All posts by Johnna

I am a Christian educator and writer.I have worked in churches, denominational offices, and seminaries. I have a PhD in Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, with a focus on Practical Theology and educating in faith. In 2010, my book, "How the Other Half Lives: the challenges facing clergy spouses and partners," was published by Pilgrim Press. I believe that words can build doorways that lead to encounters with God through the Spirit.
gratitude, Meditation, observation

Unexpected Gifts

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Seventeen years ago, I ordered heirloom hollyhocks from Burpee – three red and three yellow. Once the first summer passed, they bloomed faithfully every year. Being an heirloom variety, they reseeded themselves as well. But after the first five years, they didn’t stay the same: along with the red and yellow flowers, cross-pollination created blossoms of varying colors. About five years back, the original red and yellow didn’t return. Reseeding also caused a migration: plants grow halfway up the walkway rather than at the end, and a few have come up in my neighbor’s flower beds.

There’s something wonderful about a world that fosters change and growth in unexpected ways. I haven’t had a hand in the hollyhocks that grace my front walk in any meaningful way – a little weeding, watering, and feeding is all I’ve done. But these plants have been transformed through their own innate capacity. How wonderful is that!

There’s a generosity to nature that’s hard to deny when $19.95 spent seventeen years ago yields such beauty. Constantly growing and changing, constant in reappearance. But if I didn’t know where it all began, I doubt I’d appreciate this ever-transforming botanical miracle…

Education, gratitude, Meditation, observation, Theology

Orienting

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[ Photo by Jared Fredrickson] 

The weeds in the garden were well on their way to taking over the bed, so I spent an hour pulling them away from the tomatoes, chives, snow peas, and sunflowers. When I began, the sun was just peeking over the roof line; when I finished up, it was well on its way to the middle of the sky.

I don’t usually pay much attention to this daily arc through the sky – unless it’s to seek shade or because the sun’s heat is doing its best to turn my skin pink. But today, I began my weeding at the base of the sunflowers. In the hour I spent in the garden, the sunflowers changed their orientation: all of them began facing one direction and turned their faces to another by the time I stopped pulling weeds. The sun had moved, and they changed their orientation to continue facing it, following the life-giving light.

When I water the garden this evening, the sunflowers will be facing in the opposite direction to their morning orientation. It’s why they are called sunflowers, I suppose: though grounded in one particular place, they turn with the sun’s movement. If that isn’t an every day miracle, I don’t know what is.

It struck me that I can do the same thing. I cannot move from the particular time and circumstance that set the parameters of my life’s span, but I can choose my orientation. I can choose to be moved by something life-giving beyond myself. And within this very small, brief, and specific life span I call my own, I can choose to act accordingly.

Lord, keep my eyes and heart open. Only with your help can I look beyond myself and act with compassion for all the life you’ve created. Amen.

 

Meditation, observation

The One Thing

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The Buddha supposedly said, “What is that one thing, which when you possess, you have all other virtues? It is compassion.”

The Book of Joy (pp.251-252)

After the Dalai Lama recounts watching an exhausted mother stay up all night to tend her toddler and baby during a flight, he remarks that he might not have the patience to do that. Douglas Abrams continues by writing: The Dalai Lama’s comment echoed a topic I have discussed with quite a few religious seekers and parents: It probably takes many years of monastic practice to equal the spiritual growth generated by one sleepless night with a sick child. (p.253)

Living a monastic life, rising early and stopping at regular intervals for prayers, interrupts whatever else is being done.  Outside of critical work (tending the sick, recuperating, etc.), no activity is considered important enough to skip the daily cycle of prayers.

In either case, something beyond our own aims and goals sets our parameters. We are asked to be fully present for someone (a child or God) else, and we are relieved of being the center of our own universe. We invest ourselves in someone beyond our limited human life.  When this is done in love and for love, it offers us a joyful life.

Perhaps, with this life, we will stretch our compassion to include those well beyond our own family and faith. At the same time, perhaps we will stretch our compassion to include ourselves.

God, self, neighbor.  Holiness and joy all boil down to these same three things. Thank God.

Meditation, observation, Prayer, Theology

Enough?

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The tradition in my house for birthdays and other special days: the honored person gets the day off from all household chores, and gets to decide what to eat. From appetizers and snacks, through entrees, sides, and dessert, it’s all selected by the honoree  and made by someone else. Something became very obvious when this tradition started, and continues to the present:

If we are grateful for our lives, enough is as good as a feast.

If we are not, no feast will ever be enough.

 

Meditation, observation, Prayer

The Grateful Living

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When my father was nearing the end of his life, he spent a lot of time sitting on his back porch. He watched the birds at the feeder, the squirrels running in the yard, and the heron that would fly low over the river every afternoon. He was sitting there because cancer had invaded his body, and the chemotherapy that held it off for two years had taken his strength.  I was lucky enough to sit with him at times, and blessed to be with him when he fell out of this life into the arms of God.

Why is it that living with gratitude comes so much more easily when life is difficult? Is it because I am forced to see the giftedness of each day against the backdrop of life’s imperfections? I doubt there’s ever been a day in my life that wasn’t amazing in some unique way, but I’m certain that I was blind to the gifts of many of them.  Going forward, I’m going to remember what the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams noted in The Book of Joy;

Gratitude is the recognition of all that holds us in the web of life and all that has made it possible to have the life that we have and the moment that we are experiencing. Thanksgiving is a natural response to life and may be the only way to savor it. (p.242)

Amen.

 [New York: Avery, 2016]

The Deer’s Cry, Rita Connolly; from Shaun Davey’s The Pilgrim, 1994

gratitude, Meditation, observation, Prayer

Forgive, not Forget

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Years back, someone dear to me lost the path of peace and joy, and ended up in the spiritual wilderness of physical exhaustion and emotional darkness. Hurtful things were said and done, and our friendship was damaged. Eventually, after many years, the friendship was repaired and trust came back. But it wasn’t something that came quickly or easily for either of us. It took a lot of work to restore what had been such an easily formed friendship so many years ago.

What kept me in the friendship when it would have been easier to let it go? The certainty that my friend was a good person going through a bad time, not a fundamentally bad person.

Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama both practice forgiveness – releasing self and other from continued harm and hatred. They do not advocate forgetting: actions have consequences, and avoiding or denying them gets us nowhere but in more trouble. I doubt either one would have inspired so many people to live in love and peace had they not learned to forgive, remember, and move forward.

It takes a lot of strength to forgive, but it opens us up to joy again. Isn’t such a life worth the effort? If the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu are able to forgive the many destructive things that have happened in their lives, I’m willing to try to forgive the few in mine. What have I got to lose but suffering?

 

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Pillar Four: Acceptance

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Acceptance: The Only Place Where Change Can Begin

[New York: Avery, 2016, p. 223]

The pandemic continues, with new cases cropping up all over the country. Local and state officials are trying to find the best balance between keeping things closed and getting things reopened.

The protests and demonstrations continue, as does the mistreatment of protestors and the respectful treatment of protestors – it all depends on the place and people involved.

This is reality: pandemic ramifications and the loss of life due to skin tone. I’d rather not be in this place, but my preference is beside the point. If I want things to get better, I have to acknowledge what is before I help change what will be into something kinder and more just. Living in unreality won’t help anyone, but it will allow the wrongs of today to continue.

The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu know a thing or two about harsh realities and working toward a better future for everyone.  First, there must be acceptance:

Acceptance allows us to engage with life on its own terms rather than rail against the fact that life is not as we would wish… [p.225]

Acceptance is the sword that cuts through all of this resistance, allowing us to relax, to see clearly, and to respond appropriately. [p.225]

Lord, keep my eyes, heart, and mind open to your direction. Make me an instrument of your peace.

Black lives matter to you; may they matter as much to me.

Meditation, observation, Theology

Having a Little Fun

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Having worked with many spiritual leaders, I’m tempted to see a sense of humor as a universal index of spiritual development. 

Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy

It’s a wonderful gift, a sense of humor that lifts people up rather than cuts them down. To hold a situation lightly without making light of it requires a certain talent – and a particular way of looking at the world.  Desmond Tutu put it this way:

It’s not about the belittling humor that puts other people down and yourself up. It’s about bringing people onto common ground…the humor that doesn’t demean is an invitation to everyone to join in the laughter.  (p. 220)

I’ve looked for and found this kind of humor in those I count among the spiritually mature. Perhaps I should start looking for spiritual maturity among those with a good sense of humor. Religious affiliation may be unknown or non-existent, but prophets and mystics are bound to show up when and where I least expect them. And laugh at how long it took me to find them.

[Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy; New York: Avery, 2016]

 

 

Biblical Reflection, Meditation, observation

A Disturbed Perspective

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[I’ll move on to humor, the third pillar, in a few days. Today calls for perspective and humility. With heavily armed people patrolling the streets, peaceful protesters willing to risk gathering in large groups in this time of Covid-19, and opportunists taking advantage of it all to rob and destroy, it’s time for a wider, Biblical perspective. ]

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” John 11:49-53, NRSV

Taking a wider view, a longer look, can be a very good thing. It helps us put the troubles of today into a larger context, and it can move us from knee-jerk reacting to measured response. But that’s only if we are willing to see our own shortcomings in the process. Otherwise, taking a wider view is really just seeking wider justification for whatever it is we want to do.

Caiaphas is a good example. He spoke the truth: The love Jesus gave to the world, and the death he received in return, had powerful, holy consequences. But Caiaphas wasn’t really looking at that: he was a practical man, doing his best to maintain some freedom of worship during Roman occupation. Killing Jesus would keep the peace, and keep his world in its current state. The point wasn’t spiritual growth or sacrificial love for the world. He was willing to kill to maintain what he had.

I’m not comparing anyone today to Jesus. But in the willingness of this country to deny or try to explain away the toxic and deadly presence of racism in order to keep things as they are, I see the face of Caiaphas. The question isn’t whether the death of someone can bring about a better world – or it shouldn’t be. The question is whether it’s at someone else’s expense, or my own willing sacrifice. The means do not justify the ends.

There are so many words on this in our holy scriptures, and so many people who have done their best to point out this truth. They even have a special name: prophets. May we listen to them with open hearts and minds – and be willing to speak and act accordingly.

Disturbed, The Sound of Silence, Immortalized, 2015, Reprise Records (original version, Simon and Garfunkel)