Dismissals

Dismissals

“Our liturgy ends not with an admonition to head out and find a cappuccino and The New York Times, but to go and love and serve in the name of the Lord. Like Jesus, we have a message to proclaim - a message of release, recovery, freedom and favor.” Br. James Koester, Society of Saint John the Evangelist, SSJE Daily Email

Joanna Campbell ready to go to work first day at University of Montana

“Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

or

“Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.”

These are two dismissals from The Book of Common Prayer, p. 366, given usually by the deacon at the end of Eucharist service. The response of the congregation is, “Thanks be to God.”

  The Prayer Book also suggests adding, “Alleluia, alleluia,” during the Easter season to the dismissal and the response. Many congregations I visit want to say the alleluias every Sunday except in Lent. This warms my heart to hear them saying praise that they just cannot keep for only the Easter season.

At the Eucharist we have been fed by what is present not only at the Table but in the Word spoken and sung. Now it is time to go out and feed others.

I also hope this is true at our work and at meetings with spiritual friends. We feed each other so that we can feed others. Is this not true at every meal where we talk, listen, and eat to nourish ourselves and others?

Joanna   joannaseibert.com

Charleston: Reading

 Charleston: Reading

“Quiet hours among my books, walking the path of pages, the written words of a thousand minds, all searching for the distant island, the clue to a deeper understanding, sent out in these volumes like paper notes in bottles, cast upon the wide spiritual sea, tossed by storms of ideas, following currents of faith, until they are washed up here, by my living room chair, where they are lifted from the sands of time, and read by an old sailor, like maps to treasure, like memories of an ancient voyage, remembered but never completed.” Bishop Steven Charleston Facebook Daily Message

Part of Robert's bookcase

My husband sits and reads for hours almost every day. He is our family encyclopedia of knowledge of worlds and words the rest of us have never heard of.  For the most part, he wears his knowledge lightly. We both talk about others who also wear their intelligence lightly. It is an art, not overwhelming others with your knowledge of a subject or an experience. He tells me how hard it is to hear something that is common knowledge to him but unknown to others and not speak arrogantly and extensively about the subject.

He is teaching us that lesson as well. I daily see problems and situations and spiritual paths that I have had experience working through that others are working with or starting presently. The fixer in me wants to let them know what I know. I have learned over the years, however, that most people are not that open to words from others and only learn by making that journey, coming to that conclusion or another conclusion by themselves.

It is that way in spiritual direction. We may see a friend going down a spiritual path that we have been on so often. I want to tell them all about it and my experience. I have learned to wait to find about their journey rather than making it mine. I also learn from them about sights on the journey that I missed.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

Merton: Singing Psalms

Merton: Singing Psalms

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.” Psalm 139: 1-2. NRSV

 Thomas Merton shares specific suggestions of how to meditate, especially using the Psalms, in his very short book, Spiritual Direction and Meditation (1960). 

Merton encourages singing the psalms and using them as a meditative tool in contemplative prayer, being awakened as we re-live the experiences of the psalmist and are touched by the finger of God.

Merton reminds us that intellectual brilliance is not required for meditation and in fact that a good meditation may be dry, cold, and dark. St. John of the Cross tells us that “the best fruit grows in land that is cold and dry.”

A good meditation does not necessarily give us an absolutely clear perception of a spiritual truth we are seeking, for our minds are in the presence of mysteries too vast for our comprehension.

 The power of meditation is not generated by reason, but by faith.

Joanna  joannseibert.com