Friday, February 18, 2011

Friday Five: Words

htt;Jan over at Revgalblogpals offers us this Friday Five:

There is a dramatic and surprising venue for Spiritual Formation/Sunday School classes at my church: Each week a different person teaches about a "word" that expresses his/her passion or interest. The first week someone spoke about "hospitality" with abundant treats on her mother and grandmother's china arrayed on tables. Other words have been "connectivity," "Trinity," "money," and "dreams." No one knows which person will be teaching until the class convenes. I am teaching this Sunday and plan to talk about "stirrings."



For this Friday Five, please list five words that identify your passions, spirituality, and/or life. Describe as much or as little as you wish.

1.  Words.  Seems funny to say "words", but there you have it.  I've loved words, listening to words knocking up against each other, hearing how they sound, what they mean, ever since I was old enough to read and write, I think.  I wrote my first story in the first grade.  I remember reading Robert Frost (I think) say that if her heard someone say, "I want to be a writer because I have something to say," but if he heard someone say "I want to be a writer because I like hanging around words and listening to them talk to each other", he knew that person would be a writer.

2.  Mercy.  Love in action. 

3.  Creativity.  For me, it's words for the most part. (Yarn, a little, lately.)  For others, it's the notes of music, or paint and canvas or a potter's wheel and clay.  It's the spark that connects us with God, our desire to make things.

4.  Community.  I really think that we experience God most fully in community, as we are in relationship with one another.  I come by this honestly as a Christian, as I find in the doctrine of the Trinity that community is in the heart of God.  There's a quote somewhere in G.K. Chesterton's book, Orthodoxy, "To us, God is a society."   So it's possible that God will give some people a special mystical experience, but all of us experience God, however imperfectly, in one another.

5.  Jesus. I tried to get to the bottom of the historical Jesus when I was in high school.  Never did.  There are always more questions.

2 comments:

Wendy said...

Great words. I didn't do this today, but this could be my list (though I might tend to say grace unread of mercy. I wonder why that would be...)

Jan said...

I remember my phases of reading all I could about the historical Jesus. It was good to read all that, consider it, and now I don't care. Love your list AND your words!