Returning to Florida

Encouraging one another

“We need one another. The more things get crazy, the more they seem to spin out of control, the more we recognize that our true allies are standing all around us, men and women as bemused by events as we are, as tired of living in the daily disaster as we are, longing for the firm ground of an honest dissent and a democratic process. Until that crazy gyroscope of power stops spinning, we need one another. We need common sense, strong values, deep listening, honest talk. The counter weight to confusion is community, the balance to chaos is a coherent vision.” Steven Charleston Facebook page

Eagle 8 Mexico Beach Florida

Returning to Florida

We remember and send prayers for safety to our friends on the Carolina coasts still recovering from Hurricane Florence and those in the Florida Panhandle hammered this weekend by Hurricane Michael, especially those in Panama City, Mexico Beach, and Port St. Joe. We pray for their churches in the Central Gulf Coast, Trinity Apalachicola, St. James Port St. Joe, St. Patrick’s Panama City, Holy Nativity Panama City, St. Andrews Panama City, Grace Panama City Beach, St. Thomas Laguna Beach, St. Matthews Chipley, St. Luke’s Marianna, and Nativity Dothan.

I so remember only last year when we were on our way back to the Alabama Gulf Coast after Hurricane Irma. Our destination was not damaged by that storm that devastated neighboring Florida. All of the cars we follow have Florida license plates. Some are packed to the gills. Some are dangerously carrying extra cans of gasoline in their trunk and on their roofs. Trucks with generators pass by. Pickup trucks are filled with bottled water. We spend the night at a hotel on the way where the parking lot is filled with cars with Florida licenses. The hotel is more like a hostel with large families with their large and small dogs.

There is no water under the causeway at Mobile Bay. It was all blown out to sea, to the gulf. Could this have been the way the Israelites crossed the Red Sea in the exodus? The waters were pushed out by hurricane winds for the Israelites to cross and then the storm surge came in when the tide changed to swallow up the Egyptians.

We say a prayer as each car passes remembering in the past our return to the gulf coast after the devastation by Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. The memories are still painful of not recognizing our road or our condo building or how to enter it, and the overpowering smell of rotting food in the refrigerator.

Perhaps this is what we have to offer. A tiny connection to what people are going through in Texas, the Carolinas, Florida, and the Caribbean, but knowing that theirs is so much worse. We send prayers and financial aid for the present. Waiting to hear about more. Most of all we stand together in relationship with them, hoping that they can feel in some way the cosmic love that is being sent to them.

We send hope, love, prayers, financial support, but mostly hope and promise that resurrection can come from this Good Friday.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Nouwen: Leadership

Nouwen: Leadership

“It is the compassionate authority that empowers, encourages, calls forth hidden gifts, and enables great things to happen. True spiritual authorities are located in the point of an upside-down triangle, supporting and holding into the light everyone they offer their leadership to.” Henri Nouwen, Henri Nouwen Society Daily Meditations from Bread for the Journey 1997 HarperSanFrancisco.

The upside-down triangle. What a great image for leadership, a leadership that supports, empowers, encourages those he or she is leading. I have a spiritual friend who also tells me that his senior warden explained it another way. “You have to let them know that you care before you show them what you know.” How true this is in any kind of relationship or ministry. This is one of the models Jesus gives us. I think I have met or known a handful of leaders like this in my lifetime. It is a rare form of leadership. It is servant leadership.

Just recently I cried with another friend, Ann, as we shared the struggles of trying to lead with this leadership style. When we use it, often we are called a “weak sister.” This type of leadership is counter culture. We are often met with resistance at almost every turn.

Even if we ourselves have not been that kind of leader in the past, there is still time to change. When we are given the chance, we can try it. We can share our experience with other spiritual friends and support each other. It is a leadership that is not lead by our ego or as little ego as possible.

Parker Palmer identifies this leadership in Let Your Life Speak. These leaders are not insecure about their own identity, depriving others of their identity to buttress or support their own. The identify of these leaders does not depend on the role they play or the power it gives to them over others.

May we keep in our prayers that we will become this kind of servant leader and that we will be led to role models and mentors where we experience this kind of leadership in others.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Mortality

Mortality

“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.” Henry David Thoreau

We are at our fiftieth medical school reunion. One of the most surprising observations that I never envisioned is the number of those in our class who have died. We were invincible, ready to take on whatever came at us. We had overcome almost every possible hardship, abuse, prejudice, poverty, humiliation, ridicule, and whatever else was presented to us. We knew how to work without sleep, be shamed by what we did not know in front of peers and read and study until it seemed our eyes were coming out.

But death was never part of our own plan. That happened to those we were not able to save. We walked constantly with death and still remember every face of those we were not able to keep alive because of our own ignorance or because the medical science that could save them had not been developed. We never imagined that those whom we worked beside so closely and shared a common experience would now not be alive. How did they die? Was it a long illness? We search for their obituaries, Ken, Ken, Jim, Charles.

Of course, this has been a wakeup call about our own mortality. There is always the question of why are we still alive and they are not. Did we take better care of ourselves or do we have better genes? Today I simply know most of the answers are out of our reach.

More and more we have to live into mystery. What we do feel is a desire to give thanks for those with whom we weathered a wilderness adventure. Somehow each of them contributed to how we have become the person God created us to be today. We send prayers of thanksgiving to them for how their lives touched ours. We also ask for their prayers until we at some time will again be connected to them and learn even more about each other and our journey together and with the God of our understanding.

Joanna joannaseibert.com