Vox Veniae Podcast

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)

Rootedness: Forming Roots

Gideon Tsang continues our vision series on Rootedness by considering why we should be rooted with Christ and each other [John 15:4-8].

Reflection

1. How is Christ inviting the disappointment of our exterior lives to deepen into our interior lives?
2. What does it look like to root together with the Vox community this season?

Resources

1. Podcast: On Being (Kevin Kelly)

 

Spiritual Practice

1. Examine your interior and exterior life.  What disappoints you about your exterior life?  Embrace the disappointment. Receive your invitation to Christ IN you.
2. Stake your claim in our collective soil through the new building: Ask, Donate, Volunteer

 

Rootedness: The Vine

Jason Minix starts our vision series on Rootedness by reflecting on what it means to become more rooted to God and a spiritual community  [John 15:1-4].

Reflection

1. How am I being invited into rootedness now?
2. What surfaces for healing in me now as I consider rooting?

Spiritual Practice

1. Vine Inventory.  What vines am I attached to right now? (friends, family, work, hobbies, faith community)  How much do I give to them? (physically, mentally, emotionally) Are they still meaningful to the same degree they once were?  Is it time to renegotiate my vines?
2. Consenting to Rootedness.  What are we being invited to consent to, and where do I need to make space for healing first?  How is God being stingy to bring to beauty and meaning every detail of my story eventually? How is God joyfully wasting love on me now?

 

Provision

Geeta Mondol shares about her recent challenges and God’s provision as she continues the work of the Ashish Centre in New Dehli, India [Luke 5:17-26].

 

Reflection

1. What does our posture of faith and hope look like in uncertain situations?
2. In what ways have we experienced healing into community?

 

Resources

1. Video: Become Weaker (Jean Vanier)
2. Video: Healed into Community (Sara Miles)

 

 

 

 

 

Tension

Liz Schepel reflects on how we handle tension and how we relate to God in that tension? [Job 2:1-10].

 

Reflection

1. What tensions am I holding in life right now?  How have I been relating to God as a result?
2. What would it look like to be present with God in a non-transactional way this week?

 

Resources

1. 1. Podcast: On Being - Resilience After Loss (Sheryl Sandberg)

 

 

 

Spiritual Practice

1. In times of tension, how do I approach God in a transactional way?  Is there a transactional tension that I am wrestling with right now?

 

Grateful

Gideon Tsang reflects on how full we are of gratitude and what questions we can ask that lead us to gratitude [Psalm 103].

 

Reflection

1. How has God healed us?
2. How does contentment work in my life?
3. What does it mean that God's love is steadfast and expansive?

 

Resources

1. Video: Obama Dropping Off Malia for College

 

 

 

Spiritual Practice

1. Consider a friend in the pit. Offer them tender mercy. Observe their experience.  Consider that’s God’s gift to our woundedness
2. God, grant me the grace to be in the space between impulse and action.  God, grant me the space to be in the grace between impulse and action