I certainly have no expectation of you recalling how we started the year with our Newsletter. In a recap, I wrote about Scott Boland, his rise and success in the Australian cricket team, but most importantly, the notion of authenticity as represented in the quote of “you cannot be, what you cannot see”. Of living with authenticity. Of having your words and actions match so that your intent to live a certain way becomes visible.
How do you audit the past year, when you apply that filter to your own progression and journey across the months of 2022? How do I?
Confession: I am a closet space geek. Maybe not much closet in fact.
Whether factual docos, shows and books or science fiction novels and movies, I am captivated by the thought of ‘going where no man has gone before’, of ‘taking one small step’, of visiting ‘a galaxy far, far away’ and of stopping by ‘far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy…’, if you get my meaning. (The last one is a deep cut for the sad sci-fi fans like me in the readership)
Artemis 1, officially Artemis I and formerly Exploration Mission-1, is an ongoing uncrewed Moon-orbiting mission. As the first major spaceflight of NASA’s Artemis program, Artemis 1 marks the return of the agency to lunar exploration, originally begun as the Apollo program decades ago. We are heading back to the lunar surface! Yeah us!!!
For decades this has been discussed, funded, false started and discounted as a ‘too expensive to pursue’ pipe dream.
But now that Artemis 1 has launched, and has been orbiting the moon, and as I write this, is nearly home again this weekend; the enthusiasm and belief in this project has changed dramatically now that the visibility of the project has become… well… so visible.
As we close out 2022 – as I reflect on my own journey this year – I have cause to reflect and consider the times where my intent to BE, did not match with my lived experience of BEING. That my invisible intent, never translated into a visible form. It Is a challenge.
So as we each, in our own ways, disconnect a little, pause a bit, rest, recover and recharge this Christmas season, I do suggest we all take a moment; a WWJD moment. Yes, I know that ‘what would Jesus do’ has been commercialised, overused and in many ways diminished through commonality, BUT that is the essence of it: common.
It should be common to live life on purpose.
It should be common to live with authenticity.
It should be common to see Christ as our role model for living on purpose, with authenticity and in genuine love.
I admit to at times this year slipping out of ‘living on purpose’, and instead stumbling into living ‘by default’. From living with intent, to just existing. To blame circumstance, rather than take responsibility.
Enough.
As Artemis 1 comes home, having made visible NASA’s intent to ‘return to the Moon’, I am making a few personal commitments to do the same. To live so that my intent is visible, to make my intent common, to live on purpose.
To BE.
And you?
This word of encouragement for Christian educators was written by Dean Bennetts, and distributed in The Bridge newsletter in 2022. Dean is the CEO of Adventist Education in North New South Wales, Australia.
