Mystics' Teaching about God's Presence

 Feeling or Knowing God’s Presence, Mystics

“But the fruit of the Spirit is ‘love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.’ Against such things, there is no law.”—Galatians 5:22-23.

Modern mystics

I recently met with an amazing group of people searching for God in their lives. Several questions were asked: “How do you know you are in relationship with God? How do you know God’s presence? How do you know God is speaking to you?”

I have always been skeptical of people who tell me, “This is what God told me to do.” I do not know the voice of God until after something has happened, never before.

However, I have learned that I may be doing God’s will if I feel the presence of the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

Christian Mystics

We can also learn from the experience of others who were deeply aware of the presence of God. They are called Christian mystics. They could more clearly see God’s love and presence all around them, and within others and themselves.

 Richard Rolle, the 14th-century English mystic, describes being in relationship with God when he feels a physical warmth in his body, is aware of God’s sweetness, and experiences heavenly music as he chants the Psalms. I know music touches our soul, and the sweetness and warmth Rolle feels may be from one of the fruits of the Spirit.

I have heard others say they have a gut feeling of assurance when they think they are doing God’s will. Another common experience of the presence of God occurs when we are in nature, where we feel the presence of something greater than ourselves. Others may learn more about the presence of God when they become ill or lonely or are suffering or dying. Many experience God in prayer.

Orthodox Women Mystics

Experience tells me that people of the feeling (F) type in the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator may be more inclined to develop this relationship experience with the Divine. But I also know that thinking (T) people can experience this presence and assurance through logic and truth in research and reading.

The approaching summer is a good time to read about the mystics and find your favorite one. I hope to spend the summer with Hildegard of Bingen listening to her music.

[See Ursula King, Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies Throughout the Ages (HiddenSpring, 2001).]

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com

Creative Friends for Life

 Creative Friends for Life

“Some say the creative life is in ideas. Some say it is in doing. It seems, in most instances, to be in simply being. It is not virtuosity, although that is very fine in itself. It is the love of something, having so much love for something—whether a person, a word, an image, an idea, the land, or humanity—that all that can be done with the overflow is to create.

It is not a matter of wanting to, not a singular act of will; one solely must.”—Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves.

Suzanne and Laura

Several years ago, my husband and I went on a motor trip of over 2500 miles back to towns and farms where I grew up, reconnecting with my cousins and old childhood friends. On this last visit, I was reunited with women who loved me no matter what I did. I was with friends and family like Liz, Kelly, Janie, Debbie, Laura, Jean, Christine, Betty, Anne, Wanda, and Suzanne, who encouraged me to be the person God created me to be. They still do over sixty years later.

Traveling by car was conducive to long periods of silence, introversion, and thinking of people, especially women, who affected my life. I grew up in a small coastal town in Virginia. There were thirty-three in my high school graduating class. I went to college in North Carolina and eventually studied to become a medical technologist. Then, the summer before my senior year, I worked in that field and realized I had the training and education to become a physician.

However, in my college graduating class of one thousand women, only two others went to medical school. No woman in my family had become a doctor. The only female physician I knew was Dr. Shirley Olsson in my small hometown.

Dr. Olsson

I now realize that Dr. Olsson is someone I most admired and unconsciously wanted to become, the authentic, caring woman and physician she embodied. She modeled in her everyday living how a woman can be a talented doctor and still have a family and a fruitful life.

By chance, I would often run into her at the post office when I was home from medical school. I grieved when I later read she died years later at age 92. I grieve that I never told her how she influenced my life, just as I did not realize at the time how she unconsciously formed and shaped decisions in my life.

I also know now that one of the incredible women I saw on this past trip had advanced dementia and has since died.

What I learned on this trip is to try to be a little more aware of how I can support others to become the person God created them to be, just as Dr. Shirley, Laura, Liz, Janie, Suzanne, and so many others encouraged, sustained, and stood by me.  

We have another reminder to live in the present moment and treasure each person we meet, especially by chance.

The Great Fifty Days of Easter is a time to reflect on the people who influenced our lives, let them know, and thank them. There is still time.

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

Parker Palmer: Trees

Parker Palmer: Trees

“I used to take trees for granted. But these days, I know that sitting in their presence for a while will leave me refreshed and renewed. I wonder if trees photosynthesize the soul as well as sunlight?

But most of all, I’m drawn to trees because of something W. S. Merwin says in this lovely poem—the way they slowly and quietly cycle through the seasons, as though nothing had happened while our individual and collective lives whirl madly around them.”—Parker Palmer’s response to W. S. Merwin’s poem “Elegy for a Walnut Tree” in his weekly column in “On Being with Krista Tippett” (5/3/2017).

trees at the grand hotel with Spanish moss

I want to remember what Parker Palmer tells us about the outdoors, especially trees. Could “trees photosynthesize the soul”? Being outside with trees does do something to my soul. Photosynthesis is a process plants use to convert light energy into chemical energy (sugar from carbon dioxide and water) that is later released to fuel the plants’ activities and releases oxygen as a waste product.” Plants are like transformers, changing one form of energy into another, turning light energy into chemical energy.

Being outside in a forest does transform and quiet my soul. Soon, the busyness of my mind, the committee in my head, and my to-do list no longer manage my mind. I am grounded to the earth. I move out of my mind and into my body. I see a world greater than myself, a power at work beyond my limits.

As I return to the forest, I observe how the trees quietly “cycle through the seasons.” The trees are a permanent icon, reminding us that we are to be the “steady bow,” as the parent Khalil Gibran writes about in The Prophet. We are indeed all parents caring for this earth, which in turn also parents us, cares for us.

My father was a forester who, for so many Saturdays, took people out to plant more trees. Often, we would drive by the pine forest to see how they were growing. This produced synapse changes in my cells, so I always had difficulty seeing a tree cut down.

This poem is significant to me today, since two large trees in my neighbor’s yard just outside my window were uprooted last year. Soon, men with chainsaws took the trees away. I still grieve for the trees’ absence.

It helps to remember that our son and his wife had to cut down a dying tree adjacent to where they were building a house. They honored the tree by using its wood to make a mantel over their fireplace. Our daughter has an advanced degree in forestry and returned to Arkansas after teaching in the Wilderness Institute at the University of Montana. I have hope for the future.

I look forward to hearing about what you have learned from trees and how you honor trees.

Trees were nature’s natural healers for all those who spent more time outside during the past pandemic. 

Joanna. joannaseibert.com