Daily Compass

“You are loved beyond belief. You are enough, you are precious, your work and your life matter, and you are not alone.  You are part of a we, a great cloud of witnesses living and dead who have insisted that this beautiful, broken world of ours is a blessing worthy of both deep gratitude and fierce protection. Our ancestors and our descendants are beckoning us, compelling us onward toward greater connection, greater compassion, greater commitment to one another and to the earth. Together, we are resilient and resourceful enough to say ‘yes’ to that call, to make it our life’s work in a thousand different ways, knowing that we can do no other than bind ourselves more tightly together, and throw ourselves into the holy work of showing up, again and again, to be part of building that world of which we dream but which we have not yet seen.” -Ashley Horan

What is the holy work of showing up to which you are called? Where do you need to show up today?

“We wear our faith as tattoos on our bodies and in our hearts as testaments to the blood, tears, dreams, and inspirations of our community ancestors and elders.” – Elandria Williams

How do your faith and your values show up on your body? If your faith were a tattoo, what would it be?

“I am a brown, queer, disabled woman,” the Rev. Theresa Soto writes. “Pictures of people like me in mainstream media are uncommon. Social media, then, where I have my own account and can include myself as the subject, leaves space for me to show that my image and my face also matter and are also human. When I encounter dehumanizing treatment—let’s say, for example, someone calls me ‘wheelchair’—taking a selfie is a quick centering practice. I am still a person. I leave an abiding record of my personhood this way.”

Take a selfie today if you have the ability to do so. Notice how beautiful you are. Notice how much you matter.

“I am discovering that the most powerful learning actually occurs when we go off the agenda. When we go off the agenda, it’s usually because something has happened in the room, and we need to attend to something that shifted. So, it could be that someone says something that’s like a microaggression; it could be that the learning in the room requires us to pivot—the questions that are coming up are not following the original plan—but ultimately what’s exciting about that is that we are responding to the embodied learned experience in that moment. We are responding to the people in the room, and to the actual moment.” -Julica Hermann de la Fuente

What do you need to shift today in order to learn better? What different pathways do you need to explore?

Children are often judged on whether they color things the “right” color. This never fails to make me mad. Why not a blue horse, or a green sun? Why not brilliant black flowers and flowing aqua hair? All colors are marvelous in their own right.

Draw something today. Make it a fabulous color.