“A meditation on what it means to act today”

By Audrey Ross, a member of the Christ City writers workshop. Written in response to our Acts of the Spirit series.

My meditation feels distant from the mystics or monks as I sit 
near not one screen but three, trying to loose my mind 
from its endless lists and explore instead 
its edges and the question lingering there — 

What does it mean to act? 
Is it like how you

Act in a middle school play with all its 
awkwardness and earnestness, unshrouded 
behind hand-me-down costumes and DIY sets, 
shaky spotlights and slightly late timing,

owning each prewritten line and stepping 
into your unmade self in front of your peers 
and parents, clapping along with 
the shadows of you in their memories.

Or is it something more like when 
that website burns bright with

Act Now! That common call of organizations, social media ads with
sad eyes in sepia from places that need food or water or  
[enter the thing they need money for here]
ending with a button and an exclamation point and

“Log in to PayPal or Google Wallet or Venmo.”
Your CVC and the enter key unlocking 
one moment where you don’t worry about
being part of the problem.

Bracing for the multiplying moments near that may 
not gift us time to be unclear about how to

Act, like that book, the one with Apostles —
Look at their Impact! Those founders, pioneers,
the Western projection of entrepreneurs 
and our obsession with the definition of Success

and exactly how we are to emulate them — spawning 
debates and divisions, losing the plot in pursuit 
of lines and limits, in arguments about “Does the Spirit still 
move like that? Expand, reach, speak?”

As we try to figure out exactly how 
and what it means to

Act like we aren’t tired and sad and a little guilty from
being more troubled than being good trouble, wondering
if any of it matters — the actions we take each day, mostly 
just to keep our heads above the water:

Making toast in the morning and thinking of a friend —
Is that a prayer?

Reposting the horrors to unhide them —
Is that prophecy?

Walking your son to school —
Is that a sermon?

I sit in a state of marvelous unknowing — releasing 
the scripts and the shame — trusting in more than me to 

Act like each motion is breathed through — the Spirit in step with 
your mind, mouth, hands, your heart to beat and stretch out 
beyond the binds of all that turns and twists inside us — the past 
and present and future systems that twist up 

what is Goodness beside us. And at last, 
we lay down, our heads heavy, letting 
our bodies be carried to the now and next need 
by the steady, rushing river of God’s kingdom at hand

even today.