Sunrise on a cloudy day

 Awareness and Surprise  and Sunrise on a Cloudy Day

“Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let's not be afraid to receive each day's surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy. It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity.” Henri Nouwen

Sunlight on a cloudy day

Sunrise on a cloudy day

As I attempt to watch the sunrise and sunset each day my soul is nurtured by knowing that no matter what the day or night has in store, there is always a new day, a new beginning and a new end. Even as I watch the sun rise on a cloudy day, my experience tells me that the sun is there. Sometimes little cracks of light break through at different parts of the sky. For a brief moment I look and see the sun shadowed by the clouds, and then just as quickly the shaded sun disappears a few seconds later when I turn back. I know it is there. Sometimes there are little glimpses, sometimes none. I realize this is my connection to God. Sometimes it is bright as the sun on a brilliant sunny day, sometimes cloudy, sometimes invisible, but I know the connection is still there. I know it. This is what the world outside daily, hourly, yearly tells me.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Charleston Short List of Spiritual Advice

Short List of Spiritual Advice Charleston

“The Seekers Shortlist of Spiritual Advice: (1) Keep it simple, keep it sacred, (2) Ask yourself "why" at least once a day, (3) Make silence since it is hard to find naturally, (4) Be mindful of being mindful, (5) Use all the different ways you pray, (6) Spend as much time in mystery as in understanding, (7) Do what you liked to do when you were a child, (8) Practice listening as a skill, (9) Give what you can to as many as you can, (10) Turn worry into hope by doing something you would define as positive change.”

Bishop Steven Charleston

Steven Charleston seems always to speak to me. He writes these pieces in the early morning and sends them out on Facebook where I am one of 10,000 who read his posts. He is a Native American elder, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation, and a bishop in the Episcopal Church. You can also read his books through Red Moon Publications, Hope as Old as Fire, Cloud Walking, Climbing Stairs of Sunlight, Arrows of Light, and Turn to the Wild Wind.

These suggestions for today’s reading are essential simple means of staying connecting to God. One idea is to refer to this list every day. Pick one suggestion and follow for that day or for a week and then go down the list one idea at a time daily or weekly.  No skipping! Today, I have an easy one to follow, number 7.  I am going out to lunch and then to see the Disney new movie, Beauty and the Beast, with my 10 and 12-year old grandchildren and my husband.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

The less anxious presence

Non-anxious presence/ Or less anxious presence

“Still Water”

“We can make our minds so like still water
that beings gather about us that they may see,
it may be, their own images,
and so live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet.”

William Butler Yeats
Source: from Earth Fire and Water in The Celtic Twilight

Still waters in Chaos... photography by Joanna ES Campbell

Story:  Our famous Jane from old school Dick and Jane loves her outreach ministry at her church, but sometimes there is chaos and sometimes people get upset at others and are “not Christian”. Maybe she should take a geographic cure and go to a more “Christian” church where people get along better.

 Response: Former Bishop Maze teaches that if we do not engage in a ministry, we will not stay connected to our church. We discover the ministry God calls us to by learning about our gifts and then offering them to the ministry where the gifts seem to best fit. We follow the most quoted Buechner line about ministry. “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Then what happens?

We are humans. Church and all its ministries and groups are part of an organization that is “a hospital for sinners not a museum for saints”. We eventually are going to run into people problems and relationship difficulties, just like at home and work! 

William Butler Yates describes our ideal or where we would like to be in all our relationships, like a “Still water.”

Family Systems dynamics teach us that if in the midst of any conflict in a relationship with others, if we can maintain a state of having the least anxiety or be a non-anxious presence, we will make our best contribution to hold any tensions from growing and eventually solve the difficulty.  I know of few who can remain non-anxious for it is not a human trait. Staying less anxious, however is a real possibility. If we can be the least anxious presence in any situation, we can keep the arteries in our body from tightening up that takes minutes, weeks off our lifespan. Our inner and outer presence will stay calmer and we become a vessel for the spirit to become a part of the relationship or situation or meeting or encounter or ministry.

Answer: So how do we do we become like the “Still Water” that Yeats is describing? Easy? It involves spiritual disciplines. Prayer and meditation before, during, and after each ministry is a huge beginning. I am still in the process of trying to learn more from others about their many spiritual disciplines they follow, centering prayer, morning prayer, Yoga, following a rule of life, spiritual direction. worshiping together, study. There are many more.  Our tradition, scripture, reason tell us that these disciplines are gifts from God to help us care for our souls and those of others.

Joannajoannaseibert.com