Pressing the Space Bar in Our Lives

Wiederkehr: Pressing the Space Bar in Our Lives

“Long ago, when I was learning to type, I used to delight in typing letters to my friends without pressing the space bar. Now, when you don’t press the space bar, you’ve got a real mess, and much decoding must be done. The spaces in between enable us to understand the message.”—Macrina Wiederkehr in The Song of the Seed: A Monastic Way of Tending the Soul (HarperOne, 1997).

I remember reading this message from Sister Wiederkehr more than twenty years ago, and it still jumps off the page for me. She reminds us that many forget to press the space bar in our lives. She calls it hurry sickness. After finishing this email, project, phone call, or meeting, we will rest. But we always have something else to do, and the rest never happens. Macrina calls us to regular spaces of contemplation, meditation, or silence at intervals in our lives.

One of my favorite definitions of such a “space” is to stop what we are doing and attend a Quaker meeting in our heads. Macrina reminds us of a Native American admonition to listen, or our tongue will keep us deaf! I often experience this when I wake up in the morning, and suddenly, answers or ideas come to me after that long rest during the night. Likewise, when I stop to pray at daily intervals, life is more peaceful.

But I can so easily become the driver of a Mack truck coming down a steep hill without brakes, and hurriedly rushing during the day from task to task without stopping.

Today, my best help with “spacing” is looking up intermittently from my floor-to-ceiling window on the other side of my desk to watch the birds at my feeder. Sometimes, they actually chant and call me to prayer.

My husband gave me a clock that sounds the hour with a bird call. Every hour, I now also hear a call to stop and say a short prayer, usually the Jesus prayer. This has been a great gift.

Our computers and iPhones also speak to us. Have you ever noticed how much bigger the space bar is than the letter keys?

Give thanks today for Macrina and the many lives she has touched in Arkansas and around the world.

Wisdom from the Harp

Wisdom from the Harp

“For the elements changed places with one another,

as on a harp, the notes vary in the nature of the rhythm,

while each note remains the same.”—Wisdom 19:18.

This ancient verse describes music well, especially the harp.

I began a journey with this classical instrument over forty years ago when my daughter begged for a whole year to get a harp.

A Midrash tradition is that David's harp strings were made out of the tendons of the ram offered as a sacrifice instead of Isaac. The Psalms suggest that David’s harp had seven, eight, or possibly ten strings. This Celtic lever harp has 34 strings; the larger Troubadour lever harp I play has 36. A full-sized pedal harp has 47 strings.

The strings are the piano’s white keys, so it is easy if you understand the piano. Next, you lean the harp against your body so you can hear the vibrations and feel the music within you.

The harp has taught me so many lessons about life, other than the discipline of trying to master a technique for following and plucking strings.

When one string breaks, it is challenging to continue playing. Part of playing is knowing the relationships between the strings. Now, a gap, large or small, changes the entire road map. I must take the time to replace the string as soon as possible.

Then it takes days or weeks for that new string to stretch and be in tune. Then, finally, it must be “mentored,” so to speak.

Almost every atmospheric condition changes the harp strings. Constant tuning is mandatory. My husband loves the old joke about harpists. “We spend half our time tuning and the other half playing out of tune!”

On this musical journey, the harp has become an icon for living and working in community.

Its constant need for tuning reminds me how much I must try to stay current, learning, and staying in relationship with what is happening in the world around me.

If I don’t, I become “out of tune,” either too sharp or too flat.  

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

Charleston: Spiritual Wisdom

Charleston: Spiritual Wisdom

“I think spiritual wisdom is not the measure of how much we know, but how much we have learned. Knowledge can become static, a museum of dogmas, a warehouse of opinions. We discover wisdom over and over again when what we think we know meets what we have never encountered before.”—Bishop Steven Charleston, Daily Facebook Page.

There is a chasm between intellect and wisdom. My husband, Robert, a prolific reader of history, shared a story by the journalist, David Halberstam. Halberstam, the author of the 1972 book The Best and the Brightest, about the origins of the Vietnam War, detailed in his book Lyndon Johnson’s first visits to JFK’s cabinet meetings with, among others, the brilliant McNamara and Kennedy’s advisor, Ted Sorensen. Others assembled were also the brightest minds in the country. Johnson went back to his old friend, Sam Rayburn, the longest-running Speaker of the House in our country, just overcome with a feeling of awe and perhaps inadequacy. Rayburn reminded Johnson that there is a difference between wisdom and knowledge or intellect.  Rayburn is quoted as saying, “They may be just as intelligent as you say. But I’d feel a helluva lot better if just one of them had ever run for sheriff.”

Knowledge or intellect is learning, investigating, researching, and studying facts and data. Wisdom is knowledge with experience, discerning which facts are correct and how the knowledge can best be applied to your life.

Knowledge is knowing where babies come from. Wisdom knows how to care for them. Knowledge is learning the distance between here and New York City. Wisdom knows what to pack for the trip.

We belong to the information age.  There is no lack of information and data. All of us on this spiritual journey are gathering information about a multitude of spiritual tools and knowledge to guide and help ourselves and others.

Wisdom will be digesting what we learn, taking it inside, and seeing what is truly the right meal for us and those who come for spiritual direction at different times in our lives and theirs.

An essential tool in discerning wisdom is listening with the heart to the spiritual friends who visit with us, and listening actively to hear how our experience, the present world, and nature around us intersect with our lives and theirs.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com