Baptism

Baptism

“This dying and rising, this crossing over from death to life which happens at baptism, is not a one-off thing – but it is to be our daily vesture as Christians.” Br. Geoffrey Tristram, Society of Saint John the Evangelist, SSJE.org, Brother Give us a word, daily email. August 29, 2018

If we were baptized in a river or by full immersion,  we might better understand this well-known theological concept of baptism as a dying and rebirth and compare it to our life in the world. There is something memorable about going totally under water in the arms of someone else, totally surrendering and wondering for a brief second if we will come back up. When we do have our heads above water, we cannot help but look around, shake our  head of dripping hair and give thanks for being alive, a new beginning, a new start, a new you. For some reason we see the world a little clearer. Some of the fog is gone.

Each day a little of us certainly dies physically. Each day we try to learn a little more about surrender. My prayer is that each day a little of my character defects die or are chipped away. When that happens, I do indeed know resurrection, a new life, a life of peace and love and joy. But as so often happens, pieces of those character defects or sins seem to come right back like magnets to places in our mind and body and spirit where they so comfortably lived at one time. Sometimes they come back like some fiery ugly dragon from some place inside of us that we never knew existed, and we end up making more amends than we did in the past.

Baptism in our tradition is a onetime thing, but dying and resurrection are a daily, sometimes hourly event. The concept that at  baptism we see dying and resurrection is still important. I love Br. Geoffrey’s use of the word, vesture, meaning a  garment that covers us, like a vestment. He is offering to us the opportunity to try to imagine wearing our baptism like a vestment throughout the day. An amazing concept!

  As we watch infants, toddlers, youth, and adults being baptized, we might imagine their putting on a vestment to cover them throughout eternal life as a promise that they are marked as  God’s own forever, and God is always with them in each dying and each resurrection in their lives.  We hold on to this sacrament as an outward and visible both sign and symbol of our life in and with Christ in the world.

There are parts of us that are dying, but there are parts of us that need dying, and God offers  resurrection to us daily at each death on both sides of the veil. 

Joanna.  Joannaseibert.com

Spiritual Experiences

Religious Experience

“It may be possible to find explanations of spiritual experiences such as ours, but I have often tried to explain my own and have succeeded only in giving the story of it. I know the feeling it gave me and the results it has brought, but I realize I may never fully understand its deeper why and how.” Bill Wilson, As Bill Sees It, p. 313, Alcoholic Anonymous.1967.

Bill Wilson was not the only one to have a spiritual experience.  I daily meet with people who gradually, reluctantly, and sometimes embarrassingly tell me stories about their spiritual experiences.  We are still under the influence of the age of enlightenment and reason. We only know what we can explain.

We fear sharing anything that comes from mystery. For many people, these spiritual experiences occur outside in Nature. Suddenly we feel arms holding us up. We feel a presence beside us.  Some have the experience in a house of worship. A flickering candle produces what looks like holy smoke.  Some have an awareness at the Eucharist. They leave the rail at peace with what is going on in their lives. Many remember a religious experience at the birth of a child or seeing a newborn for the first time. Birds often can be part of an experience. I remember the Sunday after the death of a dear friend, Jane Murray.  I saw a wild goose fly closely by the window in our church sanctuary. I had never seen that before or since. The wild goose is the Celtic symbol for the Holy Spirit.  

Candles can often to be part of an experience. I was recently meeting and talking with a friend who saw the reflected light of the burning candle beside us through a window that appeared to be on a tree outside our window. He spoke up, “I see a burning bush!”

These are all burning bush experiences and we should take our shoes off when we encounter them.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com

Buechner, Ignatius: News of the Day

Buechner, Ignatius: News of the day

“When the evening news comes on, hundreds of thousands of people all over the earth are watching it on their TV screens. There is also the news that rarely gets into the media, and that is the news of each particular day of each particular one of us. Maybe there's nothing on earth more important for us to do than sit down every evening and think it over, try to figure it out, at least try to come to terms with it. The news of our day. It is, if nothing else, a way of saying our prayers.” Frederick Buechner, Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

Buechner is maybe challenging us to spend even a fraction of the time that we spend listening to the world news of the day with the news in our own life. At the end of the day, 12 step groups, short courses in Christianity such as Cursillo groups, those practicing Ignatian spirituality suggest  methods for reviewing the day, giving thanks, making gratitude lists, thinking back as to when we encountered God, when we did harm, asking for forgiveness, planning to make amends, and in essence turning our life and our will over to God one more time for the evening. Those in recovery call it the 10th step. St. Ignatius calls it the Examen.  

Buechner reminds us  that we should consider all of  these exercises as prayer. It is our news of the day for God, night time news, night time prayers.   In time, answers will come as to how we are to respond to the world news of the day.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com