Awareness

Best

/ Jeff Hora / 2 Comments
Graphic by CoPilot AI – Living My Best

I wrote earlier about having read the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and outlining the Four Agreements at the heart of that book:

  1. Be impeccable with your word.
  2. Don’t take anything personally.
  3. Don’t make assumptions.
  4. Always do your best.

I want to write about each of these, and have decided to go backwards through this list. So, I will start with the Agreement “Always do your best.”.

I am concerned about clear communication, context, and meaning. That concern makes this Agreement challenging. Here are a couple of the challenges:

  1. Consensus on the meaning of certain words like “best” and “always“.
  2. The overall effect of this Agreement on mindfulness and sense of self.

First, the meaning of words. I have written on this blog a lot about the difficulty of agreeing on the shared meaning of a word. Sometimes, in the context of a conversation, you can use a generic definition of, say, “car”, if that vagueness will work in the context of the conversation. However, if the kind of car and the context of its ownership, condition, etc. is what is driving the conversation, then you need to spend more time mutually defining the car. There is, of course, a big difference between a top-end 2026 Ferrari and an old, rusted-out, barely-functional 1961 Dodge Dart, so you need to agree on what the car is.

So, in the context of this Agreement, what does “best” mean? Well, what ISN’T it? It is not a line or standard set by someone else. There may be goals or metrics that you’re presented with towards which you or your team aspire, but they do not define your best. “Best” is a movable beast. You are an organic being, and there are a huge number of factors and conditions that moderate what is your “best” in every moment. Only you can know what your best is at any given time.

For example, I have certain disciplines I work very hard at, including walking. For a number of reasons, I tend to walk on our heavy-duty treadmill in 2-hour stretches at 2.4 miles per hour. I do this 3 days a week. There are days I have scheduled walks that can only go an hour, or weeks where I can only walk 1 or 2 days that week, and sometimes 4 days a week. Any more than that per week, for me, actually hurts me more than helps. I have discovered my “best” through trial and error, and it remains a moving target. Some days I’m not feeling well, so I either move the day that I’m going to walk, or, if my schedule doesn’t permit, I have to cancel that one. But, THAT is my “best” for that day and for that week. The thing that I can’t do is blame myself for not making this goal. I am doing my best. Taking the day off on that day is my best, especially when I consider one of the things I work at is learning to listen to my body. Best is Best.

The overall effect of this Agreement is to help me understand my own sense of being in every moment and know what is the right thing to do, and if I can’t do it, or fail doing it in some way, I am still doing my best in that moment! As I keep expanding in mindfulness, I can more clearly see what my “best” is in that moment. And I can follow that awareness into the next moment (and the next, etc….) so when I am presented with the next bit of life, I can know more clearly what “best” is or looks like.

If I mess things up, to the degree possible, I move past that assessment and work on the “Best” in the next moment. Mistakes are great for learning, but obsessing after the fact only minimizes the mindfulness of the moment I’m in NOW, making it more difficult to get to my current “best”.

One of the most important things I’ve learned from this Agreement is that acting on my best means never having to “fall on my sword” if I don’t hit some arbitrary target or disappoint someone. Best is Best. Goals are kind of imaginary, and someone else’s reaction to my best in any moment is not something I can control and not really my problem. I have no idea what the inner life of another is like, what they are demanding of themselves, their context, etc. Their reaction to me is their inner event, not mine. I’ll write more about this when I post on Agreement #2 – Don’t take anything personally. For now, rest and take comfort in hitting your best in every moment. Only you know what that is. Pay attention to it. Like now…

Working on Agreements

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment
Book cover is a screen capture from Audible.com.

I recently read a book by Don Miguel Ruiz entitled “The Four Agreements“. I found it very helpful in a number of ways. But first, a bit of background…

As one who firmly believes and knows the Reality of God as The Creator Who pronounced all things as “good” and “very good“, I have been blessed with an ever widening exposure to all of the good and life-giving things, practices and people around me and in this world. Being a History buff, I began researching the histories and beliefs of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Indigenous Spirituality, to name a few. Throughout this journey, I’ve been exposed to the spiritual beliefs and cultural framework of these, and have become impressed, delighted, and humbled by the overlapping of good things. Generally the most difficult thing has been “translating” (if you will…) the expressions and language used and how this may have a recognizable relation to other symbologies I have encountered to date. I have loved every step of this journey so far, and am grateful to continue to be engaged in it.

Don Ruiz’s book is about some principles of Toltec beliefs and culture. The Four Agreements, as presented in this book are:

  1. Be impeccable with your word.
  2. Don’t take anything personally.
  3. Don’t make assumptions.
  4. Always do your best.

The first agreement is one I still struggle with, as I have a hard time wrapping my head around a definition of “impeccable” that doesn’t create obfuscation for me. Also, the definition and context of the word “word” for me is pretty broad and is a bit slippery in my head. I’m still working on this one.

The other three agreements have been valuable, especially as they seem pretty straight-forward to my sensibility. I’m actually going to write separate posts on these, as there is a lot to comment upon and pull from my experiences with them in my life to date that I wish to share.

That all said, I highly recommend this work. The following posts can be read as grounds for further conversation with anyone who wants to. Keep an eye out for the next one in the next several days!

How Real Is This?

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment
Graphic by CoPilot AI

In my recent post “Which part(s) do you see?” I wrote about the existence of the many, many facets of pretty much everything: people, events, clothing, times, works of art and science, and so on. The more facets you see and understand to be integral to what you’re seeing, the harder it becomes to truly describe it.

A received a comment on that post about how much of challenge it is to REALLY know someone, whether a spouse, a parent, a child, a BFF, and others. People have so many facets that, in paying attention and time in evolving the relationship, real description becomes almost insurmountable. There’s that….

I started thinking, however, about the more or less opposite challenge. I have several friends, and one in particular, who are writers, mostly of novels. I also have a couple of friends who are journalists. Each of these callings create a problem for the writer (going forward, I’ll gather my journalist pals in with the term of writer….). I’ll get to the issue shortly.

First, I want to state that I now understand why so many of the Author forums and pages I have visited over the past several years have discussions surrounding constructing characters in their work. I have certainly read works where the story wasn’t too bad, but the characters were shockingly one-dimensional. Introducing a character is one thing, but fleshing one out to interesting and believable is another entirely.

So the issue is, if a person is a gem who is showing (or not showing) all of their facets, how does an author create a “complete” character without trying to expose so many of the character’s facets that they become virtually indescribable in their writing? I realize that this is both an Art and a Science, and doing it consistently well is a true gift. I take my hat off to all of you writers who work so very hard to do this.

This recognition extends to journalists, too, for a slightly different reason. Journalists are expected to deliver a story (if it’s news…opinion pieces are a bit different) as neutrally as they can. This is completely impossible, but each of them does the best she/he/they can. Why is it so hard? In describing an event, the journalist is directing attention to a facet or two of the event. Trying to illuminate the entire gem is impossible. Plus, in directing attention to the one or two facets immediately creates the message in human minds that those facets are more important than others in the event, which may or may not be true, but, again, there’s only so much a journalist can do. Describing an event as neutrally as possible by including as many facets as are communicable while not obscuring the event is wicked hard.

Directing attention in this way, sadly, is also how stories can mislead and misinform the readers. Those who have agendas, ideologies, axes to grind, things to hide, etc. can look at the gem and choose to highlight different facets that can be woven into a narrative supporting whatever the writer is trying to overtly or covertly support (for example, think of some who write about the world and cherry-pick verses from the Christian bible to support what they want to call out….The Bible is WAAAAAAAY more complex than that….). Being aware of the power of description, the difficulty of expressing near-neutrality and, in other writing, creating those characters in such a way that they are real-ish…these are all skills and abilities that responsible readers can and should cultivate. We need to be aware that we’re only being shown what can be shown in some way that’s comprehensible. Upon consideration, we get to decide if the character drawn is reasonable, or the news story is mostly neutral or skewed. It’s up to us and our big ol’ brains to work through this.

Which Part(s) Do You See?

/ Jeff Hora / 3 Comments
Graphic by CoPilot AI

A picture I’ve carried in my head for a long time about experience, observation and communication is one of a lovely gem.

I have placed before me, in one form or another, a person, an item, an event, something old, something new, etc. Something that is new or transient can flash past. It could go so fast I don’t really get a chance to see anything but the blur as it goes by. Those can leave an impression, but, unless they come swinging back like some sort of yo-yo, my attention moves on.

The gem analogy for me emerges with people or things or any of the other things I listed above that I see again and relatively frequently. The attention focused on differing facets of the gem, especially as I turn it in my hand, show me things about the gem that differ from what I saw before, and give me a better apprehension of the the gem in toto.

Take the example of someone I see pretty frequently, but maybe not every day. On different days, this person exhibits different feelings or shades of feelings. As our relationship grows and deepens, other feelings and conversations reveal themselves. Being mindful, open and accepting, I can “turn the gem” and see innumerable aspects of this person and who they really are. I’ll probably still miss a ton, because I am limited by my only-too-human focus on one thing at a time, or my own filters, preconceived notions and beliefs, culture, and “programming”. However, investing attention and non-judgmental care in moments with this person delivers such treasures that even my clodhopper handling of the gem yields wonders, appreciation, love and care for this this other fellow person that I’m left breathless.

The more I turn the gem, the harder it becomes for me to verbalize the entire, holistic, total view and appreciation of this fellow traveler. When I reach the point where the other compatriot becomes almost indescribable to someone else, I know I’m crossing that fuzzy line where I get that we’re both equal components of this creation. This goes for all the other items I mentioned above.

We are all alive as connected creation here. As I remember, we were called out as being “Very Good!” from the Beginning, right?

Solid Ambiguity

/ Jeff Hora / 3 Comments
Graphic by CoPilot AI

I may be remembering the timing incorrectly, but it seems like early in my corporate career (started at the end of 1997…) a LOT of companies were publishing job descriptions, especially when posting jobs internally or on the fairly new Internet, with one of the desired traits/skills being “to be comfortable with ambiguity”. I feel that being COMFORTABLE with ambiguity is different from being able to HANDLE ambiguity. The latter is probably the best that most of us can muster. I’ve have never, in my life, met someone who is “comfortable” with ambiguity. Every one of us seeks stability and certainty of some degree in a good chunk of our lives. Ambiguity is the speed bump you didn’t see, the change in weather on the day you were counting on it being nice, the change in plans for a day, etc. Look around you, every moment. Ambiguity abounds. (A good friend of mine wrote a blog post about this kind of expectation/schedule yanking at https://steveawiggins.com/2026/05/07/snowballs-in-spring/)

So there’s this tension we need to be aware of and learn to accept instead of ignore or react violently to. Holding each moment as distinct and not everlasting, realizing the next one is already upon us and is different than the last one. That the chances that the next moment will be as we expect, according to habit, pattern, or what we think we know, are variable.

I’ve been reading a lot of books by Brian Greene and others about quantum sciences, cosmology, and a lot of other truly fascinating (at least it is to me….) stuff. In between that and a lot of reading concerning Christian mysticism, other belief systems including Buddhism and Native Nations’ spiritual experiences and cultures leads me to believe that the reality of the mutability of each moment and awareness of that is something that relieves this tension. Acceptance and awareness, coupled with a growing realization of how this all fits together in Ecology and Cosmology.

So, I came up with a concept that allows me to hold this kind of somewhat paradoxical sense to myself. I call it SOLID AMBIGUITY. Why “solid”? Good question. That word communicates to me the picture of something that I can rely on, a very real trait of ambiguity. Right now I’m sitting in my Office/Man Cave at home. I am fortunate enough to have 4 windows here on the second floor that look directly into the trees nearby our home. The sun is out (not a REALLY consistent occurrence here in the Pacific Northwest in Spring, so enjoy it!) and the trees are full of life. I’m listening to music (of course I am…)…right now; the group Snarky Puppy, and music by Steve Reich is cued up shortly. My body is not too achy (a nice state of things that I do NOT take for granted anymore…).

Each and every one of these items (along with the untold number of others that pass by and change every moment) changes…solid ambiguity. I can count on it. Most are pretty ignorable (teeny tiny things or “expected” items that flow past). When a big change takes place like, say, a completely unforeseen gust of wind blows through and causes one of the trees I’m looking at to keel over, I can be startled. Being in the moment allows me to take that in, be mindful of my being Right Now, confront what my response should be, and over it all allow the center of my being take the stance of “Well, THAT happened…”. I need not concern myself with the event of that past moment. I can focus on the moment I’m in so I can pay attention to the time and space surrounding me now.

Everything that I’m describing is woefully inadequate to the experience. Paying attention to as much of everything in and around me is impossible to describe. There’s too much. However, the experience and discipline is there. The moment opens itself. I believe it was Thomas Merton who wrote that each moment is pregnant with the next. Pregnancy implies new life, and new life is exciting and certainly worth being grateful for.

One Fades Out, One (sometimes) Fades In

/ Jeff Hora / 3 Comments

Sisyphus Photo by Gerard Van der Leun

I have a lot of things that I find of interest….some more, some less. Still, I feel that this is the norm for most of us. There’s a handful of things that you’ve held dear for your whole life, or at least for such a long time that it can FEEL like it’s been your whole life.

Then there’s the entire ocean of all the other stuff in this world that can latch onto your attention and time. The massive bulk of this you just “let be”, if only because there’s not enough time in your day or life to pay attention.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed a cognitive pattern for me that lines up, more or less, with the the attentive emotions for the duration of a deeper interest and engagement with something. An example in my life was my passion for painting. Right at the beginning of the COVID shut-down, I decided that I would try my hand at painting. I have a friend who had been doing this for awhile at that point (this friend has since excelled WAY beyond what I felt I could do….her work is, well, “jaw-droppingly wowser”….), and I felt it would be a new and different outing for my creative side. I have been a musician most of my life, but my active engagement with that side of my creative self (other than CONSTANTLY listening to music….) had drawn down, and I felt that going a new direction that I’d never even considered before would be fun and an adventure.

And indeed it was. For about two and a half years. Before I get further into that experience, I’d like to give a shout-out to all the fellow travelers who created (and continue to create) an enormous number of helpful online videos with tips and how-tos, as well as all the members of various online groups and forums of others willing to not only give a guy a hand, but commiserate about tough nuts to crack for a newbie.

So why only two plus years, you might ask? Good question. Age and growing personal awareness has led me to learn a couple of things about myself (“FINALLY!”….my inner voice exclaims). One big one one has been that, in those areas of interest and engagement, when it stops being fun, so to speak, it’s time to either take a break or give it up.

Now, I know about perseverance and cracking a tough nut. Those were and are the areas where that virtual “cloud of witnesses” encourage and support me. I’m writing about when it stops feeling like fun and starts feeling like work. I HAVE to make myself do something that I liked and might present me with a challenge for the period of time, or confront me with a hill that I need to get over. I don’t know about you, but I spent a LOT of life having to go ahead and just DO something (or take up the tug-of-war-rope ONE-MORE-TIME just to get to the next Sisphusian point) regardless of what I felt.

Well, I’m in a time in my life where I don’t really need to do that any more. Are there regular chores? Sure. But I’m not writing about those. I’m writing about stuff over which I have the agency to say, “Nope. Don’t want to do that any more. Buh-bye…”

I’ve discovered that there are more of those in my life than I thought. Over time, I examine the things I spend precious time and attention on and evaluate whether I can, or want to, scale down, ramp up, or drop them. I now know that this has NOTHING to do with being a “quitter”. What others may or may not think about my actions in that regard has had less and less an impact on my awareness and acceptance of myself than it might have had in earlier days.

I’m going to limit my banging on about this for now, but I wanted to get this out there as a testimony, and maybe as an encouragement to any one else who might stumble across this post and is confronting the ongoing changeableness of everything in this life. It’s OK. It’s normal. If it really isn’t fun any more, think about whether you want to keep going, or move on in some way.

Don’t worry about making “the wrong decision”. In most cases, there really isn’t such a thing.

The Catnip of Storytelling

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment

It’s the time of year when some of the people you haven’t seen or heard from for awhile may reach out to get together or call or chat or send massive tomes as “Christmas Letters.” (Folks still write those, sometimes, it’s true….) I have a few folks for which this holds true, but there are a couple of old friends I’ve referred to in other posts that get together pretty regularly. We don’t run out of things to talk about, for sure. Aside from the usual catch-up, we have all these intervening years during which we didn’t really keep in touch, plus our shared youths, to consider and reconsider.

Add to this that all three of us are born storytellers, and you have the recipe for a lot of Really Long and Fascinating Conversations.

Graphic provided by CoPilot AI

What is it about telling stories versus just conveying events or facts that is so compelling to so many of us (and drives so many other people utterly bonkers….)? I feel there are several different things, some or all of which call to our story-telling breed inexorably. Some of them include:

  • The desire to provide context. The presentation of a simple data point begs (to me..) to place it in what I deduce as a position of context that provides a bit of understanding about what that data point can mean in the environment around it. While most data gets some kind of context, storytellers prefer to give it a LOT of context! This, however, doesn’t play well with the Severe PowerPoint set…..
  • Like begets like. When surrounded by other storytellers telling stories, it only feels natural to “fall into the pool” and do like likewise. It is a very comforting a life-giving place to be…
  • The story triggers vivid, irresistible memories.  These make it difficult to break off or wrap up the story. If well-told, your hearers are drawn along with you. Eventually you realize that you’ve been holding forth for quite awhile and wrap up the current discourse (I have been know to say, out loud “I need to stop talking now….“). This at least gives everyone a time to sit with the memories, or for another one of your storyteller friends to tee up one of their own.
  • Storytelling used to be how we conveyed knowledge, experience  and belief. Humankind didn’t always know how to write, or read, or anything like that. Verbal was the only way ANYTHING was passed on, and stories lend themselves easily to memory. So, we’re kind of built for it……

Each of those sits atop the next for someone like me. When I was busy working on my graduate degree, my wife (a Ph.D. scientist!) would read my work and come back to me with two primary kinds of feedback:

  • Help with my written grammar – I tend to write conversationally.
  • A single question: “What is your point here?”

The assistance was invaluable to me, both for the degree and in the following years. The single question she asked has served me well over time until retirement from the corporate world, and serves me well now when I find myself involved in situations that require me to tell a little less story with the conversation.

Nonetheless, storytelling is truly catnip for me (at least as defined as what catnip is to a cat with a serious catnip problem….I have a number of cats, so I know what that’s like….). I don’t know how much of a draw it is to others. I feel that some are more drawn to written storytelling (I have a few friends who are authors, and I see this in them), others to face-to-face conversation (enticing, plus there’s body language to express and observe….), and, thanks to all the story-telling technologies and platforms available now, many more who tell these stories in a lot of ways.

If you are a member of this tribe, leave a note in the comments with a pointer to where we can find and enjoy your stories!

See It All

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

I do a lot of varied reading through out the days and weeks. I just finished a book by Dr. Cornel West entitled “The American Evasion of Philosophy” and started one by Slavoj Zizek entitled “The Sublime Object of Ideology”.

Not exactly easy reads, but they are part of my ongoing desire to wrap my head around the philosophical, cultural, societal, spiritual, etc. foundations that not only surround us today, but brought us here (Lest you think I’m buried in this stuff, I’m also reading/listening to other books – War & Peace, Limit by Frank Schätzing, a History of Spain, Theology of the Old Testament by Walter Brueggemann, The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, and a couple of others…..I like being able to switch gears as well as get exposed to the unpredictable ways all of these can shine different lights on each other).

As I read the early part of the book by Zizek, he mentioned a “progressive theorist of education” from the Sixties who published a study in which a group of children were asked to draw an image of themselves playing at home. A few years later, after some years in primary school, the same group of youngsters were asked to do it again. There was quite a difference. The early self-portraits were “exuberant, lively, full of colours, surrealistically playful…” The later portraits were much more subdued. Most of the group chose to use only regular pencils, although other colours and drawing pieces were available. Predictably, this experiment was taken “as proof of the ‘oppressiveness’ of the school apparatus, of how the drill and discipline of school squash children’s spontaneous creativity, and so on and so forth.” (Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, pg. ix)

While not entirely subscribing to this viewpoint, I began to think about the experience and perception of each of us, surrounding expectations regarding what we see, and a whole host of other influences, factors and limitations. I remember clearly, to my later shame, working with my kindergarten-age daughter to try and help her learn to color within the lines of work that she had from school. My goal was to try and help her be successful at school, without thinking about the joy of coloring outside the lines. She worked very hard to do this, which slowed her down considerably, thereby finding a different avenue from which to annoy her teacher (she later was told, in class, to just stop working at it so they could move onto the next thing on the classroom schedule…..She felt like such a failure…).

Visualize this process. Take this photo:

Graphic 1: Source unknown

A younger child, asked to draw this, gives you something like this:

Graphic 2: rendered by CoPilot

A few years later, upon being led into the world of “how a grown-up would do it”, the artist hands you this:

Graphic 2: rendered by CoPilot

From the vantage point of someone about to turn 70, I meditated on this conclusion by the educational theorist, my experience as a parent and member of our society and culture and years of life folding like layers upon my awareness. If the photo, as regards this writing, represents what I ACTUALLY see, then the two drawings are not an either/or perception……they are both/and and beyond.

The first drawing has, perhaps, more vibrancy and colorful impressions of the reality. The second, however, isn’t ‘wrong’. It observes a more Platonic ‘essence’ of the subject, with clarity and precision that the first one misses (although, to be fair, ability and the difficulty of working crayons when in youngster “Woo-Hoo!” mode can make clarity, etc. harder to capture….).

So, there’s more there. It is NOT a matter of one being Right and other being Wrong. Not only are they both Right, but there’s even more there to see. Throughout your day, sit with the moment and try to restrain your own ‘monkey mind’ concerning the things you see. Just take the grace and time to see them, accept them, and realize that others may see different things about them than you do, which isn’t wrong. Taken together, you may both be “right” with more to see together.

I’m feeling that I want to see what I see more in light of the first drawing. The colour, the life, the vibrancy lead me to a mindfulness I don’t access any other way.

A Journey of Gaps

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Graphic by CoPilot AI

I keep reading, especially in the book I’m into about Sartre and his thought journey right now, of the unusual place of art in establishing a counter voice in times of upheaval and uncertain restraints. It’s hard for me, as I feel like I only have one or two drums to beat, and that I’ve whomped on them before, so what’s new there? I’m not sure….Perhaps the context of a new day or a different focus?

That said, I have friends who take part in various arts (music, visual, written) in regular and copious expression. I’m a bit envious of their compulsion/addiction to their artistry. But I know that I can’t compare myself to them. I can look at who I was yesterday and look at myself today. Moving this moment forward is the only change I get to really take part in, and life teaches me that THAT changeableness is the norm of Reality. Without being driven over by events, flexibility and openness to the call in that moment and the next is what I can pay attention to and live into and out of.

My real passion for the past 4 or so years has been to read and learn as much as I can. My personal library is enormous, and I’m guilty of only reading about 30+% of the books I purchased in my life (years ago I used to comb through book stores while I worked in the military or in corporate, telling myself that I was obtaining them for when I didn’t have the funds to buy them any more. Of course, being a true bibliophile, I always came up with fund for more books).

Then there’s the desire to reread those few works that call to me to be experienced again, for whatever reason. There may only be so much time between today and the day I will be unable to read or understand what I can take in, so I do my best to cover a lot of ground now. As the eyes give out, that is a challenge, although I am mightily grateful for audio books…..I only wish they also had more of the other books I have that haven’t been produced in audio yet, but it’s a good start.

Anyway, as I have studied more in the (somewhat overlapping) areas of linguistic theory, critical literature theory, theology and mysticism in a number of religions, cognitive science, psychology and communication, the histories of other cultures (and their global influence), and the kind of Zen-like qualities of quantum mechanics (I’m a science geek, but I don’t have the math and physics chops to go very deep there, still….it’s awfully cool!)…my initial question to myself when I started this particular journey was, and still is, “What brings us to this place in society today, and what can I better grasp in order be an intelligent and love/life-giving person in this world?”

That’s an inadequately expressed, shortened goal. There are any number of rabbit trails to head down in working toward filling in the gaps in my understanding, usually uncovering scores of new gaps as I go. I’ll pass on some of the stuff I find out about, if it seems like it might interest you as much as it does me.

Witness As Being

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Image by Alex Carabi

While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. – Acts 1: 4-9 NRSV

When I carry forward what I wrote about earlier on what “witness” means in various contexts into this text, something jumps out at me: the phrase that I used to hear when I was much younger, “Let’s go out witnessing!” seems misplaced…

Being a witness isn’t an activity I set out to do or accomplish. I am a witness by virtue of experiencing God’s Spirit and power in my life. Jesus didn’t say “y’all go out witnessing to the world!” He said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (emphasis is mine)

The text above mentions receiving power in the Holy Spirit twice before then telling the disciples that they will be witnesses. Certainly this doesn’t mean that NOW God will start to work in their lives, NOW God will start to demonstrate His power……God’s been working in their lives for quite awhile! The Holy Spirit living in Love and Power through and from them into the world around them heightens their awareness of what they have experienced. The Spirit gives them the loving insight into what that might mean to those around them, and the wisdom to recognize the dire need for God’s Grace in each and every one about them. They each learn how to express their experience, both in love and in restorative justice, that allows their witness to show, not themselves, but our loving and graceful God to that person.

Being a witness isn’t something we train up to do. We are witnesses. There are things we can learn from our community, from spiritual friends and others that can lead us to be more sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s work, and perhaps, more wisdom about being the witness that God has placed us in this life to be, right now, with this person……but the central experience is your experience with God in your life.

Prayerfully consider your rich relationship with God, and present that as an open book through which the Spirit breathes grace for others.