Blog Archives

Very Grateful~

11/26/2015

This Thanksgiving season it seems that expressing gratitude is the major theme out there in the public world. It ought to be, given the name of the holiday, but this year it is taking hold in a new way, as if it were a new idea. Undoubtedly some of this has to do with the fear brought to consciousness by the terrorism in Paris less than two weeks ago.
I smile, because Mom always knew that gratitude was the foundation of faith. She was on the cutting edge! Every morning she would express gratitude for ‘my health, my family, and for my life.’ She also prayed for peace in the world, and for difficult situations around the world.
So this morning, I suggest you offer the same prayer. Pray for your health, family, your life and for the world. Even it things aren’t perfect, which of course they aren’t, find the good things, and lift them up to God with thanksgiving.

Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier

11/24/2015

Thanksgiving is upon us and as you know, gratitude isfoundational to my life, the gift my mom gave me and so many others. We can be thankful, grateful, however you want to phrase it, in personal prayer, but what about expressing it out in the world? Sharing gratitude changes us, changes others, changes the world.
Arthur C. Brooks, in “Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier” (NYT, November 21, 2015), offers some suggestions, but please, read the entire text.
• Acting happy, regardless of feelings, coaxes one’s brain into processing positive emotions.
• Choosing to focus on good things makes you feel better than focusing on bad things.
• Choosing gratitude can also bring out the best in those around us.
• Move to “exterior gratitude.” Write two short emails each morning to friends, family or colleagues, thanking them for what they do.
• Be grateful for useless things.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/sunday/choose-to-be-grateful-it-will-make-you-happier.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share
Am posting this on my cottagebythesea blog as well.

God loves everyone, yes, everyone~

11/19/2015

Growing up in a loving home and attending a loving UCC church, I’ve always known that God loves me. “God is love” was one of the most repeated phrases I heard at church. I’ve never thought much about God as love because that HUGE theological concept was given to me as a child, has lived in my unconscious and has always been part of my automatic system.
Yesterday at a small gathering at church, for the first time ever, I questioned what that means. The catalyst was a member of the GLBT community who expressed that for his group, knowing and believing that God loves them is life saving. Everywhere else in the world (reinforced by atrocities in Paris and the increased backlash expressed to anyone who goes against an individual’s personal idea of norm) those on the margins are continually demonized, dehumanized and judged by societies pre-ordained, rigid roles. God is their saving grace.
My prayer is twofold: that everyone will know and come to believe that God loves them and that the world will grow in acceptance that “God knows no partiality.”

Meeting Christ in the Jesus Prayer

11/16/2015

From time to time I write about the Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner”), and my continual intention to pray it without ceasing. No surprise I do better when I have time to pay attention to prayer and meditation, than when I’m busy 24/7 out in the world. I’ve always been drawn to the monks who take the vow of silence, solitude, and thus simplicity, and envy how this offers them time to sit in God’s mystery, which is what they have chosen to do. I couldn’t do this, nor do I want to, but I am striving for some place in between, and yes, I get glimpses of the mystery now and them. I believe that the Jesus Pray is one way that we ‘religious’ out in the world can stay in the mystery.
Currently I am reading Meeting Christ in His Mysteries: A Benedictine Vision of the Spiritual Life, by Gregory Collins OSB, a monk of Glenstal Abbey in Ireland. Although a Benedictine, he speaks generously from the perspective of Eastern Orthodoxy, of which the Jesus Prayer is important.
Collins tells me, “There is nothing selfish about such sustained personal prayer (the Jesus Prayer) for it is really a kind of evangelization of the self,” and with that I am encouraged to keep saying it.

Beyond words~

11/13/2015

It has been a week since my last post. So much prayer, so little time to write. I returned from Italy to a weekend celebrating the life of a long time friend who died after a month-long cancer diagnosis.
I am aware that I’m not saying anything new in writing that something so personal brings forth the preciousness, fragility and sanctity of life. The commonness of feelings and how I articulated them, however, doesn’t take away from the profundity of it. When a friend dies, we are conscious that the meaning of these words is beyond any meaning articulated by words. What I know, all I can say is that it is all about God.

An Affair to Remember and more~

11/6/2015

One benefit of a long plane ride is an extended time for prayer. Ten hours from Rome to Philadelphia is plenty long! I spent my time sleeping, writing emails, sleeping, watching a movie, sleeping, clearing out some files on my computer, sleeping. Sleep involved putting on my eye visors and then fading away into though and prayer, with time to pray my prayer list or just be in a holy moment without thought-- my rendition of centering prayer.
Off the topic of prayer, I must share that out of a selection of forty four movies, I chose “An Affair to Remember” staring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. The message of working hard to overcome obstacles was as powerful yesterday as it was way back in 1957. Rich, handsome Cary Grant sacrifices fame and glamour to be an artist; Deborah Kerr is determined to walk again. As the movie ends we have to believe that together they will make this possible.

S. Agnes Outside the Walls

11/4/2015

My last morning in Italy. What better place to visit than the Church of Saint Agnes Outside the Walls, and the adjoining Mausoleum for Costanza, daughter of Constantine I. Because this church was outside the Roman walls, Roman law allowed Christians to bury their dead in catacombs. The church displays Christian artifacts from the earliest times (second century) to the present. What a prayerful place, both at the grotto in the garden as well as inside the church.
The Mausoleum for Constanza was build in the fourth century. On a previous visit I was the only one walking around and around. Today students were sketching. Different forms of prayer.

St. Agnes Outside the Walls

Mausoleum for Costanza

Seeing the Christ in people

11/1/2015

Try this is you want to keep God in your life, if you want to pray without ceasing, if you want to keep in mind that you are not the only person in the world, if you want to remember that God loves everyone.
See the Christ in people, in people you pass on the street, in people in the cars passing you, in people in the coffee shop. I am certain that doing so will make a positive difference in your life; I have faith it will do the same for them.