Fox-Walking

June 17, 2025 joanna seibert

Fox-Walking

Guest Writer: Eve Turek

“Come, follow Me…” -Jesus (Mt. 4:19)

I have always defined “Christian” for myself as “Christ-follower.” I think of that phrase literally as well as spiritually.

In the mid-1980s, I became interested in animal tracks. I practiced identifying the tracks I saw in the sand. I tried to imagine how the animal might have moved and where it paused or lengthened its stride based on its footprints. I quickly learned obvious tracks like those of rabbits, mice, and raccoons. I puzzled over bug trails. I marveled at all the different tracks fanning out from a single ghost crab hole.

But my favorite tracks belong to my favorite animal: fox.

Fox tracks have the unusual characteristic of almost always occurring in a straight line. Foxes’ normal gait exhibits a “perfect register” – their back paws land precisely where their front paws do, creating a single line of tracks. Their footprints speak to me of purpose and direction. I have tried to walk in a perfectly straight line. It’s not easy, especially in rough or uneven terrain. “Fox-walking” requires focus, concentration, and balance in the natural world. “Christ-walking” takes all of that in the spirit.

So, what stride, direction, and pace do I strive to follow?

Simple, but not easy. Challenging and demanding both focus and balance, no matter the surrounding terrain of circumstance.

Love is what I strive to follow. The kind of love that says love God with all you are and have. Or use Bible words with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Love. The kind of love that says, love your neighbor as you would love yourself. And then, just so we don’t misunderstand, Love Himself gave us a story about “neighbor” being the least like us, the one we might more naturally despise or feel superior over. Love THAT one.

Love. The kind of love that says, love your enemies. (Really? You have got to be kidding! How does an ordinary person do that?!?) Yes, those parenthetical sentences sum up the arguments I have tried to have with God many times.

Over the decades, I have found an answer: I ask for healing. I ask for a blessing. I ask for forgiveness, restoration, and better choices. I ask to see as God sees, as a loving parent sees, who wants only and always the best for every child.

I don’t, I’m sorry to say, always think in a perfect register. And I don’t always speak or walk in perfect register either. However, I’m grateful to say that I’m very aware when I “step out of line.”

The idea of “fox-walking after Jesus” informs every conversation I have, every decision I make, and all my choices. It will direct my vote in the upcoming election. I will not vote for hatred or division. Or for any candidate who advocates despising others for whatever reason. Are there perfect people, perfect candidates, a perfect nation? No.

But I am determined to fox-walk, as best I can, in the life I have been granted, and for my part, that means trying with focus and balance to walk the walk of being a Christ-follower, not just talk the talk.

Eve Turek

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

Scripture and Literature for Pentecost

June 16, 2025 joanna seibert

Arthur: Scripture and Literature for Pentecost

At the Stillpoint “is a journey of the imagination guided by poets and authors, both classic and contemporary, who have known the things of God but speak in metaphor.”—Sarah Arthur in At the Still Point (Paraclete Press, 2011), p. 7.

At the Still Point, by Sarah Arthur, is a literary compilation of daily and weekly readings and prayers designed for the long green liturgical season between the Day of Pentecost and Advent. Arthur has also published similar guides for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany (Light Upon Light), Lent, Holy Week, and Easter (Between Midnight and Dawn).

In these twenty-nine weeks between the Day of Pentecost and the first Sunday in Advent, Arthur kindles our imagination as she exposes us to brief excerpts or short works of well-known writers and offerings from authors we may not know but should! As we encounter readings in this anthology, Arthur warns us with an alert: “Warning: Powerful Spiritual Moment Ahead!” She suggests we read these passages not as assignments for our English Literature class or for pleasure but as liturgical pieces for worship, especially prayer.

Each week begins with an outline for the next seven days, comprising an opening prayer, Scripture passages, readings from literature, a place for personal prayer and reflection, and a closing prayer. Arthur suggests applying the ancient principles of Lectio divina, or divine reading that many of us have used with Scripture, now applied to selected weekly poetry and fiction writings.

We read the passage, meditate on it, pay attention to a word or phrase that resonates with us, and then rest in God’s presence with what we have experienced. It has been helpful to carry that word or phrase with me during the day or perhaps the entire week. Since this process is now used for literature and poetry rather than Scripture, Arthur has christened it “holy reading” or “Lectio sacra.”

I invite you to journey with Sarah Arthur and me during this “Ordinary Season” with an extraordinary spiritual practice of daily worship and prayer.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Thank you for supporting our camp and conference center, Camp Mitchell, on top of Petit Jean Mountain, by buying this book in the daily series of writings for the liturgical year, A Daily Spiritual Rx for Ordinary Time: Readings from Pentecost to Advent. All proceeds from the sale of the books go to Camp Mitchell. If you enjoy this book, could you please take a moment to write a brief recommendation on its Amazon page? https://smile.amazon.com/Daily-Spiritual-Ordinary-Time-Pentecost/dp/B08JLTZYGH/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=joanna+seibert+books&qid=1621104335&sr=8-1

More thank-you’s than we can say!!!

The Trinity

June 15, 2025 joanna seibert

The Trinity

“Trinitarian theology says that true power is circular or spiral, not so much hierarchical. If the Father does not dominate the Son, and the Son does not dominate the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit does not dominate the Father or the Son, then there’s no domination in God. All divine power is shared power.”—Richard Rohr in The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House), pp. 95-96.

Robert Farrar Capon says when humans try to describe God, we are like a bunch of oysters attempting to describe a ballerina. But we can’t help but try, especially as we strive to understand the doctrine of the Trinity, perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith.

At a summer course at Oxford University, a Greek Orthodox bishop, Timothy Kallistos, introduced us to Andrei Rublev’s 15th-century icon, The Trinity, or The Hospitality of Abraham. It pictures the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Gen. 18:1-8) to announce the coming birth of his Son, Isaac. We have interpreted it as a symbol to help visualize the mystery of the interrelationship in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Each figure is in circular harmony with the other, humbly pointing to each other with mutual love. We miss the mark if we relate only to the Trinity in its separate parts. The Persons are in a community, transparent to each other, indwelling, and in love with each other. They have no secrets from one another, no jealousy, no rivalry. Instead, they teach us how to live in community. Barbara Brown Taylor describes their relationship as the sound of “three hands clapping.”

The doctrine of the Trinity calls us to a radical reorientation in our way of seeing and living in the world. We are what we are in a relationship with. The God of the Trinity is not an I, but a we; not mine, but ours. Our belief in and understanding of the Trinity can definitely make a difference in how we drive our cars, how we fill out our tax returns, how we relate to others of different faiths, colors, and political views; how we stand about war; how we treat the person sitting across the aisle from us, as well as those living across the Interstate and outside our country’s borders.

Richard Rohr’s and Barbara Brown Taylor’s thoughts are excellent to meditate on when we have a conflict with another person, particularly when the Christ within us is having difficulty seeing the Christ in that person.

[See Barbara Brown Taylor, “Three Hands Clapping” in Home By Another Way (Cowley), pp. 151-154.]

More thank-you’s than we can say!!!

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/