Mother's Day, Nature, and the Bible and Richard Rohr

Mother’s Day: Nature and the Bible and Richard Rohr

 Richard Rohr views Nature itself as a primary Bible.

“If you scale chronological history down to the span of one year, with the Big Bang on January 1, then our species, Homo sapiens, doesn’t appear until 11:59 PM on December 31. That means our written Bible and the church appeared in the last nanosecond of December 31. I can’t believe that God had nothing to say until the last nanosecond. Rather, as both Paul and Thomas Aquinas say, God has been revealing God’s love, goodness, and beauty since the very beginning through the natural world of creation. ‘God looked at everything God had made, and found it very good’ (Genesis 1:31).”

Richard Rohr Daily meditation, Center for Action and Contemplation November 16, 2016.

Joannaon her first visit to Santorini

I believe my daughter has known this truth since her birth. She is an original tree hugger, spent her growing up years exploring the woods behind our home and now takes our grandchildren there to look for “specimens”. She spends hours at the beach walking and swimming. She has a master’s degree in Environmental Studies and Forestry and Creative Writing and now is an amazing writer about the environment. I could write a book about things my daughter has taught me. I know when I am depressed or overwhelmed, I can go and sit outside or walk and I soon realize there is something greater than myself and my problems. With the events of the recent election, my daughter only found relief by taking blankets and pillows and lying down in the forest of her backyard for 2 hours. This could be the best advice when I am seeking spiritual guidance. The silence and contemplation and centering is best done outside in Nature waiting for direction.

So on this Mother’s Day, I give thanks for our three children who have taught me so much and have been so gracious and thoughtful to me and have raised their children to be and do the same. But I especially thank our daughter who keeps pulling me back to Nature and doing the same for the six nieces and nephews who adore her.

Joanna

Merton on Prayer of Distraction

Prayer as Distraction Merton

“If my prayer is centered in myself, if it seeks only an enrichment of my own self, my prayer itself will be my greatest potential distraction. Full of my own curiosity, I have eaten of the tree of Knowledge and torn myself away from myself and from God. I am left rich and alone and nothing can assuage my hunger: everything I touch turns into a distraction.”  Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

What a great gift from Merton to remind us of what may be the problem if our prayer life is no longer meaningful and rich, if we seem to lose the connection. Our first question should be, “Is my prayer life centered around myself?” Unfortunately, it is rare that we can really see that in ourselves. It often takes talking to someone else about their stale prayers and seeing that loneliness and isolation and self center in them. Then the “ah ha” moment comes internally, “The same is also true for me!” We constantly learn from each other consciously or unconsciously. We so often realize our egocentricity in community as we see it and abhor it in others and then by Grace realize it is also in ourselves. The change for ourselves, however, so often comes as we withdraw from community in silence, contemplation, and meditation, centering prayer, so many ways for change, to again be aware of that connection to God that was always there.  Instead of trying to change the other, we see the gold in the difficulty and see the call to change ourselves which paradoxically calls us to place our center on love of God and others instead of only loving ourselves.

Joanna

President Jimmy Carter about our enemies

Concluding remarks by President Jimmy Carter at 1980 Prayer Breakfast

"The Bible says even the worst sinners love and pray for their friends, the ones who love them. And sometimes we don't go that one more step forward in growth, not on a single cataclysmic, transforming experience, but daily, and count those against whom we are alienated. At least every day, list them by name, and say, 'God, I pray for that person or those people.'

Every day, I pray for the Ayatollah Khomeini. Every day I pray for the kidnappers who hold our innocent Americans. And every day, of course, I pray for those who are held hostages as innocents. It's not easy to do this, and I have to force myself sometimes to include someone on my list, because I don't want to acknowledge that that person might be worthy of my love. And the most difficult thing of all, I think, is to go one step even further than that and thank God for our own difficulties, our own disappointments, our own failures, our own challenges, our own tests.

But this is what I would like to leave with you. To set a time in each day to list all of the things that you consider to be most difficult, most embarrassing, the worst challenge to your own happiness, and not only ask God to alleviate it but preferably thank God for it. It might sound strange, but I guarantee you it works.

And you might say, 'Why in the world should I ask God for thanks — give thanks, for something that seems to me so bad or so damaging?' Well, growth in a person's life, growth for a nation, growth spiritually, all depend on our relationship with God. And the basis for that growth is an understanding of God's purpose, and a sharing of difficult responsibilities with God through prayer."

Text taken from Gregory Korte, "How presidents pray: The prayer breakfast from Eisenhower to Obama," USA Today, Feb 4, 2016.

Praying for our enemies and those we have difficulty with is at the heart of staying connected to God within and outside of us. In Raymond Carver’s award winning short story, “A Small Good Thing,” a bereaving couple whose son has just been killed and a baker who had made a birthday cake for their son which they never picked up sit down over coffee and hot cinnamon rolls to share their suffering. This has been my experience of best being able to pray and talk and be reconciled with those who have harmed me. I listen to their story and try to share some of my story with them usually over a meal if possible. Carter’s enemies are not at the breakfast, but he brings them to the breakfast in prayer. This is a start. We move from victim to survivor.  We are healed by feeling a connection to the pain each of us has known, realizing we are not alone in our suffering.

 If you are having trouble with this idea, think about starting small. You start by connecting with those with whom you have difficulty that you may have the best chance of finding a healing relationship with. Start with members of your church that you may find difficult to work with. Now certainly there may not be people in your congregation with whom you have difficulty getting along.  But just in case, try this. Sit down just the two of you, preferably over a meal and tell your story and listen to the other person’s story just like the couple and the baker in Carver’s story. Share a meal together, pray for presence of Spirit. I did forget to tell you that the presence of the Spirit is the only way you can be reconciled, for finding a healing relationship is not yet a major part of our human DNA.

 Jesus tells us, do not fight fire with fire. Fight fire with water, living water.6 Evil is overcome with good, not with a stronger version of evil. Jesus calls us to break the cycle of evil and suffering. Let it stop with us. Break the cycle with the person sitting three pews ahead of you. Break the cycle with your estranged brother or sister. Break the cycle with your spouse or child. Break the cycle with the person you work with or your next-door neighbor. With God’s help, we can do it. Christians are called to be Christ-like, to counter evil with good, to allow the power of Christ, the Spirit to live within and through us out to others. Is there any hope for us? No one can be Christ-like by sheer will power or discipline. Christ, the Spirit has to do it within us. Pray for this. Put yourself in the place where the Spirit can lead you using the spiritual disciplines that are best working for you at this time.

Excerpted from a sermon given Epiphany 7A Matthew 5:38-48   Holy Spirit, Gulf Shores, February 19, 2016 Jesus calls an audible

 Joanna Seibert

Joanna

Respond on joannaseibert.comor Joanna J Seibert on Facebook