The First Step

May 22, 2024 joanna seibert

The First Step

“The heroic first step of the journey is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will be supported. The hero’s journey has been compared to a birth; it starts out warm and snug in a safe place; then comes a signal, growing more insistent, that it is time to leave. To stay beyond your time is to putrefy. Without the blood and searing and pain, there is no new life.”—Diane Osbon in A Joseph Campbell Companion (N. Y.: HarperCollins, 1995).

People sometimes come for spiritual direction as they take that first step to becoming the person God created them to be. It is a fork in the road, and they are always on the road less traveled. Sometimes, the path is so undeveloped or un-cared for that it is overgrown. Someone who has traveled that way before can only see a recognizable path. Therefore, we look for and need spiritual friends along the way.

Sometimes, someone may need to hold our hand just to get us started. Other times, we see the way after just minimum help. Sometimes, we need a companion for a greater distance until we become familiar with the path and adjust to its twists and turns. The journey and the first step is a birth, offering a multitude of opportunities for rebirth. Before hearing our new voice, we can always count on labor pains and a messy experience. Friends and family may have difficulty accepting our change, our new birth, and the unique path we are now on.

Treasuring the journey instead of focusing on a goal can always keep us from wandering off the path.

Thank you for supporting our camp and conference center, Camp Mitchell, on top of Petit Jean Mountain, by buying this book in the daily series of writings for the liturgical year, A Daily Spiritual Rx for Ordinary Time: Readings from Pentecost to Advent. All proceeds from the books go to Camp Mitchell. If you like this book, could you briefly write a recommendation on its page on Amazon? https://smile.amazon.com/Daily-Spiritual-Ordinary-Time-Pentecost/dp/B08JLTZYGH/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=joanna+seibert+books&qid=1621104335&sr=8-1

More thank-you’s than we can say!!!

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Stories from a Plane Crash

May 21, 2024 joanna seibert

Take up your cross

“Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”—Matthew 16: 21-28.

This was Little Rock’s headline over 20 years ago.

Wednesday, June 2, 1999.

All of Little Rock mourns the crash last night of American Flight 1420 from Dallas at the Little Rock airport. During a severe thunderstorm shortly before midnight Tuesday, the aircraft skids off the end of runway 4R, crashes into a bank of landing lights and a metal tower, and lands in a flood plain of the Arkansas River 15 feet below the runway. The steel poles act as a can opener, peeling back the plane’s thin shell on its left side. Fire engulfs the plane as fuel spills.

The captain and eight passengers have died so far.

Images of the disabled plane speak to the miracle of the 129 survivors, primarily Arkansans. Conversations in this capitol city center around eyewitness accounts from survivors. One of the first and most haunting reports is by Little Rock native Carla Koen at the Children’s Hospital Burn Unit. As she tries to escape from the burning plane through the hole in its side, she is caught on the jagged edges and trapped, hanging by one leg upside down. Other passengers spill out over and on top of her, scrambling to get out. “They poured over me while I was hanging there, but no one stopped to help me,” she cries. “One angry, panicked man even screamed at me as I dangled upside down, “Move and get out of his way so I can get out of the wreckage.” I’ll see his face for the rest of my life,” responds this survivor.

When Carla Koen finally frees her leg and jumps to safety, she soon cares for two young girls alone and terrified in the adjacent hay field in the driving rain and hail. Erin and Cara Ashcraft, 13 and 10, are on the flight to visit their grandparents in Arkansas. “I tried to talk to them about life and how we were alive, and that was the most important thing,” Koen says, adding that the girls also helped her. “They gave me something else to focus on.” She doesn’t allow the lack of consideration of others to help her become a “stumbling block,” a resentment that could keep her from reaching out to others.

“Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

The chances of our ever being in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million. However, our chances are 1 in 10 of being caught in an addictive lifestyle, which often leads to a life that looks like an impending airline disaster, a life controlled by alcohol, work, drugs, or a person. There is no question that addictions become a cross to bear. Those caught in addiction often feel like Carla Koen, hanging by one leg, upside-down, dangling out of a burning airplane.

There is more to this gospel than about cross-bearing and dying. Unfortunately, the disciples missed the message, and we often do as well. “And on the third day, you will be raised.” He is talking about resurrection. Those in 12-step groups know it as recovery, a new life. Resurrection and recovery are written throughout Flight 1420, especially in Carla Koen’s story.

The message to those in addiction is that when we feel as if we are hanging by one leg upside down in a burning disaster, the message of 12-step groups is that we can get out of that burning plane, that old life, and find a completely new life waiting for us. One of the secrets to the new life is that instead of harboring resentment for situations and people in the past, we are called to reach out to serve others in similar situations, just as Carla Koen did. This is also called the Twelfth Step of recovery. This is the significant way healing occurs. This recovery is also called resurrection.

Linda S. Caillouet, “Fleeing survivors trod on entangled woman,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Thursday, June 3, 1999.

Joanna Seibert, “Flight 1420, A community of Survivors and Servants,” The Living Church, July 11, 1999.

Andrea Harter, “Surviving 1420,” A Four-part series, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 23-26, 2000.

Andrea Harter, “Flight 1420 survivors to gather, crash memorial dedication today”, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Tuesday, June 1, 2004.

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

Pentecost Continues

May 20, 2024 joanna seibert

Pentecost Continues

“When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.” —John 20:22.

We are now into the season after Pentecost, remembering and celebrating that the Spirit was given to us on the Day of Pentecost. If you want to see what happened that day when the Spirit moved through a large room of people who did not have a clue what was happening, watch the video of Bishop Michael Curry’s sermon at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on the morning of Pentecost Eve.

Usually, the minister’s words at a wedding are called a homily, a short sermon, but as one of the British commentators puts it, Curry’s message is an actual sermon—and it is all about love. He first reminds us that when two people fall in love, nearly the whole world shows up, as it did that Saturday morning. That is how important love is.

Bishop Curry reminds us that love has the energy of fire, and his enthusiastic, passionate words are indeed comparable to the Pentecost flames running through St. George’s Chapel on that day. It appears as though Bishop Curry is so filled with the Spirit that he has to keep holding on to his lectern to stay in place.

His body language signals that he wants to move out and reach more directly toward the young couple and his congregation. As you watch people’s faces, you can tell they have no idea what to do with him or his barnstorming message. They look mystified, amused, indignant, comical, questioning. Some look down at their program, so others cannot see what they are thinking. Others glance at their neighbors to seek a clue about what is happening. Some almost fall out of their chairs! Some look at Curry as if they are mesmerized.

Perhaps the ones who seem to understand his message best are indeed the royal wedding couple themselves—especially Meghan, who beams a radiant smile with an occasional twinkle through the whole sermon.

Bishop Curry’s presentation and delivery are not given in the British style, but his message of love is true to his Anglican and African roots. He speaks out of his African American tradition, drawing from his ancestors in slavery and out of his training in an Episcopal style that Americans modified from the Anglican form. Curry speaks his truth, which comes from deep inside of him—as all these traditions mesh and kindle tongues of fire from the power of love that flames around the world.

Curry is an excellent role model of what it is like to be filled with the Spirit. With Pentecost fire, we have no choice but to speak the truth. Many people will be clueless about what we are saying, but everyone who receives us will be changed in some way.

Bishop Curry also reminds us that the truth from God should always be about love: loving God, loving ourselves, and loving our neighbor. Period.

I have so enjoyed our journey together through Lent and Easter, and I look forward to our new adventure through the season after Pentecost.

Happy Pentecost.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

More thank-you’s than we can say!!!