Emerging

Emerging

What is emerging in this time?  That’s the question that I keep praying about.  I truly believe that this is a threshold / liminal time for our world right now.  We are in a space where what has is falling away and something new is going to emerge.  The question is, what will that be?   Some have speculated that we are in the midst of a time very similar to the Reformation 400+ years ago where, to use Phyllis Tickle’s words, it was like a “giant yard sale.”  Others such as the authors of The Fourth Turning share that they feel we are in the final stage of a 4-fold cycle of time that will open into a new one (their paradigm notes that the fourth stage is always a crisis point before the awakening to a new cycle).  Regardless, the question is “what is emerging here”?  Will this time of difficulty and trial be a point where we move to a more isolated way of life?  Or to a more communal?  Will we move towards more oppression or to more openness?  Will we grow to a more just world or to a less just world?  

This morning that question and prayer was stirring in my heart as I saw this one little bud starting to emerge along my walking path.  There are hundreds of other buds just waiting to emerge but this was the only one that had started.  And as I looked at it, it felt to me like it was two hands clasped in prayer.  Like it was carefully emerging into this new world and praying for what would be.  I thought of the prophets of old and of the present who often feel like they are the lone voice in the wilderness shouting “prepare the way of the Lord!”  They shout this in the hope that others will begin to emerge as well and join the call.  

Today, my prayer simply is...what is emerging, Lord?  And how can I be one of those voices?  And may I have the courage to emerge and bloom.