“If you wear glasses, you likely often forget that they’re even there! Only when you take the lenses off do you realize how much your capacity to see is informed by the lens through which you are seeing, or as Richard Rohr often says, ‘How we see is what we see.’”
—Cynthia Bourgeault in The Shape of God: Deepening the Mystery of the Trinity (CAC, 2004), disc 2.
Here Cynthia is using an analogy to teach us about the Trinity; but we can apply this also to our everyday life. If you or the person you are meeting with for spiritual direction wears glasses, try this exercise:
Take off your glasses. Try to see at a distance or read a passage of text. Perhaps you will “see” or realize that what you “see” actually depends on the lenses of your glasses. Often our lens, or how we see the world, is through the filter of our work, our family, or our position. We might be experiencing a need for prestige; a desire for money or control or power; a longing to be in the spotlight, or successful; or we could be obsessed with beauty, clothes, food, alcohol, drugs, or controlled by other addictions. When our world or the sun is too bright, we need to put on sunglasses such as Zoe and Turner are wearing. At other times if we are depressed or grieving, we truly may be seeing the world through dark glasses.
Meditate, pray about, and write down a description of the lenses you use to view your family, friends, enemies, the world. In our attempt to stay connected to God individually and in community, our hope is that we will connect to the Christ in ourselves and the Christ in our neighbor. Let us learn to see ourselves and the world and others through the lens of the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance (patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
Some say spiritual direction is helping someone become awake. Spiritual direction can also be putting on a new pair of glasses.
Joanna joannasebet.com
Release party!!!!!!!!!!!
Come and get a signed copy of the new book
Just in time for the holidays
A Spiritual Rx for Advent Christmas, and Epiphany
The Sequel to A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter
Both are $18
All Money from sale of the books goes either to Camp Mitchel Camp and Conference Center in Arkansas or Hurricane Relief in the Diocese of Central Gulf Coast
Seibert’s, 27 River Ridge Road, Little Rock, Arkansas 72227
10 to noon, Saturday September 14, 2019
RSVP joannaseibert@me.com