Nouwen: Twilight Zone

Nouwen: Our Twilight Zone

“There is a twilight zone in our own hearts that we ourselves cannot see.  Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves.” Henri Nouwen, Henri Nouwen Society Daily Meditations March 24, 2018, from Bread for the Journey by Henri Nouwen, 1997 HarperSanFrancisco.

Sadaf is not only an amazing pediatric radiologist, but the mother of 4 including her precious triplets

I do believe it is not a coincidence that certain people come into our lives. I remember Catherine Marshall talking about praying for patience, and soon afterwards she hired the slowest housekeeper. I learned about homosexuality through so many gay friends especially Richard and Terry and Joe as I walked beside them seeing their struggle. I learned about the depth, love, and the concern for others in those of the Moslem faith through my radiology residents and partners, especially Sadaf and her family. 

These are all people I already loved. Today I am getting just a little hint that I also have much to learn from the people who come into my path with whom I have difficulty. Over and over I know I am to learn from them about forgiveness, for I know if I cannot forgive the harm they have brought to my life, I continue to let them hurt me. Slowly I also am learning about my part, my character defects, my sins, my hubris, my self-centeredness that had a part to play in the difficult situation.

As I meet with friends for spiritual direction we often discuss what is the lesson that God is telling and teaching us in every situation and every person with whom our lives intersect whether it be a joyful or difficult experience. Again, this is where we learn about ourselves, especially that twilight zone in ourselves that Nouwen describes, as well as learning about the twilight zone in others.

The sacred place where God heals us is in community, especially as we enlarge our community and take down fences and walls.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com

Chant: Easter Again

Chant Exsultet Easter

“When a prayer or a psalm or a passage from the Gospels is chanted, we hear the words again. We hear them in a new way. We remember that they are not only meaning but music and mystery. The chanting italicizes them. The prose becomes poetry. The prosaic becomes powerful.”  Frederick Buechner,  Originally published in Whistling in the Dark, Frederick Buechner quote of the Day,  October 8, 2017

Buechner reminds us about using this ancient voice in praising and praying to God and speaking to each other.  It is changing the way we address God and each other. The words become notes. The message we chant sounds different. The sounds of chant are soothing, comforting. The music takes us to another place. The sounds open our world to another dimension. Chanting slows down the words of the message. The squirrels running in the cage in our head slow down and become a bit quieter.

The chant that deacon’s most often sing is the Exsultet which follows bringing the newly lighted Christ candle back into the church at the Easter Vigil. Even before Lent begins, this music becomes part of my body even if I am not the deacon designated to sing this lengthy canticle.  Jason Pennington, the music director at one of my previous churches, describes the Exsultet as “one of the most difficult chants of the Church’s treasury of song, sung  at the opening of the Great Vigil, at the culmination of the events of the holy triduum as all of the congregation is holding their candles in the shadow of the one Paschal, the choir not yet allowed into the stalls, standing in the nave with the faithful as that most beautiful of canticles is intoned, the Exsultet, promising us all the immeasurable gift of salvation.”   

I keep a note from Jason from our last Easter together when I was having some mobility issues and standing for a length of time was more difficult. “She was facing excruciating physical pain to stand for the lengthy canticle as she drew each breath to acclaim its message of life.  She paced it well, taking her time and savoring every single phrase as if it were the very first. This was a beautiful gift of ministry, a Holy Spirit gift that put ministry before self. And isn't that exactly the lesson to have been learned at the Mandatum not two nights before: ‘I give you a new commandment, that you should love one another.’  Joanna's lovely, quiet chanting voice was tremulous with pain, yet was filled with joy. This was Easter.”

I keep Jason’s note to help remind me and others that chanting is always an offering, not a performance.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com    

MLK: Next Right Thing

MLK: Next Right Thing

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

This past week my husband and I have been remembering 50th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr in Memphis, April 4, 2018, and the events leading up to it and afterwards. We were both senior medical students in Memphis during those troubled times when the world seemed to be falling apart. King left us so many legacies.

Today I am thinking most about how he started out in the civil rights movement becoming a leader in the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott which began in December1955 after Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the front of a bus and lasted for 385 days. King was 26, the new pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. He supposedly was selected by the African American community to lead the bus boycott because he was new and had not been intimidated by the white community nor had he aligned himself with the various factions in the black community. During the boycott, King was arrested and his home was bombed.  King’s articulate and nonviolent leadership brought him into national prominence.

King also wrote in his book, Stride Toward Freedom, about a spiritual experience as he sat one midnight at his kitchen table after another bomb threat. As he was ready to give up, he felt a divine inner presence that took away his fears and uncertainly, ready to face whatever came that sustained him for the rest of his life. I think this is one of the experiences he is speaking about when he refers to “going to the mountain and hearing the truth.”

King did not decide to go to Montgomery to lead a bus boycott or become the leader of the civil rights movement. He most probably went to be a good minister like his father and have a family, but a situation arose, he was chosen, and he stepped in. Certainly, his family background of three generations of ministers and all his training as a minister allowed him to be that leader, but that had not been his goal.

I see this as a message to all of us that we may be trained to be one thing, but we may be called to do something else that we never realized that we had been trained to do all along. Each of us, like Martin, will be called at some time to speak our truth. We most probably will not think we are prepared. We may be given a job because we are young or old and inexperienced, or no one else wants the job.

Tonight, I am thinking of the young high school students who are today leading a fight for gun control after an attack at their school.

 My experience is that this is one of the ways God works, and the lives of King and these students exemplify it.

Joanna joannaseibert.com