Spiritual Practices and Social Action

Spiritual practices and social action

“Spiritual practices undergird social action. Accordingly, socially active congregations must make spiritual practices essential to their mission. There is no division between prayer and protest, between spirituality and social concern. Contemplation deepens our spirits and broadens our sensitivities. Action expands the scope of our spiritual sensitivity. And God can enlarge our hearts to see God’s presence in every human and all creation, and to respond with grace and compassion.” Bruce G. Epperly, “What does it mean to have a Savior?” Sunday’s Coming, The Christian Century, September 16, 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, Christian Century.org

Life goes smoother if we can balance spiritual practices and social action at the same time where each cycles back and forth with the other. One leads to the other and nourishes and affirms the other. We learn about the Christ in ourselves and the Christ in each other.

There are many who support social justice who do not seem to connect to a spirituality they can affirm, and consequently sometimes these issues consume them, and there is no visible presence of love in their actions. There also are those with deep spirituality but no sense of social justice. Often their spirituality turns so inward that it becomes stagnant and cannot grow.

I have also had other experience suggesting that this relationship between the two does not always happen in the same way and at the same time. My story unfolds with the death of someone I loved. This drew me back to the spiritual life I had a taste of in my youth. For years later I simply learned and read and prayed and practiced spiritual practices daily. I was one of those “groupees” who went to every possible conference and retreat I could find. I never spoke out or participated in any social justice action. I blamed my inaction on being an introvert. Gradually my heart could no longer hold inside the injustices to women, African Americans, immigrants, gays. I had to speak out, sometimes boldly, often quietly, more often writing about it.

My “spiritual” excuse for the delay is biblical, of course. After Paul’s conversion and before he started his ministry this is his story. “I did not confer with any human being nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him for fifteen days.” (Galatians 1; 16-18). Paul then goes on to say he went to Syria and Cilicia and was unknown to the churches of Judea, but after fourteen years he finally went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas.

My time in Arabia was much longer. It took me twenty years of spiritual reflection before I began to make a dent at social action, and finally almost twenty more years before I let my feet do the talking and participate in two women’s marches. Now I make calls, write letters, and financially help social justice causes and the candidates who support them. My hope is that my spiritual practices keep me centered on the God of love, the God who loves us all, and that being a voice concerning social injustices leads me to the people where the God of my understanding abides.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Music as a Travel Agent

Music

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” Aldous Huxley

When my husband and I were in training at the University of Iowa, the Department of Otolaryngology ( Ear, Nose, and Throat) put on a program where the entertainment was a slide show of scenes from Iowa called “Iowa, a place to Grow.” The background music was opening movement from Beethoven’s 6th Symphony or the Pastoral Symphony. It is playing now on our public radio station. Of course, every time I hear it, I think of our four years in Iowa City.

It is amazing how over the years we only remember the good parts, and that is exactly what I flashes through my mind this morning. The friends we studied with, my first job as a pediatric radiologist and the amazing physicians I worked with who taught me how to be a pediatrician and a radiologist, taking trips on Sunday afternoons with our two boys to small towns looking for antiques. One of our favorites towns was West Branch, the birthplace of Herbert Hoover.

I remember the first house we were able to buy with the help of my husband’s parents, the fresh food from Iowa farms, Sunday dinners at the University of Iowa, concerts at Hancher Auditorium, the city park just around the corner from our house on Park Road, the large elm tree in our back yard and the apple tree between our garage and the house, riding our bicycle for two with our two boys on it unprotected, visiting the Amana Colonies, weekends in Davenport on the Mississippi River, and short trips to Chicago.

I hear the music and I am immediately back in Iowa with old friends. Music transports us to new places but especially immediately takes us to places we have been. These are soul trips that bring us to places of comfort and peace if we will take the time to allow them back into our minds.

Music can be one of our best travel agents to times and places where we were loved and cared for. This leads us always eventually to a place of gratitude for opportunities, friends, and teachers, and the many who cared for us that we forgot to thank at the time, but take time to do so this day.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Our Neighbor

Our Neighbor

““The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.” Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, HarperOne. 2010.

Zoe and her dad

Our oldest son takes his daughter to high school each day on his way to work. If they leave with some extra time they stop at their favorite coffee or smoothie haunt and have a cup of coffee or smoothie together. I am thinking what a treasure to have a few minutes a day with one of your parents and maybe even share a cup of your comfort drink. They are both introverts so they probably may not say much, but it is a presence, one on one experience with someone you care about and would like to get to know a little better.

I grew up in a small town with amazing neighbors. Mrs. Rick, a widow with pearl white hair, lived across the street in a house that seemed huge at the time. One of our neighbors on second street had to move away for physical reasons. Mrs. Rick then started walking at nine every morning for seven blocks from second street to ninth street up to Riddle’s Drug Store to meet this neighbor for coffee. Our next-door neighbor, Paul, cut Mrs. Rick’s grass every week.

I have a friend who calls me every morning. Most people are too busy just to call or talk to one person a day on a regular basis that is not work related.

These are the kinds of relationships that especially can spring us from ourselves. We don’t have to pretend any more. If we allow it, these people learn who we really are like. When we are with them we begin to let down our mask and start becoming the person God created us to be.

Joanna joannaseibert