Barbara Crafton, Camp Mitchell, the World, and Climate Change

Barbara Crafton, Camp Mitchell, and Climate Change

Portrait of Earth
Reto Stöckli, Nazmi El Saleous, Marit Jentoft-Nilsen
"This true-color image shows North and South America as they would appear from space 35,000 km (22,000 miles) above the Earth. The image is a combination of data from two satellites. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite collected the land surface data over 16 days, while NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) produced a snapshot of the Earth’s clouds." -- NASA
“How lovely. Oh, my.”
“A MOUNTAINTOP EXPERIENCE
We are perched on the top of a mountain. I am sitting at a picnic table where I can overlook the valley below as the sun comes up -- a good place for Morning Prayer.
The antiphon I use most at Morning Prayer in the long months of ordinary time is this one: The earth is the Lord's, for He made it: Come, let us adore Him. Especially when I am reading it outside, or near an open window when the birds are singing in the half-dark. And especially today, here: the fields below us are several greens -- a piercing light one, a bluish dark one, a bright jewel one -- and the trees dot them like darker plumes. They delineate the fields, which you can see when you're as far above them as I am, marking out the quilt of cultivation and pasture, dividing land from land. The golden slant of the sun's rays as it rises creeps across the valley, turning the silver water of the lake golden and then leaving it behind, a rich blue.
One family owned this mountain, and the valley, too, I think. Now the Church owns it, and we can come here and live in this beauty for a day or two. All over the world you find these separate places, sacred places, kept for future generations of people in need of spiritual replenishment, needing to suck up some beauty to carry with us back into a world that can be an ugly place.
Make sure you get some time and find a place to lift your eyes to the world God has made and marvel at its beauty. If you are a pastor, make sure your people have an opportunity to do that this summer -- even if it's just a day trip by train to Jones Beach. If yours is a poor church, see if a rich one won't help you do this. The mountains, the sea, the trees -- we must experience how lovely it all is if we are to care enough to preserve it. The family that used to own this land didn't really own it, and the Church doesn't either. It all belongs to God, and it is given into our hands for our brief season on earth. Live in it at least once this summer, so that you do not forget it.
Where was I? Camp Mitchell, in the Diocese of Arkansas.”

Barbara Crafton, The Geranium Farm, June 2, 2017, The Geranium Farm, 53 McCoy Ave, Metuchen, NJ 08840, bcrafton@geraniumfarm.org

I want to thank Barbara Crafton for allowing me to use everything from  her “almost daily eMo” today. It is the day after the president has discarded the Paris Agreement about Climate Change. My feet and body are no longer good for marching and I have what others have described as a soft “inside voice”, so all I know to do is write and write and read and write. I try to see the other side on issues and see where people are coming from, but this is too hard. I know I need to stay cool because what you do in the heat of the moment is not always productive. What I really want to do is send everyone David Brooks’ article from today’s New York Times, “Donald Trump Poisons the World”. Instead I send a writing by a favorite author whom I have never met on her several trips to Arkansas due to various circumstances. I did hear her once at Kanuga and was so grateful for that experience. She shares today a story from a place, Camp Mitchell, that has been sacred to our family for almost forty years as well and is reminding us of our connection to the rest of the earth by this amazing Portrait of the Earth. I am adding this picture from the chapel of Camp Mitchell.

I hope Barbara Crafton keeps writing, and my prayer is that all of us can keep listening to each other and keep writing and walking and listening and talking and sharing our sacred spaces that are now even more endangered.  One more idea comes to me. I am going outside with my grandchildren and let them tell me how much the world outdoors means to them.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

The Helper Catherine Marshall

Catherine Marshall The Helper

“When we try it on our own, we are seeking to usurp the Helper’s place. The result of attempting in the flesh to convict another of sin is wreckage-defensiveness, anger, estrangement, loss of self-worth, defeatism, depression- whereas, when the Spirit does this corrective work, it is “good” hurt, the kind that leaves no damage, that never plunges us into despair or hopelessness but is always healing in the end.”

Catherine Marshall, The Helper, Chosen, 1978,  pp. 214-215.

Over forty-five years ago when our medical practice at Children’s Hospital was just starting, my husband and I were not as busy and were able to go downtown for lunch and then perhaps browse Cokesbury Bookstore before returning to the hospital. One day I saw a book, The Helper, by Catherine Marshall on the front sales table for two dollars. I had remembered that she had written A Man Called Peter about her husband who was a Scottish immigrant who became the chaplain of the United States Senate but died an early death. I particularly loved the movie, so could not resist the bargain. I paid the two dollars, and it changed my life. I had no concept of the Holy Spirit. Suddenly I was presented with a part of God that I could relate to who was always with me. I had had great difficulty relating to God the Father and Jesus. One was a kind old man with a beard in the sky and the other was some kind of television evangelist flipping Bibles who wanted to save me.  For years, I held on to the Holy Spirit, the comforter, the helper who was always beside me guiding me if I chose. This sustained me for years until I was able to have a deeper relationship with the other two parts of the Trinity. I am constantly amazed how God, the Holy Spirit works: a Presbyterian minister’s daughter I would never meet who was raised in Keyser, West Virginia, with my father, the son of the Methodist minister in the area, a slow time in our practice, a Methodist book store, a bargain table, a New York Times best seller, a movie, and two dollars.

My favorite quote by Catherine Marshall was about answered prayer. She prayed for patience, and God gave her the slowest possible housekeeper.  I wept when I heard about Catherine Marshall’s death at age 68 in 1983 just before Holy Week.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Rumi BBT Dark Times

Rumi BBT Dark Times

The Guest House

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”
-Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks , The Essential Rumi, 109, 2004.

Barbara Brown Taylor read this poem by Rumi at the end of a lecture she gave in Little Rock last year. We are hearing this theme of looking for what we are to learn in difficult and painful experiences from so many wise writers. Tutu writes about it in his book, Forgiving. Barbara Brown Taylor writes about it in Learning to Walk in the Dark, I hear it from Richard Rohr. It is even biblical! There is the Hebrew Bible story of Joseph and his difficult journey to Egypt where in the end he is able to save his family.  It is the life of Jesus.  The lesson is this: that which is difficult has something to teach us. If possible, we are to learn to honor it rather than cursing it.

I usually can only recognize the Grace months or years down the line when I can see Resurrection rising from the ashes of a situation I never thought I could live through.  My most precious example is one you will hear many times. I was in a car accident fifty years ago when I was a junior medical student which left me with mobility disabilities I still daily struggle with. I had to leave medical school for six months. I dropped back into the class where I met my husband now of almost as many years. We never ever would have met if I had not been in that accident and our names were not close to each other in the alphabet and we were on the same rotations together. Today, I never curse my disabilities or the accident, for I cannot imagine my life without him. Any of you who know him know what an amazing person he is.

As I daily hear stories of great tragedy, I want to let people know, there can be victories out of them, but it would be unkind and never helpful to suggest that at the time, but I can over time keep looking intently for ways God is redeeming their lives and caring for all of us. In difficult times, we can start with small victories, like just being able to get out of bed, and then moving on from there.

Joanna joannaseibert.com