Learning from other Traditions

“What can I learn from a spiritual tradition different from my own? For me, the answer is a great deal. Over the years I have had an open border policy when it comes to faith. I have never felt nervous about the need to guard my frontiers of belief, instead I have welcomed difference as a chance to explore and discover. Has this experience changed me? Yes and no. No, I have not changed my spiritual outlook to conform to every new thought I encounter. But yes, I have been deeply informed, matured and blessed by such diversity. I have learned more about myself by learning more about others. Learning is listening.” Bishop Steven Charleston daily Facebook

What richness we can gain from other traditions.  An Episcopal priest and well known author, Lauren Winner, introduces us in her book, Mudhouse Sabbath, to many Jewish practices that she grew up with that could enrich other traditions. Jewish spiritual practices around the death of a loved one honor the one who died but also compassionately honor the grieving left behind in time honored rituals through that first hard year after a death.

I have learned from Muslim friends about the honoring of a fast at Ramadan. The Eastern Orthodox tradition has given us the gift of icons as a spiritual practice.  Other Eastern religions have taught us about yoga and contemplative prayer. The Catholic monastic tradition has given us the gift of chanting and developing a rule of life.

Exploring other traditions can only enlarge our image of God and our God language. They help us take God out of the tidy box our traditions have a tendency to cloister our God in.  

Joanna   joannaseibert.com

Morning Prayer

Morning prayer

Psalm 88: 14

      “But as for me, O LORD, I cry to you for help;

in the morning my prayer comes before you.”

A spiritual discipline that many people use is beginning and sometimes ending the day reading and meditating on Holy Scripture. Many denominations follow a daily lectionary of scripture readings so that over a certain period of time the reader has studied major parts of the whole Bible.  In the Episcopal tradition, the Book of Common Prayer BCP lists a two-year cycle of daily lessons taken from the Psalms, the Hebrew Scripture, a New Testament letter, and one of the gospels for each morning and the evening. Every seven weeks, the reader has digested the Book of Psalms. After the two-year cycle, the reader has been exposed twice to all of the books of the New Testament and once to pertinent portions of the Hebrew Scripture. The scripture readings can also be done as part of a structured morning and evening prayer service read alone or with others.  These daily offices provide a contemplative framework for the day as well as developing a pattern for reading the Bible. Some use a daily book of meditations that also contains scripture readings as well as the meditation such as the Methodist Upper Room, the Episcopal Forward Day By Day, the Catholic Catholic Moment, The Word Among Us, and Being Catholic. Some of these meditations are available online for reading or listening. The Daily Office of morning and evening prayer is also online at many sites. One of the most popular office sites is The Mission of St. Clare www.missionstclare.com . I use the daily office online from the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis dailyoffice.wordpress.com.

  I hope to hear from many others about their use of other daily meditations and ways of structuring daily scripture readings.

Joanna           joannaseibert.com

tools and disciplines

Spiritual tools

“What are the tools you use most in building your spiritual life? Living in a spiritual way is a lifetime job. There are always areas that need repair and new plans to incorporate into the design. So, having the right tools helps. Tools like curiosity and compassion. Like honesty and open-mindedness. There are basic tools like listening and study. There are specialized tools like discernment and meditation. Learning to use the tools from a mentor makes sense and practice is a given. Take care of your tools and they will take care of you: simple spiritual advice.”

Bishop Steven Charleston daily Facebook post

Bishop Charleston again offers us his tried and true well-used toolbox for a spiritual life. I am reminded of another manual to accompany Charleston’s toolbox for the spiritual life written by the Quaker, Richard Foster called Celebration of Discipline, The Path to Spiritual Growth. Foster’s classic offers a smorgasbord of a variety of rich spiritual disciplines. Foster divides thirteen disciplines into three categories, inward disciples of prayer, fasting, meditation, and study in the Christian life, the outward disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service, and corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. His book is one to read and re-read and become tattered, frayed, and worn with falling apart pages as we return to it over the years to try different spiritual disciplines that may work best in different stages of our life.  God speaks to us in so many voices. Foster teaches us about thirteen of God’s well-known languages.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com