Other Religious Traditions, Other Countries

May: Other Religious Traditions, Connections

“We are all rooted together in the ground of consciousness that is God’s gift to all of us, and our joining is absolute. When the Islamic mullah prays with a true and quiet heart, I believe the souls of the Iowa farmer and the Welsh miner are touched. When the gong sounds in the Japanese monastery and the monks enter the timeless silence of Zazen, their quiet nourishes the Brazilian native and the Manhattan executive. When Jews and Christians pray with true willingness, the Hindu scientist and the Russian policeman are enriched.”—Gerald G. May in Will and Spirit (HarperOne, 1982), pp. 319–320.

return of the prodigal son

 Many authors remind us of our connection to Nature and the world around us. Others remind us of our relationship with the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely. Gerald May reminds us of our connection to other religions—how the Spirit moves in so many different paths that we do not understand. Too deep for words. 

There is more here, though, than just recognizing God at work in so many varied ways. May also tells us that this Spirit intimately connects us. What we do to further the Spirit, to connect to God in our own day, in our own way, makes a difference across the globe in some distant rainforest.

Again, this relationship is a profound mystery beyond our knowing. Sometimes when I read this passage from May, I can sit and almost feel the Iowa farmer working his black dirt, since we spent four years in Iowa City training. Then I try to cross the Atlantic to England. I can connect to the shepherd, his dogs, and sheep striding through green pastures, since we have made several trips to England and Scotland.

Because of our political situation, I am having more difficulty connecting with the people in Russia. I have never been there, but I always wanted to go to St. Petersburg to see Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son in the Hermitage Museum. So the next time I watch a newscast from Russia, I will look and try to imagine the people there instead of the leaders. I think this could make a difference. Perhaps they are doing the same for us.

I will be speaking at the Arkansas Daughters of the King Fall Assembly in Little Rock, on September 9 on Forgiveness and the Spirituality of Aging. Contact me for more information.

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

Gibran: On Children, Steady Bow, Smorgasbord

Gibran: On Children, steady Bow, Smorgasbord

“Your children are not your children.

You may give them your love, but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.”— Khalil Gibran, “On Children” in The Prophet (1923).

family celebration

This may be some of the best advice about relating to our children. Parents are to be the steady or stable “bow.” Our children do not belong to us. They are the most treasured guests we will ever have in our home.

Another piece of wisdom came from a counselor, Phyllis Raney, who led a parenting class at our church. She told us our job was to provide the best smorgasbord of possibilities of experiences for our children to sample. What they choose, however, is up to them. We are to be the best possible providers of opportunities for them to experience, but we cannot control their decisions about what they choose.

We have three children, and as parents, we had busy lives as physicians at a children’s hospital. We wondered how to give quality individual time to each of our children. At the birth of our second child, my mother-in-law, Elizabeth, gave me a book, Promises to Peter (Word Books, 1974), by Charlie Shedd. We read in it about taking each child out to dinner one night a week. We let the child choose the restaurant, within reason. So, one night a week, usually Monday, was “date night” with one of our children. It was a gift to focus on letting that child tell their story without distractions, and to appreciate how much we loved them.

We also attended many medical meetings yearly and tried to take one child with us, hoping to spend quality time one-on-one. This was one more offering on the smorgasbord.

Our children are older now, with their own children. It is easier to be the steady bow.

The steady bow image has now also become an image of our relationship with God. First, we learned about it as we tried to raise our children. Now it is teaching us more about how God cares for us. The smorgasbord has become the image of the innumerable ways God provides for us. We learn more about this One who loves both “the arrows and the stable bow.”

Phillis

I will be speaking at the Arkansas Daughters of the King Fall Assembly in Little Rock, on September 9 on Forgiveness and the Spirituality of Aging. Contact me for more information.

Joanna    https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Kindness

Gould: Kindness

“Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoticed and invisible as the ‘ordinary’ efforts of a vast majority.” —Stephen Jay Gould in The New York Times (9/26/2001).

reed

A longtime friend, Dr. Steve Thomason, Dean of St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, sent out this nearly twenty-year-old Gould quote some time ago for all of us to consider. Humans seem unable to avoid being dualistic, viewing life as a well-balanced struggle between good and evil. In fact, it is difficult to avoid thinking of evil and failure and missing the mark to have greater power and strength over us in our lives. We receive all “A”s but one “B” on our report card. We agonize and only remember the “B.” We remember only the one line we missed in our class play, and discount the brilliant lines we remembered. We obsess over rejection letters, rather than celebrating our college acceptance or recent job promotion. Most physicians think daily about the diagnosis we missed, and forget the thousands we made correctly. We forgot to visit our friend the week or day before she died, but in our grief, we discount all the hundreds of other visits we made during her illness. 

The morning, noon, evening, and late-night news can seem overwhelming when we are told about all the human tragedies, deaths, and violence. Perhaps there is one last thirty-second segment about someone’s kindness on a good day.

Gould, an evolutionary biologist, and historian of science, contends that the forces in the world are not evenly divided and that reality is overwhelmingly composed of kindness, not evil. Gould believes the problem is that these acts of kindness are so small that they go unnoticed. On the other hand, evil and failure stop us in our tracks, immediately get our attention, and blind us with their bright orange glare.

How can we wear a fresh pair of glasses and begin seeing the world differently? That is the pathway to even more apparent acts of kindness. It starts with a small, simple step called gratitude. I have many friends who survive unbelievable tragedies by making and reciting a gratitude list each day, most often at night before they go to sleep. I have spiritual friends who even send me their daily gratitude lists. By their actions, they encourage me to do the same.

Gould is challenging us to remember the kind acts we constantly see, especially when we feel overcome by some evil act and begin to believe that darkness has overtaken our world.

When I think of kindness, I remember our friend, Reed, who died much too early, but left so many acts of kindness still living in this world.

I will be speaking at the Arkansas Daughters of the King Fall Assembly in Little Rock, on September 9 on Forgiveness and the Spirituality of Aging. Contact me for more information.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/