Ground Hog Day Again

Reading Again and Groundhog Day

“In a course on contemplative prayer, I assigned just six books:  Origen’s On Prayer, Teresa of Ávila’s Life, the anonymous The Way of a Pilgrim, Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, Howard Thurman’s Disciplines of the Spirit, and Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Prayer. We read these books once, then reread them.”—Stephanie Paulsell, “Faith Matters, Reread it Again, The inexhaustible spiritual practice of rereading,” Christian Century, January 17, 2018, p. 27.

I constantly see more old and new books I want to read. When friends tell me they are rereading a book, I roll my eyes away from them and wonder about the other books they will not have time to read. Stephanie Paulsell, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, tells us to roll our eyes back toward our friends and listen to what they have to teach us. 

Indeed, we all experience studying again the Bible, the most reread book, especially if we try to follow a systematic study of yearly lectionary readings. Nevertheless, we never fail to see things the second, third, or tenth time we have never seen or heard previously, probably because our life experiences and concentration are different.

How could we have missed that word, that meaning, or what that person was doing?

For the last several years, I have been blogging about spiritual direction and reconnecting to authors and books I have read in the past that have been meaningful to me. I am rereading material I underlined a year ago, ten years ago, and sometimes fifty years ago.

As Paulsell suggests, I have become more intimate with the texts and am called to practice some teachings presented more intently, “continuing to see things I have not seen before. For some reason, the authors and their books now more deeply intersect with my life. Rereading and reconnecting with writers leads us to recall truths we had forgotten or overlooked.

We might compare rereading books to Bill Murray’s experience in Ground Hog Day. We eventually receive one more truth after each new attempt to digest a reading with new glasses.

It is also like spending time with a favorite painting. Something new we never saw before illuminates our souls.

The same is true for this blog. Year after year, I often repeat the message. Each year, I learn something new I missed or find another picture that better speaks the truth I am trying to say. My prayer is that this may also be your experience.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 Reading Again and Groundhog Day

“In a course on contemplative prayer, I assigned just six books:  Origen’s On Prayer, Teresa of Ávila’s Life, the anonymous The Way of a Pilgrim, Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, Howard Thurman’s Disciplines of the Spirit, and Thomas

Merton’s Contemplative Prayer. We read these books once, then reread them.”—Stephanie Paulsell, “Faith Matters, Reread it Again, The inexhaustible spiritual practice of rereading,” Christian Century, January 17, 2018, p. 27.

I constantly see more old and new books I want to read. When friends tell me they are rereading a book, I roll my eyes away from them and wonder about the other books they will not have time to read. Stephanie Paulsell, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, tells us to roll our eyes back toward our friends and listen to what they have to teach us. 

Indeed, we all experience studying again the Bible, the most reread book, especially if we try to follow a systematic study of yearly lectionary readings. Nevertheless, we never fail to see things the second, third, or tenth time we have never seen or heard previously, probably because our life experiences and concentration are different.

How could we have missed that word, that meaning, or what that person was doing?

For the last several years, I have been blogging about spiritual direction and reconnecting to authors and books I have read in the past that have been meaningful to me. I am rereading material I underlined a year ago, ten years ago, and sometimes fifty years ago. As Paulsell suggests, I have become more intimate with the texts and am called to practice some teachings presented more intently, “continuing to see things I have not seen before. For some reason, the authors and their books now more deeply intersect with my life. Rereading and reconnecting with writers leads us to recall truths we had forgotten or overlooked.

We might compare rereading books to Bill Murray’s experience in Ground Hog Day. We eventually receive one more truth after each new attempt to digest a reading with new glasses.

It is also like spending time with a favorite painting. Something new we never saw before illuminates our souls.

The same is true for this blog. Year after year, I often repeat the message. Each year, I learn something new I missed or find another picture that better speaks the truth I am trying to say. My prayer is that this may also be your experience.

Greensboro, February 1, 1960: Reaching Out of Ourselves

 Greensboro, February 1, 1960: Reaching out of Ourselves

 “Love is stronger than fear. No matter how many walls fear may build around us, warning us to be afraid of the person standing next to us, urging us to withdraw into deeper and deeper bunkers of conformity, claiming our only strength is in power, love will subvert it, to remind us that beneath the uniforms we all look the same, feel the same, cry and laugh the same.

Love calls us to find a way to listen, learn, and live. Every faith has its share of fanatics, but they are only as influential as we allow them to be. Love is our common ground. Love is the will of the many to overcome the fear of the few.”—Steven Charleston’s Facebook Page.

 February 2020 seems so long ago. It was a time of naivety when most could not believe or imagine this pandemic was coming to our country. How bewildering that we would think we could keep an infection so contagious away from this land. Did we not realize that we are a global society?

  I also remember seeing a Google image that month reminding us that over sixty years ago, on February 1, 1960, four African American students from a local college in Greensboro, North Carolina, began a nonviolent sit-in at “whites only” Woolworths Department Store’s lunch counter. Before long, students from local colleges joined them, including the university I soon attended. The sit-ins spread all over the country.

Finally, in July, Woolworths allowed blacks to eat at their counter after suffering a substantial financial loss to all their stores when the students boycotted them. The Woolworths Store in Greensboro is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

I write about this momentous civil rights movement because it started just before I went to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, considered one of the best public colleges for women. I vaguely remember reading about the sit-in in our local paper, but I was oblivious to the civil rights movement at the time. My only concern was going to college. Is this disturbance going to keep me from going to college?

During that time, I never participated in any movement for the rights of others. The four thousand women at my college only rioted when the drink machines were removed from the dorms on campus, but I did not even participate in that.

This morning, I wonder how aware I am today of the suffering and loss of fundamental rights for others, even in my state, much less the world. I think I am more aware, but this event in my life sixty years ago reminds me how easy it is to be so wrapped up in my world and not see, be aware, or do something about the loss of rights and suffering of others who are different: African Americans, Native Americans, Muslims, Hispanics, immigrants in our country and at our borders.

So, I will keep this in my prayers today and pray for awareness to look outside my life and reach out to the suffering of others in my city, my country, and the world.

God never gives up, calling us out of our tiny world to the world outside of us through the voices of the world’s greatest needs. Even if we did not hear this call when they first reached out to us, voices from the past continue to call us to speak up, stand up, or even sit down for our brothers and sisters.

Merton and Prayer and Love

Merton and Prayer and Love

“If my prayer is centered in myself, if it seeks only an enrichment of my own self, my prayer itself will be my greatest potential distraction..”—Thomas Merton in Thoughts in Solitude.

Thomas Merton reminds us what our prayer life becomes when our prayers center on ourselves, our own desires, needs, and knowledge. Merton calls this kind of life a distraction that keeps us from the truth, a diversion, a disturbance of the mind, a hindrance.

We think we are doing everything right, but in essence, we are back where we started, with our world centered on ourselves rather than God.

We may think God is our co-pilot, but we are the pilot. This is because we have such good ideas.

God is there to ensure that our ideas and prayers are answered.

I think about all the prayers I prayed that went unanswered and learned would have been a disaster, the boyfriends who never gave me the time of day I would have sold my soul for. But, I also well remember the prayers that were answered that became harmful, the jobs I thought I had to have, and the co-workers I just knew would be perfect.

As friends in recovery say, “Our best thinking got us here.”

When we do not say to God, “Your will be done,” his answer may sometimes be, “Your will be done.”

Merton calls us to the prayer life of surrender, turning our prayers, our life, and our wills over to God, “thy will be done.”

This prayer life also calls for acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and most of all, love, knowing that we are loved and, in turn, offering that love to others.

Today, January 31st, is Merton’s birthday. He was born in 1915 in Prades, France, to an American mother and a father from New Zealand, both artists. His mother died when he was five, and his father died ten years later.

We honor Merton on his birthday by remembering and sharing one of the many things he taught us. I hope to do the same for so many others who will share their life with us during this new year.