by Marcia Mount Shoop
Mark 8:31-38
“Our brains are made for navigation. Unlike worms and other animals with smaller brains who might just use one thing to find their way around like smell, mammals have complex brains–and we are adept at making spatial maps so that we can figure out alternative routes to places just from the many different parts of our brains that are activated and gathering data when we move around. It’s ancient–and it’s like any muscle. If it’s harmed or we let it atrophy, it doesn’t work as well as it could.
Lent is a GPS dead zone spiritually. The route can get recalculated over and over again, and it calls on the most elemental parts of our embodied existence to find our way. And by that, I mean the deepest truth of who we are–that we are made in the image of God, that we are instilled with God consciousness, with a spark of divinity within us. We are made for this world to be home, and we are made to create balance and right relationship with all that is.”
Watch the full GCPC service on 2/25/24 here
(Scripture and sermon begin at 45:25)