Charleston: Imagination and the Spirit

“The light under the door to your mind is your imagination. It is always glowing, always searching for a new idea, always alive and energetic. If you want to enlighten your spiritual life, try the one channel of contact to the Spirit that is the most direct: use your imagination. The curious, playful, unlimited vision of what you can imagine is a hint of how the Spirit thinks. It is a point of contact for us because when we open ourselves up to thinking and seeing in new ways, we are stepping into a sacred process. If you want to find the Spirit, open the door.” —Bishop Steven Charleston Daily Facebook post (3/7/2019).

Bishop Charleston affirms that using our imagination is one pathway to connecting to God. My experience is that my prayers are more meaningful if I imagine each of the people I am praying for sitting near me, or holding the hand of Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit. I am turning each of them over to our loving God, who is guarding and caring for them.

In the forgiveness prayer from Contemplative Outreach, Ltd., we imagine being with a person who has harmed us. We sit in a safe place, with God beside us, as we tell the person how he or she has hurt us; and then we hope we can say words of forgiveness. This is not a one-time prayer, but a practice we repeat over and over again in our own sacred space until we reach the place of forgiveness—with God by our side.

In Ignatian study of Scripture we imagine ourselves in the scenes of Jesus’ life when he was on earth. We join the crowd following Jesus. We may become the Samaritan woman he meets at noon. We may stand in the crowd at the foot of his cross as he is dying. We may be with the women who first discover he has risen.

In dream work we practice active imagination by conversing with people and images as they present themselves in our dream. In our imagination, these participants in the dream can tell us who they are and explain to us the parts of ourselves that they represent.

Anthony de Mello encourages us to make albums in our imagination of joyful times in our lives. Then we can come back to our album from time to time, especially in difficult times, to remember what we experienced. De Mello also believes that at the time of a past event we never appreciated its richness. Returning in our minds and actually “getting back” into the scene can bring even greater joy; and we may feel greater love than when an event first happened.

Imagination is one of our best spiritual practices.

Joanna Joannaseibert.com

Book Signing Wordsworth Books

Saturday, November 2, 2019 1 to 3 pm

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. Money from sale of the books goes to Camp Mitchel Camp and Conference Center in Arkansas or Hurricane Relief in

The Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast

Cymbals and Morning Prayer

“Praise him with clanging cymbals;

praise him with loud clashing cymbals!” —Psalm 150:5.

I frequently read Morning Prayer online from The Daily Office (dailyoffice.wordpress.com) posted by Josh Taylor in Indiana. Josh calls the site “not a website but a community” because an interactive Morning Prayer is offered during the week online and as a webcast at 7:00 and 9:00 in the mornings. There is also a video Evensong every Friday night at 9:00. Josh, who founded dailyoffice.org in 2004, is a vicar and lay commission evangelist in the Episcopal Church. I am drawn to the website because of the ease of reading Morning Prayer according to the tradition of The Book of Common Prayer; but I especially look forward to the artwork, the music, and short related discussions Josh and his staff bring to the Daily Office.

Recently Josh included some information about cymbals in worship, referencing this article in the New York Times by Lara Pellegrinelli with this photograph by Kayana Szymczak:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/arts/music/zildjian-cymbals-400-years.

For more than 400 years, an Armenian family has been manufacturing what is considered the world’s best cymbal, called Zildjian, which means in Armenian, “son of the cymbal maker.” The family first developed the cymbal for the Sultan of Turkey, but moved the business to Massachusetts just before the Armenian genocide. The cymbals are made from a carefully guarded family secret alloy of tin, copper, and silver, and the company is today led by its fourteenth generation of cymbal makers and the first female CEO, Craigne Zildjian.

We sometimes have cymbals in our resurrection Easter worship; but we more often see them used in bands and at the symphony. Interestingly, no two cymbals are exactly alike.

Today I learned about an instrument we so often see and hear, but take for granted, and one we would normally not consider interesting unless we were drummers or percussionists. I learned that this powerful instrument came alive 400 years ago when an Armenian artisan convinced a Sultan that the cymbal would be a significant instrument to mark the rhythmic cycles each morning before prayer, and every evening after prayer.

Next time I am at the symphony I will pay more attention to the cymbal player and give thanks for this Armenian family that has made a difference in so many of our lives.

The Zildjian family story is only one of so many powerful stories to be told about people who have come to this country seeking a new life, and who have enriched all our lives in ways we most often take for granted.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

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

Contact: joannaseibert@me.com

Cameron: Writing As A Spiritual Practice

“Do not call procrastination laziness. Call it fear. Fear is what blocks an artist. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of not finishing. The fear of failure and of success. The fear of beginning at all. There is only one cure for fear. That cure is love. Use love for your artist to cure its fear. Stop yelling at yourself. Be nice. Call fear by its right name.” —Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (Tarcher, 1995).

When I suggest to friends that they should consider writing as a spiritual practice, most respond that they don’t know how to start, or they have no talent as a writer. It is not their gift. The best antidote to this fear of writing or fear of inadequacy as a writer is Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. Cameron suggests starting to write by rising in the morning and writing “morning pages,” which she calls the “primary tool of creative recovery.” These are three longhand pages of whatever comes into our mind. These reflections do not have to make “sense.” Writing them is intended to be a listening exercise in the morning: imagining that it is the hand of God moving through our hand as we write.

I have also experienced this exercise as a clearing or cleaning out of the garbage in my head. Fearful thoughts stay powerful when they remain in my head; but when I put them on paper, some of their power over me goes away. Perhaps in some way I am turning them over, releasing them to God, so that the creative process can begin.

Cameron recommends that every night we pray for guidance, and ask for answers. The morning pages are a process of listening for the answers as the day begins.

I often write down on the inside covers of books the date when I started reading them. As I reread Cameron’s book, I pull back her cover and see a date twenty years ago. Memories flood in of the book group at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church with which I read The Artist’s Way over one summer. I especially remember Lee Nix, who had been the chair of my discernment committee, who was a mentor to me, an encourager of creativity.

I believe it enhances the experience to read, write, and work through a book like The Artist’s Way with a book study group—to go together through the book’s many suggested activities and exercises. Today I am reminded also of how powerful just writing down a date can be in the context of spiritual writing.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

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

Contact: joannaseibert@me.com