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Writer's pictureAndrea Angie (GA)

Platforms and Vocation: An Inside Out Approach to Showing Up and Using Your Voice



Pause For The Small Everyday Harvest

Links are provided at the end to reduce distractions.

Our vocation may or may not be tied to our occupation. Vocation calls us all forward (vocatio means “a call or summons” in Latin), more than we call it to us. Vocation is about your voice. It's an inner insistence to let your life speak forth in ways that evoke and encourage shalom — wholeness and wellbeing wherever you are present.


Sis, you are a speaker because you have a voice.


The speaker in you definition...

She primarily uses her life as a voice to speak forth grace + truth. Language helps her deeply connect whether she's stuck or struck, she's a shalom-making storyteller calling folks home.


How is the inner speaker in you speaking to you?


Your voice is first about your inner voice. It's more than the words coming forth from your larynx or pen (or however you express yourself).


Your voice (and mine) is about the way we allow our lives to boldly speak the truth about what we long for, what we've witnessed and experienced, and our holy response. When we align our vocation with the kingdom business of shalom-making, we will all be given a platform to steward. The significance is not in the size of the platform, it's in the Savior who assigned it to you in the first place.


Platforms + Presence

Nowadays when we think of platforms, we immediately associate it with social media. But before we get to the social media part, let's ponder what we mean by platform.


I always begin with the etymology of a word when I truly want to do more than skim its impact and meaning. A platform is a ”flat form,” the literal sense means a ”raised, level surface."


Your raised, level surface is wherever the Beloved has gathered you to be a healing, shalom-making witness. Your platform is also a plan of action to strategically gather with others to experience + extend the presence of "tov" (Hebrew for good) in the face of "rah" (Hebrew for evil) through a united effort. Whether in our households or in our public spaces, we all have a platform. Are you attentive to nurturing your platform—your raised, level surface in life?


Social Media Platforms Are Not Your Platforms

Any social media platform that you are on is not your platform, but you do bring your platform to social media.


Pastoral counsel: Just do you on whatever platform you're on. No matter what the platform incentivizes, be aware that you arrive on the social media scene as part of their product, not their platform. You and I merely participate on their platform.


Their platform is based on their values, mission and message, not yours. When you and I consent to bring our platforms to their platform infrastructure, we are merely borrowing space, we are tenants and they are the owners.


But we are never without options because we get to distinguish between where our platform calls home and where it goes out on a mission—every mission has a home base. Let's establish our home base.


Here's how we can do just that...


1. Get very clear why you show up wherever you show up.


2. What platform (website or blog) do you own as the creator? Where is home? What epicenter have you prepared for those you welcome into a sacred community?


3. I invite you to spend more time joyfully cultivating and sabbathing in a holy belonging that doesn't ebb + flow on algorithms, hearts, thumbs, reblogs, reposts, likes, or other metrics that can not provide meaningful purpose or offer a real witness of transformative, co-creating connection.


Yes, those metrics offer you data, but be clear, the data can not tell you WHO you are or inform you of your intrinsic worth. And it can not tell you about the legacy you are leading + leaving.


4. I invite you to spend more time consistently showing up + sowing into the healing sustainability of the God-given message + vision on your platform and less time chronically showing up and sowing into an often unsettling and unsustainable practice of scrolling on the platform of another.


5. I invite you to discover + experiment like a child with some upstream sabbathing practices that will bestow real sabbathing shalom and real sabbathing security in your life from the inside out.


6. Sabbath from seeking and desiring that people look up to you. Rather, you and I need people to see the Beautiful One unobstructed through our lives as they see us following Him—Yeshua.


7. Regularly name + elevate gratitude to its honorable place. Gratitude rewires the brain and allows us to heal + connect with the truest part of ourselves as recipients of grace.


Begin with one baby step, if you need to remove the cobwebs and dust from your dormant website, do that. Or if you desire to launch your very first website or blog—drag and drop models are all over the place for no cost or low cost. I started out using Blogspot, then, WordPress. I’ve been using Wix since 2016, and it works beautifully for all of my platform needs.


Pastoral comfort: Don't allow imperfection to hold you back, your website or blog doesn't need to be flawless. People who come to visit will be just fine with your work in progress. You're not there to impress for status-sake, you're there to be involved in real service that's unquestionably clear about your purpose + presence (peridot!).


No matter our vocation, occupation, life-platform, or digital platform, our identity is not found in them. Our identity is WHO we are apart from WHAT we do (or what we don't do). Our multi-faceted identity is revealed to us by the multi-faceted One who knit us together in our mother's womb.


 

Thank you to the SOULjourners who have traversed with me in counting the omer (sheaf) of our inmost being. The doors are still open for others to join in the festival counting of the omer to Shavuot/Pentecost, Thursday evening May 28, 2020 (Pentecost Sunday is celebrated on May 31, 2020).


1. Visit my Mohawkmomma Studio Patreon page to watch the Intro video and download the Omer calendar and the senses guide.


2. For the secured password access to the full sessions, become a patron.


3. Join in joy - yes, even in this season of crisis, this is a biblical festival of joy.


4. A gift to you: watch and lean into Omer Day 37. Tonight, we'll count Omer day 38.



Let the blessing of pause persuade you to bless and boast in your small and significant places.


The Wisdom of Wilderness Book

Tap and download the above guide to remind your soul of the significance of the small.


Until next time,


Scribble. Speak. From your soul.


 

Links for further discovery Subscribe & Listen to my Soul Care Podcasts

Become a Patreon parishioner to receive exclusives. I share all news, soul care and self-care toolkits + guides first with my patrons—I call my resources SOULutions.


Give one time (or more) to my pastoral mission via PayPal or Cash app - $AndreaBeloved


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More SOULutions Worksheets and Guides LEAVE A COMMENT: I’m curious, where is your platform’s home? Please share your address with me, and I’ll come to linger with ya sometimes.

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