Nouwen: Easter Message

Nouwen: Easter Message

“When you forget your true identity as a beloved child of God, you lose your way in life.”  —Henri Nouwen, “Holy Saturday/Easter Vigil: Be Not Afraid” from Fear to Love: Lenten Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Creative Communications of the Parish, 2009).

Jim and grand son Zach

So many spiritual friends I talk with well understand Nouwen’s Easter message to us. For a multitude of reasons, often fear based, we lose our true identity. We forget that we are loved by God and seek love everywhere else. We stop becoming the person God created us to be and turn into the person others or our society wants us to be. We become people pleasers, fearing rejection. We become insecure, fearful, frightened, and look for relief in power, addictions, fame, money, or attachments to others. We grow dependent on what others think about us; or we may become paralyzed and unable to make any decisions. We eventually become acutely aware that we have lost our connection to God. Where can we find help?

My experience is that it is in community where we are helped. We talk with others who can share their connection to God. In recovery groups this is known as “sticking with the winners,” “staying close to those who still have their lights on.” Eventually we are healed, and we stay connected by reaching out to others who have gone through a similar experience.

As the alcoholic or addict in recovery stays sober and clean by telling his or her story, we talk to someone else who is seeking recovery and share our story of Resurrection from Good Friday.

Some may not call it Easter, but that is what it is. I was reminded of this by a dear friend, Jim Waldron, who now lives in the resurrection—who indeed did become sober on Easter Sunday many years ago.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter from me, joannaseibert@me.com, from Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, or from Amazon.

Easter Vigil

Easter Vigil 1

“Dear friends in Christ: On this most holy night, in which our Lord Jesus passed over from death to life, the Church invites her members, dispersed throughout the world, to gather in vigil and prayer.” —Book of Common Prayer.

For the church, the Easter Vigil is one of the most complicated and beautiful services of the year. The difficulty is that it is only once a year, so it is hard to remember all the tiny details from year to year. This means that sometimes there is more chaos on this evening than the church would like. But this is also what adds to its beauty: light and creation coming out of chaos. The service starts with the lighting of the Paschal candle from a fire, usually outside of the church, and then bringing it inside into the complete darkness.

The deacon carries the Paschal candle in as he or she lights the congregation’s candles while singing “The Light of Christ” three times, each time in a slightly higher pitch. This is followed by the deacon chanting the beautiful Exsultet.

It is time for me to turn the Exsultet over to someone else. I have loved chanting the Exsultet for more than seventeen years. It has been a privilege. A newer deacon singing the Exsultet this year has been practicing it for two years and so lovingly and beautifully chants it from her heart. The Exsultet is followed by Old Testament readings about God’s history with God’s people. Next come baptisms, crying babies, and curious toddlers escaping from their parents, all still in the dark. Finally, the cacophony of the great noise of bells of every size announces that Christ has risen indeed, as the lights come on and we see all the flowers of Easter surrounding the inside of the church. Then we celebrate the first new Eucharist of the Easter season.

The service may have some similarity to what the spice- bearing women experienced when they came to the empty tomb on that early Easter morning, and saw one or two angels in dazzling white telling them that they were the first to know that Jesus had been raised from the dead!

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter from me, joannaseibert@me.com, from Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, or from Amazon.

Good Friday

Good Friday

“The courageous women who weep … ” –John 18:1—19:42.

“On Good Friday, so much focus is rightfully on Jesus’ suffering on the cross. But let’s look down below him and see the courageous women of John’s story. In memory of them, let us pray for women who today will weep for their children, refusing to be comforted. And let us hold in prayer the women in today’s Golgothas who, in the face of horrible suffering, somehow find the strength to hold each other up.” —Eileen D. Crowley, “Sunday’s Coming” in The Christian Century (4/11/2017).

In Arkansas starting on Easter Monday in 2017 there were eleven executions planned because one of the drugs being used had an expiration date at the end of that month. There had not been an execution for twelve years. I remember that earlier execution well because I was a deacon at our cathedral then, which is close to the governor’s mansion. We had an ecumenical prayer service for the person to be executed and the person he had killed. I know I played the harp at the service, probably the African American spiritual, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” We then went to the governor’s mansion and sang and prayed by candlelight until after the execution.

All of the men on death row last year had killed young women. I wonder what these girls now in eternal life are praying for and if they are lighting candles. Some of the stories about the men reveal that they had awful lives with a lack of love from women like the ones who followed Jesus. My prayers today are of course that governors all over our country will stay executions and that eventually this state would abolish the death penalty.

My third prayer is that we will do our best to raise strong and loving women like the ones at the cross with Jesus, so that their children will know love and not violence against others, especially against women.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter from me, joannaseibert@me.com, from Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, or from Amazon.