Image Gently

“Relationship is not a project, it is a grace.” —Thomas Moore in Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship (HarperCollins, 1994), p. 256.

My friend, Marilyn Goske, who also is a pediatric radiologist, has spearheaded a campaign called Image Gently to decrease radiation to children in diagnostic radiology. This organization encourages physicians to use the least amount of radiation when performing tests on children. It applies to conventional X-rays, fluoroscopy, interventional radiology, nuclear medicine, computed tomography, dentistry, cardiac imaging, and imaging in the setting of minor head trauma. It is the organization’s aim to make physicians, technologists, and nurses aware of the amount of radiation being used, as well as the importance of reassuring parents about any of their concerns. This educational program entails communication with all those directly involved in these studies, as well as all medical organizations that support them. It has had overwhelming success, with more than 63,000 pledges to take part in this program.

Marilyn is showing us how we can change the world by communicating and dialoguing with all people who share a special interest. It involves trying to solve a problem, talking together, working together, celebrating when answers come, and honoring those who are bringing the vision to reality. In this way we are seeing the power of community.

I realize how important this could be in our spiritual lives as well. We find more answers to our spiritual questions in community; whereas often we cannot understand our concerns by ourselves.

Yesterday I met with my spiritual director, who helped me understand a dream that had baffled me for days. Each day in the early morning, I go back to the dream and uncover another insight as though she, and all those who have taught me about dream work, are still guiding me.

We also have many parts of ourselves: inner masculine, inner feminine, the child within, and so many more. When we can see them as helpful voices rather than unwanted adversaries, especially coming from the weaker parts of ourselves, answers are revealed. It is in our weakness, in our vulnerability, especially in community, that God the Holy Spirit creeps in and helps us discern a path—where before we saw only a jungle.

In community we image gently.

Joanna. Joannseibert.com

Cushman: Praying with Icons

Guest Writer Susan Cushman

“I have chosen icons because they are created for the sole purpose of offering access, through the gate of the visible, to the mystery of the invisible. Icons are painted to lead us into the inner room of prayer and bring us close to the heart of God.” —Henri Nouwen in Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons (Ave Maria Press, 1987).

For four years in a row, in the 1980s, Henri Nouwen spent time at a spiritual retreat in France. Each year, someone placed an icon in the room where he would be staying. At the end of these visits, he wrote a book about his experiences with these icons—Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons. He gazed at these four icons for hours at a time, and, after patient, prayerful stillness on his part, they began to speak to him. As a man who loved the art of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Marc Chagall, he could have chosen any of these Western treasures for his meditations. But he chose icons.
When I became an Orthodox Christian, I embraced icons as “windows to heaven,” and have prayed before them for many years. As an iconographer, I have written many icons—some commissions, some as gifts, and some that I have kept in our home—and found the process to be very much like a prolonged prayer. These images of Christ, the Mother of God, and various saints and angels, draw my heart to God in a way that nothing else does. In addition to the “set” prayers I pray in the morning and evening, sometimes I pray specific prayers to saints depicted in the icons. Here is one to the Mother of God:

“Forasmuch as thou art a well-spring of tenderness, O Theotokos, make us worthy of compassion; Look upon a sinful people; Manifest thy power as ever, for hoping on thee we cry aloud unto thee: Hail! As once did Gabriel, Chief Captain of the Bodiless Powers.”

—St. John of Damascus, quoted in “Icons Will Save the World” in First Things (12/20/2007) by Susan Cushman.

Susan Cushman

Signs Too Deep for Words

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” —Romans 8:26.

milada vigerova

Trent Palmer reminds us in a recent post about this Daily Lectionary reading from Romans1—how this Romans passage has changed his prayer life. He is trying to wait for the Holy Spirit to lead him in prayer, knowing that God is doing for all of us far more than we can pray for or imagine ourselves.2 I need to hear this from The Daily Lectionary, Romans, The Book of Common Prayer, and Trent each week.

My prayers, especially for others, are a way to move out of the orbit I live in and know there is something going on greater than my mind, my feelings, my world. The space I live in is only a small piece of God’s world, perhaps like a grain of sand. But still, the God who loves us so much cares deeply about us, each grain of sand, each hair of our head, and loves us beyond what we can imagine. It is comforting to know that no matter what we pray for, the Spirit is there to guide our prayers. Sometimes I try to remember this by leaving a period of silence in prayer, followed by a few sighs of my own, hoping they will catch up with the sighs of the Holy Spirit!

I have friends who simply say to God, “I turn this day over to you for your care.” I admire them. It takes me more than ten words to turn over my day as well as those I care for and those I pray for. That is why intercessory prayer has become so important in my life. I aim for the shorter versions, but for today I am praying in long division.

1Trent Palmer, “Morning Reflection” from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas, Monday, July 9, 2018.

2 “Prayer for Those We Love,” Book of Common Prayer, p. 831.

Joanna joannaseibert.com