De Mello: Selfish

 De Mello: Selfish

“Part of waking up is that you live your life as you see fit. And understand: That is not selfish. The selfish thing is to demand that someone else live their life as YOU see fit. That’s selfish.”  Anthony de Mello,  Awareness,  Daily Words, Inwardoutward.org, June 22, 2015

Anthony de Mello was an Indian Jesuit priest who also was a psychotherapist who died too young in 1987 but whose spiritual writings still speak clearly to us today.  I think de Mello is trying to tell us that loving others means allowing, supporting them to be the person God created them to be. Self-love or selfishness is wanting others to be the person we want them to be. This is a constant struggle because “we are so wise and have such good ideas!” Sometimes we want others to live a certain way to live out a life along a path that we were not able to live. Other times it is a control issue thinking we know what is best. We struggle with this form of selfishness with our children, our grandchildren, our students, our partners, our friends, almost any relationship.

Of course, this also can be a hurdle to overcome in spiritual direction, wanting our spiritual friends to live a certain form of spirituality, especially the spiritual life that has worked for us. Spiritual direction is a two-way street. It is like teaching or any form of mentoring. If we are not learning from our spiritual friends as well as sharing with them, we become even more self-absorbed in our own knowledge and experience. We must constantly remember that it should be the Holy Spirit present with us in spiritual direction, guiding and teaching us as well as our spiritual friends.

My experience is that two things are helpful. First, trying to live the Serenity Prayer, knowing we can only change ourselves and not others. God is the one who makes the change. We are to sit back and wait for the Holy Spirit to bring about changes.

The second is awareness, awareness when we think we know what is best and start planning the agenda of others and not allowing them to become the person the Christ, the Spirit within is leading them to be.

 I am counting on the Holy Spirit to bring in de Mello holding up a big stop sign with SELFISH written all over it when I become aware of when I am doing this.

Next, we are to turn around and prayerfully and humbly ask God to transform that selfish energy directed at others into energy for the Christ within us to continue creating us to become the person God birthed us to be.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

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