Walking in Someone Else's Shoes

 Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes

“Within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it.

 And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every person and see deep down within what religion calls ‘the image of God,’ you begin to love in spite of. No matter what the person does, you see God’s image there.”—Martin Luther King, Jr., in “Loving Your Enemies,” sermon at Dexter Ave. Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, 1957.

I once worked with another physician, whom I thought was incompetent. I felt her decisions did not make sense and were not helpful. She often talked almost in riddles, trying to look at many sides of a question, while I already thought there was an obvious answer that, beyond question, was right. Moreover, she was amazingly slow to make any changes.

One weekend, I had to cover her job while she was on vacation. Overnight, I realized why she behaved as she did, the magnitude of her responsibility, and the endless number of real and imagined problems presented to her. I walked in her shoes, and it made all the difference.

Placing myself in her shoes led me to see God’s image in her and others, whom I had previously found difficult to understand.

A story also circulates that someone asked Mother Teresa the question, “How do you stand it when you have to serve some truly despicable person?” With a sigh, she replies, “I look deeply into their eyes and say to myself, ‘My Jesus, what an interesting disguise you are wearing today.”’–Deborah Sokolove, Seekers Church, “Weekly Gospel Reflection,” Inward/Outward.com, Church of the Saviour.

This is also how Benedictine Spirituality calls us to see others. It is called radical hospitality. We are to look for the light of Christ in others. Often, if we are having difficulty with others, it is because we are having trouble finding the light of Christ, our God hole in ourselves. We have strayed from our path of staying connected to God in our own lives. We have lost the “light” in our lives that directs us to the light in the lives of others.

Having difficulty with others is always a “stop sign” to try to find the light of Christ within ourselves, and maybe even ask someone else for help. Walking in someone else’s shoes is always a good starting point in seeing others in a new light.

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

May You Live Long Enough

Guest Writer: Isabel Anders: Ricoeur and Anonymous: May You Live Long Enough

“I find myself only by losing myself”—Paul Ricoeur.

“It is always possible to argue against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them and seek an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach.”

—Paul Ricoeur.

My Grandmother Whaley and her sisters in front of her home

May you live long enough …

To be able to laugh at your most embarrassing moments in the past—sportingly owning the temporary title of “dunce”—before passing it on to the next clown in this dance of win-and-lose, hit-and-error called “life.”

To side with your former adversaries, if only for a glancing moment—to accept that in certain past disagreements or outright conflicts that cobble your past: “The other person had a point.”

To realize that even your greatest “triumphs” owe much to outside influences: others’ kind and diligent contribution, the coming together of circumstances, and “sparks” of grace flung from afar that happened to hit you at the moment.

To experience prayer as the automatic breathing of petitions for others’ good—urgently present in your heart before your own needs or requests enter your awareness.

To meet someone whose efforts or example—in any category—put you to “shame,” and feel the joy that such understanding, expertise, or goodness exists in the world apart from your receiving any specific personal gain from it.

To recognize that your “defeats,” by the world’s judgment, were blessed checks and balances in the larger arc of your journey toward maturity and self-acceptance.

To feel genuinely sad for people who seemed unfair and cruel to you for no apparent reason and to lament the conditions that must have made them that way—even when their cruelty caused you genuine pain.

To let go of any idea that we might be able to judge who is worthy or unworthy of anything that comes to them in this life, or in the life to come.

“We look not at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”—2 Corinthians 4:18.

“We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts. …”—Romans 5:3-5.

Isabel Anders

Author of Circle of Days: A Church Year Primer--Years B and C: A Celebration of the Major Themes and Texts of the Church Year

Year A is out as well!

Joanna   https://www.joannaseibert.com/ 

Mary Magdalene Courage

Mary Magdalene Courage

Courage

Robert Lenz ofm iconographer

“The other disciples left, “but Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.” This is where we see Mary Magdalene’s courage. Not the courage to take up a sword, but to stand, to remain in her grief and loss and fear. This is a common, unheroic kind of courage – the vulnerable courage of waiting and trusting when hope seems gone, when we have no other hope than that God will provide.”—Br. Lain Wilson, SSJE

We recently celebrated the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene on July 22. Mary Magdalene weeping at Jesus’ tomb is our icon for a very different kind of courage. It is the courage that stands by, waits, does not run away, and stays still. It is the kind of courage we see in people who are grieving who decide to stay with the grief, not try to anesthetize grief with alcohol or drugs or work, or shopping, or whatever coping mechanism that allows them to escape instead of feel and work through the deep pain.

This is also the courage that comes to those who sit and wait with that friend who is grieving, not trying to say words that bring no comfort. It is that person who can cry with their friend. This is the courage we have when our friends are in trouble, and we stand by them when the world mocks them. We don’t condone their actions, but we stand by them. Often, this is the courage that comes to those who have made mistakes themselves and remember what it was like to have friends who stood by them. I see this in families whose teenagers got into trouble.

I will never forget the image of Dr. Joycelyn Elders standing and walking beside her son, who was in trouble, when she was Surgeon General. I see this also with adults who have made a mistake, whose friends are not afraid to walk with them. This is the courage of the women at the cross and the women who go to the tomb on Easter Sunday. They put themselves in a position for possible ridicule and danger in order to support someone the world judges.

This is courage that does not shout or make a scene. Biblically and traditionally, this has been a characteristic of courage seen in women, but we are increasingly seeing it in men. This is courage that has said its prayers and then stands or sits beside the person in need. This is courage that changes the world by its healing presence.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com