Charleston: heart strings

Steven Charleston: Heart String

“Here is something to do for the little kids in your life. When you are saying goodbye, make a special moment of showing them that you are tying something to their wrist. Tell them it is a heart string. You can't see it, but if you close your eyes you will know it is there. It will stay on their wrist wherever they go so your love will always be with them. And not to worry, it is magic string, so it will never get tangled, never knock anything over, and never break. It will just keep you connected in your hearts so your love for one another will always be there.” Bishop Steven Charleston, Facebook September 14, 2018

gabriele riberiro

Two of our recent Sunday scripture readings have been about little children and entering the kingdom of God. This Sunday Jesus tells us in Mark (10:2-26) that we must enter the kingdom by receiving it like little children.

Bishop Charleston’s heart string message to children not only reminds us how we stay connected to those we love but how God stays connected to us. The God string is always there even if we cannot feel it. Sometimes it feels like a thick rope and sometimes like the thinnest of sewing threads. Sometimes we feel so close we might reach out and touch the Holy One, and sometimes our God seems nowhere to be found.

Almost always we can feel that God connection when we go outside and realize there is something, some powers much greater than we can imagine. We may still not believe that this power believes in or cares about us until a call, a visit, a note comes from someone else who brings God’s love to us. Sometimes that person tells us he or she is praying for us, and we indeed feel those prayers.

Then we in time again feel God’s love and can only respond by returning that love to another as it was given to us.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Charleston: Where is God?

Where is God?

“God is in the kitchen, sitting quietly over a cup of coffee. God is on the street corner, waiting for the light to change. God is at the bar, watching the game on TV. God is in the beauty shop, listening to the latest stories. There is no place where we are that God is not.” Steven Charleston, Daily Facebook Email

I sometimes share this short writing by Bishop Seven Charleston from his daily Facebook page with spiritual friends who cannot seem to find any answers to the question, “So, where do you see God working in your life?” I suggest an exercise of writing down places they have been that day, people they have meet and would like to remember and seeing if any feelings or thoughts of the presence of God there come to them at the end of the day. It is important to write it down if possible. Writing takes things out of our body and mind and into our tangible world. Some think it is silly and never do it. Others find it helpful to begin to see and feel a connection they think they have lost that is always there right beside them all day… and night.

The church at which I serve is on a corner with a stoplight. Recently our family minister, Luke, started putting a short “stop light prayer” on our church’s electronic sign by the stop light. We weekly hear of people whose day changes when they stop just for a second to connect to our God who is always there. Briefly stopping what we are doing, becoming aware of creation around us is our first step out of ourselves and into the life of knowing and feeling the ever presence of God.

Joanna joannaseibert@me.com

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

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