Wisdom from the Harp, Community

March 18, 2019 joanna seibert

“For the elements changed places with one another,

as on a harp the notes vary the nature of the rhythm,

while each note remains the same.” Wisdom 19:18

A friend reminds me this was in the scripture in morning prayer today. I read the first part of the Wisdom reading this morning but missed this last part. I hope I won’t miss it next time, for this ancient verse so well describes music, but especially the harp. I began a journey with this classical instrument over thirty years ago when my daughter begged for a year to get a harp.

The strings are the white keys of the piano, so if you understand the piano, it is easy. You lean the body against your body so you can not only hear the vibrations but you feel the music within you as well. The harp has taught me so many lessons about life other than the discipline of trying to master a technique for following and plucking the notes.

When one string breaks, it is difficult to continue playing. Part of playing is knowing the relationships of each string to the other. Now there is a gap, large or small which changes the entire road map. I learn I must take the time to replace the string as soon as possible. Then of course it takes, days, weeks for that new string to stretch and be in tune. It must be “mentored” so to speak.

Almost every atmospheric condition changes the harp strings. Constant tuning is mandatory. My husband loves the old joke about harpist. We spend half our time tuning and the other half playing out of tune!

On this musical journey, the harp has become for me an icon for living and working in community. Its constant need for tuning reminds me how much I must try to stay current, learning and staying and in relationship with what is going on in the world around me. If I don’t, I become “out of tune” either too sharp or too flat.

I would love to hear from others about life lessons they have learned from a musical instrument.

Joanna. Joannaeibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter in Little Rock from me joannaseibert@me.com or from Wordsworth Books or from the publisher Earth Songs Press or on Amazon.. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

De Waal: Living on the Border, Community

March 17, 2019 joanna seibert

De Waal: Living on the Border, Community

“The first step in listening, learning, and changing is to see that different is not dangerous; the second is to be happy and willing to live with uncertainty; the third is to rejoice in ambiguity and to embrace it. It all means giving up the comfort of certainty and realizing that uncertainty can actually be good.”

-- Esther de Waal in To Pause at the Threshold, Reflections on Living on the Border ( Morehouse), p. 86.

When de Waal wrote this book, she had returned to the home where she had grown up on the border between England and Wales. I met this prolific writer of Benedictine and Celtic spirituality at the College of Preachers at the Washington National Cathedral. She often took up residence there and was accessible during meals to weekly pilgrims like myself seeking respite and learning at this sacred space. This small pocket-sized book is a gem to be read and re-read.

De Waal is talking about how we relate to borders and boundaries as she is directly experiencing borders in her day to day living experience. Do we build walls and barriers and fortresses or do we engage in conversation and learn about something different, another culture? She describes the diversity of the world as an icon to let us know that God loves differences. She entices us to be like a porter waiting at the gate of a Benedictine monastery, standing at the “threshold of two worlds”, welcoming those who come no matter the time of day, treating each stranger as if it were Christ.

This resonates with me as a deacon. Our ministry calls us to go back and forth between two worlds, the church, and the world outside of the church. De Waal also teaches us to honor the threshold of the two worlds and be open to the change, the uncertainty, the contradictions that the different worlds may present to us.

De Waal’s concept of thresholds has been helpful in visiting those in hospitals or the homebound. I have learned to pause as I am about to cross the threshold of the door. At hospitals, this is a time to wash my hands at the door. The threshold is a symbolic reminder that I am entering another world. The handwashing is a reminder to leave my agenda at the door. I am there to honor that person and to listen and be present to them. Some of the time I remember.

Joanna. Joannaeibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter in Little Rock from me joannaseibert@me.com or from Wordsworth Books or from the publisher Earth Songs Press or on Amazon.. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

Butler Bass: Community

March 16, 2019 joanna seibert

Butler Bass: Belonging, Community

“Instead of believing, behaving, and belonging, we need to reverse the order to belonging, behaving, and believing. Jesus did not begin with questions of belief. Jesus’ public ministry started when he formed a community.”

—Diana Butler Bass in Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, (Harper One, 2011), pp. 11-64.

Diana Butler Bass tries to help us understand what is happening in the present day changing Christian landscape where religion is now no longer the center of a member’s life. She reminds us that our religion started with community, not confession. Thomas Watkins from Wilson, North Carolina also tries to explain how our church might change using the South’s love of football in an article in Journal of Preacher (“Game Day: Becoming a New church in an Old South,” Pentecost 2017, vol. 40, no. 4) “They (fans) are not asked to show their diplomas at the stadium gate.”

One of the most frequent questions of those coming for spiritual direction is “I don’t know if I believe or what I believe anymore. Maybe I am no longer a Christian.”If the person belongs to a confessional denomination or a church of orthodoxy where he or she must believe a certain set of doctrines, this can sometimes be a problem. There are denominations that are churches of orthopraxy where its members are held together because of a way they worship or practice their faith. In that circumstance, a changing belief is considered at times an asset, a sign of growth. Our relationship to God will change as our God becomes larger, as we come to see the Christ in more and more people, people who are very different from ourselves.

I often quote that line I first heard from Alan Jones at a Trinity Wall Street conference at Kanuga in the early 2000’s: “the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.”Doubting is a sign that God is working in us; our relationship is changing. Sometimes this change in relationship can feel like the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates. Sometimes it can be like a volcano erupting. If we can just take it as a good and not a bad thing and try to stay steady, a new relationship, a new life will arise.I remember a quote attributed to Catherine Marshall, “Those who never rebelled against God or at some point in their lives shaken their fists in the face of heaven, have never encountered God at all.”

This is also where community is important. In a church that is alive with the spirit, there will be many others who have experienced this awakening who can walk and hold a steady hand when the foundations that we thought were our beliefs are threatened. We come to see that these beliefs are not threatened, but enlarged, and we learn this because of belonging to a community.

Joanna. Joannaeibert.com