Connecting in Our Woundedness to Christ the King

Connecting Through Our Woundedness to Christ the King

“The reality is that every human being is broken and vulnerable. How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded!”—M. Scott Peck in The Different Drum (Touchstone, 1998).

Henri Nouwen also tells us that we become less, not more, vulnerable when we share our woundedness. It takes enormous energy to pretend we are “just fine.” We hide who we are, wearing masks and trying to be something we are not. As we take off that mask, we can now employ all that energy simply to be ourselves, to become the person God created us to be. We become more human. In turn, others share their wounds because they recognize us as a safe place—another human being who may have just an inkling of what pain is about.

Letting others know we are human, have pain, and make mistakes is also a path into the divine within ourselves and others. This is the path we are all seeking. A wide, gaping entrance to this path opens through our wounds directly into the Christ, the Holy, and the Spirit within each other.

This is the path from Good Friday to Resurrection. We especially remember Christ’s woundedness and our woundedness, and that connection to Christ the King within us on this Christ the King Sunday on our liturgical calendar. So many images of Christ on this day are of a King on a cross. A King we can always recognize by his wounds. A king who has overcome the cross.

Jake Owensby describes the reign of Christ the King as one of love, forgiveness, and mercy, not a kingdom of punishments and rewards. Christ offers us a love that will not die, that often enters us through our woundedness. That love can only live by overflowing out of us, expanding God’s reign of love on the earth until it is like his reign in heaven.1

1Jake Owensby, “The Peculiar Reign of God,” https://jakeowensby.org/ November 18, 2022.

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

God's Presence

God's Presence

"When, like Elijah, you're surprised by sheer silence, listen to God speaking deep inside. When, like Peter, you're scared by the wind on the sea, look to Jesus right there with you. Finally, when bedtime nears, stop and review how the Spirit caught you by the hand and caught you off guard with love. Hold these close to your heart and go to sleep."—Br. Luke Ditewig, SSJE, from "Brother, Give Us a Word," a daily email sent to friends and followers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE.org).

God promises God is always with us, beside us. Always. All the time. How do we feel that presence? My experience is that when I connect to the God within me, the Christ within me, and when I can see the Christ in my neighbor, I feel God's presence. 

We feel God's presence when we feel the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, and kindness (Galatians 5:22-23). We feel God's presence when we suddenly realize we can do something we did not think we could do.

During troublesome times, God shows up in the presence of someone who loves us just as we are. This epiphany can be in a phone call, an email, a snail mail, or even a text.

It isn't easy to spend any time outdoors in nature, or even to gaze outdoors to observe the birds feeding near our windows without feeling the presence of something greater than ourselves.

Gratitude helps us wear new glasses to recognize God's presence in our lives.

Forgiving ourselves and others keeps us from putting up the barriers that prevent us from seeing God in our lives.

Beauty in art, music, the sacred word, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction writings can open up our eyes, ears, and minds to see God sitting right beside us—on a bench at the National Gallery, Crystal Bridges, or in the center orchestra section of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, or as we curl up in our favorite chair with a favorite book.

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

Leaving the Land of the Numb

Leaving the Land of the Numb

Guest Writer: Don Follis

In my memoir Leaving The Land of Numb—A Journey To Connect My Emotional And Spiritual Lives (Mountain Ash Press, 2023), I tell the story of how, at age 14, my first boss told me I was the only person who ever worked for him that he couldn’t teach how to do the job. To make matters worse, he was a man in our church and friends with my Dad and Mom. Neither of them ever intervened to help me make sense of what happened. For the rest of my growing-up years, I mostly avoided the man.

Years later, following seminary, I spoke at my home church one Sunday. My old boss was there, and he shook my hand afterward. “Congratulations,” he said. “I never thought you could do it.”

I went on to serve 25 years as a campus pastor at the University of Illinois and now have served 46 years in the ministry. One Sunday, as a young campus pastor, I spoke at a rural church an hour from my home. Returning home, I started smiling from ear to ear. It suddenly occurred to me that I had forgiven my first boss. As I drove through the countryside, I thought about my hurt from years ago. I began empathizing with the old fellow, whose life had been hard. He had lost his wife, and my parents told me he was in poor health. He needed my love way more than my derision.

Though I thought I had forgiven him, alone in my car that day, I felt it as never before and said, “I forgive you, old boy, and wish you all the best. May the peace of Jesus be with you.” I told the Lord I wanted to be a man committed to forgiveness for the long term, come what may in my life. 

Over decades of ministry, I have seen how forgiveness challenges seeking revenge and the need for reciprocity. Forgiveness is the one force in the world that invites us to approach people with love, giving us a desire for their well-being. That means giving up our natural inclination to protect ourselves and seeking justice on our terms. As we have received forgiveness from God, we extend the same forgiveness to others, even when it’s difficult or painful.

 Don  Follis

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Don’s memoir, available on Amazon, tells how he learned to feel his emotions, both painful and joyous. His journey took him through a teenage marriage and divorce, rejection by the church because of that divorce, the death of his son, and a new vision of the richness of the emotional life of Jesus.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/