Getting ready for the 4th of July

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”    Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

4th of July Freedom

July 4th has been a major holiday in my life.

When I was growing up in Virginia my grandfather and grandmother held a family reunion every July 4th on their farm on the Mattaponi River for my grandmother’s Smith relatives. Watermelon, homemade ice cream cooling in the cellar, fried chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs, five kinds of pies, chocolate pound cake. I was in charge of name tags.

We arrived in Little Rock on July 4, 1976 to start our careers in pediatric radiology and pediatric ENT with three small children. We made the St. Margaret’s July 4th service a family tradition where a political speaker is always the preacher, the bishop often is the celebrant, and Episcopal choirs from the Little Rock churches join together to lead us in patriotic hymns followed by a picnic on the grounds.  We have learned to be cheerleaders for the July 4th Firecracker 5 K race and later watch our children and grandchildren enter watermelon eating contests and dive for money in a swimming pool and stay up late to watch fireworks.

The 4th of July is about freedom, freedom to do all the things I have just described without fear, freedom to worship, freedom from fear because all the branches of our government are strong with capable and talented leaders who proclaim the ideals of freedom for our citizens of our country and the rest of the world. If something is not right, I have the freedom to speak out about issues.  This is at the top of my gratitude list tonight, freedom to speak out.

People who come for spiritual direction can’t help from bringing in political issues at some point. I try to remind them and myself to keep these issues in our prayers, but we are also called to speak out as articulately as we can when fear becomes the norm and masquerades as taking away these freedoms to prevent the fear of loss of freedoms. Our job is to do our part to remind others that the kingdom of God is not a kingdom of fear but of love. Our freedom does not depend on harming others but on loving others.

Joanna      joannaseibert.com

Prayer Lamott

Prayer Lamott

“So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light. It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold. Even mushrooms respond to light - I suppose they blink their mushroomy eyes, like the rest of us.”

Ann Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow, The Three Essential Prayers

 When spiritual friends are having difficulty praying, we talk about the present prayer life and what kind of prayer discipline has helped in the past. We discuss the multitude of ways to pray, walking and praying, praying in silence, using prayer books, Ignathian prayers, centering prayer, prayer with beads, praying in color, praying the hours.

Ann Lamott’s book, Help, Thanks, Wow, is a realistic, humorous, short, down to earth discourse on praying with three subject lines, giving thanks, asking for help, and praising.  The book is filled to the brim with simple “one liners” to remember and help us through the day. One of my favorites is, “If one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen.” Another is, “The difference between you and God is that God never thinks he is you.” She reminds us that gratitude is not lifting and waving our hands on television but in picking up trash, reaching out to others in need. When we breathe in gratitude we breathe it out.

Lamott’s section on Wow likens that kind of prayer to a child seeing the ocean for the first time. I still remember being inside the National Cathedral at its entrance as a group of fifth graders walk in. I will not forget one small boy looking up at the high vaulted gray stone ceilings and saying, “Wow!” These are upper case wows. There are lower case wows such as getting into bed between clean sheets. She suggests that that poetry is “the official palace language of Wow”. Lamott also reminds us about CS Lewis message about prayer, that we prayer not to change God, but to change ourselves. My experience is that Lamott always stimulates us into new practices of faith or reminds us about those we have forgotten that can make all the difference.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com

Doubt Alan Jones Desert Spirituality

Alan Jones Spiritual Direction and Doubt

“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.” Alan Jones

The first time I heard this quote was by Alan Jones at a Trinity Wall Street conference at Kanuga in 2001. It warmed my heart when I heard Jones profess this, and I have shared it with so many others since. Annie Lamott is also a writer and speaker to whom many often attribute the quote. I have theological friends who tell me it is really from Paul Tillich’s work, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, pp. 116-117! I am going to stop here, but I am certain it is also scriptural as well.

So many come for spiritual direction about doubts.  

In his book, Soul Making, the Desert Way of Spirituality, former dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, Alan Jones writes about doubt and the finding and nurturing of the soul according to the spirituality of the desert fathers. The spirituality of the desert involves encountering God, but then feeling God’s absence, and then feeling his joy. Jones describes this three-fold experience of soul making after an awakening with the first conversion involving self-knowledge, often with tears, the second conversion where things seem to fall apart, and the third conversion where we enter the life of contemplation. The awakening periods have occurred for me at so many times along the way, church camps, the time when I suddenly decided to go to medical school, the time I decided to ask for discernment about the diaconate, and at Cursillo as examples. The conversion of self-knowledge with tears occurred as well as the falling apart when I decided my only hope was to go to a 12-step program, and when people close to me, my grandfather, my mother and father and my brother died, and now as my mobility becomes more and more limited. 

Often only in the presence of death of a loved one do we see so clearly what love should be like. Jones describes the tears like the breaking of waters of the womb before the birth of a child. The task of love found in the desert experience is to free us of our well built up exoskeleton. Soul making is paying attention to things invisible which do not lend themselves to manipulation and control. It requires receptivity to the life of the mystic rather than being the problem solver where we instead spend most of our energy building up our frail egos by setting before it dozens and dozens of small situations while the life of the soul is aborted. If the world is to change, then, first, we must change, and that happens when we live more deeply into our questions and doubts. Sharing our doubt can bring us together more than faith, for the believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference; the doubter only fights with himself.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com