Kairos Time

Kairos Time

“Music helps us ‘keep time’ in the sense of keeping us in touch with time, not just time as an ever-flowing stream that bears all of us away at last, but time also as a stream that every once in a while slows down and becomes transparent enough for us to see down to the streambed the way, at a wedding, say, or watching the sunrise, past, present, and future are so caught up in a single moment that we catch a glimpse of the mystery that, at its deepest place, time is timeless.”—Frederic Buechner in Beyond Words.

Buechner writes that artists who paint work with space, while time is the medium for musicians, as the changing sound of one note follows another in different time intervals. I hear each bird singing outside my window with an identifying rhythm. Even the silent wind makes a variable sound as it moves through nearby trees.

The rain also sounds at regular and irregular beats on our bedroom roof, often like an alarm clock in the early morning. Our grandchildren once loved to lie in our bed and listen to the sound of rain beating on our roof as we watched movies together.

Each day, we awaken to a new gift of time. Buechner goes further to say that the movements of a symphony teach us about the movements of our daily lives, streaming from one sound, one instrument to another, often in repetition. Our favorite musicians and nature’s constant sounds help us keep time for these movements to flow through our lives.

Sometimes, this stream of music in our lives slows down just enough for us to see clearly the bottom of the stream and live in the present moment at sunsets, graduations, births of our children, weddings, funerals, and sacred liturgies. We realize the mystery of how time is timeless. This is living is Kairos time, God’s time, eternity.

I had a similar experience while writing my last book, Letters from My Grandfather, as I responded to letters from my grandfather written fifty and sixty years ago. I experienced an absence of linear time and sensed a timelessness between us. Here, it was not music but writing where time became timeless.  

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

First Steps on a Spiritual Journey

The First Step

“The heroic first step of the journey is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will be supported. The hero’s journey has been compared to a birth; it starts out warm and snug in a safe place; then comes a signal, growing more insistent, that it is time to leave. To stay beyond your time is to putrefy. Without the blood and searing and pain, there is no new life.”—Diane Osbon in A Joseph Campbell Companion (N. Y.: HarperCollins, 1995).

People sometimes seek spiritual direction as they take that first step toward becoming the person God created them to be. It is a fork in the road, and they are always on the road less traveled. Sometimes, the path is so undeveloped or un-cared for that it is overgrown. Someone who has traveled that way before can only see a recognizable path. Therefore, we look for and need spiritual friends along the way.

Sometimes, someone may need to hold our hand just to get us started. At other times, we see the way after just minimal help. Sometimes, we need a companion for a greater distance until we become familiar with the path and adjust to its twists and turns. The journey and the first step is a birth, offering a multitude of opportunities for rebirth. Before hearing our new voice, we can always count on labor pains and a messy experience. Friends and family may have difficulty accepting our change, our new birth, and the unique path we are now on.

Treasuring the journey instead of focusing on a goal can always keep us from wandering off the path.

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 will 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!!!

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Merton and the Spiritual Life

Thomas Merton and the Spiritual Life

“The only trouble is that in the spiritual life, there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God’s will and his grace.”—Thomas Merton in Contemplative Prayers.

Thomas Merton’s concise book, Spiritual Direction and Meditation, is another excellent source for those seeking to learn about spiritual direction and the spiritual life. I often recommend it to spiritual friends before we meet to discuss the spiritual life for the first time. It should also be a frequent reread for those giving spiritual direction. Merton reminds us that spiritual direction is not psychotherapy, and directors should not become amateur therapists. He recommends directors not worry about unconscious drives and emotional problems. They should refer.

Merton’s sections on meditations are classic, straightforward, and practical. For example, he uses the story of the Prodigal Son to serve as a model for reflection, as the son “entered into himself” and meditated on his condition, starving in a distant land far from his father. Merton also suggests that the Incarnation, the birth of God into human form, serves as a focus for another meditation on birth events within our own spiritual life.

Merton emphasizes the importance of holy leisure, believing that meditation should not be treated as work and remembering that it requires time. He reminds us of promising artists ruined by premature success, which drove them to overwork in an attempt to continually renew the image of themselves created in the public mind. On the other hand, wise artists spend more time contemplating their work beforehand than putting paint on canvas; poets who respect their art burn more pages than they publish.

In our interior life, we must allow for intervals of silent transition in our prayer life. Merton reminds us of the words of St. Teresa: “God does not need our works. God has need of our love.” Our prayer life aims to awaken the Holy Spirit within us, so that the Spirit can speak and pray through us. Merton believes that in contemplative prayer, we learn more about God through love than knowledge. Our awakening is brought on not by our actions, but by the work of the Holy Spirit. 

Merton also cautions us about what he calls informal or colloquial “comic book spirituality,” which flourishes in popular religious literature. For example, when Mary becomes Mom and Joseph is Dad, and we “just tell them all about ourselves all day long.” For some, this may be a helpful path to God, but it was not Merton’s path.

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 will 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!!!