Watched over

Watched Over Charleston

“They are watching over you, the ones who have gone before, the ones who know you best, the spirits of a love that never dies, your ancestors of hope and courage, those bright souls who shaped your life and gave you life and showed you what life really was, they watch over you, they hear you and care for you, no matter what comes, no matter what happens, they are there, sheltering you beneath their blessing, giving you the wisdom you need, the strength you need, to live as they lived, to love as they loved, to watch in wonder the unfolding of a blanket of dreams.” Bishop Steven Charleston, daily Facebook

My grandmothers still caring for me

I know I am watched over by loved ones who have died. I have no doubt about it. There are times I am able to do things I know I could never do alone without being helped and cared for by others. My grandfather was the most important person in my growing up years who taught me about unconditional love. When he died, I was devastated. I wanted to do something to honor him. I knew he did not like my smoking. I had tried to quit many times without success. Quitting smoking for me was a spiritual experience. I have not had a cigarette since December 7, 1979, the day of my grandfather’s funeral. My grandfather loved me when he was living and saved my life after he died. 

One New Year’s Eve I walked the labyrinth that evening at Christ Church. It was a cool night and I was wearing a long black shawl with fringes like ones you sometimes see over pianos. Suddenly during the walk, I felt the presence of my grandmothers holding and surrounding me like the shawl around my shoulders.

This weekend I had a dream that I received a letter from Peggy Hayes, my former spiritual director. I knew it was from her because of the address and writing, but I woke up before I could read the printed handwritten message on the short folded up letter. My prayers have been asking what was in the letter. I am planning to ask my dream group about it as well this morning.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Hurricane

“Hurricane”

by Mary Oliver

It didn’t behave

like anything you had

ever imagined. The wind

tore at the trees, the rain

fell for days slant and hard.

The back of the hand

to everything. I watched

the trees bow and their leaves fall

and crawl back into the earth.

As though, that was that.

This was one hurricane

I lived through, the other one

was of a different sort, and

lasted longer. Then

I felt my own leaves giving up and

falling. The back of the hand to

everything. But listen now to what happened

to the actual trees;

toward the end of that summer they

pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.

It was the wrong season, yes,

but they couldn’t stop. They

looked like telephone poles and didn’t

care. And after the leaves came

blossoms. For some things

there are no wrong seasons.

Which is what I dream of for me.

Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings: Poems, Penguin 2013

Parker Palmer introduced this Mary Oliver poem to me in his column on Krista Tippett’s “On Being” weekly newsletter email.  (February 18, 2017) Parker reminds us how nature is a place of healing when we have lost our connection to God. My own experience and those of others is that simply getting up off the sofa or out of the seat behind our desk and walking, sitting, or standing outside can make a difference almost instantly. While I sit at my desk I become consumed with my own obsessions and problems. When I go outside I realize there is something greater than myself and my problems. I immediately hear the song of birds reminding me of God speaking to Job during his pain, asking Job and us if we were able to form or make what we see in natural world just outside our window or doors.  We see around us a power greater than we can imagine, the sun, the sea, the wind, trees and plants that bloom out of season because they will not give up.

Parker Palmer and Mary Oliver are asking us to go deeper and make a longer and deeper observation especially after events that seems like our being hit by a hurricane when we ask where was the God of our understanding that did not seem to protect us. In the world of nature, we repeatedly see what was dead come back to life. Being regularly outside and in nature is better than the time I spend with people trying to help them connect to the God within them or even the drugs that medical therapist can prescribe to ease their suffering. Nature is God’s spiritual director that is offered constantly to us if we only have eyes to see, ears to hear, hands to touch, a body to feel, taste and smell, to observe in the world outside of us, the free gift and power of resurrection, Easters every day from every awful Good Friday.

Joanna          joannaseibert.com

Sue Monk Kidd 4 one more time

Sue Monk Kidd 4 again one more time

“Today (August 12) is my birthday. It makes me think of the new life I’m incubating and the Birth-day still to come.

I’ll say to myself. ‘You’re loved. Your pain is God’s pain. Go ahead and embrace the struggle and chaos of it all. The splendor, the messiness, the wonder, the agony, the joy, the conflict. Love all of it.’

I’ll say to myself. ‘Remember that little flame on the Easter candle. Cup your heart around it. Your darkness will become the light.’”

Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits, p. 171, incubating the darkness.

We continue our visit with Sue Monk Kidd.
I wish I could have Sue Monk Kidd’s book, When the Heart Waits, Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions, with me all the time and just read from it when I meet with other spiritual friends. I hope I can remember her message about waiting. I hope to share her ideas about the false self at the appropriate time. I see many people coming for direction on or getting ready for the “night sea journey” of biblical waiters like Jonah in the belly of the whale, or like Christ in the tomb, or like Joseph in the well. I hope to remember Kidd’s phrase when we are having difficulty letting go, “Put on your courage suit” or the image of letting go like crossing a bridge.

I began this book on Maundy Thursday in the Chapel of Repose with the reserved sacrament. I am ending it in Greece with my husband, my daughter, and her husband in the week of Easter 4 as we overlook the Acropolis. I know Kidd’s later books are about her trips to Greece especially with her daughter where she becomes even more connected to the feminine part of herself and God. My daughter and I have just this month published a book together just as Kidd and her daughter did.  Kidd ends this book telling about a drawing which came from her true inner self of a sketch she made at Kanuga, the home of my spiritual direction class, of a mother and child. So much serendipity.

This past Sunday, on Mother’s Day we dedicated a sculpture of mother and child that my husband had purchased in the garden next to St. Luke’s chapel. I will attach a picture of the sculpture. More connections.

So, this week as we travel in Greece I will try to follow Kidd’s direction and stay in the moment and feed my soul real food instead of junk food, and see what else might happen to help me see the God within each person I meet and in myself as I continue to study to become a spiritual director and friend.

The real food I am looking for is silence, laughter, solitude, taking care of my body, swimming, massage, deep encounters, prayer, writing, reading, Eucharist, gratitude, seeing serendipity, delight, compassion, living in the present, empathy (sharing pain), and a reverence for the earth, especially in this ancient part of the earth that I will visit on land and on sea this week.

Joanna     joannaseibert.com