Matthew Shepard

Matthew Shepard

“ Their bodies are buried in peace, but their name lives on generation after generation. Ecclesiasticus 44: 14

The ashes of Matthew Shepard were laid to rest yesterday in a crypt at Washington National Cathedral where Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan are also buried.. It was twenty years ago in 1998 that the openly gay twenty-one-year-old student was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left for dead outside of Laramie, Wyoming. He served as an acolyte in his Episcopal church and always found church to be a safe place.. This picture from dailyoffice.wordpress.com is taken when he visited Rome in 1993. He wanted to go into the diplomatic service.

Matthew’s murder brought to our national awareness about hate crimes. I intermittently could do nothing else but say prayers all day yesterday for the hate and prejudices and partisanship so openly present in our country still today. In the past our prejudices were there but often secretly and carefully concealed. Today they are not hidden and most of us wear them like a fine garment.

Maybe this is a good thing. When our prejudices are open and on the outside, eventually we and others may see how ugly and harmful they are such as the recent bombing attempts sent to ten locations this past week. Hopefully the openness of all this ugliness will allow us to eventually realize we must walk across the aisle and listen to each other and eventually look for the divine spark, the God, the Christ in each other.

I am also always reminded that when I am so overcome by the sins of another, I must stop and evaluate what part that ugliness may also be in me. It as well is carefully concealed..

Sharing where we are on this journey with spiritual friends can give us insight and sometimes peace. When our prejudices are just in our head, they sound so reasonable, but when we speak them out to another, sometimes they sound so awful, and they lose their power.

My experience also is that the awfulness of hate and prejudice develops because of the absence of love. Hate and fear seem to fill the vacuum when love is not present or has never been offered.

Offering and being more open with the love we know is at least a starting place for all of us. Another starting point is praying daily for those with whom we disagree. Barbara Crafton in her note yesterday reminds us that praying for those we consider enemies can turn them into human beings rather than monsters as we turn them over to God for God’s love when we are not capable of it.

Let us continue to pray for each other, especially as this mid-term election comes closer.

Joanna joannasaeibert.com

bread on the water

Bread on the Water

“Send out your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will get it back.“ Ecclesiastes 11:1

Yesterday I was privileged to be with a group of interfaith ministers at the Clinton Presidential Library hoping to work together and share resources about addiction in face of the opioid crisis. The Clinton Foundation sponsored the event and will be working with all of us in the coming year. They started a similar dialogue in Houston, and now Little Rock is the second city to be involved. I think their next city is Jacksonville, Florida.

It was thought provoking to be the beneficiary of an international foundation in our own locality that we have supported. I could only remember this well-known saying from Ecclesiastes of bread cast upon the water returning.

The stories from the faith groups were similar and different depending on their view and personal experience with addiction, but we share a common problem. As I sat there in that Great Hall overlooking downtown Little Rock, I kept remembering that our strength overcoming a difficult situation is in community. We each add our experience and contribute to the solution. Recovery occurs in community. Solutions to recovery occur in community. Support of those trying to help others experience recovery occurs in community. None of us has all the answers.

I have learned all this by meeting with and staying connected to spiritual friends who keep reminding me of how I most experience the God of my understanding in community. I come full circle like the bread on the water as I am reminded each morning at Morning Prayer in the Prayer of St. Chrysostom. “.. and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them.” Book of Common Prayer, p. 102.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Guest writer and painter Jeanne Fry

Instructions to Painters

delta dawn fry

Guest contributor and artist Jeanne Fry

[Panhala] Instructions to Painters & Poets (excerpt) -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Redux)

Instructions to Painters & Poets

“I asked a hundred painters and a hundred poets
how to paint sunlight
on the face of life
Their answers were ambiguous and ingenuous
as if they were all guarding trade secrets
Whereas it seems to me
all you have to do
is conceive of the whole world
and all humanity
as a kind of art work
a site-specific art work
an art project of the god of light
the whole earth and all that's in it
to be painted with light

And the first thing you have to do
is paint out postmodern painting
And the next thing is to paint yourself
in your true colors
in primary colors
as you see them
(without whitewash)
paint yourself as you see yourself
without make-up
without masks
Then paint your favorite people and animals
with your brush loaded with light
And be sure you get the perspective right
and don't fake it
because one false line leads to another

***

And don't forget to paint
all those who lived their lives
as bearers of light
Paint their eyes
and the eyes of every animal
and the eyes of beautiful women
known best for the perfection of their breasts
and the eyes of men and women
known only for the light of their minds
Paint the light of their eyes
the light of sunlit laughter
the song of eyes
the song of birds in flight

And remember that the light is within
if it is anywhere
and you must paint from the inside.”

~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti ~

(How to Paint Sunlight)