grace, Flat Tire

Grace, 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 is still there: Christ’s desire to incarnate grace and truth.”

Br. Mark Brown, “Brother, Give us a Word,” Society of Saint John the Evangelist, SSJE, friends@ssje.org, a daily email sent to friends and followers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, a religious order for men in the Episcopal/Anglican Church. www.ssje.org,.

I and another spiritual friend so relate to this message as we both have mobility issues, so we love the image that we are moving around with at least one flat tire and maybe more. Images from our physical life are mirrors into 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 to remember I am human and not to beat myself up. I often need a little more air, a little more Spirit in my tires. I like the image of the Spirit, the air we breathe being that air, creation, the mark of the Creator, that is all around us and freely given.

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

The flat tire is a work in progress. It is a reminder that we are not perfection and subject to change.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

MLK, Sims: A New Norm of Greatness

MLK: A New Norm of Greatness

“Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”

Martin Luther King Jr., “Drum Major Instinct,” sermon, Atlanta, February 4, 1968.

Martin Luther King is giving us the short version about servant ministry, which Bishop Bennett Sims wrote about in 1997 in his landmark book, Servanthood, Leadership for the Third Millennium. Our worthiness has nothing to do with our IQ. Being a servant leader is completely different from being the smartest, working to become the greatest, needing to control or needing the admiration of others because of your abilities. Servant leaders make room for and empower others, work to build up others, not to polish the system or the leader’s self-importance. A servant leader does not see production as the first purpose of any family system, endeavor, church, or business.

Human enhancement, not human employment, is the primary aim of organizations led by servant leaders. Meaning and joy in work comes from power with, not power over.

Sims describes collaboration with others as the “meat and potatoes” of human nourishment while competition is the “salt and pepper.” He believes our society has been living on “spices.”

Joanna joannaseibert.com

MLK:Racism, Inconvenient Time

MLK: Racism, Inconvenient Time

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s

Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Martin Luther King Jr, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963.

I receive a letter from a friend encouraging me that I am in a position to speak out against racism. I am at a dream retreat and the presenter, also my spiritual director, tells the story several times about Jacob’s dream of a heavenly ladder. Jacob renames the place of his dream Bethel, house of God, God is present. I suddenly thing of Bethel AME Church in Little Rock where I fell in love with that African American congregation as they taught us all about racism and poverty when I was assigned to Trinity Cathedral in Little Rock and we planned a celebration of the anniversary of the 1957 desegregation of Central High School. Later our daughter and now a granddaughter is attending that historic school. In the past I have attended a prayer breakfast at our sister St. Mark Baptist church on the celebration of MLK’s birthday on January 15th. Being there was empowering.

This week people all over the world will be celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr who died more than 50 years ago on April 4th,1968. I feel some ownership in his death since I was a senior medical student in Memphis when he was assassinated. At that time, my world centered solely on finishing medical school. His death made it more difficult for me to get to the hospital since Memphis was briefly under a curfew and martial law. I do remember what the dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral did. He carried the processional cross from the cathedral and marched with other clergy to Memphis Mayor Loeb’s office, petitioning him to bring to an end the injustices which brought King to Memphis. I also remember that Dean Dimmick’s speaking out with his feet resulted in consequences for him at the Cathedral as he lost a large part of his congregation.

So here we are more than fifty years later. How are we to carry the cross with our hands, as so many before us have modeled for us to do, walking out into the streets and homes and schools and hospitals of our cities and country sides speaking and acting the truth with love against the violence and hatred that still lives?

I know I am a story teller. I share my story with you but especially today I share it with my children and grandchildren, surrounding them with love and prayer that they may be empowered to do a better job than we did.

Joanna joannaseibert.com