Cynthia Bourgeault: Mystical Body of Christ

Cynthia Bourgeault: Mystical Body of Christ

“What Jesus so profoundly demonstrates to us in his passage from death to life is that the walls between the realms are paper thin. Along the entire ray of creation, the “mansions” are interpenetrating and mutually permeable by love. The death of our physical form is not the death of our individual personhood. Our personhood remains alive and well, “hidden with Christ in God” (to use Paul’s beautiful phrase in Colossians 3:3) and here and now we can draw strength from it (and [Christ]) to live our temporal lives with all the fullness of eternity. If we can simply keep our hearts wrapped around this core point, the rest of the Christian path begins to fall into place.” Cynthia Bourgeault in The Wisdom Jesus (Shambhala 2008), p. 133-134.

Bourgeault is pushing the envelope on our relationship with those who have died by also interpreting our relationship to the resurrected Jesus. She reminds us of the passage from John (14:2) so often spoken at funerals, “ In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places [mansions]. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

She is telling us that Jesus demonstrates to us that the walls between these dwelling places or mansions [if you are a King James reader], and our homes are very thin and are permeated by love. This speaks to Paul’s thoughts in 1Corinthians (13: 8) “Love never ends.” The love we have for each other never dies. Our body dies, but that love never dies, and in some mystical way our individual personhood in love reaches out through the mystical body of Christ to continue to bring love into this world and the next.

We connect to this love “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3) when we open the “eye of our heart’ through spiritual practices such as centering prayer meditation, lectio divina, the welcoming prayer, chanting, especially the Psalms.

Joanna. Joannaseibeibert.com

Rachel Held Evans: Searching for Sunday

Rachel Held Evans: Searching for Sunday

“This is what’s most annoying and beautiful about the windy Spirit and why we so often miss it. It has this habit showing up in all the wrong places and among all the wrong people, defying out categories and refusing to take direction.” Rachel Held Evans in Searching for Sunday (Nelson Books 2015), p. 196.

Our world grieves the death of 37-year-old Rachel Held Evans this past Saturday, May 4th, 2019. She was a spiritual voice for so many millennials as well as their parents and grandparents. I treasure that I meet her on her podcasts and at writing conferences, and at our cathedral in Little Rock when they invited her here to speak.

Larry Burton recently reviewed on this blog her newest book, Inspired, a book about the interpretation of some of our favorite Bible stories as she wrestles with some of our greatest questions about suffering and doubt.

Today’s writing relates to a quote from Searching for Sunday where Rachel struggles through the liturgical year trying to find her faith and a church community as she journeys through the sacraments. At Pentecost I hope I will remember that Rachel reminded us that the wind, the Holy Spirit that Jesus described to Nicodemus goes even to the Pharisees, one who eventually heard the wind, spoke up for Jesus at his trial, and personally cared for Jesus’ body when he had been abandoned by most of the rest of the world.

Rachel reminds us that the Spirit is inside but also outside the traditional church if we only have eyes to see and feel it. There is never a corner of the world where God has abandoned its people even when it is so hard to see God in that place or with that people. She reminds us we will know the presence of the Spirit when we know and see the fruit of the Spirit: peace, joy, love, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Today we may honor Rachel Held Evans as we try to keep looking for God and the fruit of the Spirit in all kind of places and talking about it in community and writing about it as much as we can.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Charleston: Being Resilient and La La Land

Charleston: Being Resilient and La La Land

“Life is hard. The losses, the sudden arrival of illness, the struggles within families, the pressure of a world trying to find a reason to hope. If it is to endure the gale force winds of chance, faith must be deeply rooted, anchored in trust, strengthened by courage, able to bend but never break. So here is a prayer for all of you living in the real world: may you find your faith as tough as you are and as resilient as the love that keeps you going.” —Bishop Steven Charleston, Facebook Post.

I think of the end of the 2017 Academy awards, when Warren Beatty couldn’t understand what was in the envelope to announce the best picture of the year. He handed the confusing envelope to Faye Dunaway, who saw the name La La Land and announced that movie as the winner. They had been given the wrong envelope! It was the one announcing Emma Stone as best actress from La La Land, which had been reported earlier. The producers and cast of La La Land were so excited, they came up and thanked numerous people. Men with headsets scurried on stage and handed Jordan Horowitz, one of the La La Land producers, the correct envelope as he announced, “I’m sorry. No. There’s a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won best picture!”

I will always remember the grace with which Horowitz gave up his Oscar—his whole team on stage, his dream suddenly crushed, after years of hoping to win, his Oscar now being handed over to another producer before a live television audience in front of millions of people. Later Horowitz said to Adele Romanski, a Moonlight producer, “I got to give a speech and then give you an award!”

When I think of resilience, I will remember and tell his story. I compare it to all the mistakes I have been involved in: taking my family, particularly my husband, for granted; failing to speak to a patient’s family because I was too busy; all the potential mistakes I fear, such as reading the wrong Gospel, preaching from the wrong Lessons, not chanting well, running out of bread at the Eucharist, forgetting to visit someone who then dies. Then there are all the frustration dreams of going to take a test for a class I had not attended or studied for.

Knowing that a time-honored institution such as the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers can make such a mistake somehow helps me forgive myself for my own failings. This firm, which has overseen the Oscar ballots for eighty-three years, also was gracious, asking forgiveness, making amends for the confusion, apologizing for their human error.

When spiritual friends ask about forgiveness, we always return to Desmond and Mpho Tutu’s outstanding book, The Book of Forgiving, in which they also talk about forgiving yourself by admitting your mistake and making amends as do those in twelve-step recovery. We now have role models who have forgiven others for great injustices, such as Nelson Mandela in South Africa who forgave his captors for his eighteen years in prison. We have the Amish community in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, who forgave the gunman who killed five of their children and critically wounded five others on October 2, 2006. Forgiveness and amends can transform guilt and shame and anger and turn revenge and resentment into resilience and even more. Resurrection.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

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