Inside Voice

Inside voice

Quiet

“For whatever reason, God never seems to shout when trying to get my attention. God always uses his “inside voice,” as my mother used to call it. Shouting, and calling, and crying out, and throwing people off their horses is great stuff, but that’s not how I hear God. I hear God in a whisper; in a look; in a turn of the head; in a subtle expression on a face.” Br. James Koester, “Brother, Give Us a Word,” Society of Saint John the Evangelist, Daily Email, SSJE.org,

The irony here is that as we read this from SSJE about God speaking to us in God’s inside voice, I am practicing preaching with all my might with my outside voice. My voice is soft. It is a legacy from my father who was soft spoken. It is a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing as I talk to people and can more easily relate to them as a softer listener. But when I stand in the pulpit to preach the word of God or speak out to a group, I have always had difficulty projecting that message even with good amplification. My husband always sits in the back of any congregation or meeting giving me signs that I need to increase my volume. I have spent years working with an amazing speech pathologist, but still have to push my voice. If someone has a hearing impairment, they may especially have difficulty hearing me.

My present rector has taken me on as a project to increase my volume. He let me read a prayer outside at a burial office as an “audition” to see if I had an outside voice. Yesterday I preached at a church without amplification. I felt as if I were shouting the whole time.

So, what is the point of all this in reference to our relationship with God? For me, I am just acutely aware of what an inside voice sounds like and what my outside voice sounds like. My connection to God does indeed come through an inside voice, quietly slipping in. I also know we hear these soft messages at moments when we least suspect God, usually in interruptions in our daily routine.

God also seems to speak most clearly in Advent in an inside voice while the world is more than ever in an outside voice mode.

I am wondering, however, if God also speaks to us with an outside voice, and we just never hear it because we we have come to expect only the inside quiet connection.

Does God’s outside voice also speak at the least expected times by least expected people we don’t usually listen to or maybe don’t even want to listen to?

For the present, my best experience with God’s outside voice is in my dreams. Eventually my dreams become louder, memorable, and messy if I don’t pay attention to them.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Keller, Tillich, Lamott: Faith, Doubts

Keller, Tillich, Lamott: Faith, Doubts

“Observers in the full enjoyment of their bodily senses pity me, but it is because they do not see the golden chamber in my life where I dwell delighted; for, dark as my path may seem to them, I carry a magic light in my heart. Faith, the spiritual strong searchlight, illumines the way, and although sinister doubts lurk in the shadow, I walk unafraid towards the Enchanted Wood where the foliage is always green, where joy abides, where nightingales nest and sing, and where life and death are one in the Presence of the Lord.”

Helen Keller, Midstream: My Later Life

How beautifully Helen Keller describes faith. Someone who is blind describes faith as light, a light in her heart. She also does not negate doubt. The words of Paul Tillich which Ann Lamott has popularized ring in my ears, “The opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.” Faith implies believing in something or being in relationship with something that is a mystery, that is not defined by our human understanding.

Our rational minds can just take us so far in understanding faith.

When a person has difficulty with mystery, doubts move in. Our doubts can be stepping stones to a deeper faith as we read and share our doubts with others and learn and experience the mystery together.

I so often speak with spiritual friends about doubt and reassure them that this is not unnatural or the enemy or unhealthy. I tell friends, “Let ‘s talk about the doubts. If you come to a place of unbelief, let me carry your faith, until you are ready to take it back. I am counting on you to do the same for me, when doubts overcome me.”

Joanna joannaseibert.com

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harding: change

Esther Harding: Change

“We cannot change anyone else; we can change only ourselves, and then usually only when the elements that are in need of reform have become conscious through their reflection in someone else.”

M. Esther Harding, The “I” and the “Not-I”, A Study in the Development of Consciousness, from Inwardoutward.org

Esther Harding was a British American Jungian analyst who is considered to be the first significant Jungian Analyst in this country. Her 1975 first book, The Way of All Women, was one of the first books I read as I first tried to connect to a feminine spirituality.

President Jimmy Carter wrote this year about getting to the place where we can give thanks for our difficulties. That is almost impossible, but I can see his reasoning a little more clearly in Esther Harding’s writings. We wear our character defects and self-centeredness like an old bathrobe that is ugly and tattered but comfortable and a known entity, because this manner of life has become our known identity. We can only come to see these defects so glaringly in someone else as we are repulsed by the behavior pattern in others, and finally may realize this is the way we live as well. Our behavior and reaction to the world is what is keeping us from our connection to God.

I continually am amazed how God uses everything, everything to bring us back to God’s love, to connect to the God within us and within our neighbor. We find out what is blocking us from God’s love by first seeing it in someone else and realizing how unbeautiful it is. At some point, when it is the right time, I can share Harding’s insights with spiritual friends who also are suffering. I, as well, have spiritual friends who listen to me when suffering brings awareness which opens up a crack of light into my own life.

Joanna joannaseibert.com