Target practice has begun! When God gives you an assignment, what comes next is triggered by your response. You look at the landscape of your life; right away, what God has called you to do looks impossible, even downright crazy. It is okay to have a brutally honest conversation with God, just as Gideon of the Bible did (Judges 6-8).

It is time for your sound, your dance, your song, your story, and your artwork to be seen and heard! Your gift is an uncut gem, rare and unlike any other, that is ready to be formed, polished, and revealed. Not to mention the earth needs your voice!

Required viewing for every adult: the TED talk by Margaret Heffernan– “Willful Blindness.” I always included a TED talk by this amazingly honest woman on the mandatory viewing list for university-level Critical Thinking classes because creative thought really begins with the ability to take stock of a situation—to ponder–with real honesty.

There was once a land filled with eyeless creatures called Ignopaths wandering around in a dark thicket, victims of their own emotions. All around them was sunlight and truth in plain sight, voices sounding alarms, the earth itself speaking for those who could hear her moaning. The eyeless ones thrashed and screamed at one another, sinking into a mire of confusion.

Never before in our history has there been a more urgent need to refuse to be silenced. Freedom of thought is under constant attack, freedom of worship, speech, press, assembly and the right to bear arms are all fodder for tiny minds attempting to plunder them for political gain in a current narrative that has become so insidious and fluid we may miss its threat.

If we are honest enough with ourselves to step back from the confusion and shifting narrative of this chaotic year, many of us will acknowledge that the CoVid Quarantine, and its ensuing unintended consequences, have shaken us out of the self-absorbed complacency, the blind busy-ness of our lives pre-2020.