There is Only One Race on Earth: the Human Race

There is Only One Race on Earth: the Human Race

Guest Writer and Artist Mary Ann Stafford

There is only one race on this earth – the human race.

We’re all human beings created by the same true God.

We may have different kinds of hair, eye color, skin color,

Speech, customs, religions, but we are more alike than different.

Our bodies work the same way – digestion, senses, pain.

We feel in the same ways – love, fear, anger, humiliation.

Differences are because of location, climate, culture, condition,

And these are what happens to us after birth.

At our birth, we are the same tiny creatures.

Our parents look upon us with either love or disgust,

We could be born into wealth and grandeur and

Never have a financial worry in the world, or

We could be born into severe poverty with no stable home

In a war-ravaged world, and never able to feel secure.

These differences are of the world, of the devil, of circumstances

Over which we have little or no control.

So why do we look down on others who are not as fortunate as us?

We disrespect them, consider them inferior or unwelcome?

We turn against them, fight them, despise them, and enter groups

To work against them, hurt them, commit genocide.

They are our brothers and sisters, and we should treat them as such.

We are all part of the human race, God’s creation

No matter shape, ability, circumstances, or appearance.

But then, our hubris gets in the way.

Mary Ann Stafford pastelanne@sbcglobal.net

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

Isabel Anders talks about being an editor and a writer

Isabel Anders talks about being an editor and a writer

Guest writer: Isabel Anders

“Editing and writing walk together, and they both require the eye and the ear.” —Found in the New Yorker (3/27/23).

It never failed. Every time I typed my name, Isabel, the spell-check on my old computer would change it to “usable.” I laughed, but there was a kind of logic to it.

Eventually, it accepted my name as a valid entry rather than a typo. If you stick around long enough, you get written into the story.

“Editors and their input are inconspicuous by design. … Editors work in the service of their authors and are the invisible shepherds (or packhorses or midwives, pick your metaphor) of the books we read,” wrote Sara B. Franklin.

My primary vocation as an editor has suited me perfectly—requiring accuracy, diligence, and solitude, and allowing a degree of independence while working on a manuscript. If only life were like that—a page spread out with identifiable bumps (errors) and cracks (omissions) that could, at one time, be “fixed” by an editorial pencil—but now succumb to the electronic delete key that wipes away mistakes completely.

An editor’s work should be invisible, allowing a piece to read and flow as though it had been written that way from the beginning. Injecting one’s own style is not the function of a responsible editor who serves the work.

Since I have written books on the side, I truly appreciated other editors who performed that useful function for me—because, as they say, “everyone needs an editor.”

Perhaps workers in any helping profession can easily relate to this need for focus: “Attention,” the psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist writes, “is a moral act: It creates, bringing aspects of things into being.” Those of us who are useful in some way are privileged to have a hand (though often an invisible one) in the process.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might,” we’re told in Ecclesiastes 9:10. When the scroll of life’s story is fully unrolled, editors will likely not be needed.

Isabel Anders’ Mother Bilbee Tales is a collection of nursery rhymes and folktales with a twist that lets her editorial spirit have a fun ride.

Sing a Song of Six Birds and several others are available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review/?channel=glance-detail&asin=B0D53LDWQ8

Isabel Anders

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

Holy Smoke at a Church Named Holy Spirit

Holy Smoke at a Church Called Holy Spirit

“And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.”—Revelation 8:4.

I slowly rise from my seat next to the Bishop’s chair near the altar at Holy Spirit Episcopal Church in Gulf Shores, Alabama, as the organist plays the prelude to the closing hymn, “Lift High the Cross.” The music is uplifting, but suddenly I am transported to another place. An unusual burning smell fills the air. I look up and see two nearly straight lines of black smoke rising at least a foot above the altar, then disappearing into the air in front of the congregation. 

As the acolyte in the white alb passes by me to reach for the silver processional cross, I notice that she has just extinguished the two candles on the glass altar.

This smell is unfamiliar compared with what I usually notice at the end of the service. It is an especially holy scent, accompanied by an uplifting, holy smoke stronger than incense. It is raw and attention-getting, signaling that something has happened. The few in the front rows of the congregation can see the black smoke, but the smell probably lingers only around the altar. By verse two of the hymn, as the crucifer leads the choir members in their blue cassocks and white surplices out of the church, I realize what this is all about. 

The Altar Guild of Holy Spirit uses real candles, possibly beeswax, not the oil candles I am familiar with in many churches I visit. It is the smell of smoke from extinguished candle wax, and I am close enough to smell it.

I remember this scent. It lingers after a spiritual direction meeting with seekers as they depart. I light the candle at the start of a spiritual direction session to mark our meeting as holy, as we care for our souls. I extinguish the candle at the end of our time together to mark the passing of what we have shared. I know our time together as spiritual friends is holy work, just as our Eucharist on Sunday is sacred time. 

The smell and the smoke tell me that whatever has happened is now being lifted up, spreading into the air around us, into our universe. The Word we shared has now moved away from the altar or our meeting place and out into the world. We can no longer see the smoke, but it is there. I experience the smell only briefly, yet it is a poignant reminder of what is happening. 

The Holy Word has spread its healing blessing throughout the world, making a difference in all our wounded spaces.

Bless the Altar Guild of Holy Spirit for teaching me a little more about the movement of the Holy. 

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