secret garden

Silence

A Garden of Silence

“What will your secret garden look like? Will the space fill a field? An acre? A narrow border? Will you begin with an entire day? A weekend retreat? An hour before bed? Several minutes? The point is to begin to slow down your life and focus your attention…. There are many ways to sow the seeds. Listen and in the quiet you will hear the direction of your heart. The garden of silence is always there for us. Patiently waiting. We have only to claim it.”  Anne LeClaire, Listening Below the Noise 2009

Ann Gornatti's Secret Garden

The Secret Garden by the American-English author, Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett who also wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess, is still one of my favorite stories. The Secret Garden is a story about an unloved 10-year-old English girl who is sent to live with her grieving uncle in his remote country home after her parents die. Her unhappiness and aloneness as well as the heartache and isolation of those around her are healed when she begins to spend time caring for and restoring a secret garden on the grounds of the manor house on the bleak moors of Yorkshire.  I have watched the 1993 British film with Maggie Smith with my daughter and granddaughter and am going to see the play with my granddaughter this weekend. This story resonates with the child within us, the creative part of us, the part we so easily abandon for more important things, the part that is a major connection to the divine within us. It is another story about how the sounds, the smell, the sights in nature can silence and calm the grown up wounded committee in our heads and can heal and transform our inner child. We all should have a secret garden, a place where we seem to be able to reconnect so much more easily with the God within ourselves and the divine within each other. It is a safe place where the presence of the Spirit is more easily felt, described in Psalm 32:7:

” You are a hiding-place for me; you preserve me from trouble;

you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.”

Talking about our secret garden, our hiding place,  often a place of silence, can be an opening to the divine in spiritual direction.

Joanna                                 joannaseibert.com

zero sum

Zero-Sum

“As fearful people we are inclined to develop a mind-set that makes us say: "There's not enough food for everyone, so I better be sure I save enough for myself in case of emergency," or "There's not enough knowledge for everyone to enjoy; so I'd better keep my knowledge to myself, so no one else will use it" or "There's not enough love to give to everybody, so I'd better keep my friends for myself to prevent others from taking them away from me." This is a scarcity mentality. It involves hoarding whatever we have, fearful that we won't have enough to survive. The tragedy, however, is that what you cling to ends up rotting in your hands.

The opposite of a scarcity mentality is an abundancy mentality. With an abundancy mentality we say: ‘There is enough for everyone, more than enough: food, knowledge, love ... everything.’ With this mind-set we give away whatever we have, to whomever we meet. When we see hungry people we give them food. When we meet ignorant people we share our knowledge; when we encounter people in need of love, we offer them friendship and affection and hospitality and introduce them to our family and friends.”

Henri Nouwen, Temptation to Hoard, Henri Nouwen Society Daily meditation, May 6, 2017

Nouwen is first describing our life as a zero-sum mentality. We can only do well or win or succeed if someone else loses, so we are not going to share because there is just so much food, love, land to go around.  There is one pie. If someone takes a slice, there is less for the rest. One person’s gain is another’s loss. This theory describes situations in which the total of wins and losses adds up to zero, and thus one party benefits at the direct expense of another. There is only so much and not enough for all. Some must lose for others to gain. It is a competitive scarcity world view.  It leads to a fear based society.

 On the other hand, the opposite of the scarcity mentality is a positive-sum situation which occurs when the total of gains and losses is greater than zero. A positive sum plan occurs when resources are seen as abundant and an approach is formulated where the desires and needs of all concerned are satisfied. One example would be when two parties both gain financially by participating in a contest, no matter who wins or loses. Positive-sum outcomes occur in instances of distributive bargaining where different interests are negotiated so that everyone’s needs are met. With an abundancy mentality, there is enough for all.

How we view our neighbors and ourselves and the world is totally different in these two views. A zero-sum life style is isolated, lonely with our own self-interest guiding us. A positive sum life sees abundance, gives away food, love, knowledge to those in need, and as Nouwen reminds us, “there are many leftovers.” Jesus’ feeding of the 5000, found in all four gospels, is a story of a positive sum experience.

 I would so love to hear from others about their experience being involved in these two ways of living. My experience is that I am living in fear with zero-sum lifestyle where I am competing with others for the love or attention or support of some entity or person. There is peace in my life when I live knowing there is enough love or support or attention for all.

Joanna                   joannaseibert.com

Practicing the Presence Brother Lawrence

Practicing the Presence Brother Lawrence

“Sometimes I think of myself as a block of stone before a sculptor, ready to be sculpted into a statue, presenting myself thus to God and I beg Him to form His perfect image in my soul and make me entirely like Himself.”

The Practice of The Presence of God, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection.

This very short book of a collection of four remembered conversations, sixteen letters, and a list of spiritual maxims of a French lay brother of a Discalced Carmelites in the sixteen hundreds is considered a spiritual classic about staying connected to God. Brother Lawrence initially worked at menial tasks in the kitchen for fifteen years and later in the shoe repair shop of the monastery. He lived a life of a constant conversation with God which brought to him the continually presence of God. He reminds me of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Time for prayer was not different than any other time, since in essence he was in constant prayer. He believed the shortest way to God was a continual exercise of love by doing all things for the love of God. He believed that we do not need penance or skill at certain practices or deep theological knowledge to connect to God. We only need a heart devoted to God. He writes how God is often nearer when we are ill or weak than when we are in good health. He tells us to look especially for God in difficult times and instead of asking for relief from suffering, to pray for strength to suffer courageously. Brother Lawrence asks us to keep unceasingly knocking at God’s door.

Joanna                           joannaseibert.com