Finding what is missing

Finding what is missing

     “What is truth? You can see where there is truth and where there isn’t, but I

      seem to have lost my sight. I see nothing. You boldly settle all the important

     questions, but tell me, my dear boy, isn’t it because you are young and the

     questions of the world haven’t hurt you yet?” Anton Chekhov, The Cherry   Orchard. From inwardoutward.org

A dear friend, Pan, who reads my blog, Daily Something, noticed a word I had not spelled correctly. I had been writing about how we see the world through different lenses and glasses.  She kindly sent me a message asking me, “Did you mean to spell glases with only one s or did you do it to make a point to see if we might see it?”  I loved her comment. She reminded me of so many lessons. 

It helped me see and remember how something that looks so right can be so wrong. In writing, it more often is a missing letter, especially when there is another similar letter beside it.  I have also talked about it in my life as a radiologist. It was the things that were missing such as a part of a bone that I would miss and not recognize its absence. It was easier to see the things that were added such as a tumor or extra blood vessels.

So many lessons. We need community to help us have better vision in our world and in our everyday and spiritual lives. I made such fewer mistakes in radiology when I took the time to share what I was looking at with others and asked their opinion. In radiology, that person was a partner or colleague.  In writing we might call that person a copy editor. In learning to live life on life’s terms, we might call that person a therapist. In recovery we would call that person a sponsor. When we want to find out what might be missing in our spiritual life, we would call that person a spiritual friend or director.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

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