Our Neighbors

Our Neighbor

“The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self—to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince, or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.”—Barbara Brown Taylor in An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (HarperOne. 2010).

Our older son once took his daughter to high school each day on his way to work, before she started driving. If they had extra time, they would stop at their favorite coffee or smoothie haunt and have a cup of coffee, hot chocolate, or smoothie together. What a treasure it can be to have a few minutes a day with one of your parents, and maybe even share a cup of your favorite comfort drink. They are both introverts, so they may not say much, but each offers the other a presence in this one-on-one experience and a chance to get to know each other better.

I grew up in a small town with fantastic neighbors. Mrs. Rick, a widow with pearl-white hair, lived across the street in a house that seemed huge at the time. One of our neighbors on Second Street had to move away for physical reasons. Mrs. Rick then started walking at 9:00 every morning for seven blocks from Second Street to Ninth Street, up to Riddle’s Drug Store, to meet this neighbor for coffee. Our next-door neighbor, Paul, cut Mrs. Rick’s grass every week.

I have a friend who calls me every morning. Unfortunately, most people are too busy working to contact or talk to one person a day regularly and realize it is a pure gift.

These are the kinds of relationships that work best to “spring” us from ourselves. We don’t have to pretend anymore. Other people can learn who we indeed are if we allow such intimacy. When we are with them, we begin to let down our masks and become the person God created us to be.

I share more pictures of our neighbors across the street.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Feminine Wisdom Of Waiting

 Wisdom During Waiting

“To the disciples who always asked for words of wisdom, the Master said, ‘Wisdom is not expressed in words. It reveals itself in action.’ But when he saw them plunge headlong into activity, he laughed and said, ‘That isn’t action. That’s motion.’”—Anthony de Mello.

Manet. Fainting Couch

There is a Greek myth about Psyche and Eros that best describes women’s growth into consciousness. The story is the basis for She by Robert Johnson and Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis. In order for Psyche to reunite with her lover, Eros, she is given several tasks. At the beginning of each task, Psyche collapses and weeps as she sees the task is insurmountable.

My image is Psyche lying on one of those old-fashioned fainting couches that every woman of means once possessed—with her hand turned palm up on her forehead, her eyes closed, and her head leaning backward on or off the couch. It is the feminine body language of surrender and stillness.

Instead of plowing directly into an arduous task before us, the feminine energy in us waits and rests. In the waiting, answers come that are entirely out of the box. They are genuine answers to prayer. Some would say these solutions are received from the Spirit of God within her. Help comes from places she never imagined. 

This is wisdom: the action of waiting, stillness, especially before we are asked to do something we do not think we can do.

I remember waiting in an outer office before a difficult meeting with other physicians. At first, it upset me that I, this important person, had to wait! But, slowly, I realized the waiting was a gift, wisdom from a mysterious source. It was a time to quiet myself, surrender to the moment, and be still before going into this challenging meeting. When I could do this, I carried with me the feminine energy of staying in relationship with those around me. This made all the difference.

We often find ourselves in a waiting period today. We wait in “waiting rooms.” We are waiting for new vaccinations. We wait for a cure for cancers and forms of dementia. We wait for rain. We wait for rebuilding from tornadoes, hurricanes, and fires. We wait for all our children to be vaccinated and no longer hungry. We wait to spend more time with our children and our grandchildren.

Macrina Wiederkehr1 suggests a way to honor waiting in our lives. She tells us to put “pause” on our to-do list several times.

All this can be seen as a precious time or an anxious time. We have a choice.

1Macrina Wiederkehr in Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day (Sorin Books 2008), p. 20.

The Lost Art of Waiting

Joanna Seibert. Joannaseibert.com

Parker Palmer: On the Brink of Everything

Parker Palmer: On the Brink

“I’ve lost the capacity for multitasking, but I’ve rediscovered the joy of doing one thing at a time. My thinking has slowed a bit, but experience has made it deeper and richer. I’m done with big and complex projects, but more aware of the loveliness of simple things... I like being old because the view from the brink is striking, a full panorama of my life.”—Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity & Getting Older (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. 2018) pp. 1-2. 

joanna at blue mosque

Parker Palmer takes us to the brink of an alternative life. It is a slower life where we observe and become aware of so much we missed in this world while living at a frantic pace: cardinals, dolphins, pelicans, hummingbirds, downy woodpeckers, Carolina Chickadees, the ocean, crocus, daffodils, old friends, the list goes on. Parker Palmer has so many suggestions for our new life. First, we are to consider being a mentor, knowing that we will learn as much or more from the one we mentor. Second, we are to be more observant of the world outside of us and inside our inner world.

Palmer reminds us that “violence happens when we do not know what else to do with our suffering.” We are called to reach out with love to those who suffer and become acquainted with our own suffering and what we can learn from it. Parker Palmer simply asks us to welcome everything that comes into our lives, the good and bad.

Palmer quotes Rumi’s poem, “The Quest House,” reminding us that every part of our life has something to teach us. Palmer talks about how suffering breaks our hearts, but if our hearts are supple instead of brittle, it breaks open and allows more love and a new life to come in. Our heart becomes supple by stretching it, taking in all of life’s little joys and taking in life’s little deaths without an anesthetic.  

Palmer believes faith allows us to live with all the contradictions of life. However, we become faithless when we are so afraid of contradictions that we pretend they are not there.  

We can now become observers of our world because most of the world does not have time to observe and digest. They simply react.

Langley Santorini

He reminds us that as long as we only look for results, our tasks become smaller and smaller.

We are to be seed scatterers. Others may plant, Others water. Others reap.  

Palmer’s experience is that solitude is not being apart from others but being apart from ourselves.  

Palmer reminds us of Benedict’s message of “keeping death daily before our eyes.”

In the meantime, we must reach out and learn from the younger generation, move toward, not away from, what we fear, and spend as much time as possible in the natural world.

Finally, he reminds us of how essential humor is as we age, quoting William James: “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same things moving at different speeds. Humor is common sense dancing.”

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