Elizabeth's 111th Birthday

“But Ruth said, ‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.’”

—Ruth 1:16.

In August we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 111th birthday. She died when she was 81. Our church tradition honors people on the day of their death. Our family still remembers those we love on their birthday. I think this is because we remember the ways we celebrated their birthdays—or maybe for some unknown reason their love, their presence seems closer to us on their birthday. My daughter and granddaughter are named for her. Elizabeth taught school, second grade, for more than forty years. Her class was called Happy Town. I keep wondering if any of her thousands of students remember her. They do not know that August 30th is her birthday.

I try to Google her to find out the exact day she died. I do not find her. There is no Google picture of her either. But my life was changed by knowing her: her acceptance of me, her love for her grandchildren. There are so many saints like Elizabeth who changed people’s lives, many people’s lives, but are unknown to many.

When Elizabeth died I remember asking her in my prayers to watch over our children like a guardian angel, and I promised I would care for her beloved husband Bob who was left behind. Well, Elizabeth did a much better job of watching over our children than I did caring for Bob.

Whenever our children were away from home, my prayers would be to Elizabeth to be with them. I know she truly was, reminding them in some way that they were loved, keeping them out of harm’s way.

I do feel her presence today, telling me that all shall be well, all shall be well.

My prayer is that others may remember and honor the Elizabeth who encouraged them and taught them about the unconditional love of God, just as Mary’s Elizabeth did for her.

Joanna . joannaseibert.com

On A Pallet

“He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead.”

—The Apostles’ Creed.

Bishop Jake Owensby of Western Louisiana reminds us in his blog, “Looking for God in Messy Places,” about the line in the Apostles’ Creed where Jesus descended to the dead (“Unbearable,” Looking for God in Messy Places, July 1, 2018; jakeowensby.com). Bishop Owensby’s message is that our God goes to the places that seem like hell on earth to us. I also remember that our definition of hell is the absence of God. Perhaps the creed is telling us that even when we do not feel the presence of God, when life seems unbearable, God is still there.

When we are there “in hell,” when we feel unlovable, when our health fails, when we lose our job, when our best friend dies, when depression lives not only in a cloud above us but flows in our bloodstream and in the synapses in our brain, this is a hard belief to remember.

During Advent many churches celebrate a Blue Christmas at which the church remembers those who have died and offers to God the grief of those who are still grieving. St. Mark’s is having this service, called a Holiday Healing Service tonight, December 18th at 5:30. This is also a time for us individually to remember and reach out to those who still live in sadness.

This image of a loving, caring God must be written on our hearts during times when we feel connected to God and are dwelling in what seems like heaven—so that we can then carry that knowledge and feeling with us when our life descends into hell. This is still too hard.

We cannot depend on ourselves to remember how much God loves us. This is why spiritual friends around us are so needed. This is why God calls us to community. When we become paralyzed with fear and loneliness and pain, we need spiritual friends to carry us on that pallet through the roof to God, as friends once brought a sick man to Jesus. Otherwise life becomes too hard.

This is not the only answer, but it is the experience I have known best as my friends bring me to be cared for by the God of love of their understanding—until I am once again connected to the God of love and compassion I once knew. Then more will be revealed.

Joanna . joannaseibert.com

Earle: Julian

“Then, with a glad face, our Lord looked into his side, and gazed rejoicing; and with his dear gaze he led his creatures’ understanding through the same wound into his side. And then he revealed a beautiful and delightful place which was large enough for all humankind who shall be saved to rest there in peace and love.”

—Mary Earle in Selections from Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich, annotated and explained by Mary Earle, Long Text 24 (SkyLight Paths, 2013), p. 69.

Episcopal priest and well-known writer, Mary Earle, was the keynote speaker last year at the Community of Hope International meeting at Camp Allen. Her topic was “Julian of Norwich and the Oneing Love of God.” Julian was a 14th-century English mystic who is perhaps best known for her saying “All shall be well. All shall be well,” as well as her Revelations of Divine Love, her reflections on a series of visions or showings she received when she was near death. The writings are in two parts—Short Text written soon after the visions and Long Text written much later—and are thought to be the earliest book written by a woman in Middle English.

We know so little of her life and even her name, except that in later life she became an anchoress to St. Julian Church in Norwich, living in a walled-off cell connected to the church. Julian lived in a difficult time before the Reformation, during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France and through three outbreaks of the deadly Black Plague, caused by bacteria living in the fleas of rats, and decreasing the population of Europe probably by half. There also was a lack of leadership in the church with the Great Western Schism; sometimes there were two and even three popes.

All this is to say that most people must have felt as though the world was coming to an end! But in the midst of this comes Julian’s message from her mystical experience—not with an angry God who must have retribution, but with the God of love. This God of love comes to her through her relationship and visions of the suffering of Jesus on the cross. Earle believes wherever Julian mentions Jesus she means the Trinity, God in three parts. Through God’s suffering, Julian saw and felt God’s love for all mankind.

Julian believed that we can enter into a mystical relationship with God through suffering, where, like the disciple Thomas, we enter into the wound in Jesus’ side and find a place large enough for all mankind to rest in peace and love; or, like Nicodemus, we are born again through pain and suffering.

Earle suggests that instead of our arguing over how Jesus was born of Mary, our energy should be centered on whether Jesus’ and God’s deep love is being born in us.

This is our ministry as spiritual friends: to help others see not a vengeful, hall-monitor God, but the God of love calling and caring for us even in the darkest times. In the light of Julian’s understanding, we stand beside our friends in their pain and suffering. This pain was and is also so well known by our God.

Joanna . joannaseibert.com