Michele Shimizu-Kelley

Day 13: December 11

Reflector: Michele Shimizu-Kelley @michelejsk

Image Title: Sunrise at Acadia National Park (August 2020)

Have you greeted the sun yet today? Have you taken a moment to appreciate the star that’s fixed just the right distance from Earth so that it provides life-sustaining energy to all the diverse living beings of our planet? Today’s Scripture readings invite us to take stock of our lives, both individually and collectively, from an illuminating perspective. Jesus asks, “To what can I compare this generation?” (Matthew 11:16). It’s a fitting question for us all today who are living during a global pandemic and reckoning with the toll our human activities take on one another and upon the natural climate and ecosystems we inhabit. So much of my own darkness is felt when I recognize how I have taken something for granted, like the fact that the sun rises each day or that we have a finite amount of natural resources being extracted at absurd rates from our common home ground. And yet in those moments when I am made aware of my darkness, I am simultaneously made free to appreciate the light and cherish its value in my life. So it is with Advent, we feel our darkness so we can discern just how we are being summoned to follow “the Light of Life” (John 8:12), to listen to our God who “teaches us what is good for us” and “leads us in the way we should go” (Isaiah 48: 17). I invite you to take a moment today to pray in thanksgiving for the sun and meditate on how its rays may be inviting you to seek life’s Light in your own unique way this Advent season.

Michele Shimizu-Kelley is Assistant Director at Rostro de Cristo, whose mission is to provide transformative intercultural service experiences through living the Gospel in solidarity with marginalized communities. Rostro de Cristo’s programs are facilitated in collaboration with local community partners in Guayaquil, Ecuador and most recently in Camden, NJ, which is how Michele came to know the sacred space and community at Saint Raphaela Center. She loves to accompany and support young adults in their spiritual life and vocational discernment as she walks her own journey; a journey which has recently led her to pursue a degree in social work to more actively seek ways of practicing environmental justice and liberation health.