Going Upstream

Going upstream

“We are very reasonable creatures, but to feel the grace of God, one must forget about reason and go on a pilgrimage to a place where we no longer ‘see as through a glass darkly,’ to a place where we are able to see with eyes of gratitude, rather than with eyes of conquest.”—George Grinnell in A Death on the Barrens.

Mississippi at Memphis

I remember recently sitting by the Mississippi River in Memphis, watching barges travel slowly upstream on a late December cold, windy morning. The few dog walkers and runners along the shore move faster than the endless barges churning white water as they move against the current. The barges are pushed by either towboats or tugboats, identified by either the flat or V-shape of their hulls. Some covered barges traveling upstream ride high on the water. They must be empty but are still straining to travel upstream to be filled more inland on the banks of this mighty river. They move slightly faster than the full barges.

I wonder where their destination is. St. Louis? What are the filled barges carrying?

I hope to remember these barges slowly being pushed upstream against the current. I enjoy leading my life more easily, moving downstream, going with the flow, and not making waves.

Sometimes, however, I am called to go against the crowd and navigate upstream. It will help if I remember the journey is easier if I travel lightly, not taking myself so seriously, not carrying a lot of my own baggage, and not being on a right or wrong conquest.

The barges teach us that the journey upstream always moves slower than journeying downstream. Moving upstream means speaking our truth against the current culture. I pray that the boat pushing us upstream is the Holy Spirit, not our own ego. Grinnell also reminds us that a heart of gratitude can help discern our path and motives and keep us connected to that greater power, leading us on this more difficult journey.

I will be in Memphis at Saint Mary’s Cathedral Bookstore on Saturday, February 3 at 10 am. I would love to see you there.

Mary Seni sent me a picture of a barge on the Mississippi at Natchez

Joanna   https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Merton: Epiphany

Merton: Epiphany

 “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.” — Thomas Merton

Merton Marker in Louisville

This is the first line of Thomas Merton’s famous mystical revelation and epiphany in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, described in his 1968 journal about the world of the 1960s. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. pp. 140-142.

Merton had been a Trappist monk for seventeen years and was on an errand for the monastery in the middle of an ordinary day on March 18th, 1958. The story became so famous that Louisville erected a plaque at the site in 2008 at the 50th anniversary of Merton’s revelation. Ordinary people and popes continue to visit the corner of Fourth and Walnut, which was life-changing for Merton and those who read his works. 

 Merton’s experience seems similar to what James Finley describes in Christian Meditation: Experiencing God’s Presence as “having a finger in the pulse of Christ, realizing oneness with God in life itself.”

 This experience may also be similar to what St. Francis realized in nature when he called the sun his brother and the moon his sister. Richard Rohr calls it finding our True Self, “our basic and unchangeable identity in God.” 1

Methodists might relate it to John Wesley’s experience at 8:45 pm on May 24th, 1738, at a Society meeting in Aldersgate Street when someone read from Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to Romans, and Wesley says, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” 2

Many readers may be going to Louisville this summer. We hope you have a chance to go to the corner of Fourth and Walnut and let us know what it is like.

1 Richard Rohr in Center for Action and Contemplation,” Richard Rohr Meditation: “Thomas Merton Part II,” October 6th, 2017.

2 John Wesley in Journal of John Wesley (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1903), p. 51.

Joanna       https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Celtic Hospitality in Community

Celtic Spirituality: Celtic sacred life of hospitality in community

         “I sought my God;

    My God I could not see.

    I sought my soul

    My soul eluded me.

    I sought my brother

    And I found all three.”

In the Celtic hospitality tradition, God is present not only in Nature, but also in our neighbor, ourselves, and especially in the stranger. This is a sacredness in relationships. I am told there is no word in the Irish language for private property. Faith is lived in a community with a combination of periodic seclusion and community and mission. Anamchara or soul friends or spiritual friends or spiritual directors are essential relationships. Women are regarded as equals, and communities are not hierarchical. Monasteries rather than parishes are the basis of the church. The Celts value education, art, and music.

We traveled to Iona off the western coast of Scotland twice and would return in a heartbeat. You don’t simply stumble on Iona, however. You really do have to want to go there by ferry, down a one-lane winding road, and finally walking over on a ferry onto the small, three-mile-long island in the Inner Hebrides where Columba brought Celtic Christianity to England in 563. Here, the breathtakingly illuminated manuscripts of The Book of Kells are believed to have begun to be written at the end of the 8th century. Iona is considered an exceptionally “thin” space where the membrane between the spiritual and the secular is extremely thin. This was our experience as well. You walk a lot, eat good food, worship outdoors and in the ancient abbey and a decaying nunnery, listen to the wind and waves, study high crosses, wear warm clothing, and watch the sea change the color of the abundant million-year-old rocks by the shoreline.

I often meet with spiritual friends who describe Celtic Spirituality when they have no name for it. This seems a sign of the universality of this type of spirituality. The sacred presence of God in each of us is a start.

Again, further reading might include Philip Newell’s Celtic Benediction, and John Miriam Jones, With an Eagle’s Eye, Esther de Waal”s Celtic Way of Prayer, John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara.

Joanna    https://www.joannaseibert.com/