Nouwen: Spiritual Doula

Nouwen: Spiritual Doula

“Religious leaders, priests, ministers, rabbis, and imams can be admired and revered but also hated and despised. Let's try to love our religious leaders, forgive them their faults, and see them as brothers and sisters. Then we will enable them, in their brokenness, to lead us closer to the heart of God.” Henri Nouwen, Henri Nouwen Society, Daily Mediation, April 10 2018, from Bread for the Journey, 1997 HarperSanFrancisco.

It is so easy for spiritual directors and leaders and those they meet with to get into this well-known religious trap of the “one who knows all” and the “one who knows nothing.”

 In order not to get caught in this unfortunate relationship, I remembered one of my favorite programs on PBS, Call the Midwife. This led me to imagine a spiritual director or friend as  a midwife helping people give birth to a new life. Then my daughters-in-law introduced me to the new concept of a doula, a birth companion. A doula provides various forms of non-medical and non-midwifery support, physical and emotional, in the childbirth period, preparing the person for childbirth, being there with them at the delivery, and in aftercare, especially assisting with breast feeding or nourishing the newborn.

I am now beginning to see God as the real midwife or obstetrician. God is the one more directly at the delivery, bringing the new birth into the world that it is almost impossible for one to do alone.

I think we are God’s doula, supporting people for their spiritual journey with God. The concept is not unlike the ministry of a deacon in my tradition, standing beside the priest at the altar and standing beside the non-ordained and cheering them on and supporting them in their ministry.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

How we are remembered

How we are Remembered

 “I am grateful to God.. whom I worship.. as my ancestors did..when I remember you constantly in my prayers… recalling your tears… I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois ..and now lives in you.” 2 Timothy 1:1-14

Do you sometimes think about what will be your legacy, how people will remember you? I think of Phillips Brooks, a legendary preacher, writer, social activist, innovator of modern architectural and liturgical tastes at Trinity Copley Square in Boston, briefly bishop of Massachusetts before his early death at age 58. When you see his life size statue at Trinity Boston you realize what a formidable, physically imposing man he was, six feet four inches tall. Of all his accomplishments, he is now most remembered for one short poem he wrote one night on a visit to the Holy Land, O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.

What is your O Little Town of Bethlehem, your life, your word, spoken in poem, by which you will be remembered?

What about John Chrysostom, named a golden-mouth preacher of his day in the early church, archbishop of Constantinople, recognized among the Three Holy Fathers, with Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus? Those who read Morning Prayer say his prayer of St. Chrysostom near the closing of the service each morning, “you have promised that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them.”  That is how we remember him.

What is your Prayer of St. Chrysostom by which people will remember you when “two or three or gathered?’

Remember St. Francis who is honored each October 4th with the blessing of our beloved animals. He changed the church’s view on our ministry to the poor and the sacredness of God in Nature, but he is still best remembered for his prayer just attributed to St. Francis. “Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.” So, we still do not even know if he ever wrote it.

What is your Prayer of St. Francis, your relationship that brought peace, the love by which you will be remembered?

My Grandparents, Joe and Annie Whaley, whom by the way I am named after mostly raised me. They nurtured me and cared for me and loved me without conditions. My greatest memory of my grandmother, however, is one single event occurring one of the days I went back to college in another state. I always go to say goodbye to my grandparent at their nearby home on my way out of town. I only stay a few minutes. This day my grandmother is playing canasta with her sisters. I kiss her goodbye and leave. Then I remember I have forgotten something. Today I have no memory of what it was. I go back to their house and my grandmother is not at the card table. I ask her sisters, “Where is she?” After a pause my Aunt Julia whispers, “She went upstairs to her bedroom to cry. She misses you so much when you are gone.”

Even though my grandparents are my real caretakers when I am growing up, I spend very little time with them on these infrequent visits home from college. I am always absorbed with my friends or work I bring home. Suddenly I am acutely aware how much my grandmother loves me. I run up the stairs, hug her one more time, and witness her love embarrassed by her tears. I can still feel today that love my grandmother showed me with her secretly concealed bedroom tears. 

Where are your tears of love by which you will be remembered?

It is possible that you may be most remembered like my grandmother for just one small act of love.

 What we remember most is relationships we had with others, their acts, their words, their prayers, and how our relationships with them changed our lives and most of all connected us to the God of our understanding of love.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

Charleston: Gratitude

Gratitude

“I have an important message for you: thank you for continuing to be a channel of grace in this world. Thank you, because it is not always an easy thing to do. If we become discouraged ourselves, doubting whether justice will prevail or peace will come at last, then we can keep ourselves from receiving the word of hope that is trying to pass through us to others. We slow the flow of grace into the lives of those for whom we care. But when we keep the channels wide open, unafraid of the future and full of faith, then we share strength where strength is needed most. So, thank you, thank you for keeping your heart open, thank you for letting love reach as far as it can.” Steven Charleston, daily Facebook email.

Whenever I am in some kind of funk, feeling sorry for myself, feeling low, thinking I am not valued or loved, I know of one prescription that always brings healing. I make a gratitude list. It never fails. It brings me back to reality and all I have to be grateful for. I also talk to friends who share the same egocentric disease with some awareness of it, and we laugh about our condition and how ridiculous it is!

Gratitude is at the heart of 12-step programs, especially gratitude for the love of others, and it is at the heart of the spiritual life. It is very difficult to lose recovery when we are grateful for and learn to appreciate loved ones in our lives. The same is true for keeping a spiritual connection to God. Making a gratitude list every day for people and situations and our surroundings can help us find recovery from addiction as well as help us know and feel that connection to the God who is always with us, who always loves us, who never leaves us.

 As we list each day what we are grateful for, we suddenly or gradually realize that we are not alone, that we are cared for, that there is a love we cannot understand or fully know that is caring for us, has cared for us all our lives, has walked beside us, cried with us, laughed with us, and will never leave us.

Joanna joannaseibert.com