With August comes many annual reminders and traditions. For Texans we shatter the century temperature mark, flock to back to school shopping and tax-free weekends, and attend orientation weeks for incoming college freshmen. Baylor University has Line Camp, Texas A&M has Fish Camp, and of course, the one I am most inclined toward is the University of Oklahoma’s, Camp Crimson.
These orientation rituals serve key goals including building friendships, navigating the campus, learning college life routines, AND at the top of the list, indoctrination into the University traditions. These would include the sports teams fight songs, complete with hand gestures. Face it, whether you’re a Texas Longhorn with the Hook ‘em Horns sign, or a Baylor Bear with the Sic’m Bears sign, or a Texas A&M Aggie with that annoying Whoop, every University, their fans and sports team share in these intensely held traditions of support for their home team.
And most would agree that these traditions, fight songs, and hand gestures galvanize us in our school allegiance. They’re fun, meaningful, and memorable packaged in one.
This causes me to wonder, can similar types of expression populate and advance our spiritual lives? Does God have a fight song? Are there ways that we can wear our “Christian colors”, via our voices, hand gestures, or some other traditions?
I think the answer is yes. My experience is that through our voices, our postures, and our common fellowship and traditions, meaningfulness exists and it fuels our inner connection with God. These expressions can be as simple as singing together, kneeling together, or raising our hands in worship.
For me, I am always in wonderment and gratitude of fresh insights that enrich my experience and expression of devotion and affinity with my Savior. Often times these well practiced gifts span both time and culture.
Recently in following the meditations of Fr. Richard Rohr, he unveiled such a tradition from the life of Julian Norwich, a means by which she connected with God in mind and spirit and body. It has served me, and so perhaps it will you as well.
These words and hand motions are from the Order of Julian’s motto:
AWAIT (hands at waist, cupped up to receive): Await God’s presence, not as you expect, hope, or imagine, but just as it is in this moment.
ALLOW (reach up, hands open): Allow a sense of God’s presence (or not) to come and be what it is, without meeting your expectations.
ACCEPT (hands at heart, cupped towards body): Accept as a gift whatever comes or does not come. Accept that you are not in charge. Accept the infinity of God’s presence, present whether or not you are aware.
ATTEND (hands outstretched, ready to be responsive): Attend to what you are called to, actions that God invites you to from this stance of openness.
A grateful student,
Jim
