Crafton: Living with Limitations

Crafton: Living with Limitations

“Just because you’re disabled doesn’t mean you’re not anything else. Have you lost an ability you used to have? Something you loved? Have you had to say goodbye to it? Maybe there’s another way or another place where you can still do it, or something like it.”—Barbara Crafton, eMo from The Geranium Farm (geraniumfarm.org), August 16, 2018.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. NYC. Van Gogh

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports on its website that 61 million adults, or about one-fourth of adults in this country, have a disability that majorly impacts their lives. The most common disability involves mobility, which affects one in seven adults. This limitation is more common in women, especially those with lower income in the South. Cognitive impairment is the most common disability in younger adults.

Barbara Crafton, who once visited St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, contributed to an almost daily email eMo from the “Geranium Farm,” including a picture of artwork related to her story. For example, one week, she featured a Van Gogh painting, “Summer Wheat Field with Cypresses,” painted in the artist’s last year, a view from a window in his room at a mental facility. Her last eMo was now several years ago. We honor her today for so many years that the many faithful daily waited for her wisdom.

My experience is that each of us has what the Apostle Paul calls a “thorn” in our flesh. We are mistaken if we imagine another person doesn’t suffer from this “thorn” in some form.

We have a choice of how to respond to a disability. But, more and more, I believe we can ask in our prayers how that thorn brings fresh light into our lives. Those in recovery will say their addiction brought them to an alternative life they never dreamed possible. I encounter people with cancer changing and improving the lives of others with the disease. I recognize parents with disabled children who are experts in patience, kindness, and love.

There is a new pathway. It may not mean overcoming the disability, but rather waking up to a divine message or being open to a new direction in becoming the person God created us to be.

Barbara Crafton

Connecting in Our Woundedness to Christ the King

Connecting Through Our Woundedness to Christ the King

“The reality is that every human being is broken and vulnerable. How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded!”—M. Scott Peck in The Different Drum (Touchstone, 1998).

Henri Nouwen also tells us that we become less, not more, vulnerable when we share our woundedness. It takes enormous energy to pretend we are “just fine.” We hide who we are, wearing masks and trying to be something we are not. As we take off that mask, we can now employ all that energy simply to be ourselves, to become the person God created us to be. We become more human. In turn, others share their wounds because they recognize us as a safe place—another human being who may have just an inkling of what pain is about.

Letting others know we are human, have pain, and make mistakes is also a path into the divine within ourselves and others. This is the path we are all seeking. A wide, gaping entrance to this path opens through our wounds directly into the Christ, the Holy, and the Spirit within each other.

This is the path from Good Friday to Resurrection. We especially remember Christ’s woundedness and our woundedness, and that connection to Christ the King within us on this Christ the King Sunday on our liturgical calendar. So many images of Christ on this day are of a King on a cross. A King we can always recognize by his wounds. A king who has overcome the cross.

Jake Owensby describes the reign of Christ the King as one of love, forgiveness, and mercy, not a kingdom of punishments and rewards. Christ offers us a love that will not die, that often enters us through our woundedness. That love can only live by overflowing out of us, expanding God’s reign of love on the earth until it is like his reign in heaven.1

1Jake Owensby, “The Peculiar Reign of God,” https://jakeowensby.org/ November 18, 2022.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com https://www.joannaseibert.com/



God's Presence

God's Presence

"When, like Elijah, you're surprised by sheer silence, listen to God speaking deep inside. When, like Peter, you're scared by the wind on the sea, look to Jesus right there with you. Finally, when bedtime nears, stop and review how the Spirit caught you by the hand and caught you off guard with love. Hold these close to your heart and go to sleep."—Br. Luke Ditewig, SSJE, from "Brother, Give Us a Word," a daily email sent to friends and followers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE.org).

God promises God is always with us, beside us. Always. All the time. How do we feel that presence? My experience is that when I connect to the God within me, the Christ within me, and when I can see the Christ in my neighbor, I feel God's presence. 

We feel God's presence when we feel the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, and kindness (Galatians 5:22-23). We feel God's presence when we suddenly realize we can do something we did not think we could do.

During troublesome times, God shows up in the presence of someone who loves us just as we are. This epiphany can be in a phone call, an email, a snail mail, or even a text.

It isn't easy to spend any time outdoors in nature, or even to gaze outdoors to observe the birds feeding near our windows without feeling the presence of something greater than ourselves.

Gratitude helps us wear new glasses to recognize God's presence in our lives.

Forgiving ourselves and others keeps us from putting up the barriers that prevent us from seeing God in our lives.

Beauty in art, music, the sacred word, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction writings can open up our eyes, ears, and minds to see God sitting right beside us—on a bench at the National Gallery, Crystal Bridges, or in the center orchestra section of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, or as we curl up in our favorite chair with a favorite book.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/