Going Deeper: The Journey of the Soul Led by the Spirit

 Going Deeper: The Journey of the Soul Led by the Spirit

“This challenging time we are living through may actually be a spiritual gift for us. Maybe the invitation from the Spirit within us is to see this time as a precious opportunity to go deeper, to discover a rich and wondrous world within us to explore, with the Spirit as our guide.”—Br. Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE, Society of St. John the Evangelist.

We rise early to catch a good view of the pageantry of the sea, waking up at the Gulf of Mexico. We are not disappointed. The ocean is almost motionless, like a sheet of blue-green glass stretching as far as we can see in every direction. Only a few dolphins have been visible since we arrived. They come out in droves this morning. Finally, a huge dolphin from the pod comes too near the water’s edge. We worry he will beach on the sand, but he knows what he is doing. My husband first thinks he is a shark, but alas, he is the majestic black creature from the deep with sonar vision that we now see up close.

Why do I love dolphins so? They live predominantly beneath the surface, then rhythmically glide above the water in a circular dance movement, returning back down. They are the water ballet of the sea. We see them best when the waves are stilled, not choppy, as they are this early morning. 

As I read this morning’s words from Brother Tristram, I realize the dolphins may be a metaphor for our soul’s journey, our path to the unconscious, the ground of our being, as the Spirit leads us to the Christ within us. Our journey is easier to observe when the waters of our lives are calm and still. When the waves are too high and the weather is stormy, the parts of ourselves that show us the path may be less visible.

 We must find a sacred place each day, away from the choppy waters of our lives, where the sea is stilled. We do not necessarily need to be alone. We can find this place in community with spiritual friends. There, we are renewed and then return to the sea for new adventures. We also need to return to this place intermittently, even for brief moments, for renewal throughout the day. We can delve deeper each time, but we must always return to the surface to breathe.

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

"Further Up and Further In"

“Further Up and Further In”

Guest Writer Don Follis 

When I read Joanna Seibert’s July 5 inspiring reflections on her 50 years in Little Rock—as a physician and as a deacon in the Episcopal Church—I had just finished rereading C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia.  Lewis famously concludes the final book—The Last Battle—by telling the Pevensie children (Peter, Lucy, and Edmund) that although Narnia had come to an end, their lives and adventures in Narnia had been only the cover and the title page. They were just beginning “Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever.” As the characters run joyfully through the new Narnia in Chapter 15, their cry is “Further Up and Further In.” 

I started reflecting on my nearly 50 years in the ministry. 

Forty-eight years ago this month, I married a young, blonde-haired woman from Phoenix. Together, we drove across the United States to Champaign-Urbana, IL, where I began a 20-year campus ministry at the University of Illinois. 

Though I met new students every year, I felt like I was just beginning year after year. There were new problems to solve, new books to read, and new ideas to explore. In my early days, I wanted to be the best campus preacher, the best campus apologist, and the best writer among my campus ministry peers. 

I was none of those, and yet I grew as a preacher, read hundreds of books, and ultimately wrote 800 religion columns for the local newspaper. At heart, I knew that I was a little red-headed boy from a working-class family in northwestern Kansas, who was taught to work hard, be kind, and treat people the way I wanted to be treated.

On the last day of my 20-year campus ministry, I slipped into St. John’s Catholic Chapel on the edge of campus to pray. Over the years, I had met hundreds of students in the St. John’s Newman Center cafeteria. Several priests were friends. As I knelt to pray, I felt the tension of having made hundreds of friends while hoping and praying that I had done enough to make a difference in their lives. Suddenly, in the quiet of my heart, I sensed the Lord’s voice. “I’m proud of you, son. You have done enough.”

In the ensuing years, I went on to pastor a church for 7 years. For the last 15 years, I have headed a ministry that counsels and mentors clergy. Talk about often feeling inadequate. Happily, not long ago, one of my pastor friends smiled and said, “All we can do is all we can do, brother. And all we can do is enough.”  

Whatever the future holds, I will always be the kid who wonders what comes next. Way more than I’ll ever know, my decades in the ministry are merely the cover and title page of what lies ahead. I gladly take my stand with the Narnia characters on the cusp of a new world, saying over and over, “Further up and further in!”

Don Follis

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Lighting Candles and Saying Prayers in the Darkness Together

Lighting Candles and Saying Prayers in the Darkness Together

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night,’ darkness is not dark to you, O Lord; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.”—Psalm 139:11-12.

At the five o’clock contemporary service every Sunday night at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, the darkened nave is lit only by tealight candles on the altar before a large icon. After the usual Prayers of the People with a Leader and a Congregational response, the celebrant invites members of the congregation to come forward and light a candle before the altar as they offer a silent prayer of intercession. Tonight’s pianist plays music from the Taizé community or the Celtic tradition as almost all members of the congregation come forward. 

While I remain seated behind my harp, I experience the scene as a Spirit-filled synthesis of corporate and individual intercessory prayer. I watch men and women, and sometimes children, walk silently to light their tapers and place them in an enormous earthenware bowl filled with sand. I know a few prayers that may be on some hearts. There are many people I do not know, much less what they are praying for, but I see faces showing heartfelt emotion and sometimes silent tears. Even when I do not perceive their prayers, I can feel their power and perhaps even their connection. There is a stream of people connecting to God in prayer for others, and sometimes for themselves. 

The light from the many candles now brightens the church’s nave. The scene has become its own icon, teaching us what happens when we pray. Prayers germinate in the darkened nave and are born to transform darkness into light. I remember that C. S. Lewis once wrote that he “prayed not to change God, but to change himself.” These silent prayers, carried by candlelight, are changing the church’s appearance and the pray-ers, and indeed, they are changing me.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/