The disease of busy

The disease of busy

“I saw a dear friend a few days ago. I stopped by to ask her how she was doing. She looked up, voice lowered, and just whimpered: ‘I’m so busy… I am so busy… have so much going on.’  In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask others how they’re doing, you ask in Arabic, ‘how is your haal?’ In reality, we ask, ‘How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?’ I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment…Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart. Help me remember that I too am a full and complete human being, a human being who also craves a human touch.”

Omid Safi, November 6, 2014, September 16, 2017, On Being with Krista Tippett

Omid Safi is a columnist for On Being on Thursdays and is Director of Duke University Islamic Studies Center. He is teaching us to be more intentional about relationships rather than being a person making lists and doing tasks and assignments. My usual greeting to start a conversation is, “How are you doing?” The word doing implies that I am interested in what they are doing, while I really want to know how they are being, how we can stay connected in this relationship and how we both can learn to live as human beings rather than humans doing. Maybe at some point I can say, “How is your heart,” for that sharing is what will make the most difference in allowing us to be in relationship.

Can we also transfer this to our relationship to God? Instead of starting our prayers with our to do list for God and expecting God to give us a to do list as well, can we open prayers with “God, how is your heart? Show me your heart and open up my heart to you.”

Joanna     joannaseibert.com

Humor

Humor

Diagnosis
by Sharon Olds

By the time I was six months old, she knew something
was wrong with me. I got looks on my face
she had not seen on any child
in the family, or the extended family,
or the neighborhood. My mother took me in
to the pediatrician with the kind hands,
a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel:
Hub Long. My mom did not tell him
what she thought in truth, that I was Possessed.
It was just these strange looks on my face—
he held me, and conversed with me
chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother
said, She’s doing it now! Look!
She’s doing it now! and the doctor said,
What your daughter has
is called a sense
of humor. Ohhh, she said, and took me
back to the house where that sense would be tested
and found to be incurable.
"Diagnosis" by Sharon Olds from One Secret Thing. © Knopf, 2009.

Playing with my daughter at Camp Mitchell

There is no question that the God of our understanding has a sense of humor. Our spiritual life or relationship with God also should reflect that humor. Some of the things that happen can only be explained knowing that our God does indeed have sense of humor. This is the God who keeps putting people in my life that annoy me until I realize that what bothers me about them is something in myself that I have not recognized. I have come to see this as one of God’s little “jokes”.

Sometimes there are situations that occur in our life that only can be tolerated with our sense of humor as well. There was a boy in our medical school class, Mike Levinson, whose frequent quote was, “you got to laugh or you will cry!” At times situations were so difficult then, that we had to find humor in them.  When we can see the humor in difficult situations, I do believe that that is the Spirit working in us to comfort us. My experience is that the humor is not from God if it is at someone else’s expense, if the humor makes fun of another. I see God in situations when I can see humor in some of my character defects, my sins. “Goodness gracious, God, I just did it again!”

I learned about humor and character defects from 12 step groups. It is not “gallows humor” where something deadly serious is made fun of in a silly or disrespectful way. There is a fine line.  My mother did the best she could in her lifetime, but I did not appreciate her. I can now remember that every time I would call her, I would expect her to be different instead of thinking about how I might change my way of relating to her. I now look back on this, and instead of beating myself up, see how humorous it is to “do the same thing over and over the same way and expect a different result.” It is so true it is humorous.  It is also insanity! Ann Lamott is also a great writer who has helped me look for the humor in the truth.

When I find myself getting too serious or am visited by a friend becoming too serious, my experience is that the antidote for both of us is play, playing with our children or grandchildren, being with friends who know better than we know  how to play.

Joanna     joannaseibert.com

The Table, the Barometer of our lives

The Table, the Barometer of Our Lives

“Although the table is a place for intimacy, we all know how easily it can become a place of distance, hostility, and even hatred. Precisely because the table is meant to be an intimate place, it easily becomes the place we experience the absence of intimacy. The table reveals the tensions among us. When husband and wife don't talk to each other, when a child refuses to eat, when brothers and sisters bicker, when there are tense silences, then the table becomes hell, the place we least want to be.” Henri Nouwen, Henri Nouwen Society, Daily Meditation, Email.

Henri Nouwen always offer insight into our everyday world. I marvel at how a man who never was married who had no children can know so much about real life in the trenches. When I talk to spiritual friends, a good ice breaker or introduction to find out about their life is asking about mealtime. It is the place where we daily have an opportunity for intimacy and consequently seeing the Christ in each other. It can be one of many barometers that we can use to contemplate how we are connecting to each other and therefore to God. The habit of starting with a short prayer of thanksgiving can always set the stage no matter where the meal begins. “Thank you for our family, food, and friends. Amen.” This is our family mealtime prayer. We connect to the rest of our family when we say it, knowing that many may be saying it no matter where they may be. The conversation with my friend can then move to another table where we connect beyond our family into the world where prayers begin the meal. This also is a table of unbelievable intimacy. This is the table of the Eucharist. This table also affords us one more opportunity to connect to the Christ in ourselves and each other and be changed. This table also is one more barometer and one more opportunity to renew our connection to God and each other

Joanna      joannaseibert.com