Magdalen, Charleston, The world within

The World within Charleston Magdalene

“How hard it is sometimes to live in two worlds, the one we inhabit with the people around us, and the one that we live in alone. None may know the pain we hide, the deep wells of worry into which look, the memories that enfold our lives like a forest. But the Spirit knows and cares and understands, ever beside us to offer comfort and counsel. The Spirit is not the public face of God, but more often the personal presence which makes such a difference. We all need a private space for mind and heart to heal, just as we need a Spirit who welcomes us, when we turn to the world within.” Bishop Steven Charleston Daily Facebook page

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

The Repentant Magdalen

Last week I spent time with a 387-year-old friend that I have known for her last twenty-five years. We first met when she was one of three Georges de La Tour’s Magdalen paintings at a special exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. She was the only one in their permanent collection. I visited her that morning before an important meeting in Washington, and she quieted my soul.  I instantly fell in love with her. She spoke to me as no other painting has before or since. This Magdalen sits with her left hand on a skull. She does not look at the skull directly but sees the skull’s image in a mirror in front of her. The chiaroscuro scene is dark and only illumined by a partially hidden candle beside the skill.  I talk to Magdalen and thank her for her insights.

 For me, the skull represents our insides, what our skin covers up, the Christ within as well as the negative parts of our unconscious. Over the years this Magdalen has taught me that we most often see inside ourselves by looking into a reflection, a mirror. It is too painful and too overwhelming to see what we are beneath our surface. We cannot look there directly. It is like looking at the sun. The mirror represents the reflection we see of ourselves in others. We come to know and understand the true parts of ourselves by seeing ourselves in our neighbors.

 One of the reasons God calls us to community is to learn from others who we really are. I best see my own soul, the Christ within me as well as my many unconscious character defects by first seeing them in others. Caring for our life means learning about our unconscious character defects by first becoming aware and then seeing them for who they are in others. Caring for our soul is finding the Christ within ourselves by first seeing that holy in another and then realizing the miracle that it is also within us.

Joanna               joannaseibert.com 

The remedy

 The Remedy

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy, is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God.” Anne Frank,  The Diary of a Young Girl.

Anne Frank lived in hiding in a cramped secret upstairs annex of an office building for more than two years with her parents, sister and four other Jewish people, Hermann and Auguste van Pels, their son Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer. The building, was owned by Otto Frank’s company and the entrance to the dark, damp hiding place was concealed by a bookcase.  The remedy is a powerful statement written in Anne’s diary when she and eight other people could never venture outside. A small window in the attic where she could see a chestnut tree was her only chance of getting fresh air.  Anne was fifteen when her family was discovered and sent to Auschwitz death camp and later to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she died weeks before British soldiers liberated the camp.

 Today we give thanks for the life of Miep Gies, one of Mr. Frank’s employees who helped his family in hiding and later retrieved Anne’s diary. Otto was the only member to survive and received the diary from Miep on returning to Amsterdam after the liberation.

Every day I know I take Anne’s remedy, the world outside my window, for granted. I am putting Anne’s picture on my desk in hopes of honoring her short life and its spiritual truth.

Joanna                            joannaseibert.com

Suffering, Emmett Till Lessons

Suffering, Pain, Emmett Till, Lessons

The Unbearable

What is unbearable is not to suffer but to be afraid of suffering. To endure a precise pain, a definite loss, a hunger for something one knows—this it is possible to bear. One can live with this pain. But in fear there is all the suffering of the world: to dread suffering is to suffer an infinite pain since one supposes it unbearable.

Louis Evely, Suffering

Emmett Till was a 14 year African American from Chicago who wrongly was accused of flirting with a white woman in a grocery store while visiting the Mississippi Delta in 1955 who was then lynched and brutally murdered. His mutated body became the cornerstone of the civil rights movement particularly after the acquittal of the killers. When his mother was approached by the funeral director to try cosmetically to change his massively disfigured face and body, she would not change a thing. She wanted the world to see in that open casket service what had been done to her son.

We had the opportunity to visit the African American museum in Washington DC last week with our grandchildren. The Emmett Till exhibit is still the most crowded part of the museum.  I kept remembering, by his wounds we are healed ( Isaiah 53:5).  This was a horrific event, but one woman, a mother, had the courage to make a statement about wounds. She wanted the rest of the world to see the ending, the fruit of racial bias, hatred, and injustice. Hopefully this could also be the beginning of the end.

The Emmett Till story is a disturbing beyond belief message about racial prejudice, but its stark lesson opened many eyes to the injustice. We all learned a great deal from this painful event, even though our agony was not of the magnitude of the suffering of his family. If we open our ears and our eyes, God will teach us so much in our pain about parts of ourselves, parts of others, parts of the world, but especially about parts of our soul. This is our constant question in spiritual direction. What can we learn about our soul, the Christ within us, from our suffering instead of fearing it, of  trying to ignore it or fixing up this pain cosmetically?

Joanna     joannseibert@me.com