Conversing or Talking

   Conversing or Talking

“Conversation can stimulate, inform and build strong connections. At best it can inspire, comfort, motivate and kindle creative thought. But as I listen more carefully I discover that much of the dialogue in our culture is what someone once called ‘talking and waiting to talk.’”

Anne LeClaire, Listening Below the Noise, InwardOutward.org, Daily Words, October 25, 2016. 

As I meet with spiritual friends, I listen and listen and listen. I hear something I want to respond to. Sometimes the urge is huge and I get teeth marks in my tongue to keep it from moving! I have learned, however, that when my friend is ready for me to respond, he or she will stop talking.  My interruptions beforehand fall on deaf ears. When my friend is quiet, I try to wait for a period of silence before I speak. My mind wishes I could take notes, for often I cannot remember what I had planned to say.

I am trying to let the Spirit lead our time together. My premise is that if my response is important, I will remember it. I always have a candle burning when meeting with spiritual friends to remind me that both of us are seeking the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes my friend begins talking again before I have a chance to respond. It takes time to get adjusted to this, for I was just getting ready to respond with something “very profound.” Again, however, I have learned that when I allow the Spirit to guide both me and my friend, we have a third much more experienced person leading both of us. People in 12 step recovery might call this practicing the third step, “turning our life and our will over to the care of God.” It is a practice of surrender to something greater than both of us.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Too Wonderful, Earth Day

 Too Wonderful

“Oh, Earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?”

Thornton Wilder, Our Town, Daily Word, from inwardoutward.org, August 2, 2016.

Emily speaks these memorable lines in the play, Our Town, after she returns to earth for one day to Grover’s Corners since her young untimely death at age twenty-six. She chooses her twelfth birthday and soon can no longer bear watching as the people she loves barely interact with each other.

I am writing on Earth Day and listening to music about the earth such as Beethoven’s Sixth Pastoral Symphony as we travel from a reunion in Virginia to the gulf coast. This symphony always reminds me of the four years we lived in Iowa City. The music was the background for a visual production of the Iowa outdoors called, Iowa, A Place to Grow, which always reminded us to bloom where we were planted and appreciate the beauty of the earth and the people of that state.

I remember the first Earth Day in 1970. It was the day my husband of six months left for Vietnam for a year. I was pregnant with our first child and feeling very sorry for myself. I spent the day watching the Earth Day celebration on our small black and white television and stripping the wax off the floor of our kitchen. I knew I had to transform the energy generated by Robert’s leaving into something useful. I wish I was able to write that I went out and planted trees, but alas, my kitchen floor was as far as I got.

We are driving through a gentle rain and the car radio is now playing American composer, Alan Hovhaness’ tribute to a beloved tree on his uncle’s farm struck by lightning, Under The Ancient Maple Tree.  I wish I could say I participated in some marvelous events to care for and thank our earth and especially its trees on the other forty-eight Earth Days since, but I honestly cannot remember another Earth Day.  Today the best I can do is enjoy the ride, give thanks for the rain, and give thanks for the bountiful green trees keeping us alive along Interstate 85.

I think of my father who was a forester who lead many hundreds of expeditions to plant pine seedlings.  I remember on trips how he often would point out the tall grown trees that he had planted. I thank him now for his plantings many years later.

I have learned along the way that our environment, the outdoors, especially trees keep us grounded to the present moment. This is the present moment that I think Emily is talking about where we learn to appreciate each precious gift of time especially with those we love. My experience is that I most often begin to live in the present moment when I am outdoors and see the trees and plants and realize that there is something greater going on than the past and the future that I am concerned about.

CS Lewis and so many others and now Emily tell us that the present moment, not the past or the future, is where we meet and recognize God,  the Creator, the God of Love.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

Charleston: How We Learn

Charleston: How We Learn
“We are strongest when we show our tenderness to others, when we bend the rigidity of culture and custom to care for those in need. The Spirit dares the conventions of our time so that love can reach out as far and wide as it can. Those from whom we would turn are those from whom we would learn.” Bishop Steven Charleston, Daily Facebook Emails

Transcranial Doppler

Bishop Charleston constantly reminds us that we most learn from those from whom we want to turn away. I try to pass this insight on to spiritual friends as I remember the people and situations who have made such an impact on my life.

 In my medical career, my major research developed because the person I had the most difficulty working with pushed me into it. She not so kindly told me that if I didn’t start working on this test for her patients, that she would get someone else to do it or she would do it herself! As I started the research working with children with Sickle Cell Disease, it became one of the most rewarding parts of my career as I grieved for the children and their families and what they had to suffer, hoping to make their lives even a small part better, helping to develop an ultrasound test to know which children were at risk for stroke.

I think of all the people after the recent elections whose candidates did not win. Instead of reacting with violence and hatred, they became more involved in the politics of their country locally, nationally, and globally. They committed themselves to problems of refugees, immigrants, the environment, the working poor, gun violence, and  children’s and women’s issues. They let our representatives know what is important to them and actually are running for office where before they watched from the sidelines or perhaps gave a small amount of money to a cause or watched someone else do it.

 We learn most from difficult people and difficult situations if we have the courage and energy to go there and process what is going on, transforming the initial anger into useful energy to make a change.  

God uses every part of our lives to connect to us and lead us into becoming the people we were created to do and be. Nothing is ever wasted.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com