Anders: Spinning Wisdom

Anders: Spinning Wisdom

“It is suggested in a legend that draws from the apocryphal Book of James that Mary as a young virgin spun scarlet thread for a curtain to adorn the temple—while Herod’s architects completely rebuilt the temple around her. In this imagined scenario, the acts of spinning and weaving are brought together against the backdrop of the construction of a holy sanctuary, all together symbolizing Woman enmeshed in her ideal Work.”  —Isabel Anders in Spinning Straw, Weaving Gold: A Tapestry of Mother-Daughter Wisdom (London: Circle Books, 2012). 

This resonant, compelling image of Mary conjures for us the “red thread” of life, a mix of blood and tears, that binds together wisdom and love—here embodied in a feminine personage: the one woman who made possible the Incarnation of Jesus the Word made flesh himself. 

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads

Of her life, and weaves them gratefully

Into a single cloth—

It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall

And clears it for a different celebration.

—Rainer Maria Rilke.  (From Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996, p. 64.)

          Indeed, this is exactly what Mary did.

I previously explored the vibrant image of fire as wisdom in my book Becoming Flame: Uncommon Mother-Daughter Wisdom (Wipf & Stock, 2010). I now add to it several complementary, similarly hopeful images to which women have a natural affinity. For instance, L Maloney (in The Lost Coin: Parables of Women, Work, and Wisdom by Mary Ann Beavis; New York: Continuum, 2002, p. 24) offers this insight:

“Our work is contextual and concrete; it sees the ordinary and the everyday as the place where God is revealed; it takes place ‘in the house.’ It is hard work; it is a struggle to find what we are seeking in the darkness that has covered it for so many centuries. But it is also characterized by joy and celebration, and by hope: a hope that assures us that God is with us. God has her skirts tucked up and is busy sweeping and searching too.”

         —Guest post from Isabel Anders from her Introduction to Spinning Straw, Weaving Gold.

 Joanna joannaseibert.com

Nouwen: Community

Nouwen: Community

“Community is not a talent show in which we dazzle the world with our combined gifts. Community is the place where our poverty is acknowledged and accepted, not as something we have to learn to cope with as best as we can but as a true source of new life.” Henri Nouwen, Henri Nouwen Society, Daily Meditation

Beautiful Community

The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament constantly reveal stories of how God continually calls us to community. This is what enlarges our view of God, keeps our God from being so small as we hear about the God of their understanding from others. In community is where we learn how our gifts our needed and how we don’t need to have all the gifts or be in control.  In community, we also learn about ourselves as we begin to see that the faults we so dislike in others are often also in ourselves, and in time we see how ugly they are in the ourselves as well and finally pray to be changed.

We also learn about forgiveness as we are forgiven. In community as we attempt to live in harmony we learn about reconciliation, pluralism, connection, a different kind of living than our society often teaches us. 

We live in a zero-sum world, where we are taught there is only so much food, so much resources, so many jobs, so much money, so much love to go around. If we give any of what we have away, if we give love away, we will lose it all, we will lose love and all the other that we have accumulated, and they will not return or be rejected, so we store our things in pods and warehouses and store up love inside of ourselves and don’t give it away. We fear if we share, we will lose what we have and not be able to have more.

 I learned about the fallacy of zero sum from some of my grandchildren. I once envied their grandparents who lived nearby while we lived far away. I feared there was only so much love my grandchildren could give, and their closer grandparents were going to get most of it. Oh, me. My grandchildren have taught me that they have much more love to give than I can fathom, and how wonderful it can be that they know and share the love of so many living grandparents. This is what we learn in community. We learn about God’s love without numbers, love without conditions, love that we cannot hold onto, but love that can only grow if it continually moves and flows in and out of us.

As I meet with spiritual friends I share what I have learned in community and offer living in community as one more way to keep that connection to God which so beautifully lives in others. In return, our community reflects to us the Christ, the God of our understanding which also dwells within ourselves as well.

Joanna  joannseibert.com

Nouwen: Being Ourselves

Nouwen: Being Ourselves

“We tend to compare ourselves constantly with others.We will never find our vocations by trying to figure out whether we are better or worse than others. We are good enough to do what we are called to do. We must be ourselves.” Henri Nouwen, Henri Nouwen Society Daily Meditations

This is the spiritual journey, trying to become the person we were created by God to be. I remember when I first heard this phrase of “becoming the person God created us to be”. It was in a prayer given at a football game by the new Junior Miss of Arkansas, Kristin Murray. Gail and Pat Murray’s daughter. How amazing to learn this from a high school senior, a teenager no less. I think of the years I spent trying to be the person my mother wanted me to be, my father wanted me to be, and finally the person I thought I should be in order to succeed in life, the doctor, the mother, the wife, the deacon I thought I should be, trying to follow the path of those I admired or not following the path of those I did not admire.

I wish I had taken Kristin Murray’s message to heart so long ago, but I was not ready for it at the time, but I am ready now. This is a message I try to ask often in spiritual direction as well, “Who is the person that God created you to be?” Getting to know that person is the pathway straight to the God, the Christ, within us.

Joanna joannaseibert.com