Image Gently

Image Gently

“Relationship is not a project, it is a grace.”  Thomas Moore, Soulmates, Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship, p. 256, HarperCollins  1994.

Image Gently Logo

I have a friend, Marilyn Goske, who also is a pediatric radiologist who has spearheaded a campaign called Image Gently to decrease radiation to children in diagnostic radiology.  The organization encourages physicians to use the least amount of radiation when performing tests on children such as conventional X-rays, fluoroscopy, interventional radiology, nuclear medicine, computed tomography, dentistry, cardiac imaging and imaging in the setting of minor head trauma.  Part of their campaign is making physicians and technologists and nurses aware of the amount of radiation being used as well as talking with parents about any of their concerns. It is an educational program where there is communication with all those directly involved in these studies as well as all medical organizations which support them.  It has had overwhelming success with over 63,000 pledges to date to take part in this program.

Marilyn is showing us how we can change the world by communicating and dialoguing with all people who have a special interest in trying to solve a problem, talking together, working together, celebrating when answers come, and honoring those who are bringing the vision to reality, seeing the power of community.

I see how important this could be in our spiritual life as well. We find more answers to spiritual questions in community where we could not understand our concerns by ourselves.

Yesterday I met with my spiritual director who helped me understand a dream that had baffled me for days. Each day in the early morning I go back to the dream and see another insight where she was leading me as if she and all those who have taught me about dream work are still guiding me.

  We also have many parts of ourselves, inner masculine, inner feminine, the child within, and so many more. When we can see them as helpful in solving problems we face rather than unwanted adversities, especially the weaker parts of ourselves, answers come. It is in our weakness in our vulnerability, especially in community that God, the Holy Spirit creeps in and helps us discern a path where before we only saw a jungle. In community we image gently.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com

Guest Writer: Larry Burton, Life after Death

Guest Writer: Larry Burton, life after death

“So, what do you think about life-after-death?”

  As an Episcopal priest, I have heard that question, or others like it, more times than I care to count.  I’ve come to think that the Resurrection event may not cover the question of what happens when we die, like I would have thought it did.  “But,” a friend said, “that was Jesus.  This is me.”  Fair enough.

A group of us have been reading Frederick Buechner’s A Crazy, Holy Grace. Buechner, now 92, is a prolific author and theologian for whom many of us have great admiration. In part of this book he imagines a conversation with his grandmother who has been dead for more than forty years. She tells him that death is like stepping off a trolley car. Life does not stop but rather continues as a further deepening of understanding of God's grace and love. That imagined conversation stopped me in my tracks.

For most of my life as a theologian I have thought (and taught) something similar, but it was far more abstract, and ultimately not quite satisfying.  Buechner has his grandmother put humanity on my abstractness, and offers an image of continuity in God that, as I said, stopped me flat.  Did I believe what I had been teaching.  Yes.  No question.  But now the abstract has taken on a form that both challenges and delights. 

So, I had my own conversation with my preacher father and step-mother.  Both are dead.  But they were delighted to talk with me.  “Sorry you had to wait so long to understand,” Dad said after I told him about Buechner’s book.  (My father was a Buechner fan, and so he was clearly way ahead of me.  My step mother added her two cents worth: “I always thought suddenly I’d ‘get it,’ but it didn’t happen that way.  There are always new layers or new heights, and my heart!  My heart just continues to open wider and wider.”

My words in their mouths?  Or, their words in my mouth?  Buechner’s grandmother challenges her grandson, just as I am challenged.  Buechner’s major point is that memory can be an astounding portal into the wonders of God.  So, what do I think about life-after-death?  I am more convinced than ever that as a beloved child of God, access to the reality of God’s love is far more cosmic, mysterious, and wondrous than I had imagined.  It is more than Resurrection; it is a continuing transformation moving toward God’s very heart.

Larry Burton

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Frederick Buechner’s birthday was two days ago on Wednesday, July 11.

Sighs too deep for words

Sighs too deep for words

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” Romans 8:26

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Trent Palmer reminds us in a recent post about this Daily Lectionary reading from Romans how the Roman’s passage has changed his prayer life. He is trying to wait for the Holy Spirit to lead him in prayer, knowing that God is doing for all of us better than we can pray for or imagine ourselves.2 I need to hear this from The Daily Lectionary, Romans, The Book of Common Prayer, and Trent each week.

My prayers, especially for others, are a way to move out of the orbit I live in and know there is something going on greater than my mind, my feelings, my world, which is only a small piece of God’s world, perhaps like a grain of sand. But still, the God who loves us so much cares deeply about us, each grain of sand, each hair of our head, and loves us beyond what we can imagine. It is comforting to know that no matter what we pray for that the Spirit is there to guide our prayers. Sometimes I try to remember this by leaving a period of silence in prayer followed by a few signs of my own, hoping they will catch up with the sighs of the Holy Spirit!

I have friends who simply say to God, “I turn this day over to you for your care.” I admire them. It takes me more than ten words to turn over the day and those I care for and those I pray for. That is why intercessory prayer has become so important in my life. I aim for the shorter versions but for today I am praying in long division.

1Trent Palmer, “Morning Reflection” from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Monday, July 9, 2018.

2“Prayer for those we Love,” Book of Common Prayer, p. 831.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com