Where is our heart?

Where is our heart?

“The visible and the invisible meet at the crossroads which we call our heart. When we say ‘heart,’ we mean that center of our personal being where we are one with ourselves, yet not with ourselves only. In our heart of hearts, we are one also with all others – all humans, animals, plants, the whole cosmos — and with the Ultimate, with God. St. Augustine affirms from his own mystical awareness a truth of which every human being has an inkling: ‘In my hearts of hearts God is closer to me than I am to myself.”’—David Steindl-Rast, A Listening Heart, p. 22.

 Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37). Where are our heart, mind, and soul? Anatomically, we know our heart is in our chest, and our mind is in our head. Our soul may be the mysterious part of us, the God within us. David Steindl-Rast gives us one more idea of where our heart is. “It is the center of our being where we are one with ourselves and all others, and with God where God is closer than we are to ourselves.” This makes some sense if we go on to Jesus’ following words in Matthew: “This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:38-39)

 This is all highly mysterious and mystical. All three parts of ourselves seem similar and related at times, and, at other times, significantly different. But by some means, we experience the God within us through our minds and our hearts. We also experience this God within us, changing us and keeping us connected to the God in our neighbor and part of God beyond ourselves, more extensive than we can imagine, fathom, or understand. We experience God through our mind, heart, and something else intrinsically within us.

Perhaps heart, soul, and mind are so interconnected, like the parts of the Trinity, that it is hard to keep them separated, particularly when they are working together.

I am reminded of the joy we see and hear when our older son and his wife play a “Heart and Soul” duet together on the piano. Next time, I will take a picture. For now, I have a beautiful picture beyond words in my mind of what the blending of heart and soul looks like. 

Joanna   https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Chris Keller: Getting On Toward Home

Getting On Toward Home

By The Rev. Dr. Christoph Keller

 From the first time we heard Chris Keller preach in 1991, we know intuitively that he is one of the most outstanding visitors to the pulpit we will ever experience. His exact technique for writing is a mystery. However, I do know he spends hours mulling over every sermon preparation. He has set a high bar for all privileged to step up with fear and trembling1 into the same pulpit where he has left footprints. His sermons are never a Saturday night special.2 The number of us who have learned about preaching simply from listening to him is too numerous to count.3 He has mastered the formula for combining the needed ingredients of mind and heart into what he composes. This is especially true of his funeral sermons, where the heart almost always takes the lead through his innumerable homiletic journeys toward resurrection.

Today, as I reread each of Chris’ chosen sermons, many of whom I have heard in person, I try to share which homilies have been meaningful to me. Which sermons best follow Richard Milwee’s funeral direction, to tell the truth, but not the whole truth?4 I decide on this one, then that. It becomes impossible. Each has significant meaning, written for a specific friend or family member, or even persons unknown. Chris Keller writes about a beloved young man he baptized as an infant who died an early death. He has homilies for both of his well-known parents. He writes about beloved parishioners. He presides with words over the funeral of a talented physician who committed suicide. He preaches at the death of someone he has known since childhood with mental illness.

Finally, I decided Keller’s funeral sermons simply best represent Frederick Buechner’s description of preaching in Telling Secrets. “It is to try to put the gospel into words, not the way to write an essay, but more like a poem or a love letter, putting your heart and your whole life into it, your own excitement, most of all your whole life.”5 

1Philippians 2:12.

2Name for an inexpensive gun used by poorer neighbors, referring to preachers who write a Sunday sermon late Saturday night.

3“Too numerous to count” or TNTC is a medical term for a large number, usually about the number of organisms in a specimen.

4 Chris Keller dedicates the book to his longtime friend, Richard Milwee. One of my joys in ministry has been sitting beside Richard and Chris at the Diocesan Convention and learning about making a convention more exciting than I can write about.

5Frederick Buechner in Telling Secrets (HarperOne 2000) p. 61.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Seedtime

Seedtime: Photography as Spiritual Practice

Eve Turek, Guest Writer

“We thank Thee then, O Father, for all things bright and good,

The seedtime and the harvest, our life, our health, our food.

No gifts have we to offer for all Thy love imparts

But that which thou desirest, our humble, thankful hearts!”—Matthias Claudius, 1782; trans. Jane Campbell 1851.

eve

I have always associated “seedtime” with spring, the season of tilling and planting, and new growth emerging. However, a recent stroll through a waning, drooping autumn garden revealed a truth, the depth of which I had never considered: the seeds of tomorrow’s growth come from this fall’s season of release. It is out of the harvest of what has been that what will be emerges. Seeing dried fall flowers bursting with new seeds altered my perception of this season I associate more with endings than beginnings.

Most of these seeds will drop into the soil at the base of the plant that produced them. In this way, many flowers considered only annuals would reseed their garden beds and sprout fresh the following year. But one seed in particular that I saw is constructed not to drop, but to fly. The wispy “tails” on Milkweed seeds act as sails in the wind, scattering the plant prolifically. Milkweed is the host plant for monarch butterfly caterpillars. I find it fitting that its seeds take flight on a journey away from their producing plant, just as the caterpillars plumped on milkweed will morph into butterflies—the fall generation of which will significantly outlive all other generations of butterflies and make migratory journeys of thousands of miles.

Research shows butterflies retain specific sensory memories of their former caterpillar life. Successive generations of monarchs will return to the areas where their great-great-great grand-caterpillars crawled to lay eggs to be nourished on another year’s milkweed crop. Seeds are encoded to grow into the same kind of plants that produced them, although someone seeing a seed or a caterpillar for the first time could never envision the transforming growth each one holds. And so it is with us.

I have recently been paying particular attention to all things “butterflies,” – including caterpillars and chrysalises. I’ve seen newly emerged Swallowtails drying their wings and aging butterflies whose wings are tattered and torn, yet still flying and finding their nourishing nectar up to the end. When my husband was dying—his body and soul were on their last, earthly, migratory journey. In this season of harvest and letting go, I found strength and comfort in the seeds of autumn.

Spring seems far away, but new growth—beyond all we could ask or think—is hidden within the seed, the caterpillar’s chrysalis, and each of us. Autumn seeds remind me to hope. They tell me that as bodies wither, spirits soar, and that essential memories from this existence will be carried into the next. Though I may water autumn seeds with tears, I know mourning will turn into dancing; sorrow will melt into joy; morning will overtake night; caterpillars will morph into butterflies, and flowers hidden in fall seeds will emerge in the warmth of spring.  

Eve Turek

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/