Where is our Heart?

Where is our heart?

“The visible and the invisible meet at the crossroads 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)

All this is 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/

Seedtime: Photography as a Spiritual Practice

Seedtime: Photography as a 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.

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. However, I saw one seed, in particular, 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 autumn seeds.

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/

Carver: Gravy

Carver: Gravy

“No other word will do. For that’s what it was.
Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. ‘Don’t weep for me,’
he said to his friends. ‘I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure Gravy. And don’t forget it.’”—Raymond Carver in The New Yorker (9/29/1988), p. 28.

Raymond Carver

It is not unusual for people seeking spiritual direction to come seeking relief from an addiction. They are under the influence of another “spirit” and have “seen through a glass darkly” that the answer may be a spiritual one—a relationship with what those in recovery call “a higher power.”

They may simply come for a brief time. As spiritual friends, we care for their souls, which have been anesthetized and put to sleep by drugs, alcohol, work, shopping, etc. We keep looking to see where God has worked in the person’s life, caring for that soul. We keep praying they will become aware of God’s leading them to a new life of spirituality through those moments.

A recovery theme or principle is that a person caught in addiction must reach some sort of “bottom” before having a moment of clarity, leading to a desire to change. So, we look for that bottom and hope to bring awareness to the person who can learn from that devastating event.

Raymond Carver was a brilliant poet, short story writer—and alcoholic. When he reached his bottom in June 1977, he went into recovery for ten years. This is his famous poem about his last ten years in recovery, written at age fifty before he died of lung cancer. It is also inscribed on his tombstone in Port Angeles, Washington. Sometimes, I share this poem when that moment of clarity comes to someone I am talking with.

Olivia Laing has written an insightful book, The Trip to Echo Spring (Picador, 2013), about the association between creativity and alcohol in the lives of six writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Carver is the only one of these six who found significant recovery.

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