To Stay Human
- Alysia Miller
- Feb 6
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 6
Feb 2026 Issue No. 14
HONEST LIFE | SLOW GROWTH | DEEPLY ROOTED
WELCOME
Welcome to Invitations. My deep hope is that this monthly newsletter will serve as an invitation to consider ideas, practices, and images that will enrich your life. I hope you’ll find fresh perspectives on living a honest, spiritual life, deepening connections between God and others, and permission to grow slowly.
Two Questions:
What in your life is well-forming you?
What in your life is malforming you?
TO PRACTICE: Simple Reflection
A friend recently asked what I've been doing to stay hopeful during times of tumult. I had to think about it a bit, but here is my list:
1. Painting a simple watercolor everyday in a painting journal
2. Listening to music (anything ranging from Jon Guerra to classical to funk)
3. Praying (or listening to) the Lord's Prayer (love this version from Matt Maher and Taya)
4. Sipping on dirty sodas
5. Stretching
Upon reflection, all of these bring me to the present moment and place. They're not an escape from reality, but a way to stay grounded. When I can do this, I find myself wanting to engage more with the actual people in front of me and consider ways I can love my neighbors.
Reflecting on what grounds you may not have immediate impact on your life or the world around us, but it is a simple step into a deeper practice of consistent reflection. It's a practice of staying curious and noticing. I find when I notice my own practices and habits, I can be more intentional about how I move through my daily life, and what kind of person I am becoming, and I give my self a chance to maybe notice where God is showing up in the middle of it all. What is on your list? What moves you to love the people in front of you?
"A good, but unexamined life will be high on duty and not likely to celebrate the odd paradoxes and ironic coincidences and the humor of being dirt." C.S. Lewis
From Eugene Peterson
found in TELL IT SLANT: a conversation on the language of Jesus in his stories and prayers
"Jesus is not a word in a book to be read and studied. He is not a word to be discussed. Jesus is the "Word made flesh." He is the living Word, a live voice, God's Word that took on human form and lived in an actual country, Palestine, in real time, the first century, and ate meals of bread and fish and wine with people (Mary and Martha, Peter and Andrew, James and John, for a start). In order to respond rightly to this voice, this Word-made-flesh, we must listen and answer in our actual neighborhoods, while eating meals of tuna casserole and spinach salad, and in the company of people who know us and whose names we know (our spouses and children, friends and fellow workers, for a start). Nothing in general. Nobody anonymous. No disembodied or unvoiced words."
Howard Thurman on Staying Human in Chaotic Times
February is Black History Month. Howard Thurman was an African American theologian who was influential to Martin Luther King, Jr. He wrote during the civil rights movement, standing firm on the belief that it was in and through Jesus that those with their backs against the wall could retain their humanity and live "unchained" even as the dominating world was pressuring them from all sides. It was to these people--those with their backs against the wall--to whom he wrote, in particular. If a person could see themselves as a child of God, they would be free from fear to move into a new courage. He asks us to consider what Christianity says to the poor, the disinherited, and the dispossessed--not as merely recipients of someone else's generosity, but Jesus as a unique model for how to live given his particular context as Jew in a Roman occupied territory. But even more than a model to imitate, Thurman taught that it was Jesus who could transform a person's inner character to heal their wounds and enable them to live as he showed.
Howard Thurman experienced Jesus differently than I do. His grandmother survived slavery. He was not naive to the hardships and daily struggle it was to simply exist as a person of color in the United States. He saw first hand that love was only possible between two free spirits. Yes, the Jesus Thurman was loved by is the same Jesus that loves me, but Thurman's vantage point is one I can never have, and I am grateful how he was able to share how to live in the chaos of a broken world as a child of God. He writes:
During these turbulent times we must remind ourselves repeatedly that life goes on.
This we are apt to forget. The wisdom of life transcends our wisdoms; the purpose of
life outlasts our purposes; the process of life cushions our processes.
The mass attack of disillusion and despair, distilled out of the collapse of hope, has so
invaded our thoughts that what we know to be true and valid seems unreal and
ephemeral. There seems to be little energy left for aught but futility. This is the great
deception. By it whole peoples have gone down to oblivion without the will to affirm
the great and permanent strength of the clean and the commonplace.
Let us not be deceived. It is just as important as ever to attend to the little graces by
which the dignity of our lives is maintained and sustained. Birds still sing; the stars
continue to cast their gentle gleam over the desolation of the battlefields, and the
heart is still inspired by the kind word and the gracious deed.
There is no need to fear evil. There is every need to understand what it does, how it
operates in the world, what it draws upon to sustain itself.
We must not shrink from the knowledge of the evilness of evil. Over and over we must
know that the real target of evil is not destruction of the body, the reduction to rubble
of cities; the real target of evil is to corrupt the spirit of man and to give his soul the
contagion of inner disintegration.
When this happens, there is nothing left, the very citadel of man is captured and laid
waste. Therefore the evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from
without to within. This would be to be overcome by evil.
To drink in the beauty that is within reach, to clothe one’s life with simple deeds of
kindness, to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement of the spirit of God in the
quietness of the human heart and in the workings of the human mind—this is as always
the ultimate answer to the great deception.
Excerpted from Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman, published by Beacon Press.
Text First Published January 1953
BRIEF THOUGHTS ON WHY JESUS DIDN'T LEAD WITH "GOD LOVES YOU"
Or 2 minutes on why faith awakens love & is the therapy for the soul
by: Geoff Holsclaw
Why doesn't Jesus start with his ministry with "God loves you, God sees you and knows you."? Jesus invites us to believe, even before we can feel it. This is the faith we ask for, and the faith that we receive.
Liturgy of the Ordinary
Nathan Foster talks with author and Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren about her book Liturgy of the Ordinary. Tish helps us see not simply that ordinary life matters but how it matters and how we can be “found by God in the ordinary”. We all have a notion that our ordinary lives have meaning, and Tish helps us explore how our days are shaping our lives.
Tish references an article she wrote which inspired her book, which can be found HERE.
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