Feast Day of the Annunciation

Feast Day of the Annunciation

john collier

“Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. Then the angel departed from her.” Luke 1:26-38

       We are nearing the end of Lent, with Holy Week approaching, but yesterday, March 25, we took a short break to celebrate the feast of the Annunciation to Mary, when she became a God-bearer. We hear the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary, "Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you!" 

What is it like to see an angel? Would we, too, be confused, like Mary? Do we see angels but not recognize them? What does Gabriel look like? 

Imagine an angel appearing to us as we sit here reading this message. Can we tell if it’s a man or a woman? Are they dressed in white, blue, or pink? Do they have wings? Do they bring us a flower? Is the voice loud or soft? Is there music? Imagine being called by God's messenger, told that we are the favored ones, and that God is with us.                                            

"Greetings, Edie, Sam, Sally, Henry, Michael, Amanda, Linda, Mark, Vickie,  favored one, the Lord is with you! God has called you to a special mission. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Nothing will be impossible with God. A new life will be born within you."

fra angelico. florence

All of creation holds its breath, waiting for our answer. What is our response? I am too old, too young for a new life. I am a man. I cannot have something born within me. The age of miracles is over. How can something new be born in me? The space inside me is not a pure and holy place for the birth of the sacred.

Gabriel's message is alive and meant for each of us this Lent, not just for the historical Mary from so many years ago. It is for you and me.  

The angel Gabriel appears to each of us individually, asking whether we will accept God being born within us through the Holy Spirit. We each have that chance, daily, hourly, and especially during this Lenten season. The miracle is still happening. The gift is offered this afternoon. We only need to be open to receive it. We are all favored by our Lord, just as Mary was. He is with us as he was with Mary. We are given the same opportunity for new birth within us that she was.

My prayer for this Lent and the upcoming Holy Week is that each of us will answer the call like Mary does, saying, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." May these words be on our lips and in our hearts daily, as God sends his messenger to reveal his presence within each of us. May we also stay attentive to the voice of another angel at the empty tomb, who will soon announce that Christ, this new life within us, has now risen from the dead.

 The birth announcement has been made and heard.

Feel a new birth kicking within us.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Wounded Healers

 Wounded Healer

“To be a conscious person in this world, to be aware of all the suffering and the beauty, means to have your heart broken over and over again.”—Sharon Salzberg, InwardOutward.org, “Daily Quote,” May 31, 2018.

Sharon Salzberg is an author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices. Those in Christian and psychological traditions will recognize this Buddhist belief as the Christian and Jungian teaching of the wounded healer.

The best healers are those who have experienced and understand the most about suffering. We see this daily in our small group grief recovery group, Walking the Mourner’s Path. Three or four of us serve as facilitators, holding the group together. The real healers are the group members who try to live through the death of a loved one and begin to empathize with what others in the group are feeling.

The same is true for those in 12-step recovery groups.

When we talk with spiritual friends who are suffering, we listen and listen and listen. At some point, they will mention someone else who is suffering and who helped or reached out to them. This is our subtle cue to tell them that perhaps, at some future time, they can do the same for someone else. It echoes the old Native American message of having walked in someone else’s moccasins, which gives us compassion for that person when we have a hint of what their life is like.

Christianity teaches us that we, like Thomas, are healed by the scars of the wounds of Christ.

caravaggio

Sometimes, the only resurrection we see in tremendous suffering is developing an awareness of what it is like for others who are also in distress.

We have a choice: bitterness over suffering or an understanding rooted in compassion for others who also struggle.

I see wounded healers as the pearls that oysters form from irritants in their shells. Sometimes, these are “pearls of great price.”

Five disciplines convey this same message about the wounded healer. I believe there are also other traditions sharing this message.

For me, when several disciplines intersect, it signals truth.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

View from Our Windows

Windows

“A Window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.”—Saul Leiter, artist and photographer.

 “View From My Window” is a social media group that calls me out of bed each morning, as I long to refocus my life from more than the world outside my window. Stunning photography from around the globe enlarges my connection to universal beauty from Europe, Africa, South America, Australia, Canada, and other parts of North America.

 Flowers of every possible species, forests, elephants, bobcats, oceans, tidal pools, mountain ranges, snow in Austin, Texas, and northern lights in Iceland and Alaska wake me daily to beauty beyond my normal vision.

Being in or seeing nature is one of my best ways to connect to God. Each morning, I take a visual journey into the presence of creation in all its splendor beyond the bounds of my own home to someone else’s view that I will probably never meet.

Each morning, I see a part of the beauty of the outdoors that I would have never seen in my lifetime. Occasionally, I share the view outside my window of woodpeckers and cardinals, Carolina chickadees, and blue jays, who visit the feeder beyond my floor-to-ceiling window, which takes up almost an entire wall in my home office.

Still, my favorite sight is when my granddaughter or grandson visits to wave and say hello with a dog they walk, or when my daughter leaves a colorful “I love you” hand-drawn message drawn with many hearts taped to my window. Another cherished view is my husband braving all kinds of weather to put out birdseed, allowing me to enjoy watching my avian neighbors every morning.

I rarely left my house during the two years of our long pandemic. The view from my window, where I spent most of the day, was my connection to the outside world. I am so fortunate that my view encompasses much of nature, where Parker Palmer tells us that the plants photosynthesize our nervous energy into peace, passing all understanding.

Now, I connect to the views from people’s windows all over the world. Consequently, I can begin my day with a broader worldview.

Jan Mauldin’s view from a vacation home in Utah

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/