wounds

Wounds

“The reality is that every human being is broken and vulnerable. How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded!” M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum, Synthesis Today Quote, October 4, 2018. www.synthesispub.com

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Our experience tells us that when we share our wounds we become less vulnerable. We no longer must pretend we are something that we are not, which takes up a huge amount of energy. We now have all that energy just to be ourselves, to become the person God created us to be. We become more human. In turn others begin to share their wounds because they see us as a safe place, another human being who may have just an inkling of what pain is all about.

Letting others know we are human and have pain and make mistakes is also a path into the divine within ourselves and others. This is the path we all are seeking. There is an wide gaping entrance to this path into the Christ, the Holy, the Spirit within each other through our wounds.

This is the path from Good Friday to Resurrection.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Vulnerability

Vulnerable

“The only choice we have as we mature is how to inhabit our vulnerability...” David Whyte, “Vulnerability,” InwardOutward.org, Quote of the Day, Church of the Saviour, October 3, 2018.

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Vulnerability. Poet David Whyte gives us one word to take with us today. Vulnerability, however, does not live alone but resides in a word community.

Intimacy. Another word that lives with vulnerability. We allow someone whom we trust to see and hear our inner concerns and thoughts and highs and lows.

Humility is also a close family member of this word community. We don’t think of ourselves as any better than someone else.

Humanness whispers in the ear of vulnerability. We are to take off our mask of perfection. We promptly are to admit to others our mistakes and learn from them.

Forgiveness must also be a beloved companion of Vulnerability. We are to ask for Forgiveness when we have wronged others as well as being capable of forgiving ourselves for our mistakes.

Vulnerability, Intimacy, Humility, Humanness, Forgiveness are five construction workers in a family business that are crucial for the building of our own Habitat for Humanity.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Two Spiritual Approaches

Two Spiritual Approaches

“Darkness is not dark for you, and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but

one.” —Psalm 139:12

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contemplating

Richard Rohr in his daily emails1 describe light and dark as the main two types of spiritual traditions we use to seek our connection to God. One is the more thinking, formal, theological approach called the kataphatic way where we reach God by learning and studying about God, an ascent to the sacred, reaching for the light. This has been the most used approach to God since the Protestant Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment. It could be described as the study of knowledge or knowing God.

The other approach is the apophatic way where we move beyond words and rational knowing into silence to seek God. This is the contemplative approach to the mystery, the unknowing or not-knowing. This is a descent into to the dark, into the unknown sacred within.

Rohr emphasizes how important both ways of seeking God are needed in our spiritual life. Those whose personality type involves more thinking and sensing where they make decisions on what is rational or reasonable and what are the concrete facts will be drawn to the kataphatic or ascent approach. Those whose personality involves more feeling and intuitive functions where they make decisions on relationships and value and considering many connections and patterns may be more drawn to the apophatic or descent or inward approach.

Many involved in spiritual direction suggest during Advent and in especially in Lent to try the opposite approach to God from what we are most accustomed. For example, if we are a thinking and sensing person, we are to try some form of contemplative prayer. If we are a feeling and intuitive person, we are to put our toe into the water of study of the words of our tradition, sacred scripture, or writings of older and newer theologians.

Just a suggestion to think or wonder about.

1Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, “Darkness and Light,” adapted from Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2008), 115-116.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com