130 Days of Laughing - Listening - Learning and Loving!

130 Days as a Blogger!

I looked back this morning and discovered I have been blogging for 130 days! When I began, it was a way to keep me accountable to a book study during Lent.  I was a wreck, trying to figure out how to begin. I didn't know what I would write about. I was anxious, yet I couldn't shake the sense that it was something I wanted to try.

And I am so glad I did!

In the past 130 Days:

• I have grown more confident in my writing. 
• I have  enjoyed having a place to play with music and images along with my words. 
• Having a place to share, my interest in photography has once again blossomed. 
• I have met some wonderful people and reflected on new thoughts and insights as I have read Joyce Rupp's book The Cup of Our Life and Macrina Wiederkehr, A Tree Full of Angels.
• I have met challenges and have gained the courage to keep stepping into the unknown.

I might have expected these moments of Laughter, Listening, Learning and Loving...what I did not expect:

130 Days of Self-Discovery and
New Relationships

• Receiving and enjoying the gift of help from Jen author of http://jentsfrontporch.blogspot.com/
• Connecting with people, I will most likely never meet in this lifetime!
• My world become much broader and richer as I have begun reading other blogs and sometimes responding to the challenges I discover.  
• The desire to begin journals for each of my grandkids.  I feel for certain, that has come from my own blogging and reading the blogs of others.

Yesterday, not realizing I had been blogging for 129 days, I began looking for a new image to post on my Blog and on Facebook that would say more about me. Up until yesterday I had a cup (The Cup of Our Life) and a tree (A Tree Full of Angels). On my Facebook page I had a picture of a pen and journal. But, yesterday I felt bold enough to post an image that was "ME."

Where is "Sandi" within this image?

1. It is a child, and through my blogging I feel as though I have rediscovered my childlike faith, curiosity, imagination...

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2. She seems as though she is full of joy and praise.

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3. I can't see what is in front of her, just as I can't see what is behind her.  That is another image I want to hold on to.  Arms lifted in joy without knowing what is ahead and not letting what is past shadow today.

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4. Lastly, the tree beside her.  I love nature and I love trees.  For me there is something mysterious and life giving about a tree. Like people, there are differences even within the same variety. I sense a wisdom within a tree that stands rooted from season to season, with its branches lifted toward the source of its life.

If you are reading this, you have helped me to Laugh - Listen - Learn and to Love and I thank you!

One of my favorite songs:

Lord, let it be so...Shine, Jesus Shine! AMEN!

Many Blessings ~ Sandi

Looking Suffering Straight in the Eye

Author - An Interrupted Life
the Diaries and Letters

"It still all comes down to the same thing. Life is beautiful. And I believe in God. And I want to be there right in the thick of what people call 'horror' and still be able to say: Life is beautiful....I don't think I have nerves of steel, far from it, but I can certainly stand up to things. I am not afraid to look suffering straight in the eyes." ~ Etty Hillesum

I had not intended to journal on Macrina's second entry of Etty's, but when I read it, like everything else I've read of Etty's, I stop.

She is on my list of people I want to talk with when I get to heaven! Or I should say, I would so enjoy just sitting down to listen to her share her thoughts without talking.

As if Etty's thoughts weren't enough, Macrina zones right in with her own, hitting me between the eyes.

"I always say that winter is my fourth favorite season. It is not first, to be sure, yet there is something in it that I favor. I need the scourging that it brings. I need its toughness and endurance. I need its hope. I love the way winter stands there saying, 'I dare you not to notice my beauty.' What can I say to a winter tree when I am able to see the shape of its soul because it has finally let go of its protective leaves  What do you say to an empty tree? Standing before an empty tree is like seeing it for the first time. Oh, the things that can be seen when one is empty." (Macrina Wiederkehr, A Tree Full of Angels, p 93)

I read her words and wondered how she knew I had been trying to press all the flowers, the sounds, the warmth of summer into my brain so that I could pull it out when my very very least favorite season barrels down upon me? Still, as much as I hate to admit it, there is a quiet beauty within the winter season...that IF I did not have to venture out into, I might actually enjoy and appreciate!

But what really caught me off guard were the words and the phrases I highlighted in that paragraph.  I have never considered winter as a scourging, yet I often fight depression, fear of falling, more than normal discomfort...an emptiness.  Macrina continues to push me, to challenge me to look deeper:

"Are our lives so very different when we're empty? When we've turned loose our protective coverings, is our beauty any less? In the seasons of life, suffering is my fourth favorite season. I could not place it first, yet like winter, there is something in it that has my favor. It is not easy to be praying about suffering while the sun is rising, but I try not to turn away from what God asks me to gaze upon. My sunrise is someone else's sunset. My cry of joy stands beside someone else's cry of sorry. They are two seasons of the same life." (Ibid)

Joyce Rupp spoke of this in The Cup of Our Life - The Broken Cup.
Love pours out
but the broken cup
cannot receive
.
too pained
too discouraged
too shamed
too brokenhearted
too burned out
too lonely
too discontented
.
Love waits to strengthen
Love waits to nourish
Love waits to be received
Love waits to heal
.
in time
the cup will be mended
in time
the cup will be raised
in time
the cup will receive again
.
in time
in time ~ Joyce Rupp, The Cup of Our Life, p 90


Macrina writes a wonderful tribute to Etty:

"Etty, my sister, there was something about you that was glorious even before you died. That same bit of glory is in each of us, yet we are so reluctant to claim it as our inheritance. You were not afraid to stand in the middle of what people call 'horror' and still proclaim that life is beautiful. I tremble at your proclamation. My eyes fill with tears...This is the spiritual energy that has the power to heal the world. You were not afraid to look suffering straight in the eye, showing another face...a quiet, knowing strength." (Ibid)

http://frixin.deviantart.com/art/Hope-30582324

Macrina continues: "There is something about suffering that is ennobling. I've seen it recreate people. I've seen the mystery of suffering unfold people in a way that is sacramental, giving them the face of Christ. I have watched people suffer and I've wondered. I've wondered what it is that gifts people with the courage to suffer so well. What is it that makes some people able to embrace suffering in such a way that they are lifted up rather than crushed? What is this secret and mysterious energy, this seed planted in the heart of the human race?" (Ibid)

Several weeks ago I journaled about the blessing of optimism and how thankful I am to have a source of that, which enables me to get up and try again...and sometimes again and again.

That which gives me the ability to celebrate the smallest of accomplishments....I mean really small.

Yet, that optimism has been within me, it has been something that has given me hope when doctors shook their heads. It has given me the courage to wipe my own tears, and to give it another try.

My optimism has been self-directed.  Etty demonstrated that sense of optimism, that sense of hope watching helplessly as others suffered and that is something else all together! I know....I have felt angry, frustrated, helpless, sad... as I look around and see the children growing up in the shadow of the church who are hungry, mistreated, not being encouraged to read or to learn... I often feel as though I, and my congregation are putting band-aids on a gaping wound.

CORRECTION! Etty did not watch helplessly!

Etty was actively involved with all those who were suffering and even though she could not stop their suffering, she was a source of Love...a source of God.  Where there was hatred...Etty showed a face of love and a heart of hope. Oh, dear God! Even though I nor the congregation can make EVERYONE around us happy and healthy...WE ARE OFFERING THEM YOUR LOVE! We are a ray of sunshine within the bleakness!

I cannot improve on Macrina's prayer: "O God, help me, like Etty, to be able to stand in the thick of suffering still remembering that life is beautiful. Help me to embrace all of life so that I am ennobled, lifted up and changed into Christ. Give me the courage to look all of life straight in the eye. Give me the courage of the saints." (Ibid) And God, help me to recognize what often seems like nothing...when done with you in our hearts and our hands...it is never nothing!!!  I say, AMEN and AMEN!

Many Blessings ~ Sandi

Tending to the Spark of Life

I feel as if I were the guardian of a precious slice of life with all the responsibility that entails. There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.  ~ Etty Hillesum

Joyce Rupp introduced me to Etty in The Cup of Life, at the time I was struck by her story as I Goggled to learn more.  This morning, again, I was struggling to take the time to sit down, to be still......... And I was reintroduced to Etty.

Kutless

God, Macrina's meditation on Etty's thought struck my heart, yet my heart remains clueless of how to begin. There is not a single song that comes to mind as I sit with my blanks. Still, I will go through the motions, but I need some guidance from you this morning! I need some direction as I go to Youtube...Lord, I need a song to get the blood pumping because coffee just isn't doing the trick. AMEN!


Everything I Need by Kutless

Would you believe, I prayed that prayer, opened Youtube and saw this song, listed as the first choice AND I nearly ignored it! I'm not that familiar with Kutless and I saw other artists I recognized.  I almost clicked on something by Mercy Me...and I stopped.

"Would it be possible that God actually is listening and gave me that song?"

"Nah."

"Can you be sure?"

: ) I moved the cursor back to the first song and clicked on to it...and felt as though I was given a gift.

I love this chapter 7 in A Tree Full of Angels.  I love how Macrina is taking sentences from a book or a single verse of a poem and uses them to discover Truth. Again, she is giving me permission to do the very thing that seems to happen so naturally, yet I often discredit the gift because it didn't come from Scripture of some spiritual teacher.

Using the practice of Lectio Divina, Macrina focuses on one sentence from Etty's diaries and then narrows her focus to just a few words, "...to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze!"

"What a precious responsibility! I had never thought of it quite like that before...But why not? If the spark of life in me is ablaze, that means I am full of enthusiasm, and to be full of enthusiasm means to be possessed with God." (Macrina Wiederkehr, A Tree Full of Angels, p 91)

Reading about Etty's life makes this insight even more soul shattering. Etty was a Jewish woman who lived in the Netherlands during the days of the Holocaust.  However, her writings reach across any boundary religion might impose. She journaled of her questions, her doubts, the things she discovered about human kind... She journaled about God and his presence midst such atrocities. Through her journaling she recognized the importance of "keeping the spark of life inside me ablaze."

Macrina writes: "...convinces me of an amazing inner strength we all possess. Have we ever met our inner strength? Do we know the secret of connecting with it? What do we do with the slice of life that has been entrusted to our care?" 


Yesterday I journaled about recognizing I am on Holy Ground...what ever I am doing, I am on Holy Ground! To recognize that with each footstep I take, I can strive to leave a blessing. (The Cup of Life) but, then this morning...I'm feeling a bit of apathy!

Again, I turned to Goggle Images and searched for an image of Inner Strength. I was surprised by some of the results, but the charcoal drawing of the lion, stopped my fingers.

Looking at this lion I remembered The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and the lion, Aslan. Aslan wasn't visibly present very much, yet the children mention him while they continue to fight battles.

Etty had her battle of hatred, death, fear... and within these battles, she knew she must keep the spark of life inside her ablaze. As I have walked along my garden, along the beautiful field of corn...it is easy to see God.  It is easy to keep that spark of life within me ablaze.  I wonder if I would have had the same fortitude to keep that spark alive in the conditions Etty lived?

Then, as I sit feeling a bit blah this morning, Macrina reminds me that I too live within a battle zone, it is just that the war going on around me are more subtle but just as harmful.

"There is the danger of apathy and complacency, living my life overly satisfied with things as they are. I have an amazing ability, at times to settle for shallow living...There is the danger of blindness, not seeing with my inner eye. How harmful it is for me to see only that which does not threaten me. Yet how often I refuse to look at the very things that would call me out of my frigid safety...the danger of negativism, becoming overly critical of every little fault. It is like being a living no to life's possibilities. All of these dangers eat away at me a little more each day, making the flame that I am a little dimmer." (Wiederkehr, p 92)

Maybe the images I discovered when I searched for inner strength were not that far off.  Just as it takes time and intention and TRAINING to build physical muscles and to keep them strong and firm, it takes time, intention, and TRAINING to develop my inner strength...to keep the spark of life within me ablaze.

The children in Chronicles of Narnia, did not just sit, waiting for Aslan to take care of them.  They were active.

Etty, in the midst of horrors I cannot imagine, did not just sit down and die.  She journaled, she cared for others while asking hard questions of God...and she determined it was up to her to keep the spark of life ablaze.

Kutlass expressed it..."When life is a mountain, you carry me...You are strength in my weakness...You're everything I need..." 


Spiritual Practices are the training weights to build my inner strength...to keep the spark ablaze, so that I know to call out to Jesus...because as I tend to that spark of life within me....I depend upon His strength more rather than my own ego in the "war zone" that surrounds me, that, as Macrina reminds me, is just as harmful as the war that surrounded Etty.

God, forgive me when I feel complacent and even a bit bored. Help me to stick to a regime of practice that builds my inner strength...which is You...it is my CONNECTION with You that is kept ablaze as I read, journal, sit still, pray...Spirit, thank you for the kick in the butt this morning! AMEN.

AMEN!

Many Blessings ~ Sandi

Standing on Holy Ground

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life. ~ William Blake

I couldn't decide what to journal about this morning.  I've too many ideas and thoughts rambling around in my heart. I had decided to simply journal on Macrina's book, that would keep me focused! Imagine my surprise when the first page seemed to be another puzzle piece of my rambling thoughts.

I wonder if God enjoys watching me sort through all the thoughts, questions, images, insights that are a part of my heart's reflections.

Holy Ground video.....

Chapter 7, Macrina writes about a time that a walk took her further than planned:

"...It is just dawn. Standing still for a moment, I see the first rays of sunlight shimmering through a silver maple tree...Suddenly I am uncertain whether those golden arms swaying in the morning sunlight are tree branches or angel wings. Such shining I find overpowering. My wondering heart is filled with joy..."So what do I do? What do I do with this vision that heaven has blessed me with? If I am an adult I keep very quiet about this vision, carefully guarding my reputation.  I tell no one. If I am a child, or if  I have a child's heart, I cannot contain the vision. I shout it from the rooftops. I say, 'Listen, everybody! I saw a tree full of angels shining like stars in the night." (Macrina Wiederkehr, A Tree Full of Angels, p 83)

There have been times I have forgotten I am an adult and cry out in awe, excitement, marvel when something strikes my soul.  It can be nature, or it can be something really dumb (by the world's standards).

William Blake (1757-1827) was a child who was not inhibited by what adults could or could not see.  Story goes that one day, while rambling over the hills of Dulwich he saw a tree full of angels. He ran to his parents to share what he had seen.  His father was about to punish young William for telling lies (notice the era), but his mother, more able to see the depths of things, saved him from his father's blindness.

"It is so like adults not to be able to tell the difference between a vision and a mirage. Artists are those who have visions.There is something of the artist in each of us. Artists have hungry eyes and hungry hearts, and on some days when they are purifying their eyes and hearts for deeper seeing, they choose to have hungry stomachs as well. Fasting empties them so that they can see the truth more clearly." (Wiederkehr, p 84)

Macrina shares that a wonderful example of this is Thornton Wilder's play Our Town. It has been a long time since I have seen this wonderful play.  Thankfully, Macrina refreshes my memory.

"Emily, who has died, wants to come back to the land of the living and relive one day of her life. The stage manager knows the heartache she will experience and is not enthusiastic about her request, but Emily is determined. She chooses her twelfth birthday to return. It is indeed a heartache as she sees how myopic human beings really are, how they simply do not have time to look at one another. At one point she pleads with her mother to look at her for just one moment with undistracted eyes." (Ibid)

Tearfully, Emily asks to return to her grave.  She asks if any human beings ever fully realize life while they live it. The stage manager gives a sad "No," and then as if remembering the redeemers of the human race, he suggests that the poets and saints came closest to tasting the fullness of life.

Macrina writes:

"In this section of my journal that I share with you in this chapter [Chapter 7], I am praying with the saints and the poets. I am feeding on their vision, their questions, and their dreams."I have never been one to limit God to the Scriptures, though the Scriptures have nourished me well. My God is not imprisoned anywhere, not in the Bible nor the tabernacle. Real Presence is everywhere, and those with the hearts of children revel in it. So much that I do not blush to call divine is revealed to me each day. The Word and the Bread! That's all there is. They continue becoming flesh. A crumb at a time." (Wiederkehr, p 84-84)

I am smiling with delight!

A Child's Delight

I have felt a little guilty, not staying focused, by adding pages to my blog and including pictures of things that don't really have anything to do with journaling through a book.  Yet, as I have journaled through The Cup of Life and A Tree Full of Angels, God has been bursting out all around me and I did not know what to do with all those moments of delight.

Once again, I have fallen prey to what I am supposed to do or be.  I have tried to inhibit the delight God has set in my heart by twisting it in a way that is "acceptable."

Many weeks ago I journaled about a woman in my congregation that was undergoing dialysis.  Honestly, I never expected to see her ever smiling her relaxed and happy smile again in this life.  Yesterday, I was blessed with a miracle.  When I went to see her...there was that wonderful smile greeting me as I walked into the room!  And...she is going home today!

When she was very ill and tired of the battle, Pat saw what she thought were angels.  She has described them to me in detail several times.  Yesterday, she was more subdued about this vision, contributing it to her illness, medication... I stopped her and said, "Pat, these angels you saw gave you a sense of hope and a sense of peace. Do not discredit the gift God has given you simply because the rest of us did not see them! Because we did not see them does not mean they were not there!"

She responded by a moment of stillness and then her face literally lit up like the angel light she has described. "Thank you, Sandi!"

My pictures of growing corn, flowers, rocks, Indians, my parents and grandchildren...are all images of God...of angels dancing through moments in my life! Joyce Rupp talked in The Cup of Life about stepping on this earth and leaving a blessing with each footstep.

I have at times wondered how people could not see what was before them when the living God was incarnate...right here on this earth in the form of Jesus!! Yet, I suffer the same blindness, missing the holy that is within my midst, much like the characters of Thornton Wilder's Our Town.

These thoughts give me the courage to share such a moment from a few days ago.  Walking into a local post office an elderly gentleman handed me a DumDum sucker. "Would you like my sucker? I really shouldn't eat it."

I was surprised, but thanked  him, and went in to get the proper postage on my packages.  Once back in my car I looked again at the sucker....


Ummm, I don't think I've ever seen this flavor before....ooooooohhh!

Instead of biting into that blueberry dum dum, I savored every lick, and I felt like a blessed child.  I even put the wrapper in my Gratitude Journal that evening as a reminder of that wonderful moment that I simply sat in pure enjoyment without a care in the world.

Yet, later, I placed a judgement.  "You can't journal about that San, its dumb!"

How different would my life be if I carried the notion with me through out all my day that every place I find myself is holy ground?

Sitting here at my computer, I'm on holy ground.

Walking my dog around the yard, I'm on holy ground.

Doing my stretches or riding my bike to nowhere, I'm on holy ground.

Visiting someone in their home, hospital, nursing home, I'm on holy ground.

Picking green beans in the garden, I'm on holy ground.

Helping to deliver projects or walking along the County 4-H Fair, I'm on holy ground.

The ordinary things of an ordinary day...I'm on holy ground!  With this openness, I wonder what I might discover within the ordinary! Things that the world is too distracted to see?

Hummmm, I might even notice a tree full of angels!

Another version of Holy Ground

"I know there are angels all around...Let us praise Jesus now...we are standing in his presence on holy ground."

Many Blessings ~ Sandi

Discovering God in...

....within this lazy, hazy, day of summer.

I was only going to take out the garbage, but ended up taking an adventure!

See more on my Discovering God in... page.

Journaling Through My Latest Book...

 The woman put down her water jar and hurried back to tell the people.


This morning, I have journaled more about reading scripture through the lens and practice of Lectio Divina. You can read more on the "Journaling Through My Latest Book" page.