“The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self—to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.” —Barbara Brown Taylor in An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (HarperOne. 2010).
Our older son takes his daughter to high school each day on his way to work. If they have some extra time, they stop at their favorite coffee or smoothie haunt and have a cup of coffee or hot chocolate or smoothie together. I am thinking what a treasure it can be to have a few minutes a day with one of your parents, and maybe even share a cup of your favorite comfort drink. They are both introverts, so they may not say much; but each offers the other a presence in this one-on-one experience, and a chance to get to know each other a little better.
I grew up in a small town with amazing neighbors. Mrs. Rick, a widow with pearl-white hair, lived across the street in a house that seemed huge at the time. One of our neighbors on Second Street had to move away for physical reasons. Mrs. Rick then started walking at 9:00 every morning for seven blocks from Second Street to Ninth Street, up to Riddle’s Drug Store, to meet this neighbor for coffee. Our next-door neighbor, Paul, cut Mrs. Rick’s grass every week.
I have a friend who calls me every morning. Most people are too busy working to call or talk to one person a day on a regular basis and see it as a as pure gift.
These are the kinds of relationships that work best to “spring” us from ourselves. We don’t have to pretend anymore. If we allow such intimacy, these people are permitted to learn who we really are. When we are with them we begin to let down our mask and start becoming the person God created us to be.
Joanna joannaseibert.com
Release party!!!!!!!!!!! TOMORROW
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