Faith

Faith

“I am grateful to God.. whom I worship.. as my ancestors did..when I remember you constantly in my prayers… recalling your tears… I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” 2 Timothy 1:3-6.

Is this true that our faith can be transferred from one person to another, one generation to another? We certainly all have our own individual faith journey that is unique. It is a connection to the God of our understanding that we know, the piece of God that we may feel or understand that only we have experienced. I do believe that we often find the God, the Christ, within ourselves by first seeing the Christ in another and that love of Christ is reflected back to us to see the Christ in ourselves. Some people do not call it Christ. They call it divine or unconditional love.

We are so influenced by our community. If we want to experience this love, recovery groups tell us to stick with the winners. People in gifts’ discernment would tell us to be around the people we most admire because they are carrying a part of us that we have not yet recognized. C.S. Lewis would tell us to “act as if.” We will only know how to “act as if “ if we are around other people who have what we are seeking.

My experience is that we find God so often in our community. They show me the love of God. They share their faith. Of course, we always have the option of whether to receive it or not.

I share today a community of women who are joined in prayer and service seeking a stronger faith through community with each other. This is part of the newly formed Grace Chapter of Daughters of the King at St. Mark’s. I daily learn about love from each and every one of them and am filled with gratitude for their continued presence.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Anger

Giving Anger to God

“[Destructive] anger crucifies Christ. Destructive anger is our sickness. Our medicine is God’s taking our anger. If we do not give it to God we are not healed of it. We are in bondage to our anger and are not free until our resentment is buried in God. Yes, as shocking as it sounds, we worship God by expressing our honest anger at God.”

C. Fitzsimmons Allison, Guilt Anger and God

photo by Joanna ES Campbell

Anger is one of our highest energy sources. For generations women were taught they could not express it. They kept it in and did terrible things to their bodies, their souls, and anyone who came in contact to them. Men did the same with not being able to show tears which in some way remains our body’s expression of the anger that is not expressible.

The key, of course, is transforming the energy to constructive energy just as plants transform energy from sunlight to change carbon dioxide, our waste product, and water to sugar for plant food and then give off oxygen, the essential by product for our survival. The plant world is our role model. We are to photosynthesize our anger that for us is like carbon dioxide, which if retained in our bodies can kill us.

Amazing how just going outside being near plants, our mentors, is one of the best ways to start the process. Waiting is part of the process. When we are first responders to an event calling up anger, often a disaster, the energy gets scattered all over the atmosphere bumping into the closest survivors, often those we most love. Very few know how to be well trained first responders to anger.

Some of the many other transformative processes for anger are walking, music, writing. I have so many angry moments that have been transformed by my harp strings.

Daily, sometimes hourly, sometimes constant prayers are major transforming spiritual exercises. We can give our anger to God to transform it by honoring the anger with a constant prayer mantra, such as the Jesus Prayer. This has been my own personal gift to God asking for a surgical remedy.

We begin to see signs of transformation of the cancer anger can bring to our souls when we begin to know compassion for others, often others who were injured besides ourselves.

Being in a community where we can safely share our difficulty and see role models who have experienced transformation is another important process for the change.

We rise up out of bed and are called to action that will lead to more compassion. The icon for this was the Women’s March, January 21, 2017, after the inauguration and what happened, more marches, more people, especially women but also men involved where they never walked before.

The absolute test of the transformation is when we begin to feel even the least amount of compassion for those who injured us and others, those who brought on the anger. We begin to see that this happened because they also suffered and never knew the transformative process whose by product is lifesaving love.

Transformation of anger also goes by another name. Resurrection.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Advent

Arthur: Literature for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany

“Many of us, when charting the timeline of our lives, can point to a moment when a story or poem happened.” Sarah Arthur, p. 9, Light Upon Light, Paraclete Press 2014.

Light upon Light is a literary guide of daily and weekly readings and prayers by well-known authors for the liturgical seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany compiled by Sarah Arthur. She has also written companion similar guides for the long Pentecost season (At the Still Point) and for Lent and Easter (Between Midnight and Dawn). Arthur emphasizes that this is not only a guide to prayer during a time of year that our lives become much to busy, but this is a literary guide to prayer. As we remember and recall times when poems and scripture and fiction moved us in our daily lives, Arthur believes \that good literature can make a difference in our lives when we most need it on a daily basis. The readings begin with the first Sunday in Advent and ends the week of Ash Wednesday.

Arthur hopes to open up our imagination as she exposes us to brief excerpts or short works of writers well known to us as well as some authors we may not know but should! Arthur warns us that at some of the moments that we will encounter as we read this anthology, there should be an alert: “Warning: Powerful Spiritual Moment Ahead!” Arthur suggests that we read each reading not as something for our English Literature class or for pleasure, but as liturgical pieces for worship and especially prayer.

Each week begins with an outline for the week of an opening prayer, scripture readings, readings from literature, a place of personal prayer and reflection, and a closing prayer to use for that week. Arthur suggests applying the ancient principles of lectio divina or divine reading that we have used reading scripture now when reading the poetry and fiction. We read the passage, meditate on it, pay attention to a word or phrase that connects to us, and finally resting in God’s presence. My experience has been to carry that word or phrase with me during that day or perhaps the whole week. Since this process is no longer being used for scripture she has christened it holy reading or lectio sacra.

I invite you to journey with me with Sarah Arthur during the extraordinary seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with an extraordinary spiritual practice of daily worship and prayer.

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com