Muir: Nature

Nature

“ Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.” John Muir

 A Forward Day By Day writer today reminded us of this quote from John Muir, one of our country’s most famous naturalist and conservationist who was instrumental in forming the National Park Service and the Sierra Club. In spiritual direction when I ask someone, “where do you find or feel closest to God,” the most frequent answer in “outdoors in nature.” In photosynthesis, trees transform light energy into chemical energy. I believe that the trees, the sun, the sky, the ocean, the mountains also transform some energy inside of us when we are outdoors among them. We see beauty alive and well at times where before we could only see ugliness in parts of our lives. We realize there is something greater than ourselves, something greater than our own problems. It is there for us. We do not owe it. It is a gift.

My experience is that when I have difficulty sleeping because of physical, mental, or spiritual pain, I sit outside or sit by a window and watch the sunrise in the morning, even on a cloudy day. The sunrise, the world outside can be a constant reminder of a new day, a new beginning, that there may be a new way to look at things.

Muir stands out as someone to remind us of the marvel of nature, particularly the wilderness, but he also reminds us of our stewardship of this gift.

Consider viewing nature, the outdoors, as one of our most important life-saving, life renewing remedies. It is better than drugs but like our own soul also needs care and love.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

Flexible Bible

Flexible Bible

“Mary Cosby used to begin her New Testament class by bending her soft-cover Bible and saying she preferred a Bible that was flexible. Then she would say, ‘The Bible is not a manual for morality, but a mirror for identity.”’ Carol Martin, Bread of Life Church, “A Mirror for Identity,” Weekly Gospel Reflection, Inward Outward Together, InwardOutward.org, Church of the Saviour, July 15, 2018.

My first introduction to this deeper and more flexible Bible study was with a small group of people at St. Mark’s in Little Rock in the 1990’s with a leader named Dick Moore in a room above the children’s classrooms that we called “the upper room.”  As we studied the books of the Bible, Dick reminded us that the Bible was a roadmap not the destination. 

I think of old friends like Carole and Gary Kimmel who were in our class who now live on the Outer Banks in North Carolina.  I think of Brady and Betty Anderson who now may be in Charleston who went on to be Bible translators in Africa in Tanzania and later the American ambassador to that country. They all taught me so much. Together we saw new insights that we had never seen before in the Bible.

As we saw God at work in the lives of people in the Bible who were just like us with gifts and faults, we also became more aware of God, the Holy Spirit, at work in  our own lives and those of people we encountered. We began to see that the relationship of the Holy Spirit did not stop with first and second century Christians, but the Spirit is still leading us today. If we only believe a strict literal translation of the Bible we are denying the continued presence of the Holy Spirit working in our lives today and telling us more good news.

I am thinking of the Bible I received from my bishop seventeen years ago at my ordination. It as well is flexible.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

23 Psalm and the Gender of Shepherds

23 Psalm and  Who Are the Shepherds

“The Lord is my shepherd.” Psalm 23

Malinda Elizabeth Berry reminds us in a recent article, “Who is my Shepherd,” in the online  The Christian Century’s Sunday Coming, July 22, Year B. Christiancentury.org, July 19, 2018  about a frequent misconception about the gender of shepherds. In biblical times shepherding was often done by young girls as well as boys and men. She reminds us that beautiful Rachel was tending her father Laban’s sheep when Jacob first saw her and fell in love with her. (Genesis 29: 9-10) Zipporah and her sisters were trying to water their father’s sheep when Moses drove away some other shepherds who were bothering them. (Exodus 2:16)

 We may also imply from this that these young and fair maidens were also just as  masterful with a sling shot  as young David!

 Berry asks us if we have ever seen  any bible story pictures or paintings with girls as shepherds? Indeed, I could only find a few, this one by Hungarian painter,  Marko Andrea (1887) called Shepherd Girl. Berry then challenges us to consider having girls as well as boys dressed up as shepherds in this year’s Christmas pageant! (At our staff meeting, Luke, our Family Ministries Coordinator at St. Mark’s, also reminded me that  unknown to me, St. Mark’s  had been having girl shepherds for years!)  

For myself, this is one more example of a tradition that shepherds should be only boys or men that does not ring true with historical facts. It makes me wonder why I didn’t think of girls as shepherds even after  having read the stories of Rachel and Zipporah more times than I can remember. Now it is so obvious.

I hope you can share my excitement with  Berry’s new information about  stories we thought we knew so well. It reminds us not to gloss over old Bible stories but rather hope to see new insights each time we read them. This also encourages us to keep reading what others are discovering in their journeys  as well through the Bible.  It is a  reminder  that the Holy Spirit is alive and well and  continually teaching us new things and new insights in old stories.

Joanna joannaseibert.com