be myself

This past weekend has been an eye opener for me. I have felt lost recently like I don’t know who I am anymore. I went to Emmaus for Mass Friday and on to coffee with my old group of friends. I was even blessed with a friend showing up from out of town who also joined us at coffee.

My usual pledge to myself during these events is that I will listen and answer or contribute if asked otherwise I try to keep my opinions out of the fray.
The greetings, introductions and obligatory spilled coffee all happened rather quickly and we settled right in to chat. When the conversation turned to food and health I stuck by my promise to myself. Until for the third time the woman on my right leaned across the table to tell another friend that if she just took some blah blah supplement her life would become wonderful and ordered again. Something in me snapped, I do not know what but I just stood up and said I’ve got to go. I went to the grocery store for some food I had promised to drop off for the weekend retreat at the Church; and by the grace of God wandered back into the coffee shop where my out of town friend sat waiting for me to return because “I was her ride” back over to her car.

How could I have been so selfish, everyone was just annoying me and I really wanted God to just fix this....

Sunday morning as I was reading a SLU commentary on the Sunday readings I suddenly realized I saw pieces of my life in these stories.
Larry Gillick S.J. shares that We pray with a new notion of a God of peace Whose constant labor is for our ongoing creation resulting in peaceful union.
We are bidden also to pray with our eagerness to celebrate the realities of Easter. There is the old Latin phrase, “Hasten, slowly.” We can pray with patience and to linger with these days of waking up to who God says we are in our Baptisms.
We may reflect as well on our need for a Savior, a Jesus to free us. We can pray as well for a deeper sense of the areas of our lives which are not quite living yet.
To pray with Patience? and linger with these days of Waking up to who God Says I am in my Baptism.

I can’t tell you much about the place my soul went upon reading this except it was weightless and tearful.

The story in Chronicles about the exile of the Jews to Babylon for 50 years... enough time for me and my grandchildren to forget who we are...how did they hang on to their identity or maybe it was God who hung on to who they were. Cyrus knew! When he released them he told them to go home...“Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of his people, let him go up, and may his God be with him.”

Then I hear that [I am] his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works
that God has prepared in advance, that [I] should live in them. I should live knowing or willing to be in the good works Christ has prepared for me!

So a tune from Amy Grant runs through my head “God is in Control” and I realize for the 10 millionth time that “yes” he is.

Nicodemus met Jesus in the dark because he was afraid, maybe outwardly because the authorities who would likely have hurt him or his family. The commentary however links it to shame over sin, that Nicodemus was hiding in the dark from Jesus with all the worldly good reasons and Jesus the Son of God debunks it all.

I still do not know who I am, but I do know I can’t solve the worlds problems with fancy nutrition supplements albeit there are a few I cannot do without.

I don’t know how people hang on to who they are when they aren’t who they thought they were. You see I feel sometimes like I am trying to hang on to a previous self, too much maybe. I can’t give everything up and let everyone else's needs and schedule control my life. I still drive out to Emmaus even when it is a hassle to do it. I drive past St Thomas more and ask myself why????? don’t I just cut the strings. But the few times I have been at STM I don’t feel I am called to make that my home, not just yet anyway...

My life in the lake area is still rather rich my friends very true and very much a part of me. My life around my home is all about my family I hardly know anyone else up here. Maybe all I need to do is work on that.

What will God provide.

contemplate creation

Poverty and humility allow us to contemplate the goodness of God in creation because they make us free to see things for what they are, unique, unrepeatable loved-into-being gifts of God.
Compassion,Living in the Spirit of St. Francis Ilia Delio, O.S.F.

Today I made myself honor a project I started back in the fall. I collected and pondered and googled and finally planted this little garden. I may be learning some simple humility from this little garden of succulents. I love to water and dote on my plants and for these I usually care for them too much... and as if in protest to my hovering they rot their roots and run from me. I will try this time to be patiently hands off, and love them into their potential beauty with just my eyes, to contemplate in my heart what the gift is here. How much help can God's great creation need from me?

I am delightfully thankful for this beauty and the beauty all around me. There are more and more sounds of nature as clouds part, the air warms and winter moves into spring. I hear in scripture that the people of God are impatient and thirsty and longing for water and for the fulfillment. They too require that patience that comes from God.

Christ moves from what appears to be a ho hum life as just a man to Jerusalem where he is revealed as the Messiah, the covenant promise the full revelation of God. Let me Lord, have the grace and patience to go the whole way with you to be completed by your love and made who you want me to be.

Watching grass grow

I guess Lent because it parallels the end of Winter and beginning of Spring is supposed to conspire in making one anticipate renewal. Lent comes with ashes and fasts and abstinence designed to help us get down to our root reflections... our deepest desires. The grass in my yard was cut really short and all the clippings were bagged, no shortcuts for spring yard readiness, to allow the warmer, promised sun to reach the roots and encourage it to begin growing again. I guess I am looking for that sun, that bright moment something that feels like a move forward. I feel so stuck, and ungrateful.

I read this today:

In Defense of Discontent

By the grace of God, we cannot quite pull it off. In the quiet moments of the day we sense a nagging within, a discontentment, a hunger for something else. But because we have not solved the riddle of our existence, we assume that something is wrong-not with life, but with us. Everyone else seems to be getting on with things. What's wrong with me?



Gerald May says in the Awakened Heart, We are desire. It is the essence of the human soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it. Desire fuels our search for the life we prize. The same old thing is not enough. It never will be.

So I continue to search out the desire of my heart which is to walk with God and rest with God and watch grass grow with God, if that is what He calls me to do

Breathe out

Sometimes an everyday sight, sound, song or phrase can take my breath away. That split moment when marrow and bone are separated and the truth is poured into me. A glimpse too hard to capture becomes an event ever longed to be repeated.

In our Mass there is a moment when heaven touches earth, almost a spiritual horizon line where truth, beauty and humanity intersect, when the angels silence and wait as each and every person on earth living or dead is allowed to receive and become one with our Lord.

These are sacred moments, too valuable not to be shared and too special to be trampled on. How can I explain what it is I am desperate to share without making it sound ordinary? Isn't it in the ordinary that I am able to not only express but to connect with other people.

From out of the ordinary I have learned to respect and honor many of life's lessons. The first time in the morning when the shower water begins to run too cold at first. Then there it is, an almost imperceptible change in sound when the cold water rushing through the pipes begins to merge with the hot, that's the signal to test the temperature and step into the waters spray. How do I know this? How has my ear become trained to perceive something almost below ordinary, when I fear I can't hear Gods whispers. Is it just an ordinary lesson in repetition? Is it taught in times of total quiet and solitude with nothing else going on.... so ordinary, and yet amazing!

There is an everyday loveliness that comes and then slips away, often where I never notice. To see or experience these moments I not only have to ask God to show them too me, but I must be ready for their impact in my life, ready to implement, to have some effective integration tactics. God will have to be there for me then again, always, as I can not do even the ordinary alone.

find my srength

Already it is the month of March. It is so much warmer and dryer than it should be. I sit here with my tea and my thoughts, thanking God this Friday morning for putting a song on my lips.

I Will Be, I Will Be, I Will Be, Strength for the Journey. God will most certainly have to be my strength because I know there is no other way I can make it.

My husband leaves to get back to boat building next week. I am anxious to hear the status report but not looking forward to having him gone. I enjoy every mundane moment as much as I can here but wonder what the adventure will be like.

I wonder if the astronauts ever felt this way when mission control postponed a launch? When will I go? Will this really happen? All the time knowing that no matter how short or long the journey is it will register changes in ones life perspective the will forever stay.

I saw a You Tube video of a boat launch in Argentina, with the family standing along a roadside leading to the ramp as the launch took place , the BIG SPLASH was what they named it. I was surprised at the emotion I felt while watching the process and listening to the amateurish commentary often being interrupted by questions and instructions.

I have for so long kept my distance, waited prayerfully maybe even secretly hoping this life's dream would run it's course with out any need for salt water, waves or seasickness.

Here I am now anxious and waiting but I am not realy sure why. So much has happened to get me ready, literally I could fill blogs with little stuff, and most of it is examining stuff, trying to weigh out what is necessary for life and what is sufficient. Man nor woman lives by bread alone. Who knows maybe blogging is part of what God sends along to be my strength.