Rohr: Forgiveness

“As long as you can deal with evil by some means other than forgiveness, you will keep projecting, fearing, and attacking it over there, instead of ‘gazing’ on it within and ‘weeping’ over it within yourself and all of us. Forgiveness demands three new simultaneous ‘seeings’: I must see God in the other; I must access God in myself; and I must experience God in a new way that is larger than an ‘Enforcer.’” —Adapted from Richard Rohr’s Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media, 2008), pp. 193-194.

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Richard Rohr is teaching us more basic lessons about how to forgive. It involves seeing the Christ—God in the person we are forgiving—as well as seeing God or Christ in ourselves. That makes sense. But then Rohr throws in this third condition. We must see that God is more, larger than a hall monitor handing out detention slips, checking a list, looking at our every action and judging whether we and our neighbors are behaving rightly.

My experience is that we are called to enlarge our concept of God as a God of love. How do we do this? We place ourselves with other people who seem to be experiencing God’s love. We observe the ways in which they know how to forgive others.

As we begin to see the Christ in others who know love, the God of love, the Christ in us awakens—and slowly, often very slowly, we begin to see the Christ also in those who have harmed us. We may discover that personal tragedies have brought them to the place of hurting others. This awareness starts to come as we pray daily, sometimes hourly, for the person who has harmed us. We realize we are still carrying around a heavy load of resentment that is like a cancer, destroying the joy in our lives a little each day. That person is still hurting us. He or she is becoming our higher power, our God, because more and more, that is all we can think about.

As we daily pray for that person, he or she may never change; but my experience is that we will.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Release party!!!!!!!!!!!

Come and get a signed copy of the new book

Just in time for the holidays

A Spiritual Rx for Advent Christmas, and Epiphany

The Sequel to A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter

Both are $18

All Money from sale of the books goes either to Camp Mitchel Camp and Conference Center in Arkansas or Hurricane Relief in the Diocese of Central Gulf Coast

Seibert’s, 27 River Ridge Road, Little Rock, Arkansas 72227

10 to noon, Saturday September 14, 2019

RSVP joannaseibert@me.com

Forgiveness and Resentment

“Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times but, I tell you seventy times seven!’” —Matthew 18:21-22.

Today on a retreat I encountered a woman with so much anger it was difficult to be around her. Her body language and her speech cried out through tiny holes in a thick invisible wall surrounding her. These leaks told of a tremendous pain caused by her being abandoned in the past. Almost every conversation we had with her returned to her terrible suffering after a broken relationship fifteen years earlier. The person who hurt her was no longer in her life, but was still profoundly wounding her.

She also was primed, looking for, expecting another chance to respond with resentment. One had to walk on eggshells around her for fear of saying something that might offend her. I got caught in that trap in a brief exchange, and then tried to ease the pain I had caused her—but to no avail. My amends went coolly rejected. She was unforgiving. It was so uncomfortable to be around her. It was difficult to love her, to see the Christ in her.

As I reflect on that encounter, I see that, but for the grace of God, my own woundedness could have left me stuck and rudderless in the same place she was in. Why has God allowed some of us to heal from our hurt relationships—but not this woman? I learned so much from her … so painfully. I concluded that until I can forgive someone and start anew, the person I am resenting is still harming me. I can grieve over the broken trust and our lost relationship; but unless I choose to go on with my life, I am paralyzed.

I saw in this woman an image of someone I do not want to be. I also learned from her how, in my own humanness, I can harm others even when I have the best of intentions. But I can also reverse the tables and understand how others are able to do the same to me.

I honestly believe that most people do not intend to cause harm to others. May I remember this weekend and this very wounded woman as I continue to pray that both of us can sincerely forgive.

I also remember how the prayer our God gave to us tells us that part of the condition of our being forgiven is our forgiving others. I intend to think often of this woman, and hope that she will be a reminder to me of what happens when I no longer forgive. May we both be changed.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Release party!!!!!!!!!!!

Come and get a signed copy of the new book

Just in time for the holidays

A Spiritual Rx for Advent Christmas, and Epiphany

The Sequel to A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter

Both are $18

All Money from sale of the books goes either to Camp Mitchel Camp and Conference Center in Arkansas or Hurricane Relief in the Diocese of Central Gulf Coast

Seibert’s, 27 River Ridge Road, Little Rock, Arkansas 72227

10 to noon, Saturday September 14, 2019

RSVP joannaseibert@me.com

Buechner: Memory, Eucharist, Jesus

“There are two ways of remembering. One way is to make an excursion from the living present back into the dead past. The other way is to summon the dead past back into the living present. The young widow remembers her husband, and he is there beside her. When Jesus said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me,’ he was not prescribing a periodic slug of nostalgia.” —Frederick Buechner in Wishful Thinking (Harper & Row, 1973).

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Buechner gives us two ways to remember, going back and bringing memories forward. The going back to past memories can allow us to relive a scene from our lives. Anthony de Mello writes that perhaps that scene was too powerful to experience the first time. As we relive it, we can participate in it again and again, each time acquiring a greater sense of its meaning.

Bringing memories forward is like doing active imagination with a living friend or with someone you deeply loved who has died. You imagine the person’s presence with you. My experience is that sometimes you will feel that presence even without trying to imagine it.

Buechner believes that when Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24b), he was calling us to bring him back into our presence—to know and feel his love, so that we might go out and bring others in to share it.

Some believe that Jesus is actually present in the bread and wine at the Eucharist. Others believe that the bread and wine are messengers or symbols reminding us of Jesus’ presence and love in our lives. Either way, the God of love is present.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Release party!!!!!!!!!!!

Come and get a signed copy of the new book

Just in time for the holidays

A Spiritual Rx for Advent Christmas, and Epiphany

The Sequel to A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter

Both are $18

All Money from sale of the books goes either to Camp Mitchel Camp and Conference Center in Arkansas or Hurricane Relief in the Diocese of Central Gulf Coast

Seibert’s, 27 River Ridge Road, Little Rock, Arkansas 72227

10 to noon, Saturday September 14, 2019

RSVP joannaseibert@me.com