Thurman: Love from My Heart

Thurman: Love from My Heart

National Portrait Washington D.C.

“I want to be more loving in my heart! It is often easy to see it with my mind and give assent to the thought of being loving. But I want to be more loving in my heart! So I must ease the tension in my heart that ejects the sharp barb, the stinging word. I want to be more loving in my heart so that, through both unconscious awareness and deliberate intent, I shall be a kind, gracious human being. I want to be more loving in my heart!”—Howard Thurman.

Howard Thurman was an African American Baptist theologian and educator. He spent time in India with Gandhi and considerably influenced Martin Luther King, Jr.’s theology of racial nonviolence in the last century. I read into this quote that Dr. Thurman is praying to connect to love, Christ, and the divine within himself. I also hear he may have difficulty “ejecting the sharp barb.” We can be comforted knowing that this prominent proponent of nonviolence knows it is not a straightforward task. He is praying that when we connect to this love, the divine within, we will love others and “be a kind and gracious human being” consciously and unconsciously.

Dr. Thurman reminds us that when we live in connection with the Holy Spirit, the divine within us, we will know the fruit of the Spirit, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). But how do we get there? This is the calling of every spiritual practice: meditation, prayer, reading, corporate worship, fasting, and so many others, putting ourselves in a position to connect to God within.

Perhaps if Paul were writing today, he might have told his scribe to use the word “nonviolence” as one of the fruit of the Spirit, even though it is already so loudly speaking out in all the other fruit of the Spirit.

Howard Thurman

I pray Dr. Thurman continues to pray for us today, helping us learn to “love from our hearts” in these times when the message of nonviolence is desperately needed.

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

Death and How Relationships Continue

Death and How the Relationships Continue

“We are given each other in trust. I think people are much too wonderful to be alive briefly and gone.”—Marilynne Robinson. 

When I talk with spiritual friends who have experienced the death of a loved one, I remind them that the God of my understanding does not give us an amazingly loving relationship with someone else and then abruptly takes it away. Death is not a period at the end of a sentence but more like a comma. The relationship still goes on.

Our loved ones continue in their relationship with us, but in a way we don’t yet understand. Sometimes, we can feel their presence. We often sense the reality of their prayers. In his book, A Crazy, Holy Grace (Zondervan, 2017), Frederick Buechner writes about using active imagination with those we love who have died. We can converse with them in the silence of our minds, but we often feel their presence, supporting and loving us just as they did when they were alive.

I also remind friends that those we love are now with us at all times—beside us—again, in some form, we do not understand. When they were alive, we were present with them only when we saw them physically. They are now always with us in a closer relationship than we can explain.

I often feel the presence of my younger brother, Jim, my only sibling, who died much too prematurely in 2014, the day after Christmas. I especially always feel the fun, full of mischief, that we can so easily see in his eyes. I keep his notes by my desk. They are full of encouragement that keeps me going on difficult days. His presence is still here in some form, doing the same. We celebrate his life again this week, since he was born on Labor Day, 1944.

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

Enneagram

Enneagram

“In the study of personality, the Enneagram is designed for self-inquiry. By discovering one’s Enneagrammic personality, one comes to know the many layers of self in a personal and particular way. The Enneagram points out how a person’s strengths can become more stable and more dynamic, and how weaknesses can be brought to consciousness and even healed.”—Joseph Howell in Becoming Conscious: The Enneagram’s Forgotten Passageway (Balboa Press, 2012).

We once spent a weekend at an Enneagram conference led by Dr. Howell at Kanuga. This nine-point ancient study of the personality can help us learn about ourselves, our strengths, and the healing of wounds that led to our forming certain personality traits. Understanding the Enneagram can also help us become compassionate with ourselves and others of different personality types.

On the Enneagram, I am a two, the helper, with a strong three wing, the achiever. Another wing, the four, the creative type, can lead me to the source of my fundamental essence or God within. That may explain why I write this daily message about spiritual direction and practices.

At the conference, there were nine tables where people could talk to others who shared one of the nine personality types. I immediately identified with the twos’ table. I heard the music in my mind and body from “Going Home,” the theme from Dvorak’s Largo in his New World Symphony. I was with a group of people who knew me, and I knew them. I could see their woundedness and easily recognize their soul, the God in them.

When someone with some experience with the Enneagram comes to spiritual direction, I try to use this tool to help that person see God, the soul within—for this is what the ancient practice is about.

Rebecca Spooner led an Enneagram Retreat at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, on February 29, 2020, which was so helpful. This was one of the last things we did before the pandemic changed our lives. It seems so long ago. Today, I will review what Rebecca taught us to remember about the outside world and how it affected our inner world.

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