Solomon and Wells: Presence, not Words

Solomon and Wells: Presence, not Words

“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm, for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.”—Song of Solomon 8: 6.

at race for the cure with Shaun

Samuel Wells is the vicar at St. Martins-in-the-Fields in London and a frequent writer for Christian Century. He recently titled his article “Is Love Stronger.” 1 Wells tells the story of visiting with the husband of a wife who committed suicide whom he did not know, and hearing their story, then delivering the homily at her service, suggesting that all is now well.

However, when he visited the husband a week later, he was met with anger about his sermon. All had not been well with the woman, who had a painful wasting disease, and all was not well with her husband. The husband said he told Wells that before the funeral.

 Wells said he learned from this experience that when being with people living with tragedy or in the aftermath of a disaster, all he has to offer is his presence beside them. There are no words to improve the situation and attempts to clean up the problem do not affirm their difficulty. Wells believes his role is “not to make things better for someone. It’s being beside them as they face the truth.” This is what makes love stronger than death. It is a presence, not words.

This is also true when we meet with spiritual friends. Sometimes, trying to see God in any problematic situation is simply listening to our friends’ stories and letting them know we are beside them. We are not there to improve things or give answers but to be a loving presence beside them in a great storm. Eventually, we hope to lead them to see God’s presence in them, which has been present all along.

 In times of great tragedy, I remember people who just came and sat beside me and cried with me and never said a word.

 Often, the person who can best do this is someone who has known a similar tragedy. They have walked in their shoes and understand that the presence of the listening heart is a more powerful healer than any words.

These are also people like women running or walking in Race for the Cure, who show their loving presence with their feet instead of their mouths.

This is love stronger than death.

1 Samuel Wells, “Is love stronger?” Faith Matters, Christian Century, April 25, 2018, p. 35.

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

 

 

De Waal: Living on the Border, Uncertainty

De Waal: Living with Uncertainty

“The first step in listening, learning, and changing is to see that different is not dangerous; the second is to be happy and willing to live with uncertainty; the third is to rejoice in ambiguity and to embrace it. It all means giving up the comfort of certainty and realizing that uncertainty can actually be good.”—Esther de Waal, To Pause at the Threshold, Reflections on Living on the Border (Morehouse).

De Waal

 When de Waal wrote this book, she had returned to the home where she had grown up on the border between England and Wales. I met this prolific Benedictine and Celtic spirituality writer at the College of Preachers at the Washington National Cathedral. She often took up residence there and was accessible during meals to weekly pilgrims like myself, seeking respite and learning in this sacred space.

This small pocket-sized book is a gem to read and re-read. De Waal talks about how we relate to borders and boundaries, as she directly experiences borders in her day-to-day living experience.

Do we build walls, barriers, and fortresses, or do we engage in conversation and learn about something different, another culture?

She describes the world’s diversity as an icon to let us know God loves differences. She entices us to be like a porter waiting at the gate of a Benedictine monastery, standing at the “threshold of two worlds.” He welcomes those who ask to enter no matter the time of day, treating each stranger as if he or she were Christ.

This resonates with me as a deacon. Our ministry calls us to go back and forth between two worlds: the church and the world outside the church.

De Waal also teaches us to honor the threshold of the two worlds and be open to the change, the uncertainty, and the contradictions that the different worlds may present to us.

De Waal’s concept of thresholds has helped visit those in hospitals or the homebound. I have learned to pause as I cross the threshold of the hospital room. This is a time to wash my hands at the patient’s door. The threshold is a symbolic reminder that I am entering another world. The hand-washing is a reminder to leave my agenda at the door. I am there to honor that person, listen to them, and be present for them.

During the previous pandemic, I again encountered this ritual with the many times we washed our hands. I tried to let loose or wash away the cares that previously consumed me. It was a reminder to live in the moment and be open to passing through a new threshold.

Some of the time, I continue to remember.

Diane Butler Bass: Belonging, Behaving, and Believing

Butler Bass: Belonging

“Instead of believing, behaving, and belonging, we need to reverse the order to belonging, behaving, and believing. Jesus did not begin with questions of belief. Instead, Jesus’ public ministry started when he formed a community.”—Diana Butler Bass in Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (HarperOne 2011), pp. 11-64.

Belonging Summer Quest Camp Mitchell 2024

Diana Butler Bass tries to help us understand what is happening in the present-day changing Christian landscape, where religion is no longer the center of a member’s life. She reminds us that our religion started with community, not confession.

Belonging. Saint Mark’s Women Advent Luncheon

Thomas Watkins from Wilson, North Carolina, also tries to explain how our church might change using the South’s love of football in an article in the Journal of Preacher (“Game Day: Becoming a New Church in an Old South,” Pentecost 2017, vol. 40, no. 4) “They (fans) are not asked to show their diplomas at the stadium gate.”

One of the most frequent questions of those seeking spiritual direction is, “I don’t know if I believe or what I believe anymore. Maybe I am no longer a Christian.” If the person belongs to a confessional denomination or church of orthodoxy, where they must believe a specific set of doctrines, this can sometimes be a problem.

Some denominations are churches of orthopraxy, where members are held together because of how they worship or practice their faith. In that circumstance, a changing belief is considered, at times, an asset, a sign of growth. Our relationship to God will change as our God becomes larger, as we see the Christ in more and more people, people who are very different from ourselves.

 I often quote that line I first heard from Alan Jones at a Trinity Wall Street conference at Kanuga in the early 2000s: “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.”

Doubting signifies that God is working in us; our relationship is changing. Sometimes, this change in the relationship can feel like the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates. Sometimes, it can be like a volcano erupting.

Behaving and Believing. Barkley Teaching

But, if we can take it as a good and not a bad thing and try to stay steady, a new relationship and a new life will arise. I remember a quote from Catherine Marshall, “Those who never rebel against God or at some point in their lives have never shaken their fists in the face of heaven have never encountered God at all.”

Community is so important in this process. In a church alive with the spirit, there will be many others who have experienced this awakening who can walk and hold a steady hand when the foundations that we thought were our beliefs are threatened.

We see that these beliefs are not endangered but enlarged. We learn about these enlarging connections to God through belonging to a community.

You can follow Diane Butler Bass online at Diane Butler Bass The Cottage dianabutlerbass@substack.com

Joanna                https://www.joannaseibert.com/