Intro to My Year In Review: “This Is Not What I Expected.”
My Year in Review (2018)
“For the practitioner, creating spaces where we can talk about these issues is not enough. The challenge is to create environments where the experience is undergone. “
- Peter Rollins
Why do we do My Year in Review every January?
Contemplative • While there is still no replacement for the lessons and insight that our life experience can bring; I’m a firm believer that we can achieve some very important progress in our inward life in the practice of the contemplative life. Life experience along with the addition of contemplative practice makes for the possibility
of vulnerability, of a humble and tender heart, of awareness to see more of life.
Interactive Stations • Throughout the year we are exposed to movies, art, music, news, collective and individual stories. MYIR is a about processing some of these things to better see life as it is, to be more intentionally equipped for the unfolding year. There is something to the process of interacting with our senses to help solidify our reflections.
May the following moments
engage your imagination
guide your reflection
And inspire your consideration
of your life — your whole life with God.
May this space be one that creates an experience,
an experience the aids you in the embrace of
STORY
MYSTERY
COLLABORATION
”This is not what I expected.”
Have you ever said these words? The theme for MYIR this year is failed expectations. Is there a way live hopeful but not blindly oblivious to the reality that life just doesn’t always turn out the way you expected. Can our faith (or our doubt) give us a way to process such a way of life — of wisdom and hopefulness?
This is our goal tonight. To explore our successes and our failings. It’s not meant to be an overly melancholy experience — although sometimes it is. Be open to consider the way things turned out as expected, and when life seemed to turn way off of (your perceived) course.
“When our goal is an integrated life of faith, everything counts as practice. Every moment can be an opportunity to become more loving, more aware, more just, more gracious, more forgiving, less judgmental, less anxious, more at peace.”
— Samir Selmanovic
The next several articles will include the content from the two evenings we prepared/encountered over two Sundays as a community. But you can download the full PDF.
