Kayla Mueller: God in Suffering

Kayla Mueller: God in suffering

“I will always seek God. Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering. I've known for some time what my life's work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.”

Kayla Mueller (1988­–2015) letter to her father on his birthday 2011. Synthesis, Today Quote June 28, 2018 synthesispub.com.

Kayla Mueller was a twenty-six-year-old Christian human rights activist and aid worker from Arizona who was taken captive by ISSIS in 2013 in Aleppo, Syria, after leaving a Doctors Without Borders Hospitals. Kayla had been involved in the United States with Food not Bombs, in India with Tibetan refugees, in Israel with African refugees, and in Turkey assisting Syrian refugees. She died in captivity in 2015 after being a hostage for 18 months and subjected by all reports to torture and sexual abuse.

Many have called her “the best of America” and the “best of the millennials.” Those who escaped who knew her in captivity when she was subjected to great suffering would agree. She certainly should be considered a present-day martyr, even trying to relieve the suffering of others who were imprisoned with her. She refused to escape with another young Yazidi girls, telling her, “No, because I am American. If I escape with you, they will do everything to find us again.”

God promises to be with us in suffering. We see many who suffer who seem to sense God’s presence with them while others talk of being estranged or abandoned by God. Our world so desperately needs more people like Kayla who have the gift of seeing God in suffering. I think we can do this by showing God’s love more in actions than words as we care for and let those who suffer know they are loved. In time, those who suffer and feel they have lost God may see God in this neighbor. Then in time they may even see God in themselves again, the God within them. This indeed is our ministry as spiritual friends to each other.

Some of us may not have the overpowering courage and selfless gift of empathy of Kayla, but there are so many ways to let others who are suffering know they are loved. We can sit and listen. We can help with daily tasks that their suffering keeps them from doing. We can visit. We can call. We can volunteer. We can hug. We can read to them. We can feed the hungry. We can be aware of and reach out to and support those who are sick, lonely, poor, weak, homeless. So much more.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Hillesum: Answers

Hillesum: Answers

“Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can’t think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then, and just listen. Re-establish contact with a slice of eternity.”

Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life the Diaries, 1942-1943 and Letters from Westerbork, Picador 1996, Daily Quote, June 29, 2018, Inwardoutward.org, Church of the Saviour

Etty Hilesum gives us her formula for finding her way through difficult situations. Those who make decision using their thinking (T) function, what is reasonable, will probably disagree. Those who make decisions using their feeling (F) function, taking in consideration the importance of relationships may probably agree with Ms. Hilesum.

Looking deeper beyond personality types takes us to another level. I think she is trying to tell us to let the committee in our head rest by whatever means we use, reading, meditation, music, walking, praying, writing, just being.

She is telling us to connect to the God within us however we can. We are to try to find an answer from something greater than ourselves. We do not know the exact answer. We will recognize it because we know it will have something to do with love.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com

Nouwen: Zero-Sum

Nouwen: Zero-Sum

Fearful people say: "’There's not enough food for everyone, so I better save enough for myself in case of emergency,’ or ‘There's not enough knowledge for everyone to enjoy; so I'd better keep my knowledge to myself, so no one else will use it’ or ‘There's not enough love to give to everybody, so I'd better keep my friends for myself to prevent others from taking them away from me.’ This is a scarcity mentality. It involves hoarding whatever we have, fearful that we won't have enough to survive. The tragedy is what you cling to ends up rotting in your hands.” Henri Nouwen, “Temptation to Hoard,” Henri Nouwen Society Daily meditation, May 6, 2017. Henri J. M. Nouwen p. 100, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith, HarperSanFrancisco 1997.

Nouwen is first describing our life as a zero-sum mentality. We can only do well or win or succeed if someone else loses, so we are not going to share because there is only so much food, love, land to go around. There is one pie. If someone takes a slice, there is less for the rest of us. One person’s gain is another’s loss. This theory describes situations in which the total of wins and losses adds up to zero, and thus one party benefits at the direct expense of another. There is only so much and not enough for all. Some must lose for others to gain. It is a competitive scarcity world view. It leads to a fear-based society.

On the other hand, the opposite of the scarcity mentality is a positive-sum situation or abundance mentality which occurs when the total of gains and losses is greater than zero. A positive sum plan occurs when resources are seen as abundant and an approach is formulated where the desires and needs of all concerned are satisfied. One example would be when two parties both gain financially by participating in a contest, no matter who wins or loses. Positive-sum outcomes occur in instances of distributive bargaining where different interests are negotiated so that everyone’s needs are met. With an abundancy mentality, there is enough for all.

How we view our neighbors and ourselves and the world is totally different in these two views. A zero-sum life style is isolated, lonely with our own self-interest guiding us. A positive sum life sees abundance, gives away food, love, knowledge to those in need, and as Nouwen reminds us, “there are many leftovers.”

Jesus’ feeding of the 5000, found in all four gospels, is a story of a positive sum experience.

My experience is that I am living in fear with zero-sum lifestyle when I am competing with others for the love or attention or support of some entity or person. There is peace in my life when I live knowing there is enough love or support or attention for all.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com