of?
• What story do you want to tell?

Spiritual Practice

1. Think of something that you can remember this week of how God has provided for you.

 

Rootedness: Fruit

Gideon Tsang finishes our vision series on Rootedness by exploring what it looks like for us to consent to rootedness and the fruit that we’ll bear [John 15:15-17].

Reflection

• What kind of people do we want to be in 20 years?
• What kind of fruit do we hope to produce over time?

Resources

1. Video: Mindful Silence (Phileena Heuertz)
2. MWG: Discussion Guide

 

Spiritual Practice

1. Attend the new building open house.  What is your Oneing dream for Vox? How can we dissolve our illusions of separateness?
2. Dream of a name that captures our lasting fruit.  Submit it to roots@voxveniae.com.  How can you be a part of that dream?

Rootedness: Intimacy

Jason Minnix continues our vision series on Rootedness by exploring how being rooted in community changes our relationship with God over time [John 15:9-14].

Reflection

1. How is God inviting the mess of who I am into love?
2. How am I being invited into the mystery of intimacy now?

Resources

1. Book: The Forgotten Desert Mothers (Laura Swan)

 

 

Spiritual Practice

1. Receiving Love.  How is God inviting the mess of who I am into love? (all of my questions, doubts, suspicions, addictions, smallness, all of it)  What are the parts of my life that need a home in community? (will you bring them in slow and small ways)