Rohr: Forgiveness

Rohr: Forgiveness

heavy burden of resentment

“As long as you can deal with evil by some means other than forgiveness, you will keep projecting, fearing, and attacking it over there, instead of ‘gazing’ on it within and ‘weeping’ over it within yourself and all of us. Forgiveness demands three new simultaneous ‘seeings’: I must see God in the other; I must access God in myself; and I must experience God in a new way that is larger than an ‘Enforcer.’”—Adapted from Richard Rohr’s Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media, 2008), pp. 193-194.

Richard Rohr is teaching us fundamental lessons about forgiveness. It involves seeing the Christ—God in the person we are forgiving, and seeing God or Christ in ourselves. That makes sense. However, Rohr then introduces a third condition. We see that God is not a hall monitor, handing out detention slips, checking a list, looking at our every action, and judging whether our neighbors and we behave correctly.

My experience is that we are called to enlarge our concept of God as a God of love. How do we do this? First, we place ourselves with others who seem to experience God’s love. Second, we observe how they know how to forgive others.

As we see the Christ in others who know love, the God of love, the Christ in us awakens—and slowly, often very slowly, we also begin to see the Christ in those who have harmed us. We may discover that personal tragedies have led them to hurt others. This awareness starts as we pray daily, sometimes hourly, for the person who has harmed us.

We realize we are still carrying around a heavy load of resentment, which makes it so challenging to live and walk on our journey through life. It is like a cancer, slowly destroying the joy in our lives. That person is still hurting us. They are becoming our higher power, our God. More and more, they are all we can think about.

As we pray daily for that person, they may never change, but my experience is that we will.

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

Overcoming Fear

Bishop Charleston on Overcoming Fear with Joy, Humor and Being with Friends and Children

"I have an assignment for you this weekend: don't be afraid. Wait, before you roll your eyes, hear me out. I am not talking about some greeting card spirituality, where you just put on a happy face and pretend nothing bad is happening around you. I am talking about taking some time over the next three days to seriously confront fear in your life and feel its power over you diminish. How?

 Like most spiritual healing, it seems deceptively simple. First, find a quiet moment when you won't be disturbed. Then, sit upright in a comfortable position. Close your eyes, open your hands, and breathe in and out with an awareness of each breath. Sit quietly. Don't pray at this time. Open your heart to the Spirit and experience the presence of a sacred spirit in your life. Abide in it. Let it permeate your whole body, as if you were being bathed in light.

Join me in doing this for ten minutes at least once a day over the next three days. Join me in the fight against fear: become a receiver of light."—Bishop Steven Charleston's Facebook Page.

Bishop Charleston writes often about fear. He remembers how fear loomed over us like a suffocating cloud during the pandemic and now during political unrest. Fear has a smell, an odor, a way of speaking, a walk, a glance, a posture. Fear lies, getting "bottomless" Pinocchio's Factchecks from The Washington Post.

 Fear wakes us up in the night. Fear keeps us from saying our prayers because we do whatever we can to confront and overcome it. We can try to hide it, avoid it, or put it in the closet of our mind and body, but it sneaks through a keyhole when we are not looking.

Fear comes without invitation. It is a bully, pushing its way through the happiness of our days to stand front and center, shouting with an outside voice so we cannot hear the preciousness of our days. Fear also knows how to whisper so softly we do not recognize its presence.

cousins

Charleston gives fear one more attribute I was not aware of. He says fear is a coward that shrinks like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz when water is poured on her when fear hears joy and laughter. Bishop Charleston says, "Laughter is to fear what garlic is to a vampire. It chases away fear by revealing the depth of life, its vibrancy, and the numerous possibilities that make our worst fears seem unlikely. Humor and hope drain worry and anxiety of all their power, leaving them sulking in a corner while joy walks in through the front door."

So, Bishop Charleston tells us to think of the funniest thing we have experienced when fear sneaks in. My experience is that laughter often comes from something humorous that I have read in a story, seen in a movie or television series, or experienced in my own life.

 As I remember playing with my children and grandchildren when they were small, I came upon another answer. Being with children is an automatic laughter-inducing event. We couldn't be with them during the pandemic or after they went away to school, but we could have videos, FaceTime, and even Zoom calls with them. Just the sound of their voice can make a difference. Children make us do funny things, like sitting on the floor, creating silly faces, or speaking an ancient language. If this is not possible, surround yourself with friends who bring laughter to your life or spend time outdoors in the sunshine.

tiger and pooh

Of course, there are so many other ways to deal with fear, but for today, we will try this one until fear is reduced to a manageable level.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Gibran: On Children, The Steady Bow

Gibran: On Children, steady Bow, Smorgasbord

50th wedding anniversary

“Your children are not your children.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

  — Khalil Gibran, “On Children” in The Prophet (1923).

Gibran’s poem may be some of the best advice about relating to our children. Parents are to be the steady or stable “bow.” Our children do not belong to us. They are the most treasured guests we will ever have in our home.

Another piece of wisdom came from a counselor, Phyllis Raney, who led a parenting class at our church. She told us our job was to provide the best smorgasbord of possibilities of experiences for our children to sample. What they choose, however, is up to them. We are to be the best possible providers of opportunities for them to experience, but we cannot control their decisions about what they choose.

We have three children, and as parents, we had busy lives as physicians at a children’s hospital. We wondered how to give quality individual time to each of our children. At the birth of our second child, my mother-in-law, Elizabeth, gave me a book, Promises to Peter (Word Books, 1974), by Charlie Shedd. We read about taking each child out to dinner one night a week in it. We let the child choose the restaurant, within reason. So, one night a week, usually Monday, was “date night” with one of our children. It was a gift to focus on letting that child tell their story without distractions, and to let them know how much we loved them.

We also attended many medical meetings yearly and tried to take one child with us, hoping to spend quality time one-on-one. These trips were one more offering on the smorgasbord.

Our children are older now, with their own children. It is easier to be the steady bow.

The steady bow image has now also become an image of our relationship with God. First, we learned about it as we tried to raise our children. Now, it is teaching us more about how God cares for us. The smorgasbord has become a symbol of the numerous ways God provides for us. We learn more about this One who loves both “the arrows and the stable bow.”

Joanna    https://www.joannaseibert.com/