Nouwen: Discipline, Discipleship

March 3, 2018 joanna seibert

“Discipline is the other side of discipleship. Discipleship without discipline is like waiting to run in the marathon without ever practicing. Discipline without discipleship is like always practicing for the marathon but never participating...Discipline in the spiritual life is the concentrated effort to create the space and time where God can become our master and where we can respond freely to God's guidance.” Henri Nouwen, Henri Nouwen Society, Daily Meditation: Creating Space for God, February 27, 2018

I think Nouwen is telling us that God is asking us simply to spend time with God. For some, this is reading and studying the Bible and other sacred material, especially writings from others who describe spending time with God. With some, this is sitting in quiet and silence, not necessarily waiting for an answer from God but hoping to quiet down the board of trustees in our heads who are telling us about what we have done in the past, good and bad, and making loud outcries for our next journey and agenda for the future. It is difficult for our minds to live in the present moment.

C S Lewis and others write that God meets us in the present moment. For many, being outdoors in Nature connects us to God in the present moment. Of course, all the multitude of spiritual disciplines, praying, fasting, serving, meditating, confessing, worshiping, are ways to put ourselves in a place where we are open to God’s presence in the present moment. There is not only one way. There are an immeasurable number of powerful spiritual tools that can move our minds and our bodies to a place where we are positioned to connect to the Christ within ourselves so that we can also connect with the Christ in our neighbor.

We are called to share our experience with other spiritual friends as we learn every day new ways to stay connected and centered to our true selves, each other, and God.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Paschal Candles and Light of Christ

March 2, 2018 joanna seibert

Paschal candles and light of Christ

“ After the Baptism, a candle (which is lighted from the Paschal Candle) may be given to each of the newly baptized or to a godparent.” Book of Common Prayer, 313.

As a smaller candle is lighted from the large white Paschal Candle after a child is baptized, I often am privileged to hand it to the parent or godparent receiving it and say, “The light of Christ.” Indeed the Paschal Candle is often called the Christ Candle or the Easter Candle. Parents are encouraged to light again this smaller baptismal candle they are given on the anniversary of the child’s baptism as a yearly reminder of the light of Christ in each of our hearts and minds.

We may think the light of Christ inside of us is small, but we are called, mandated to share that light, and one of the ways to share our light is to encourage one another. As Paul modelled in writings in so many letters, we are also called to connect with others who are carrying that light. That is why we have spiritual friends or connect with a spiritual director.

When our light seems to dim, the others with light will lead us to the Paschal Candle where we will once again find our light, often even brighter. We light the Paschal Candle during the Easter season, at Baptisms, and at funerals, all times when we want to, and need to be reminded of the light of Christ in our hearts, in others, and in the world.

Each time I meet with someone for spiritual direction, I light a candle when they come in. This is a reminder to me of how we are sharing the light of Christ with each other. I know I learn more in listening and talking with someone than what I can impart to them. We meet to see and encourage the light of Christ in each other. We meet solely to care for each other’s souls.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Merton: Epiphany

March 1, 2018 joanna seibert

Merton: Epiphany

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.” Thomas Merton

This is the first line of Thomas Merton’s famous mystical revelation and epiphany in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, described in his 1968 journal about the world of the 1960’s, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. pp. 140-142.

Merton had been a Trappist monk now for seventeen years and was on an errand for the monastery in the middle of an ordinary day on March 18, 1958. The story becomes so famous that the city of Louisville erects a plaque at the site in 2008 at the 50th anniversary of Merton’s revelation. Ordinary people and popes continue to visit the corner of Fifth and Walnut that was life changing for Merton and for those who read his works.

Merton’s experience seems similar to what James Finley describes in Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God as “having a finger in the pulse of Christ, realizing oneness with God in life itself.”

This experience may also be similar to what St. Francis realized in nature when he called the sun his brother and the moon his sister. Richard Rohr calls it finding our True Self, “our basic and unchangeable identity in God.” 1

Methodists might relate it to John Wesley’s experience at 8:45 pm on May 24th, 1738, at a Society meeting in Aldersgate Street when someone read from Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to Romans and Wesley says, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.”2

1 Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation,” Richard Rohr Meditation: “Thomas Merton Part II,” October 6, 2017

2 John Wesley, Journal of John Wesley, Charles H. Kelly, London, 1903, p. 51.

Joanna joannaseibert.com