Imagination as a Spiritual Practice: The Light Under the Door

Imagination as a Spiritual Practice: The Light Under the Door

“The light under the door to your mind is your imagination. It is always glowing, always searching for a new idea, always alive and energetic. If you want to enlighten your spiritual life, try the one channel of contact with the Spirit that is the most direct: use your imagination.

The curious, playful, unlimited vision of what you can imagine hints at how the Spirit thinks. It is a point of contact for us because when we open ourselves up to thinking and seeing in new ways, we are stepping into a sacred process. If you want to find the Spirit, open the door.”

—Bishop Steven Charleston Daily Facebook post (3/7/2019).

Bishop Charleston affirms that using our imagination is one pathway to connecting to God. My experience is that my prayers are more meaningful if I imagine each person I pray for sitting near me or holding the hand of Jesus, God, or the Holy Spirit. I am turning each of them over to our loving God, who is guarding and caring for them.

In the forgiveness prayer from Contemplative Outreach, Ltd., we imagine being with someone who has harmed us. First, we sit in a safe place, with God beside us, as we tell the person how they have hurt us, and then we hope we can say words of forgiveness for the harm we may have done to them. This is not a one-time prayer, but a practice we repeat over and over in our sacred space until we reach the place of forgiveness—with God by our side.

In the Ignatian study of Scripture, we imagine ourselves in the scenes of Jesus’ life when he was on earth. We join the crowd following Jesus. We may become the Samaritan woman he meets at noon. We may stand in the crowd at the foot of his cross as he dies. We may be with the women who first discover he has risen.

In dream work, we practice active imagination by conversing with people and images as they present themselves in our dreams. In our imagination, these participants in the dream can tell us who they are and explain to us the parts of ourselves they represent.

Anthony de Mello encourages us to make albums in our imagination of joyful times in our lives. Then, we can return to our album from time to time, especially in troublesome times, to remember what we experienced. De Mello also believes that at the time of a past event, we never appreciated its richness. Therefore, returning to our minds and actually “getting back” into the scene can bring even greater joy, and we may feel greater love than when an event initially happened.

Imagination can be one of our best spiritual practices.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

A War to End All Wars

Remembering “The Great War”

“This is a war to end all wars.”—Woodrow Wilson.

I remember when we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the Great War, the War to End All Wars. The war officially ended in 1918 on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. In 2018, at 11 a.m. on November 11th or Veterans Day in the morning, bells tolled in churches all over the globe. Special programs about the war were held worldwide, most notably in England, Paris, and France, where the world’s diplomats met to commemorate the peace accord that ended the war.

Uncle Hugh a pilot in WWII

Both of my grandfathers served in the war and came home. I never heard Grandfather Johnson speak of his experience. The other, Grandfather Whaley, rarely talked about the war itself, but he did have much to say about his experience in the army. He was born in what is now the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. Going into the armed service was his higher education.

When I was in college, my grandfather wrote to me weekly on his old typewriter, on which several keys often would stick. The lines of type were uneven. Every letter, however, was full of his army experiences and how he related them to my new life in college. He would remind me that book learning was not the most critical part of my new life. He believed the best lessons were found in the people I would meet and the places where I would travel. Almost every sentence ended with etc., etc., etc.

I kept every one of his letters. The girls on my floor in my dorm would gather each week to hear about his wisdom from his life experiences a half-century earlier in the army in World War I—and about his present life in small-town Virginia.

 My recently released book is about the messages in these letters, Letters from my Grandfather.

Did I forget to tell you that my grandfather always enclosed a dollar bill with each letter?

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

The Great stumbling Block

King: The Great Stumbling Block 

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens’ Councilor or Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace of justice; who says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action; who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’”—Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963.

I repeat part of the message from MLK this morning, for this letter from jail still speaks so profoundly to us in another century. We live in a time of paradox that continually shuttles us between “be patient” and “time to act.” How do we know which to do? Part of MLK’s message is that what is a “more convenient season” for one is not so for another. Most of us do not understand what it is like to walk in the shoes of those who have been oppressed for years, even centuries. Yet, I also know that in my life, if I wait for the “most convenient time,” that time will never be, never happen.

When is the most convenient time to get married, have children, tell the truth, visit the sick, go to church, write, read, go on vacation, or retire? I remember what a friend early in my recovery said at a 12-step meeting many years ago: “I am all right as long as I have all my ducks in a row.” Well, my experience is that those ducks never perfectly line up in a row! There is always some inconvenience that will keep our ducks in disarray and prevent us from doing anything we know is the next right thing we feel called to do.

We try to find “the most convenient time” to pray, meditate, and be silent. But, there is always some reason that something else should be done instead, especially marking off the other things on our to-do list for the day.

We are called to “make time” for these things by deciding on priorities. We know this, but doing it is the hard part.

 So, we want to thank MLK today for putting us in our place, reminding us to listen more carefully to the cries of those who have been oppressed, to the parts of ourselves oppressed—and the details of the needy, just like ourselves, who come for spiritual direction, who take a vow to pray and serve. We are called to listen, listen, and reach out to and for those who have been oppressed and those in need, even at the most inconvenient times, and walk beside them in love.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/