Darkness and Light and Candles and Prayers

Darkness and Light and Candles and Prayers

“ If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night,’ darkness is not dark to you, O Lord; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.” Psalm 139: 10-11.

At the five o’clock contemporary service every Sunday night at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church the nave is darkened and almost only illuminated by tealight candles on the altar in front of a large icon. After the usual Prayers of the People with a Leader and People response, members of the congregation are invited to come up and light a candle in front of the altar as they say a silent prayer of intercession. Tonight’s pianist plays music from the Taize community as almost all the members of the congregation come forward.  

While I remain in the chair behind my harp, I experience the scene as  a spirit filled synthesis of corporate and individual intercessory prayer.  I watch men and women and sometimes children walk silently up to light their taper and put it in a large earthenware bowl filled with sand. I know a few of the prayers that may be on some hearts.

There are many others I do not know who they are or what they are praying for, but I see faces with earnest emotion and even sometimes tears in their silence. Even when I do not know the silent prayers, I can feel their power and maybe even their connection. There is a stream of people connecting to God in prayers for others and certainly sometimes for themselves.

The light from the many candles now brings brighter light to the nave of the church.  The scene has become its own icon for seeing and teaching us what happens when we pray. Out of the darken nave prayers are germinated and born which transform the darkness into light.

I keep remembering that CS Lewis once wrote that “he prayed not to change God, but to change himself.” These silent prayers being transported by candlelight are changing the appearance of the church  and the pray-ers, and certainly they are changing me.

Joanna  joannseibert.com

Guest Writer: Isabel Anders, May You Live Long Enough

Guest Writer: Isabel Anders: Ricoeur and Anonymous: May You Live Long Enough

“I find myself only by losing myself”  —Paul Ricoeur.

“It is always possible to argue against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them and seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach.”  —Paul Ricoeur.

Huyen Nguyen on Unsplash

May you live long enough …

To be able to laugh at your most embarrassing moments in the past—sportingly owning the temporary title of “dunce”—before passing it on to the next clown in this dance of win-and-lose, hit-and-error called “life.”

To side with your own former adversaries if only for a glancing moment—to accept that in certain past disagreements or outright conflicts that cobble your past: “The other person had a point.”

To realize that even your greatest “triumphs” owe much to outside influences: others’ kind and diligent contribution, the coming together of circumstances, and “sparks” of grace flung from afar that happened to hit you in the moment.

To experience prayer as the automatic breathing of petitions for others’ good—urgently present in your heart before your own needs or requests enter your awareness.

To meet someone whose efforts or example—in any category—put you to “shame,” and feel joy that such understanding or expertise or goodness exists in the world apart from your receiving any specific personal gain from it.

To recognize that your “defeats,” by the world’s judgment, were blessed checks and balances in the larger arc of your journey toward maturity and self-acceptance.

To feel genuinely sad for people who seemed to be unfair and cruel to you for no apparent reason, and to lament the conditions that must have made them that way—even when their cruelty caused you genuine pain.

To let go of any idea that we might be able to judge who is worthy or unworthy of anything that comes to them in this life- or in the life to come.

“We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”  —2 Corinthians 4:18.

“We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts. …” —Romans 5:3-5.

Isabel Anders

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Our story

Our Story

 “The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood.” J.F.X. O’Connor, S. J., A Study of Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven. p. 7.  John Lane Company. 1912.

Once a week I meet with a group of friends who share how God is working in their life. I go to this meeting on Saturday morning because I believe in miracles, and that belief is always affirmed by what I hear and see. These are a group of people who were caught in addiction, who thought there was no way out, but somehow through the Grace of God with the help of  community found a new life.  I give up my Saturday morning to meet with some people I have seen for years and others whom I have never met. There are people from all walks of life, many I would not have known otherwise.

This Saturday, many people talk about the time they realized there might be a way out of their old life style. They call it a moment of clarity. Many were desperate. Some just knew this was not the path they would ever choose, but there they were. When they decided to come to the group for help, they were at first very uncomfortable. I can remember I came to this 12-step group around Thanksgiving. I can remember seeing posters about a Thanksgiving pot luck. I remember thinking I don’t like being here and goodness knows I don’t want to eat with these people as well! Today, almost twenty-eight years later, most of the people I go out to eat with I met through this community.!

Many talked about how they had no idea what gave them the courage to come to this meeting.

Story after story revealed there is something greater than all of us caring, loving us and calling us to become the person we were created to be. I also see this calling in people who come for spiritual direction. Something is calling us out of our God hole, the God, the Christ within us who deep down inside of our being knows about a God of love who deeply loves us.  

 In 1893 Francis Thompson wrote a 182-line poem about his experience with this phenomenon and called it The Hound of Heaven. I could not agree more.

 Joanna  joannaseibert.com