Matthew 25:33
"and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left."
Though I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that I could fully leave 2020 behind, I was determined to plunge into the potential of 2021. And for a while I truly thought I could. However, while I was busy focusing on new project launches and making art, my body was experiencing a different reality. Though my mind had moved forward, my body was still stuck in the heart wrenching cycle of trauma, freeze, and response. I knew this wasn’t just my own rhythm I was tapping into - our collective rhythms wreak havoc on our bodies too. Trauma experienced in the body is a wise source of knowledge if we are willing to listen.
More than our individual plights, 2020 forced us to recall what it means to be part of a collective. Even with all of our fractures we are still intimately connected. So, when one part of our collective being is hurting, I feel it. I would hope you would be able to say the same.
Walking through Matthew 25, we’ve asked key questions: Are we prepared to receive what God desires to give? Are we wise enough to put to work what God has given? Now, we are asked to consider how our presence impacts others. Do we see one another? Do we go beyond seeing and dare to act in love? What about when we witness acts of hate rather than love? Matthew 25 makes it clear that what we aren’t free to do is live as though another person’s suffering, pain, or even wrongful death is irrelevant.
When the Son of Man finally refines His creation by gathering and separating this fractured collective, it seems that His decisive judgments will be based solely on how well we loved one another. It is with this piercing reality that I allow my body’s deep-seated wisdom to guide me into truthful acts of healing and love. If my body will not let me be because it feels the weight of social (another’s) pain, then I should not rest until I have addressed what is causing my internal weeping.
Art: Dea Jenkins | "Sand" | oil | 2019
Practice: Counter Mapping Part 3/3
Pulling from the counter mapping video and your environment examen, create your own counter map. Before you begin making your map, consider what a just, equitable, and healthy society might look like.
Your map can be as narrow as your neighborhood or as broad as the entire world. You can make your map using any medium.
Prompts to consider:
1 | Who are you creating the map for?
2 | What boundaries are you crossing in your map?
3 | Who (or what) is left out of what you envision?
4 | Who is informing your ideas of what a just, equitable, and healthy society might look like?
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