Palmer: Acquired Taste

Palmer: Acquired Taste

“I believe that Christian Formation, the main task of the church, is the way God teaches our hearts to long for and love things, people, and God in the right way. It is through attending to my Rule of Life - the holy habits of weekly Eucharist, daily prayer, regular acts of service, and study, and reflection, that God teaches me to love in the right way. It is kind of like God's way of instilling in us a taste for the Kingdom of God, because the Kingdom of God...is an acquired taste.”

Trent Palmer, a member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas, on St. Paul’s Morning Reflection,

Friend and former Methodist minister, Trent Palmer, makes us look up and take notice when he says, the Kingdom of God is an acquired taste. Those who are connected to some form of a sacramental church where the Eucharist or communion is central to worship may especially relate to the image of using our sense of taste to know God.

I think of the many opportunities to taste the Kingdom on the smorgasbord that God provides. Some take a few bits of the Kingdom and decide for many reasons it is not their cup of tea. There are others that have only a little taste of the Kingdom of God and what that peace is like and crave more. Sometimes that craving lasts for a lifetime. Sometimes the busyness of the world deadens that taste or keeps us from the table. Tasting the kingdom is so much like the parable of the seeds that fall on the path, in the thorns, on rocky ground, and in good soil.

Tasting the Kingdom is like what a new person to recovery is told. You don’t just go to one meeting or meet once with a sponsor and then you are in recovery. You start off going to 90 meetings in 90 days and you met regularly with a sponsor and you connect to the program for the rest of your life, hoping to stay in recovery.

My daughter and I wrote a book, Taste and See: Experiences of God’s Goodness Through Stories, Poems, and Food, As Seen by a Mother and Daughter. We wrote about our experience seeing God’s presence in difficult times, and food was always present. God uses all of our senses and more to keep us connected.

I remember the menu plan that God provides. When we taste the fruit of the Spirit, peace, joy, love, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23), we know we are living in the Kingdom.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

4 Opportunities in next 2 weeks to purchase a signed copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter

Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Gulf Shores Alabama, Saturday February 23, 10-2 and Sunday February 24
Wordsworth Books, Little Rock, Saturday March 2, 1-3 pm

St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Narthex after 8 and 10:30 services on March 3 and March 10

Proceeds from this book go for Hurricane Relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast

Addiction and Spiritual Direction

Addiction and Spiritual Direction
“We have entered into the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime.”

p. 84, Big Book of ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, 4th edition, Alcoholic Anonymous World Services, 2001.

Sometimes those coming for spiritual direction are blocked because of addiction. They have filled their “God hole” with another form of the spirit, alcohol of drugs, and it is no longer working. How do we help spiritual friends who need recovery? First of all, as you know, this is a disease, not a moral failing. Denial is a HUGE part of the disease. It is the only disease that tells you that we do not have the disease, so look for subtle hints. This could be a time to suggest the name of a therapist who specializes in addiction or a good friend of theirs who is in a recovery program.

A person in recovery will simply tell them his or her story, what it was like when they were drinking and now what their life is like in a recovery or 12-step program. This is a two-way street. Telling their story keeps them sober as well as possibly helping another. I know of no more powerful act of love than being vulnerable enough to tell someone else your story about how another, a new Spirit has entered your life and made all the different.

Most people have no idea how spiritual 12-step programs are. They are a new way of life, a road less traveled. Statistics say that only about 10% of those in alcohol addiction make it to recovery. Recovery is not just about not drinking but a new way of life, looking and relating to the world with a new pair of glasses. Alcohol was a way to cope with living life on life’s terms. After we stop drinking we will need a new coping method, which is a relationship with a higher power that mot call God.

I remember when I first started going to a 12-step program that I soon believed it would hopeless for me to recover when I was told that the heart of this program was spiritual. I already was a very spiritual person, leading groups, writing articles about faith! However, I soon realized that God was a part of my life, but I was in charge, the pilot, and I gave God the position of co-pilot, being there to help me with my plans. I had been told this in church, of course, since an early age to have God in charge, leading my life, but I had to hear it someplace else to try to change, for you see, I have such good ideas!

Joanna joannaseibert.com

4 Opportunities to purchase this book for Lent and have it signed.

Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Gulf Shores Alabama, Saturday February 23, 10-2 and Sunday February 24
Wordsworth Books, Little Rock, Saturday March 2, 1-3 pm

St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Narthex after 8 and 10:30 services on March 3 and March 10

Proceeds from this book go for Hurricane Relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast

Barbara Brown Taylor: Spiritual Direction in the World

Barbara Brown Taylor: Spiritual Direction in the World

“People can learn as much about the ways of God from business deals gone bad or sparrows falling to the ground as they can from reciting the books of the Bible in order. They can learn as much from a love affair or a wildflower as they can from knowing the Ten Commandments by heart.”

Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, HarperOne 2009.

I received this quote from Barbara Brown Taylor today from Synthesis, A Weekly Resource for Preaching and Worship in the Episcopal Tradition http://www.synthesispub.com. I look to my right where my husband just bought a new bookcase today to house closer to me all the books I have read over the years that I want to share with you this year about spiritual direction. Then I look straight ahead out of a floor to ceiling window to the outside and watch a gentle Spring rain bathe the trees just outside between our house and our neighbors. I can also hear the rhythm of the rain on the roof above where there is very little insulation in our “modern” 1960’s home.

We will soon have dinner with our children and grandchildren in their new home across the street. What a blessing just to walk across the road to be with grandchildren, our greatest gifts, our most important visitors we will entertain. I learn from them every time I see them about simple joy and unconditional love and wide-eyed excitement about life. All of these are learning experiences. I hope I can hold on to my gratitude for them that I have learned from Barbara Brown Taylor. She was a speaker recently at the Buechner Writing For Your Life Conference in Nashville at Belmont University that I attended. She is still the amazing writer, speaker, and teacher she was when I first read her books over thirty years ago. If you have a chance to hear her, don’t miss it.

She has taught all of us so much about an awareness of the altars in the world that keep us constantly connected to the God of our understanding if only we have eyes and ears to see and hear and hands to touch and even noses to smell. Yes, the smell of a Spring rain is not unlike the smell of the well-known costly incense from Smoky Mary’s in Manhattan (Church of St. Mary the Virgin). The altars in our churches are also thin places where we especially go to give thanks for our altars in the world.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

4 Opportunities to purchase this book for Lent and have it signed.

Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Gulf Shores Alabama, Saturday February 23, 10-2 and Sunday February 24
Wordsworth Books, Little Rock, Saturday March 2, 1-3 pm

St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Narthex after 8 and 10:30 services on March 3 and March 10

Proceeds from this book go for Hurricane Relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast