I think I am a different person than I was two years ago, a shift that began in those last few months before the world closed for Covid. How I am present in the world has changed, that’s for sure. The things I say and the ways in which I am not only willing, but eager to say them, have all moved significantly from a behind-the-scenes ethos into one that is more public. Not a louder voice I don’t think, but at a different scale.
I know I am a different person than I was ten years ago, when the trajectory of my vocational life was waylaid, a story I’ll tell someday once I figure out how. A decade ago, I had to make the decision to step away from my traditional worship and faith life into a different vision of what was possible. It was scary as hell but has led to amazing places, and had to have happened for me to be the minister God calls.
Two years ago, I embarked on this new journey I’m on now. I’d made the decision to step away from traditional work and pour myself into larger visions of a world healing, and thriving even among radical climate changes. When we all shut down just a little while after I’d made this pivot, I was faced with the stark reality of this choice. I had to figure this out on my own. Among the biggest challenges in this journey has been finding a way to stand alone and ask for help in equal measure.
Many years ago, my work partner and I started some proto-podcast recording, to see what it felt like. It took me months to get comfortable with hearing my own voice like that, or to just say things I hadn’t crafted or framed ahead of time. There are still hours we recorded I’ve never heard. At the same time, I was learning how to not only preach without a manuscript (something I’d been formally trained to do but never made a habit in my own work) but also to speak at rallies, offer public prayer, and make public record testimony without writing anything down first.
The quest then was to trust my voice, and my discernment. I had to learn to trust that regardless of how I framed it that one time, or of that great line perfect for one specific situation, I didn’t have to know. I didn’t have to know ahead of time what I was going to say, and I didn’t have to be 100% sure of what I did actually say later.
My wrist is tattooed with “Stoma kai Sophia”, a phrase in Greek from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is telling his followers what life will be like after he’s gone. He says that if they are living out the Gospel, they’re going to get into some trouble, be hauled before judges and magistrates. Jesus advice is that we not plan ahead what we will say, for we will receive Stoma kai Sophia -wit and wisdom, courage and insight, fortitude and creativity.
And so I knew somehow when I chose that tattoo that it would be -was always- crucial to speak without anxiety or worry over the perfection of the words, to preach or pray in response to the movements and needs in front of me, in response to the stirrings of my soul, in response to the cries of others. I made the command to do so a permanent part of my body before I understood what it really meant.
I remember how damn scared I was the first time I made a public address without it being scripted. I’d written a few things down, outlines being excellent content crutches, and then gone with my work partner to sit in a park that we love in an attempt to calm my nerves. The stones there spoke to me, and gave me the only words I actually ended up using from that little notebook of scribbled phrases and thoughts.
I got better at it, and more comfortable with it. Now I can be handed a microphone and asked to pray or bless an endeavor, and I can do it on the spot. I can attend public testimony, and be called upon to add my own words. I can pray aloud the concerns and themes that have swirled around a hard conversation.
These are gifts of the Spirit in my opinion, and stem from stepping out into a liminal space of trust. By not focusing on what I am going to say, I can listen to and perceive the people and space around me more acutely. I can feel the Spirit move.
Adding seminars, workshops, and keynote addresses to the mix over the last six months was another leap for me, in what I could push myself to do, and in what I was willing to put forward. We launched “Rev. Jess Abell” as a holding space for these public voice events, as a platform we were building -are building- as we used it.
Getting there has been insanely difficult. Many things broke along the way, and several times, I found myself paralyzed, unable to function. Sometimes literally, as I have chronic physical issues that can manifest that way, sometimes metaphorically as words failed to come or actions seemed impossible.
But I have learned deep and true things about my Voice, about how my identity and worth are entangled with how I use that Voice. I suspected that I had been hiding, dampening my impact, quieting my voice but I didn’t see any other way to live in the world and still be effective.
Perhaps I was right to hold back for a while. I really wasn’t ready to do this until now. I needed to learn to slow down, to trust the bigger picture, and to forgive myself my mistakes. The time for that has passed and gone.
It is now the time of great abundance, and for the fulfillment of many things. It is time for a regenerative practice, for a fierce vision of a moral community in which every voice is needed. I have found mine, am finding more of it in each moment. May it be so.