Charleston: Home

Charleston: Home

“ When we first see it, really see it, it will look like the place we always wanted to call home. We will have imagined it before we find it, and so, when we see it, it will look and feel as though we had always known it, loved it, because it will be so much a part of who we are…Then distant faces will look up to see us, the glimmer of recognition, and we will begin to run, even if before we had not been able to walk a single step, we will run and run to see them. We will be home.” Bishop Steven Charleston, Daily Facebook message

What I hear from Bishop Charleston is his image of life in the resurrection, what Barbara Crafton calls the Alsolife. Eventually spiritual friends feel safe enough to talk about life after death with each other.  I think of so many images and stories from others. One of my favorite priests tells me, “Beware of those who tell you they know what life after resurrection is.” True. No one knows. Our only few clues are Jesus’ post-resurrection stories. But we can imagine.  

Could what Charleston also is describing is the place where we find peace in our this life, this life time, where we feel connected to “the God of our understanding” as those in 12 step recovery would describe.

 Bishop Charleston does speak to the place “we will have imagined.” This is the place we search for in centering prayer, meditation, lectio divina, walking the labyrinth, using the rosary, all the spiritual disciplines we use.

 I also think we connect to this place when we have a realization that we are so cared for. I saw it recently in the eyes of a friend who had a near death experience, where she was cared for all along the way, where people she knew and strangers, stepped in and did the right thing to save her.

Bishop Charleston has described what it is like to find his place of peace and connection in this life and perhaps what it may be in the next. He seems to be inviting us to imagine what  ours is and may be as well.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com

Buechner: Stop, Look and Listen 2

Buechner: Stop, Look, and Listen 2

“ Stop, Look, and Listen is also the most basic lesson that the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches us? Listen to history is the cry of the ancient prophets of Israel. Listen to social injustice, says Amos; to head-in-the-sand religiosity, says Jeremiah; to international treacheries and power-plays, says Isaiah...

And when Jesus comes along saying that the greatest command of all is to love God and to love our neighbor, he too is asking us to pay attention. If we are to love God, we must first stop, look, and listen for him in what is happening around us and inside us.”

 Frederick Buechner, Originally published in Whistling in the Dark, The Frederick Buechner Center, Frederick Buechner Quote of the Day.

Buechner is reminding us to live in the present, notice what is happening, where we were, the people we are interacting with instead of living in the past or the future.  Instead we worry about past mistakes that we have not made amends for or worry about the future or what will happen to us when people find out who we really are. We ignore or do not really engage with those around us, for we are so self-absorbed. Instead of listening, we are thinking about the next thing we are going to say. Our life is lived on the surface, like that of the Black Skimmer, the well-known water bird we see at the gulf. The skimmer flies low and fast over the water’s surface snapping up small fish.  We, like the skimmer, never go deep.

Buechner is telling us there is another life, a life where we connect to a God who so loves us that God is present in every waking and sleeping moment. If we notice, we will see people and places that come into our lives where we are led to see God in them and they also may see God in us.

How do we change? Slowly. One moment at a time. For myself, observing life outdoors surrounds me with something greater than myself. The smells, the sights, the colors are so spectacular that my mind slows down, my feet  ground my body to the present, and I begin to hear my heart beat and  begin slowly to listen, listen for the heartbeat in others.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Buechner: Stop, Look, Listen

Frederick Buechner: Stop, Look, Listen

“From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention.  Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.”

Frederick Buechner, Originally published in Whistling in the Dark,  from Frederick Buechner Quote of the Day from Frederick Buechner Center www.frederickbuechner.com

From my balcony I watch a mother and father and two young children walk along the water’s edge of the Gulf of Mexico. The two adults are doing almost power walking. The two young children stop and pick up shells and stop and put their bare feet in the cool ocean and stop and watch the dolphins as their parents keep going. The children are finding treasures, living in the moment and reacting to what they see. It is old hat to the adults. Perhaps they have forgotten the mystery. This is what we must keep remembering, what children can teach us, what the child within us can teach us. The mystery of God is at every step, but too often we keep on walking.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com