Your Image in 2007

cool chick
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

My darling and hard-working people,

At the start of this promising new year, take a moment for yourself to bless yourself, re-dedicate yourself to the work to which you were called, let go the disappointments and failures of the past year, and move into 2007 with all the bad-ass 'tude for God you can muster.

As always, you're going to need it. The world needs it. We must rock. We must rock hard. People are drowning in noise and things, and if the Holy Spirit knocks mildly on the door, ain't no one gonna answer.

Part of Rocking It For God is to develop confidence and strength in who you are and what you are bringing, even in the visual sense. You must be willing to project not just sweetness and light and healing, but leadership, vision, trustworthiness. I know that you ARE a trustworthy and devoted leader, but does your body know that? Are you projecting it when you step into a room? Are you willing to? Or are you tip-toeing in with an enormous cross dangling from your neck, hoping that will provide all the presence you need? Are you getting your charisma from a collar or a chalice pendant?

PeaceBang is very interested lately in thinking about our inner reality of our public image vs the way it plays out to others.

Let me confess that in my deepest heart, I would love to be as cool as the chick in the leopard coat above, (and oh, for that hair!). I love her. In reality, however, I'm about as cool as this:


(Cute Finnish Pastor)

I like to think, though, that that creative, eye-catching, comfortable-in-her-skin, babe somehow gets through on some layer that people feel even if its invisible inside my meatball shape and Lane Bryant couture.

Another case in point. In my lived experience, life in ministry often feels like it moves in this way:

Tough! Fast! Cool! Zoomy! Shiny! Movement! Freedom! The only thing wrong with this image is that it contains only a solitary figure. In my version, you would see hundreds of people riding with this chick.

Okay, that's how I feel about ministry and religious life. I am aware, however, that to most everyone else, it appears that this is more the reality:

Fun, eh?

So, my cookie pies, what have we learned? That it's up to US to create, cherish and preserve a vibrant, fabulous inner reality about who we are and what we are doing. And when we do, it will start sneaking its way into our exterior reality and presence, and hopefully will draw others to our lives, our visions, our communities.

Rock on in 2007!

(Photos of cool woman and bike by Ben Kerns)