Moving Against the Current

Going upstream

“We are very reasonable creatures, but to feel the grace of God, one must forget about reason and go on a pilgrimage to a place where we no longer ‘see as through a glass darkly,’ to a place where we can see with eyes of gratitude, rather than with eyes of conquest.”—George Grinnell in A Death on the Barrens.

Barge on the Mississippi near Natchez. Mary Seni

I remember sitting recently by the Mississippi River near Memphis, watching barges travel slowly upstream on a cold, windy late December morning.  The few dog walkers and runners along the shore move faster than the endless barges churning white water as they move against the current.

The barges are pushed by towboats or tugboats, which are identified by their flat or V-shape hulls. Some covered barges traveling upstream ride high on the water. They must be empty, but are still straining to travel upstream to be filled more inland on the banks of this mighty river. They move slightly faster than the full barges.

Barge on the Mississippi at Memphis

I wonder where their destination is. St. Louis? What are the filled barges carrying?

I hope to remember these barges slowly being pushed upstream against the current. I enjoy leading my life more easily, moving downstream, going with the flow, and not making waves.

Sometimes, however, I am called to go against the crowd and navigate upstream. It will help if I remember that the journey is easier when I travel lightly, not taking myself so seriously, not carrying a lot of my baggage, and not being on a right-or-wrong quest, but just speaking my truth.

The barges teach us that the journey upstream always moves more slowly than the journey downstream. Moving upstream means speaking our truth against the current culture. I pray that the boat pushing us upstream is the Holy Spirit, not our own ego. Grinnell also reminds us that a heart of gratitude can help discern our path and motives and keep us connected to that greater power, leading us on this more difficult journey.

Joanna   https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Plain Speaking and Writing and Hymns and Water Coloring

Plain Speaking*

Guest Writer and Artist, Ken Fellows 

Stonington House

     Communication is the transmission of thought –and we should do what we can to reduce confusion and not introduce new barriers to understanding. We should all write the exact manner that we speak, and it isn’t all that hard once you get the hang of it. Gustave Flaubert, the French novelist, said: “Whenever you can shorten a sentence, do. And one always can. When we speak, we almost always avoid compound sentences. It is only when we write that we swell up and get pompous …. lawyers and doctors more so than most.”

     Many years ago, Stinnett came into possession of a book called The Art of Readable Writing, by Rudolf Flesch, and was captivated by two points it made. One was a list of “empty” words ---participles, prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs –that had worked their way into language and made up more than 50% of all commonly used words. The list included “for the purpose of” (for), “for the reason that” (since, because), “in order to” (to), “in the neighborhood of (about), “with a view to” (to), “with the result that” (so that), and a few dozen more, all enemies of simplicity and clear speech.

     Flesch’s other thing was his vigorous defense of an author’s ending sentences with a preposition, which he said unfailingly turned stiff prose into idiomatic prose. Stinnett added that he personally likes a good prepositional ending and was delighted to read that the President of the National Council of Teachers of English had said that “a preposition is a good word to end a sentence with.”

     Stinnett’s own concern over abuse of the English language came at an early age when his mother took him each Sunday to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in a small Virginia town. A popular hymn at the time went, “And He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own.”

Stinnett wrote he never cared for the hymn because he never knew who Andy was, although he thought about him a lot, searching for clues.

     Peter DeVries, the novelist, must have suffered a similar bewilderment as a child. In one of his books, he wrote that he first  heard a hymn called “Oh, What a Cross I Bear.” What was so unusual, he wondered, about a cross-eyed bear that a hymn should have been written about it?

*Excerpted from “Get Me a Translator” by Caskie Stinnett in his book: Slightly Off Shore

Ken Fellows

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.org

Reading Again and Groundhog Day

Reading Again and Groundhog Day

“In a course on contemplative prayer, I assigned just six books: Origen’s On Prayer, Teresa of Ávila’s Life, the anonymous The Way of a Pilgrim, Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, Howard Thurman’s Disciplines of the Spirit, and Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Prayer. We read these books once, then reread them.”—Stephanie Paulsell, “Faith Matters, Reread it Again, The inexhaustible spiritual practice of rereading,” Christian Century, January 17, 2018, p. 27.

I constantly see more old and new books I want to read. When friends tell me they are rereading a book, I roll my eyes away from them and wonder about the other books they will not have time to read. Stephanie Paulsell, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, tells us to roll our eyes back toward our friends and listen to what they have to teach us. 

Indeed, we all experience studying the Bible again, the most reread book, especially if we try to follow a systematic study of yearly lectionary readings. Nevertheless, we never fail to see things the second, third, or tenth time we have never seen or heard before, probably because our life experiences and concentration differ.

How could we have missed that word, that meaning, or what that person was doing?

For the past several years, I have been blogging about spiritual direction and reconnecting with authors and books that have been meaningful to me. I am rereading material I underlined a year ago, ten years ago, and sometimes fifty years ago.

As Paulsell suggests, I have become more intimate with the texts and am called to practice some teachings presented more intently, “continuing to see things I have not seen before. For some reason, the authors and their books now more deeply intersect with my life. Rereading and reconnecting with writers can help us recall truths we had forgotten or overlooked.

We might compare rereading books to Bill Murray’s experience in Groundhog Day. We eventually receive one more truth after each new attempt to digest a reading with new glasses.

It is also like spending time with a favorite painting. Something new, something we’ve never seen before, illuminates our souls. As my friend, Donna Kay Yeargan, reminds me, “The artist has not retouched the painting; we have a new depth of understanding.” 

The same is true for this blog. Year after year, I often repeat the message. Each year, I learn something new I missed or find another picture that better speaks the truth I am trying to say. My prayer is that this may also be your experience.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/