Ezekiel Shower Chant: Breaking Heart of Stone

Ezekiel Shower Chant: Breaking Heart of Stone

“I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you.”—Ezekiel 36:25-27a.

I am up early watching the light come to day as a gentle rain sounds outside my window and on our roof. I can imagine this rain cleansing our planet and my heart. Maybe later, I will have the courage to go outside, stand or sit, feel the rain on my face, hair, and clothes, and pray for a heart of flesh instead of stone for just this day.

One of the first priests I worked with when I was a deacon in training shared that he chanted these few verses from Ezekiel in his shower each morning. I think of and pray for him each time I recite these words, which I first read about in the alternative Canticles in Morning Prayer in Enriching our Worship I (Church Publishing, 1998).

As I talk to spiritual friends who confide concerns about the heart of stone they carry, I also let them know that I suffer from the same dis-ease. My experience is that our responsibility is to recover awareness of when we cannot feel the Spirit within us and our hearts turn to stone. Awareness is a significant gift that God calls us to develop and discern. Only God can change our hearts. We keep that prayer to be open to change in our hearts every day. We try to put ourselves in relationship with others who also desire a heart of flesh, not stone, and we pray for each other.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

Thurman: Love

Thurman: Love from My Heart

“I want to be more loving in my heart! It is often easy to see it with my mind, and give assent to the thought of being loving. But I want to be more loving in my heart! So I must ease the tension in my heart that ejects the sharp barb, the stinging word. I want to be more loving in my heart so that, through both unconscious awareness and deliberate intent, I shall be a kind, gracious human being. I want to be more loving in my heart!”—Howard Thurman.

Howard Thurman was an African American Baptist theologian and educator. He spent time in India with Gandhi and considerably influenced Martin Luther King, Jr.’s theology of racial nonviolence in our last century. I read into this quote that Dr. Thurman is praying to connect to love, Christ, and the divine within himself. I also hear he may have difficulty “ejecting the sharp barb.” We can be comforted knowing that this prominent proponent of nonviolence knows it is not a straightforward task. He is praying that when we connect to this love, the divine within, we will love others and “be a kind and gracious human being” consciously and unconsciously.

Dr. Thurman reminds us that when we live in connection with the Holy Spirit, the divine within us, we will know the fruit of the Spirit, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”(Galatians 5:22-23). But how do we get there? This is the calling of every spiritual practice: meditation, prayer, reading, corporate worship, fasting, and so many others, to put ourselves in position to connect to God within.

Perhaps if Paul were writing today, he might have told his scribe to use the word “nonviolence” as one of the fruit of the Spirit, even though it is already so loudly speaking out in all the other fruit of the Spirit.

I pray Dr. Thurman still prays for us today to learn to “love from our hearts” in these times when the message of nonviolence is desperately needed.

 Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

 

 

 

Enneagram

Enneagram

“In the study of personality, the Enneagram is designed for self-inquiry. By discovering one’s Enneagrammic personality, one comes to know the many layers of self in a personal and particular way. The Enneagram points out how a person’s strengths can become more stable and more dynamic, and how weaknesses can be brought to consciousness and even healed.”—Joseph Howell in Becoming Conscious: The Enneagram’s Forgotten Passageway (Balboa Press, 2012).

We once spent a weekend at an Enneagram conference led by Dr. Howell at Kanuga. This nine-point ancient study of the personality can help us learn about ourselves and our strengths and the healing of wounds that led to our forming certain personality traits. Understanding the Enneagram can also help us become compassionate with ourselves and others of different personality types.

On the Enneagram, I am a two, the helper, with a strong three wing, the achiever. Another wing, the four, the creative type, can lead me to the source of my basic essence or God within. That may explain why I write this daily message about spiritual direction and practices.

At the conference, there were nine tables where people could talk to others who shared one of the nine personality types. I immediately identified with the twos’ table. I heard the music in my mind and in my body from “Going Home,” the theme from Dvorak’s Largo in his New World Symphony. I was with a group of people who knew me, and I knew them. I could see their woundedness and easily recognize their soul, the God in them.

When someone with some experience with the Enneagram comes to spiritual direction, I try to use this tool to help that person see God, the soul within—for this is what the ancient practice is all about.

Rebecca Spooner led an Enneagram Retreat at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Saturday, February 29, 2020, which was so helpful. This was one of the last things we did before the pandemic changed our lives. It seems so long ago. Today I will review what Rebecca taught us to remember a different outside world and how it affected our inner world.