working class spirituality

Working class spirituality

“I think you have to put a little sweat equity into what you believe. You have to practice what you preach. Justice does not just happen. Compassion is not a spectator sport, but something I have to exercise as I roll up my sleeves to do my part in creating a better community. I need to put in my hours as a volunteer. I have to join the prayer crew and put my life on the line to make a difference. The world will not change by wishes, but by the labor of love we call faith. Spirituality is not a spa but a construction site where we build hope one heart at a time.” Bishop Steven Charleston, Daily Facebook post

Harriet Faith Frederick

Oh goodness! I love to sit and meditate and walk and write and read and sit in silence and go to weekly Eucharist. Bishop Charleston  reminds us that being a Christian is not a spectator sport. Eventually all of our spiritual practices connecting us to God will be calling us to some action, reaching out of ourselves in some way. Even when we are homebound we can call or write or cook or knit or invite others in. 

My experience is that we do not have to go out of our way to realize what we are called to do. It will present itself to us daily. A person will come to guide us or suggest something. Someone in need will appear. Suddenly we will see a situation that was always there that calls us to reach out. Often the problem is that there are so many needs that we now become aware of around us that we become overwhelmed. Buechner  gives us a good formula to find our next step. We are called to the place where the world’s deep hunger and our deep gladness meet. We look for where our passion is, where we are energized by the ministry.

We will soon learn that we are not called to the ministry our parents or our friends or the world thinks we should do. We are called to the ministry that is our passion, that we would do for no compensation, where we begin to do things we never thought we were capable of doing, when we gain energy as we work in this ministry instead of losing energy.

When we find this calling, we start becoming the person God created us to be.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com

New Day

New Day

“Waking up this morning, I smile.
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment
and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” 
Thich Nhat Hanh, p. 102, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Broadway Books:1998.

Caterpillar becoming pupa, chrysalis    Sally Klein

Richard Rohr in his daily email  compares Christians and Buddhists. “Christians are usually talking about metaphysics (“what is”) and Buddhists are usually talking about epistemology (“how do we know what is”). In that sense, they offer great gifts to one another.” 1

All I know is that the writings of the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, so often speak to me. What a marvel idea to wake up in the morning and say to ourselves, “we have 24 brand new more hours before us. I don’t want to waste a second, minute, an hour. It is a new day.”

 Yesterday is past. We went over what we had done and left undone the night before and prayed that God would forgive us of wrongdoing, also called sins. We remembered where we found joy, often where we least expected it. We remembered where we found love. We remembered the experiences of that day where we saw God working in our life.

This is a new day, a new beginning. We can no longer regret the past. We will make living amends where we need to where we harmed others, but we have a new start.  We hope we have learned from the past. We will not keep doing the same thing every day and expect different results. We will look for synchronicity or moments or serendipity where we meet connections, related events. I write about the Eucharist one morning and someone not aware of that confides later that same morning about how important the Eucharist is in his life.  We receive a message from someone we have been thinking about that day. We think about someone we have not seen for some time and call. They tell us it was exactly what they needed at the time.

That is synchronicity. These  are God connections, and they are all around us in each new day.

1 Center for Action and Contemplation, Richard Rohr Meditation: Mindfulness, cac.org, August 24, 2018

Faith

Faith

 “Faith means receiving God, it means being overwhelmed by God. Faith helps us to find trust again and again when, from a human point of view, the foundations of truth have been destroyed. Faith gives us the vision to perceive what is essential and eternal. It gives us eyes to see what cannot be seen, and hands to grasp what cannot be touched, although it is present always and everywhere.”

-Eberhard Arnold, Why We Live in Community, Inwardoutward.org, Daily Quote, August 8, 2018, Eyes to See, Church of the Saviour

Casey Horner   unsplash

Faith is believing in something we cannot see or understand. The mind takes us to a certain place of belief, but then faith must be present to take the leap. My favorite quote about faith attributed to a multitude of people is, “the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.” If we are so certain about something, we have crossed back over that line away from where faith abides.

This gives all of us doubters great comfort. In fact, we have come to know that our doubts lead us into a deeper faith, across the line down new pathways, sometimes even major highways. Then we take a wrong turn, or run a red light and hit someone, or just become completely lost.

Then that stranger who met us on the road to Emmaus shows up. He may remind us of a quote from scripture that had been meaningful to us in the past. He may ask us if we remember how we have been cared for in the past by the God of our understanding and God’s stand-ins, our community and friends. He always feeds us exactly what we need to continue the journey, and before he disappears, he leaves on the dinner table a GPS.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com