belonging

I'm standing here until you make me move.

Plans are nothing certain
God is everything, forever.
We may lean how we like.

Daring to Walk

Remain faithful to God
He's full of life and loves to share it.
...
More to woods than the forest
more to the forest than trees
more to trees than seeing them
more to seeing than perceiving
...
andare
walk
and He will give from out of Himself
...
poison ivy up to my
widow's peak
but what a beautiful view.
...
Dios da cada día.
Dio dia cadauno giorno.
...

New Beginnings

This photo of Pristina is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Let's have coffee and start over,
I'm only happy with You.

peaches... beautiful fruit!

Say it.... say it!

"There's more to life than music blogs
there's more to life than music blogs
there's more to life than music blogs."

low start high hearts

Hearts poor come over you
and
you overcome poor hearts.

alone together forever

"If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call 'nature' or 'the real world' fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?"
- C.S. Lewis

seek but don't hide

"LEARN TO ENJOY LIFE MORE. Relax, remembering that I am God with you. I crafted you with enormous capacity to know Me and enjoy My Presence. When my people wear sour faces and walk through their lives with resigned rigidity, I am displeased. When you walk through a day with childlike delight, savoring every blessing, you proclaim your trust in Me, your ever-present Shepherd. The more you focus on My Presence with you, the more fully you can enjoy life. Glorify Me through your pleasure in Me. Thus you proclaim my presence to the watching world."

"Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel (which means God with us)." Matthew 1:23

"The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep." John 10:10-11

From Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young

IM

Just as with Roman numerals a smaller number placed before one larger indicates subtraction, so our lives before God...

Mother Theresa, 3

"It was while she was teaching at the Loreto convent school in Calcutta that the second great break in Mother Teresa's life took place; the call within a call, as she puts it. She had occasion to go into some of the very poorest streets of Calcutta - and where are there any poorer - and suddenly realized that she belonged there, not in her Loreto convent with its pleasant garden, eager schoolgirls, congenial colleagues and rewarding work. Again the only impediment to her new vocation was the happiness and happy relationships it required her to relinquish. It might seem strange to regard any religious order as an unduly easeful existence, but that was how Mother Teresa saw it in contrast with the lives of the very poor in Calcutta. She had to wait for some two years to be released from the vows she had already taken in order to be able to go back into the world, there to take even stricter vows of her own devising. Ecclesiastical authority, I should add, is something that she accepts in the same unquestioning way that peasants accept the weather, or sailors storms at sea. It would never occur to her either to venerate or to challenge it. She just waited patiently. When at last her release came, she stepped out with a few rupees in her pocket, made her way to the poorest, wretchedest quarter of the city, found a lodging there, gathered together a few abandoned children- there were plenty to choose from - and began her ministry of love."
- Malcolm Muggeridge, Something Beautiful for God

amen

i am you
you are me
we are His
and we are free
and the wind will blow any which way it chooses.

Peach and peach tea for breakfast
Nice fresh lemon pop-pop-poppyseed scone and Lady Grey tea for evening treat.
Oh God, may my day be more fruitful than these.

Surround Sound Cicadas

slow, the hum;

right,
front,
left,
front,
right,
front,
left,
front,
right,


center
-above-
behind!

(It seems God's sound, whatever it is, carries much more significance than insects' excited vibrations... but through them we realize when we listen,

Plant Slant

Perhaps you've noticed, in potted plants especially, a collective leaning and growth toward the sun. Upon rotating a flower pot such that the leaves face the opposite direction, the leaves will turn again toward the light source (and reasonably so, as they receive the most energy this way.) In turn, this shifting gives strength to their stems, and serves to add overall fortification to the whole plant, as well as to continue growth into its intended characteristics and function.

What can one person do?

The following comes from a February article in Membercare.org's Global Briefings:

There is a cartoon I once saw about a crowd of people, and each one was thinking “but what can one person do?” It illustrated the idea that each of us wonders what difference we could make, but if each one does one thing, it all adds up. If one million people each did something tangible for the survivors of Katrina, those one million random acts of kindness would bless one million, or more, survivors. We would be writing our own versions of the movie “Pay it Forward!” Could it happen? God knows it could. It just takes me, and you, and you over there, and you with that quizzical look on your face, and you over there behind the tree…

Sometimes I wonder whether plants understand the tragedy of their holding onto dead branches. I try to give a strategic, gentle tug. Nothing. A little firmer, then. Still nothing. Then some reasoning: "you know you're hindering your growth, right? That all the water I'm giving you goes through those roots of yours straight through that languishing branch to a dry leaf and to nothing that's going to help you out. Meanwhile that little blossom up and to your left has been waiting for some refreshment. See the brown on it? Please, respectfully; give it up. The deadness here has no potential for producing anything anymore. Up there though -- that little blossom has a chance."
No response.
I had no choice but to be firm this time. To pull, carefully still, but with even more strength. The branch let up, but not without disrupting a surrounding, developing green fruit in the process.
If only you knew the capabilities of your cooperation, little plant.