Mentors and Awaiting the Child and Advent

Isabel Anders

“If the roles between man and woman are more a dance than a drill (ideally, as joyful lovers can attest) the relationship between the soul and God is also more of a flow in which grace and human choice, unmerited favor and our own will, act together in concert: in coinciding channels rather than separate connections. Gregory of Nyssa writes: ‘When righteousness of works and the grace of the Spirit come together at the same time in the same soul, together, they are able to fill it with blessed life.’”

Awaiting the Child, Isabel Anders 1987

I give Awaiting the Child to every friend I know who is pregnant during Advent, but it is really for the rest of us as well who are beyond the “awaiting” stage in life. Anders shares a journal she kept for the four weeks of Advent during her first pregnancy. I often put in a book the date I start reading it. In Awaiting the Child, it is 1987, the year it came out. Ms. Anders presently for three decades has been the managing editor for Synthesis, a monthly sermon preparation magazine based on the revised common lectionary. I will always be indebted to her for her help when I first began writing, encouraging me and suggesting places to send my writing. Phyllis Tickle was also a similar mentor. I can never thank them both enough for what they did, but I can resolve to “pay it forward”, to do the same for other writers who come to me. There are not words to describe how rewarding it is to have a relationship with a good mentor. The same is true for spiritual friends. A spiritual director is also a mentor of sorts, mentoring, encouraging, caring for the soul of a friend. I suggest to people in direction that they find a good mentor as well. This is someone they admire, someone who has talents, gifts they also hope to develop. Jungian psychologists and spiritual gifts leaders would tell us that the characteristics and gifts we admire in others are also in us, but we are not as aware of their presence. Just knowing this is very encouraging. See if this fits for you.

Joanna     joannaseibert.com  

Charleston on Being Resilient and La La Land

 Charleston on Being Resilient and La La Land

“It is hard. Life is hard. The losses, the sudden arrival of illness, the struggles within families, the pressure of a world trying to find a reason to hope. Spirituality that is sugar is no help in such a reality. Feel good philosophy cannot withstand the weight of what many of us have had to face. If it is to endure the gale force winds of chance, faith must be deeply rooted, anchored in trust, strengthened by courage, able to bend but never break. So here is a prayer for all of you living in the real world: may you find your faith as tough as you are and as resilient as the love that keeps you going.” Steven Charleston

I think of the end of 2017 Academy awards when Warren Beatty couldn’t understand what was in the envelope to announce the best picture of the year and handed the confusing envelope to Faye Dunaway who saw the name “La La Land” and announced that movie as the winner. They had been given the wrong envelope! It was the one announcing Emma Stone as best actress from “La La Land” that had been reported earlier. The producers and cast of “La La Land” were so excited and came up and thanked so many people. Men with headsets scurried on stage and handed Jordan Horowitz, one of the ‘La La Land” producers the correct envelope as he announces, “I’m sorry, No. There’s a mistake. “Moonlight”, you guys won best picture!”

  I will always remember the grace at which Horowitz gave up his Oscar. His whole team on stage, his dream suddenly crushed, years of hoping to win, his Oscar, now being handed over to another movie producer before a live television audience in front of millions of people. Later Horowitz said to Adele Romanski, a “Moonlight” producer, “I got to give a speech and then give you an award!”

When I think of resilience, I will remember and tell his story. I think of all the mistakes I have been involved in, taking my family, particularly my husband for granted, failing to speak to a patient’s family because I was too busy; all the mistakes I fear, reading the wrong gospel, preaching the wrong lessons, not chanting well, running out of bread at the Eucharist, forgetting to visit someone who then dies; all the frustration dreams of going to take a test for a class I had not attended or studied for. Knowing that a time-honored institution such as the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers can make such a mistake somehow helps me forgive myself for my own failings. This firm which has overseen the Oscar ballots for eighty-three years also was gracious, making amends for their mistake, apologizing for their human error.  Human errors are part of the human condition. Forgiveness and making amends are at the heart of resilience.

When spiritual friends ask about forgiveness, we always return to Desmond and Mpho Tutu’s outstanding book, The Book of Forgiving, where they also talk about forgiving yourself by admitting your mistake, making amends as those in 12-step recovery do.  We now have role models who have forgiven others for great injustices such as Nelson Mandela in South Africa who forgive his captors for his 18 years in prison. We have the Amish community in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania who forgave the gunman who killed five of their children and critically wounded five others on October 2, 2006. Forgiveness and amends can transform guilt and shame and anger and revenge and resentment into resilience.

Joanna                 joannaseibert.com

Charleston and Processing Mother's Day

Charleston Lessons learned at my mother’s knee

“Some lessons learned at my mother’s knee: (1) Think before you act; an easy answer to a complex problem usually makes things worse, (2) Jumping out front to take charge and appear decisive can often backfire; leadership is exercised in the group not in isolation, (3) Don’t judge a book by its cover; take the time to know the individual rather than make assumptions based on a stereotype. These lessons are not a matter of politics, but of common sense. They are the wisdom most of us learned as children. The arrogance of ideology is that it thinks it knows more than what it never bothered to learn.” Steven Charleston

Some of the members of our book group of many years

As I process this Mother’s Day I hear from others how they miss their mother as we gather at a church today inhabited by many retirees like ourselves. One member of the congregation tearfully tells me her mother died on Mother’s Day. My experience is that there are many women and men in the congregation whose mother was not capable of love, but they cannot talk about it. I send them prayers, hoping that they will know God’s love in other ways and know they are indeed loved by God. All the women receive flowers. We go out to eat with friends. All of our children call and send messages.

Many learn about God’s love from their mothers and so expect their mothers always to be that kind of love, but that can never be. It takes much inner work to realize your mother did the best she could under whatever circumstances she was given. I do know and have experienced that when our parents, our mothers are not there or for a multitude of reasons cannot be the mother we had hoped for, God puts someone else in their place to teach us and give to us that knowledge and experience of unconditional love. This is our job as spiritual friends to help each other see how God is working in our lives, to come to awareness of these others, “new mothers”, doulas, who are there to teach us about a love without conditions. I especially give thanks today for so many women in my life who have taught me about God’s love, the Elizabeths, the Annies, the Rosies, the Nynas, the Dodies, the Peggys, the Marys, the Joannes, the Janes, the Phyllises, the Suzannes, the Lauras, the Barbaras, the Wandas, the Chrises, the Sharons, the Fayes, the Shauns, the incredible women who have been in my book, spiritual direction, and dream groups, the women physicians I have worked with, the women I have served with at the altar, and soo many more. This kind of love can only be experienced from many. It is not humanly possible to be contained in one person except in Christ himself.

 Jesus also charges us not just to keep this love bottled up in ourselves or it will turn into self-love. We are charged to give it away, to pass on this love not just to our children but to become mentors of this love to other women.

What has been your experience?

Joanna              joannaseibert.com