Wearing God

Wearing God

“Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.”— Romans 13:14 NIV.

There are over one hundred biblical passages about clothing, and many, like this one, refer to putting God on as if we were wearing God. I recommend Lauren Winner’s book called Wearing God. She reminds us that God made clothing for them even as Adam and Eve left paradise. (Genesis 3:8-15). God clothes us, asks us to clothe others, and when we do, tells us we are clothing God. (Matthew 25).

  What we wear communicates a great deal about who and what we are. We feel and often act differently depending on the clothes we wear. My experience is when I put on my clothes, I often remember an occasion when I last wore them, and I feel differently than before I put them on. I have many clothes I should give away, but I cannot because I look at them and remember a lasting experience I had wearing them. They are like a scrapbook of times when I was with others or alone and knew I was loved and cared for by the God of love.

Many people in Mourner’s Path, our grief recovery group, talk of wearing a piece of clothing of their loved one who has died, often a shirt. The smell, the feel, brings them closer to that person.

 I particularly remember wearing a black shawl one New Year’s Eve when I walked a labyrinth at Christ Church. Suddenly, I felt the love of my deceased grandmothers wrapping around me, keeping me safe, loved, and warm like the shawl around my shoulders.

I also remember the first Sunday after my ordination. I stayed late at St. Margaret’s talking with friends and was late meeting my extended family, still celebrating at a Chinese restaurant for brunch. I was pushing my way through the crowded restaurant to meet my family, and suddenly remembered, “I am now wearing a clerical collar. Perhaps I should not push my way through restaurants anymore!” I slowed down.

Two more clothing verses.

“Put on the whole armor of God, so that you can stand against the devil’s schemes.” (Ephesians 6:11 NIV) I often keep this Ephesian passage with me when I go into a difficult situation.

Another passage from Colossians explains even more the meaning of wearing the armor of God and what we can take to those demanding situations. “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” (Colossians 3:12). This is a quite different coat of armor Paul tells us to wear.

Here is a suggestion. For the next week, as we dress, buttoning our shirts, zipping up our dresses, pulling up our socks, hose, and pants, putting on our shoes, consciously imagine we are putting on God, wearing Christ, especially compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, as Paul suggests. Could that possibly make any difference in how we feel about ourselves/or how we treat others just for that day?

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

 

 

Groundhog Day and Reading Again

Reading Again and Groundhog Day

“In a course on contemplative prayer, I assigned just six books:  Origen’s On Prayer, Teresa of Ávila’s Life, the anonymous The Way of a Pilgrim, Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, Howard Thurman’s Disciplines of the Spirit, and Thomas

Merton’s Contemplative Prayer. We read these books once, and then we read them again.”—Stephanie Paulsell, “Faith Matters, Reread it Again, The inexhaustible spiritual practice of rereading,” Christian Century, January 17, 2018, p. 27.

I constantly see more old and new books I want to read. When friends tell me they are rereading a book, I roll my eyes away from them and wonder about the other books they will not have time to read. Stephanie Paulsell, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, tells us to roll our eyes back toward our friends and listen to what they have to teach us. 

Indeed, we all experience studying again the Bible, the most reread book, especially if we try to follow a systematic study of yearly lectionary readings. Nevertheless, we never fail to see things the second, third, or tenth time we never saw or heard previously, probably because our life experiences and concentration are different.

How could we have missed that word, that meaning, or what that person was doing?

For the last several years, I have been blogging about spiritual direction and reconnecting to authors and books I have read in the past that have been meaningful to me. I am rereading material I underlined a year ago, ten years ago, and sometimes fifty years ago. As Paulsell suggests, I have become more intimate with the texts and am called to practice more intently some teachings presented, “continuing to see things I have not seen before. For some reason, the authors and their books now more deeply intersect with my life. Rereading and reconnecting with writers led us to recall truths we had forgotten or overlooked.

We might compare rereading books to Bill Murray’s experience in Ground Hog Day. We eventually receive one more truth after each new attempt to digest a reading with new glasses.

It is also like spending time with a favorite painting. Something new we never saw before illuminates our souls.

The same is true for this blog. Year after year, I often repeat the message. Each year, I learn something new I missed or find another picture that better speaks the truth I am trying to say. My prayer is that this may also be your experience.

Greensboro Sit-In, Love, and Reaching Out

Greensboro Sit-in and Love and Reaching out of Ourselves

 “Love is stronger than fear. No matter how many walls fear may build around us, warning us to be afraid of the person standing next to us, urging us to withdraw into deeper and deeper bunkers of conformity, claiming our only strength is in power, love will subvert it, to remind us that beneath the uniforms we all look the same, feel the same, cry and laugh the same. Love calls us to find a way to listen, learn, and live. Every faith has its share of fanatics, but they are only as influential as we allow them to be. Love is our common ground. Love is the will of the many to overcome the fear of the few.”—Steven Charleston’s Facebook Page.

 February 2020 seems so long ago. It was a time of naivety, when most could not believe or imagine this pandemic was coming to our country. How bewildering that we would think we could keep an infection so contagious away from this land. Did we not realize that we are a global society?

  I also remember seeing a Google image that month reminding us that sixty-three years ago, on February 1, 1960, four African American students from a local college in Greensboro, North Carolina, began a nonviolent sit-in at “whites only” Woolworths Department Store’s lunch counter. Before long, students from local colleges joined them, including the university I soon attended. The sit-ins spread all over the country. Finally, in July, Woolworths allowed blacks to eat at their counter after suffering a substantial financial loss to all their stores when the students boycotted them. The Woolworths Store in Greensboro is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

I write about this momentous civil rights movement because it started just before I went to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, considered one of the best public colleges for women. I vaguely remember reading about the sit-in in our local paper, but I was oblivious to the civil rights movement at the time. My only concern was going to college. Is this disturbance going to keep me from going to college? During that time, I never participated in any movement for the rights of others. The four thousand women at my college only rioted when the drink machines were removed from the dorms on campus, but I did not even participate in that.

I am embarrassed that today I had to look up the sit-in on Wikipedia. This morning, I wonder how aware I am today of the suffering and loss of fundamental rights for others, even in my state, much less the world. I think I am more aware, but this event in my life sixty years ago reminds me how easy it is to be so wrapped up in my world and not see, be aware, or do something about the loss of rights and suffering of others who are different: African Americans, Native Americans, Muslims, Hispanics, immigrants in our country and at our borders. So, I will keep this in my prayers today and pray for awareness to look outside my life and reach out to the suffering of others in my city, my country, and the world.

Even if we missed opportunities to serve the underserved before the previous pandemic, there is still time. Today, I realize the pandemic was much more severe in their lives than ours. Voices from the past call us to speak up, stand up, or even sit down for our brothers and sisters.