Early in 2004, when I was teaching writers of all abilities and cultures at the University of Arizona in Tucson, an email came to my inbox inviting me to apply for a job. The attached document, named as a job description, sounded to my ear and to my soul more like a miracle, like a divine call I had ceased to expect in my lifetime. And then suddenly, impossibly, here it was.

This email! This unbelievable message, with its shimmering hint of the Spirit whispering to me, came from Downtown Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York. I didn't know what to do. Or maybe somehow I did. What I did was get up from my chair and walk out from my office into the courtyard outside our building. Immediately I was astounded by a bright gold palo verde tree in full bloom. The sky was hot blue behind it. My feet left the ground but I kept walking, because God was already talking to me.

What God was saying was that no matter how much I had so far learned and internalized not to expect it, hope for it, or if I caught sight of it, believe it, actually right now a Presbyterian congregation, with an officially elected group of ordained elders constituting a Presbyterian Session, was seeking a duly ordained Presbyterian minister of the Word and Sacrament to accompany them in their ministry, and that, among their preferred qualifications, believe it or not, and please believe it if I could, was an ability to lead the congregation in its desire to learn about and practice liberation theology, and in particular, feminist and womanist and mujerista and Asian women's liberation theology.

So today, in fathomless and joyful and never-ending gratitude for that sacred moment, and for all the people of Downtown Presbyterian Church, and for our whole entire journey from there to here, my heart turns afresh to hear God's voice in an advent passage from this year where God speaks through the prophet Isaiah on the Sunday just before Christmas:

"Behold, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert." (Isaiah 43:19, Berean Standard Bible)

And I wonder...What might God be hoping we will find it within ourselves to dare to believe now?