This Week’s Habit of the Heart: A Sense of Personal Voice and Agency
Our biblical text for Sunday will be Mark 1.9-13. Take some time to read this story of God’s voice & agency and hold it with you as you move through your week.
Here is Parker Palmer’s description of this habit:
“A sense of personal voice and agency: If we are to take advantage of these energizing potentials, we need to speak and act—not only to express our truth but to allow others to check and correct it as they speak and act in response. But many Americans have little confidence in their own voices or in their power to make a difference. For many reasons—including the fact that educational and religious institutions tend to teach us how to be an audience to a performance rather than participants in a drama—we are a surprisingly passive people. But there are ways to find one’s voice and learn how to speak it—and to know how it feels to make a difference when one does. We must offer such opportunities to more and more people if we want them to be agents of democracy’s renewal.”
Spend some time remembering and wondering:
When was a time in your own life when you spoke out—either in speech, writing, or action—and saw the power of your own agency?When was a time you thought about speaking out and didn’t? When and where do you feel most “voiceless” in your day-to-day life?
*The questions for our series on Healing the Heart of Democracy are slightly adapted from The Center for Courage & Renewal’s online study guide for Healing the Heart of Democracy. Learn more about The Center for Courage & Renewal and their important work here.
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