I’ve been participating in the Question a Day Advent Calendar. It has been quite a week, this first week of Advent, and I’ve combined a couple questions into one post. I was starting to write a different blog post about my week, which slowly changed into my advent question. As I looked at the calendar, I found it fits nicely with today’s question.

“What’s the best advice you heard this week?”

Let me take parts of my personal spiritual journal, and put them into a public blog post. First, I’ll talk about what I think some of the best advice I gave this week.

People have been posting online, “Don’t Pray”. They are posting, “God is not fixing this”. They have wagged their tongues and asking, “Where is your God?”

I’ve responded saying, “Don't say ‘No More Prayers’, say ‘Backup your prayers with action’. No more empty rhetoric.”

But the question is about advice I’ve heard this week, so I’ll hop to a different part of my journal:

Friday, we had Grand Rounds at work on cultural competency when providing LGBT care. One of my tweets summarized an important point saying, “Key aspect of the cultural competency training I'm at: learning how to be respectful of people who don't match our assumptions.” In my own journey, it is about standing with the other. That is perhaps the best advice I’ve heard this week, explore how to be respectful of people who don’t match your expectations.

Part of the discussion was about creating a safe place for people to talk about the sexual orientation and gender identity. It seems that the safest place to talk about such core issues we all face is the medical office, and, unfortunately, not the church. There was a discussion about health centers ‘coming out’ on coming out day. How do we, as a church, come out as a community that loves all people?

This leads to my advent question:

At work, we will be doing a series of webinars about clinical workforce development. We are trying to find ways to avoid them being just another webinar. One of our phrases is, “This is not your mother’s webinar”. I sent off an email to our clinical director suggesting we use, “We interrupt the webinar to disrupt health care”. As I write this, I wonder about how we would complete the phrase,
“We interrupt this sermon, (or this church service, or even, this vestry meeting), to disrupt … “

Later this morning, I will head off to a poetry group I am part of. What does poetry interrupt? What does it disrupt? How does this fit in my journey?

So, my question to you: Complete this phrase: “We interrupt this _____ to disrupt _____”