Mine has been an evolution from retreat to advance.
Where once I bowed my head, I now stand boldly, in the image of an all wise and loving God. I sing the Magnificat. What I learned, what I will practice this year on my journey, is Mary’s subversive and revolutionary Song.
I am sown deeply in the Word of God, in Whose Image I was made…
and as Eric B & Rakim said, “I Ain’t No Joke.”
No longer surrendered, as I was 10 years ago, instead, I embrace the Spirit of God within me, singing, in the words of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the “hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.” We were never meant to do anything alone.
“The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings.…This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols.
I declare, in the words of the old hymn, that my One Foundation,
” Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation
By water and the Word:
From heav’n He came and sought her
To be His holy Bride;
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.”
We Are the New Creation. It’s Time We Started Acting Like It.
This year, I shed false humility. This year, I release the shackles of Imposter Syndrome. If Mary could proclaim the greatness of our God and the favor with which God gazes upon us, then so shall I. If 2020 taught us anything, it is this…
It’s Time to Quit Playing Small
This year, I am at home in my body, comfortable in my radiant bronze skin, my wild and wooly locs flowing like those of the God of Revelations. I am planted deeply, disengaged from the winds and storms, firmly anchored.
Grounded in Faith, We Shall NOT be Moved.
I mastered it in dance. It was reinforced in meditation, but it all began in church. By what mooring are you held?
in 2021, I take back everything my own fear and the world’s lies tried to steal from me. What do I declare as my word and affirmation for the year to come?
I. AM. GROUNDED.
Do not fear me; fear the God that I serve. Fear that holy boldness that has been unleashed in me, finally, as I declare that nothing shall uproot me from the love of God.
God’s got me. God’s got the whole world held and my roots are deeply, firmly, GROUNDED. This is the year of my deconstruction. My decolonization. This is the year that my priorities are straightened out, my gaze fixed.
Chelle A Wilson 