Nouwen, Kushner, Bolz-Weber: Choices, Suffering

Nouwen, Kushner, Bolz-Weber: Choices, Suffering

 Choices make the difference. We have very little control over what happens in our lives, but we have a lot of control over how we integrate and remember what happens. It is precisely these spiritual choices that determine whether we live our lives with dignity.” Henri Nouwen, Henri Nouwen Society Daily Meditation, from Bread for the Journey by Henri Nouwen 1997 HarperSanFrancisco.

Early morning fog

The choices we make determine how we keep our connection to God and how the Christ in us connects to the Christ in those around us. In this postmodern world, we have so many choices, and so many are good. Our ministry is to connect to the choices that will bring about to us and others the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Also, learning and being aware of our spiritual gifts can help in making a choice. If we are doing what we were created to do, we will be energized. Our community can also help us as we discern choices.

Nouwen is also talking about our choices when life brings unmerited suffering. This is so hard.  If we become bitter or withdraw, it is hard to stay connected to God. I visit so often with spiritual friends who are seeking an answer to this very why question of why does an all-powerful, all loving God let suffering happen.

  Harold Kushner had a young son, Aaron, who died at age fourteen from a devastating incurable genetic disease, In his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Kushner asks us to change our question and all our energy from why did this happen to how can we work through this. This is the choice that can change us from victim to survivor to hero.   Kushner also reminds us that God is right there in our suffering with us. We never suffer alone.

Nadia Bolz-Weber in Accidental Saints (p. 59-60)   reminds us that she can only see God working in her life in retrospect. In the middle of difficulty she is “so filled with doubt and self-interest and ambition and neurosis that it’s hard to be tuned in to God. But after something surprising or intensely beautiful happens.. then I begin to suspect God.”  This is my experience as well.  When I am in the midst of pain, God’s presence is more like the early morning fog. As the fog lifts and the sun comes out, it becomes obviously clear that God was right there.

What also helps is reading and talking to others, hearing the stories of survivors who have lived through and are still living in suffering.

 The why of suffering is a great mystery that people through the ages have written about. Our tradition teaches us that we have a God who suffered and suffers with us. It can be a time of questioning. Our tradition also teaches us that every Good Friday experience can lead to Easter, to resurrection.  I think this is our ministry with our spiritual friends, trying eventually to remember and help ourselves and others see any hint of an Easter experience in suffering. I have mentioned my Easter story before. I never tire of sharing it.

later in the day

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

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