THE ESSENCE (i.e., "GOD")

THE ESSENCE (i.e., “GOD”)

Guest Writer: Gary Kimmel

“The difference between you and God is that God never thinks he is you.” – Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers (Hodder & Stoughton, 2001)

God is the essence of Creation. That essence may be a noun (e.g., tree, rain, child) or a verb (love, parenting, growing). It is not for us to put in a box or to understand. Instead, it is for us to experience and embrace. 

My concept of “God” has evolved over my life. Initially, “God” was the outstretched hand on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, human in nature, reaching out with a paternal touch. But for a long time, I have thought of “God” in much more non-human terms. Once, I compared “God” to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – the force that provided equilibrium to creation. While I didn’t really believe this, it gave my mind something to hold on to that was not predicated on making “God” human.

We were made in the image of God, not the other way around. Unfortunately, we have often confined God to the limits of a human being.

Over the past several years, our study group has explored sources that discuss “God,” most often from a comprehensive and comforting perspective. Most recently, I have found that the term Essence captures my concept of “God” as fully as possible. It is not a single identifiable object or condition. Instead, it pervades all and is the defining entity of everything, including the elusive energy that ties all Creation together.

I have put “God” in quotes because I have found the term so co-opted by its personification that it is no longer meaningful to me. In fact, the perpetuation of the human-like “God” in our minds may keep us from evolving within Creation. For the moment, Essence will suffice for me.

Gary Kimmel

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Death of Someone We Love and How the Relationship Continues

Death of Someone We Love and How the Relationship Continues

my brother and our daughter

“We are given to one another in trust. I think people are much too wonderful to be alive briefly and then gone.”—Marilynne Robinson. 

When I talk with spiritual friends who have experienced the death of a loved one, I remind them that the God of my understanding does not give us an incredibly loving relationship with someone else, and then abruptly take it away. Death is not a period at the end of a sentence, but more like a comma. The relationship continues.

Our loved ones remain in their relationship with us, though in a way we don’t yet understand. Sometimes we feel their presence. We often sense the reality of their prayers. In his book A Crazy, Holy Grace (Zondervan, 2017), Frederick Buechner writes about using active imagination with those we love who have died. We can converse with them in the silence of our minds, and we often feel their presence, supporting and loving us just as they did when they were alive. 

I also remind friends that those we love are now with us at all times—beside us—in some form we do not understand. When they were alive, we were with them only when we saw them physically. They are now always with us in a closer relationship than we can explain.

I often feel the presence of my younger brother, Jim, my only sibling, who died much too prematurely in 2014, the day after Christmas. I especially feel the fun and mischief we can so easily see in his eyes. I keep his notes by my desk. They are full of encouragement that keeps me going on difficult days. His presence is still here in some form, doing the same. We celebrate his life again this week, since he was born on September 2, Labor Day, 1944.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

What We Learn By Seeing Ourselves in Others We Admire or Find Difficult

What We Learn By Seeing Ourselves in Others We Admire or Find Difficult

 “What we see in other people – particularly those who affront us – is ourselves. They wouldn’t get to us the way they do if they didn’t already have a place within us. They are the mirror. Either that, or we are being visited by someone we will become. Rather than looking upon them with distance or disdain, treat them with kindness because they are kin to us.”—Br. Curtis Almquist, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Esther Harding also concisely explains how we change as we see ourselves in others. We change as we become aware of our sins and faults when they are reflected in someone else. We often recognize the parts of ourselves that need to change only when they appear in others. We say, “This is awful. I do not want to be like that.” Then, through some unknown factor, perhaps God’s Grace, we realize that the character defect, the sin, the failing is also in us. I often find myself not wanting to be around a particular person. That is usually a clue that they carry a trait I do not recognize in myself. Seeing it in the other person, I am repulsed by it. 

The flip side of this truth is that sometimes the people we most admire possess a gift we do not recognize in ourselves.

I also know from 12-step work how people change. They hit bottom or fear hitting bottom. They become so overwhelmed by their condition, so “sick and tired” of how miserable their life is, that they will do anything to change it. They see someone else who has recovered from addiction and wish for that life. They then seek help from that person.

So, what does all this have to do with our life in the Spirit? My experience is that it is indeed the Spirit, the Christ, the God within us, that is a catalyst for change, whispering in our ear that the defects we acknowledge in others may also be in us—that a better life is possible. Those in 12-step programs call it a “moment of clarity.” I believe God is speaking to us at that moment of clarity, and we can listen. Finally, we can hear, as Benedict tells us, with “the ear of our heart.”

Eventually, we see others as gifts, whether they repulse us or we admire them. We recognize the similarities we learn through inner work. We learn to thank them for their presence in our lives.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/