Before I offend…I am aware of the visceral reaction this word causes, and at this point in the game of my life, I don’t really mind. I could have used a euphemism like, “awareness” or “evolved” but I really think that to move beyond our own personal bubbles and being uncomfortable is essential in coming together as a people, so I don’t think I want to mince words. I absolutely believe that I am still stuck in the groggy bit between waking and sleeping, so I have a way to go before I am fully awake, or “woke”. Not because I don’t want to be, but because of the singularly small perimeters of my solitary life. I am, to use the modern vernacular, a cisgender, white, educated, Midwestern woman…I guess you could say that by nature I am pretty vanilla. And yet, regardless of the privilege of that status, I am very aware that I am so much more than that and have the scars to prove it.

For me, I am not offended by the phrase “woke” whether its used as a description or an epithet. I am only interested in what it means to me, and what has been part of my journey over the last seven years…to put into practice what God called from the heavens when Jesus was baptized, “This is my beloved, my son…listen to him.” So I have tried, sometimes harder than other times, to take the conversations, parables, teachings and actions of Jesus in a way that keeps pushing me outside of my bubble and become fully awake:

This is why I speak to them in parables, because ‘they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand. Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says: ‘You shall indeed hear but not understand you shall indeed look but never see. Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them. “But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.

I can’t comment on anyone else’s “wokeness”, except, according to Jesus anyway, that some absolutely won’t get it, he’s made that very clear. The stepping outside of one’s bubble to really see and really hear is just too uncomfortable and threatening for some so they vilify anyone else who does. I am of the “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” school of evolution and when I jumped on this train I did so willingly with utmost faith and the promise that I would absolutely go where God put me and keep walking regardless of the discomfort (even though now its with a gimp instead of a dance…see original post of starting this journey, “dancing naked before the Lord”). The sad truth after all this time? You can never un-see or un-hear those painful moments that pull you out of your comfortable slumber to witness the harsh realities (and some beautiful ones too) that are out there in this world. And it has changed me and moved me beyond so many people who are happy with the bubble they are in, because I know I can’t go back to whatever it was that I thought I knew before. I just don’t have anything to say to them any more (nor they to me if I’m being honest).

I used to think that what I wrote on this journey might…I don’t know, help others in some way. I don’t think about that much anymore, because the only thing I’m sure of is what I, myself, have learned…and its been a lot, with so much more to come. So this year is dedicated to seeing and hearing beyond the bubble and by listening more to God’s beloved.