Facebook first day of school

Facebook and first day of school

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1.

grown up too fast

 I get caught on Facebook this morning for almost an hour! I get up early to post the Daily Something and am overwhelmed by the pictures this morning of children going back to school this week. I can’t stop looking at them. I know them from previous churches, children and grandchildren of those I worked at Children’s Hospital, children I sang and prayed with at the Cathedral School, children from so many Vacation Bible Schools, children I learned from and dearly loved.  Some are almost grown.

Most of the younger children and some of the teenagers agree to look happy and excited for their parents’ pictures. I envision these same photographs in albums and embarrassingly shown at future weddings and anniversaries. I think of the joy of grandparents and friends who are not able to see their family and friends as often as they would like but visit frequently with them on Facebook.

“Where have all the years gone?” is an often-quoted heading with the pictures. I agree. Life is so fleeting. That is why living the moment, the precious present, loving and enjoying the moment is so important. I realize I remember these children most because I did for a nanosecond stay present with them at some time in the past. Today I send each of them love. They in turn have sent back love to my heart as I remember who they were and cherish who they are today.

Anthony DeMello reminds us to keep our album of good memories that we can go back to and relive even better than we did the first time the events happened. He believes often the first encounter is too powerful to experience fully. He encourages us to keep these memories when we want or need to reconnect to the love that was present there in the past.

Living in the present is what gives us such beautiful memories, but there also is a season to go back and relive the love of those memories.

Times of transitions in our lives, such as going back to school are such times.

This was a good day on Facebook, worth getting up early to see and forgetting to check the regular news of the day.

Joanna joannaseibert.com   

Canoeing the Mountains

Canoeing the Mountains

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” John 12: 23-24.

The Alban Weekly from Duke Divinity school this week interviews Tod Bolsinger, professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, about what he means by the title of his recent book, Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory.

 Bolsinger gives us an amazing metaphor for so many of our transition experiences in life. He tells the story of the journey of Lewis and Clark who thought when they reached the continental divide that they would find a river to travel directly to the Pacific Ocean. Instead, they met the Rocky Mountains.  They didn’t survive by trying to canoe the mountain. They didn’t let this obstacle stop their objective. They had to adapt, and their source of wisdom was not part of their hierarchy or the privileged. The wisdom coms from a teenager, a nursing mother, a Native American who had been kidnapped as a child. “She wasn’t in unfamiliar terrain; she was going home.” 

I think what Bolsinger is trying to tell our churches can apply to much of our own life.  We have so much to learn from people who know what it is like to reach the top of a mountain with a canoe in hand and become survivors of what seems at the time like an unsurmountable task. They have a sense of a GPS calling them back home. Immigrants, people of color, women have had to adapt to overwhelming situations have much to teach us. More and more we are called to listen to their stories.

Bolsinger reminds us that transformation most often comes from loss, and those who do not have power may be the ones who are our experts in loss. They have been trained in survival and wilderness experiences.

 Lewis and Clark had to take direction from a young Indian mother. Bolsinger reminds us this is giving up power so that something much greater can be birthed. This also is a basic premise in recovery programs.  

The canoe metaphor may speak directly to our individual life transitions. What mountains on our journey have we reached where we are trying to cross with a canoe, an energy that was useful at one time in our life, but is not the energy we need now? What does it mean for us to listen more carefully to survivors, survivors in our own world and survivor parts of our inner world who can teach us the next pathway?   

“Tod Bolsinger: What does it mean to stop canoeing the mountains?” Faith and Leadership, Alban at Duke Divinity School, alban@div.duke.edu, August 13, 2018.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

Starting Schools and Dolphins and Turtles

Starting Schools and dolphins and turtles

“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.” John F. Kennedy

Newly hatched turtle tracks in the sand

I arise early before dawn and watch the world come alive on the sea. The gulf is smooth with almost no waves. Its appearance is more like a glassy lake than the roaring ocean. It is so calm I can see schools of fish moving rhythmically near the shore. There are more dolphins than I have ever seen before. They are swimming to my right, to the left, in the water in front of the condo. The large mammals move like ballet dancers in slow motion with poise and confidence. Schools of fish. Schools of dolphins.

My two granddaughters are starting new schools today, one starting college, the other starting high school. I want to send them love for their new adventure. I think most of us can still remember our first college class, our first day of high school.  Could all of nature also be celebrating these new journeys with my granddaughters and all others starting a new adventure this early morning? I will just take it as a possible sign that generates warmth in my heart to send on to them.

My husband goes down to the beach to talk to a gathering of turtle volunteers about the turtle nest in front of our condo. There are tracks from at least one of the clutch that wobbled down to the sea last night. More turtle people arrive and wait for what they call the boil, when the rest of the 120 turtles hatch. Today, perhaps 119 turtles will start a new journey just like Langley and Zoe.

I am overwhelmed about our ability to feel and send connection to the world around us, to Nature, and to those we so dearly love who are apart from us.  I still feel this connection to my grandparents that began so many years ago. 

Today all the world as far as I can see seems to be affirming love and connection and new beginnings.

Joanna joannaseibert.com