Grace and Living with a Spiritual Flat Tire

 Grace and Living with a Spiritual Flat Tire
“We are very imperfect vehicles for the embodiment of Divine Grace. We’re all driving around on at least one flat tire and with missing or malfunctioning parts. Broken as we are, the impulse remains: Christ’s desire to incarnate grace and truth.”—Br. Mark Brown, Brother, Give us a Word, Society of Saint John the Evangelist, Daily email SSJE, friends@ssje.org

Other spiritual friends and I relate to this message, as we both have mobility issues. We love the image of moving around with at least one flat tire and maybe more. Images from our physical life can be mirrors of our spiritual life. These images help us know a God who is all-knowing and whom we only have a tiny glimpse of from time to time. I hope to remember the flat tire when I make my mistakes. It helps me remember I am human and not beat myself up.

I just need a little more air (Spirit) in my tires.

I like the image of the Spirit, the air we breathe, being that air that is all around us and freely given.

Sometimes, our tires become so worn that we must change them. That could mean so many things. The Spirit can no longer stay within our tires. Perhaps we begin a new spiritual practice. Maybe it is a sign that our image of God has become too small. Possibly, it means old habits will no longer work to keep us connected. 

The flat tire is our image that we are a work in progress. It reminds us that we are not perfection and are subject to change.

Joanna    https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Celtic Hospitality in Community

Celtic Spirituality: Celtic sacred life of hospitality in Community

         “I sought my God;

    My God I could not see.

    I sought my soul

    My soul eluded me.

    I sought my brother

    And I found all three.”

In the Celtic hospitality tradition, God is present not only in Nature, but also in our neighbor, ourselves, and especially in the stranger. This is a sacredness in relationships. I am told there is no word in the Irish language for private property. Faith is lived in a community with a combination of periodic seclusion and community and mission.

Anamchara or soul friends or spiritual friends or spiritual directors are essential relationships. Women are regarded as equals, and communities are not hierarchical. Monasteries rather than parishes are the basis of the church. The Celts value education, art, and music.

We traveled to Iona off the western coast of Scotland twice and would return in a heartbeat. You don’t simply stumble on Iona, however. You have to want to go there by ferry, down a one-lane winding road, and finally walking over on a ferry onto the small, three-mile-long island in the Inner Hebrides where Columba brought Celtic Christianity to England in 563. Here, the breathtakingly illuminated manuscripts of The Book of Kells is believed to have begun to be written at the end of the 8th century.

Iona is considered an exceptionally “thin” space where the membrane between the spiritual and the secular is extremely thin. This was our experience as well. You walk a lot, eat good food, worship outdoors in the ancient abbey and a decaying nunnery, listen to the wind and waves, study high crosses, wear warm clothing, and watch the sea change the color of the abundant million-year-old rocks by the shoreline.

I often meet with spiritual friends who describe Celtic Spirituality when they have no name for it. This seems a sign of the universality of this type of spirituality. The sacred presence of God in each of us is a start.

Again, further reading might include Philip Newell’s Celtic Benediction, John Miriam Jones’s With an Eagle’s Eye, Esther de Waal’s Celtic Way of Prayer, and John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara.

Joanna    https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Forgetting the Sacred in Each Other

Forgetting the Sacred within each other

 “Do not be shy about claiming the visions you have seen. In our time and culture, it is not as common for people to speak of their spiritual visions, but that does not mean they have ceased appearing.

The Spirit still sends messages to each of us, images unique to our experience, flashes of meaning for us to interpret and understand. Some we seek, some come unbidden, but all are authentic parts of a spiritual life. The sacred is a visual realm. Wisdom is in what we see.”—Bishop Steven Charleston Daily Facebook Page, June 27, 2018.

Salish Chief

We pass the town of St. Ignatius in the Flathead Indian Reservation on the way to Glacier National Park. The name of Ignatius is sacred to many for what this saint taught us so many years ago.

 I previously visited the church there at the foot of the Mission Mountains, known for its original biblical paintings on the ceiling and walls painted by one of the brothers, believed to be the cook!

My daughter tells me there was a boarding school there where young Salish Indian children were taken from their homes to become “civilized.” The student were punished if they ever spoke in their native Salish language. The Jesuits were certain they were doing the right thing, changing the Native Americans into Europeans.

This story is a constant reminder that we, as well, may be so assured about the God of our understanding that we forget to honor the part of God in our neighbor. We hope to remember to honor the God of our spiritual friends’ understanding. We may tell them about the God of love we know and share our experience. We may listen to the God of love of their understanding, but we do not insist that ours is the only way to encounter God.

Each of us has a part of the divine within. Our job is to realize that part of God within ourselves, help those we meet to find the God within themselves, and look for similarities in our relationship with God. We also learn so much from others about the divine presence in their lives, honor it, and care for it. It is sacred.

Today, we are beginning to realize the power of Native American spirituality, which for hundreds of years we falsely were certain was not God.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/