Month: December 2023

Posted on in Aging, Book quotes, Faith, Journal, Just do it, Listen, Music, Prayer, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Thanks, Worship

As One Year Ends and Another Begins

How do you worship God? Brandon Lake wrote a song with Benjamin William Hastings and Dante Brown entitled Gratitude. Part of it goes,

I’ve got one response
I’ve got just one move
With my arm stretched wide
I will worship You

So I throw up my hands
And praise You again and again
‘Cause all that I have is a hallelujah
Hallelujah
And I know it’s not much
But I’ve nothing else fit for a King
Except for a heart singing hallelujah
Hallelujah

Gratitude

When I awoke on the morning of December 27th in my heart I heard, “So I throw up my hands and praise You again and again.” As you might know by now if you follow this blog, the Holy Spirit often draws me and speaks to me through Christian music both contemporary and a century old. As I pondered how to complete this counting of days that we call a calendar year I realized the truth that our concept of time just folds and unfolds itself regardless of these numbers and monthly pages. So I will finish this year and begin the next praising the only One Who is going on forever.

When our son, Jeff, was little he did not always like to attend Sunday School. One week he did the Sunday School lesson as they requested, pasting arms on a cartoon child who was to be praying. The activity showed a paper child and the children were given arms that attached at the elbow. The teacher explained to me, “Oh he tried and it was so cute!” Jeff pasted the arms raised in praise instead of hands folded. There are many references in the Word about lifting our hands to God. Some say this is the highest form of prayer. Certainly a sign of surrender to the Almighty. I thought Jeff got the lesson perfectly!

Writing in Always We Begin Again John McQuiston II says

The adoption of an attitude of thankfulness to the sublime mystery that brought us into being and preserves us is at once means and end. It’s worth is beyond measure.

Remember that we are always in the presence of the sacred, but that the sacred nature of life is only apparent to these who are open to it. We are a part of the infinite which is in this moment expressing itself through us and in every facet of daily life.

Always We Begin Again

McQuiston calls this tiny booklet a paraphrase of the Benedictine Way of Living, the Benedictine rule. I did not live by the Benedictine Rule of Life, but I do return to this booklet repeatedly to regain focus on the most important.

How do you intend to spend your life in 2024? Obviously, we first have to learn to write the new number for the year! Beyond the mundane do you have a plan? Might you plan to renew your relationship with “the sublime mystery that preserves us”?

I am not one to make resolutions, but I do pursue the Living God who calls me. I pray you will be listening to the same still, small voice in your soul and follow unabashedly! I will not be posting the remainder of the week. Blessings to each of you. Thank you for taking the time to read what I write. I hope the Holy One touches you through something I write about. May you be blessed with an increased awareness of the Holy Presence.

Posted on in Faith

Celebrate Jesus

Our friend Dan Cooksey reminded us of this song in his blog. We first heard it when he played the Christmas special by Andrew Peterson while we visited the Cookseys last December.

You can listen o the entire album on YouTube.

From My Here Am I collection, I hope this will find you well prepared for His Advent.

Here am I, stuff of earth
But by the Spirit’s power rebirth
has brought me receptivity.
Fill me with Yourself.


Molded by Your Holy Hand
I wait before You
Cupped and ready,
cleansed, atoned
waiting for Your radiant touch
Virtue compelled to enfold Your own
the vessel of Your making.


Here am I, stuff of earth
yielded for Messiah’s birth
be it unto me, O Lord,
as in Your word and will.


The Great I AM
dwells in my heart
there to impart the power
courage and propulsion
His dream to be fulfilled

Posted on in Faith, Humor, Illness and Health, medical treatment, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Thanks

“Suffering Succotash”

Certainly you have heard Sylvester say it like the clip below.

My mom’s succotash was baby lima beans and corn.

If you look up the meaning most sites say it is a minced oath. A what? Minced oath for suffering savior?

In the mid-1800s, during the Victorian era, there was a rejection of all profanity and so the common people developed a wide variety of malapropisms to avoid swearing on Holy names. Soon, one could hear Cripes and Crikey replace “Christ” and Dangnabit replace “G*d damn it” and Cheese ‘n’ Rice replace “Jesus Christ.” The phrase Suffering Succotash replaced “Suffering Savior.”

Today the latter phrase is known only as an expression of annoyance and surprise by animated cartoon characters such as Sylvester the Cat and Daffy Duck. Was the expression still in vogue when the Looney Tunes cartoons were made, or did the cartoons resurrect an expression that had already lapsed from the American lexicon?

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/217793/suffering-succotas

Did they really mean Sylvester was using that in terms of the Suffering Savior I love? I certainly hope NOT!

Suffering well after the manor of those with chronic illness. Me and some friends understand chronic suffering. If you do not have a chronic illness, you probably do not understand what others go through. Yes, you can be empathetic, but understanding usually only comes with the actual experience. I told one friend when she received a chronic diagnosis that we are fortunate if there are 3 or 4 people we can talk to about the details, people we can trust. No cliches, no quick fix Scriptures, no blunt judgement. I cherish those people.

How to embrace the chronic? Some things I have learned include, I am not going to feel better in the morning. Just go with the flow or stagnation. Whichever occurs is current reality. Suffering is said to be when we try to change the current reality, ‘kicking against the goads.’ An ox goad is a wooden tool, approximately eight feet long, fitted with an iron spike or point at one end, which was used to spur oxen as they pulled a plow or cart. Kick against it like an ox and you are likely to get a wound.

About noon, King Agrippa, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. 14 We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

Acts 26:13-14 NIV

I understand the need to push back against darkness that wants to distract me from writing about Jesus and talking about Him and living for Him. With a chronic illness diagnosis in 1989 Pentecostals and charismatics said I should resist illness. Yet Jesus told me He would be with me in it. Whom should I believe? I go with Jesus. I pray for healing, but I rest in His Presence and care.

He does not make chronic easy. He does not take it away, but He does make it bearable. He does comfort me. Pain is part of life. Chronic illness can bring pain but some believe that suffering is optional. We avoid suffering by acceptance of what is – in contrast to – wishing things were different.

Jesus suffered. His relationships were disappointing. He suffered unbelief from others. He suffered from being bruised, mocked, beaten, crucified. He died exposed on a cross, feeling separated from the Father. He was buried in a cave. He knows what we feel and what we go through. He walks with us through each occasion. He came to inhabit those very times with us. He knows our misery.

Kicking against reality can create misery. Acceptance does not make the reality go away but it can ease our suffering in the midst. Immanuel, God with us, Eternal gift from the Father. When exasperated by yet another symptom or medication requirement I might say, “Sufferin’Succotash!” I never mean it to degrade what my Savior went through. I just get as exasperated as Sylvester trying to catch the Tweety Bird!

Posted on in Book quotes, Challenge, Faith, Just do it, Listen, Worship

John Main

When I was first exploring contemplative prayer and Christian meditation, I was told to read works by John Main, a Benedictine monk and teacher. He was born in 1920 in London, England and died in 1982 in Montreal, Quebec.

I have found his writings inspirational and challenging. In the introduction to his “Essential Writings” he is quoted as saying that his essential teaching could be written on the back of a postage stamp. The intro goes on to state:

Because his is a spiritual teaching, indeed a mystical one, it cannot be adequately described in the way we would explain a philosophy or theology. It asks to be understood at a personal level, where thought and experience, mind and heart, converge.

John Main Essential Writings, Introduction by Laurence Freeman

Why should we care about all this? Perhaps John stated it best himself!

In contemplative prayer we seek to become the person we are called to be, not by thinking of God but by being with God

John Main

In a selection entitled Word and Silence he writes,

It is better to be silent and real that to talk and be unreal, wrote St. Ignatius of Antioch in the first century, and our contemporary situation must surely bear this out. Authority, conviction, personal verification, which are the indispensable qualities of the Christian witness, are not to be found in books, in discussion, or on cassettes {I would add or on podcasts}, but rather in an encounter with ourselves in the silence of our own spirit.

If modern people have lost their experience of spirit, pneuma, or essence, in which their own irreducible and absolute being consists, it is because they have lost their experience of and capacity for silence. There are few statements about spiritual reality that can claim a universal agreement. But this one has received the same formulation in almost all traditions, namely, that it is only in accepting silence that people can come to know their own spirit, and only in abandonment to an infinite depth of silence that they can be revealed to the source of their spirit in which multiplicity and division disappear. Modern people are often threatened by silence, what T. S. Eliot called ‘the growing terror of nothing to think about,” and everyone has to face this fear when they begin to meditate.

First, we must confront with some shame the chaotic din of a mind ravaged by so much exposure to trivia and distraction.

Word and Silence, John Main

I think it is no wonder that if we attend a candlelight service and sing Silent Night we are in awe and amazement. We need more silence and we need the Light of Christ, especially in this season that can so very chaotic. I pray you will allow yourself a period of silence this December. Time just to be with God, to listen, to learn about your heart and His.

As you give yourself as the gift that Jesus asks for this year, I pray you will spend some time in silence with Him. Be with Him. Listen, learn and experience His Presence. His light will illuminate your darkness and show you a bright path into 2024.

Posted on in Aging, Challenge, Faith, Illness and Health, Just do it, medical treatment, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth

Why Get RSV Immunization?

My adult niece, (under 50 years old) has been sick for 2-1/2 weeks. Truly could not get out of bed. She did not have a cold. She had RSV that went to pneumonia.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes infections of the lungs and respiratory tract. It’s so common that most children have been infected with the virus by age 2. Respiratory syncytial (sin-SISH-ul) virus can also infect adults.

In adults and older, healthy children, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) symptoms are mild and typically mimic the common cold. Self-care measures are usually all that’s needed to relieve any discomfort.

RSV can cause severe infection in some people, including babies 12 months and younger (infants), especially premature infants, older adults, people with heart and lung disease, or anyone with a weak immune system (immunocompromised).

Mayo Clinic

RSV is on the rise in Ohio. Modern medicine has provided us with an immunization against this virus. My husband already had his immunization as his lungs are compromised. I did not get mine at the same time due to my immune system being in an uproar with many contributing factors. I got mine last weekend. This disease is viral, so antibiotics do not help if you get the illness.

Again, another respiratory illness we do not need to mess with. If my niece could be so ill she took to her bed for over a week, I do not want to imagine what would happen to us old folks if we should catch it. Please, get your shot!

My niece is on a course of steroids to help her lungs recover.

Please don’t mess around with this.

Posted on in Amazing Creations, Challenge, Faith, Journal, Just do it, Listen, Music, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Thanks, Yield

Light of The World

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1: 1-5 RSV

This time of year as the wintry sky brings less sunlight where we live and the earlier sunset brings on the darkness, this verse comes to mind. As the Advent and Christmas messages ring out, again and again I remember the LIGHT of Christ shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot put it out, has never extinguished it, darkness cannot comprehend the light, darkness did not understand it or overpower it or appropriate it or absorb it [and is unreceptive to it], darkness has not suppressed it … You can read translation after translation and continuously find that the Light conquers the darkness.

For many years we sang this song in our church. I could not help but bow at the waist when we hit certain parts of the song.

So in this season as we celebrate the Light of Christ coming into the world how do you respond? I pray you are taking time to worship and remember Whose Birthday we celebrate. The indwelling Christ can bring you joy in this hectic season. Just slow down, breathe His name, center on His love again.

Posted on in Book quotes, Collection of Quotes, Faith, Just do it, Listen, Memories, Prayer, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Thanks, Worship, Yield

Sunday, December 17

In the Monday zoom group we are reading and discussing Richard Rohr’s book entitled Eager to Love, The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi. Reading Chapter 6, “An Alternative Orthodoxy” I came across this statement by Rohr.

For example, I often change the wording of many of the official orations of the Catholic Mass, after I find myself praying for my or our own salvation 65 percent of the time (Count them yourself.)

Page 90, Eager to Love by R. Rohr

If you have ever attended a liturgical church this might be true of you, also. I know there are things I added to my prayer book when we regularly attended the Episcopal church. I will give you an example.

A portion of The General Thanksgiving

Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks for all your goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all whom you have made. We bless you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.

Morning Prayer 2, Page 101
Christ in you, the hope of glory Colossians 1:27

I prayed this most every morning when I was a Third Order Franciscan. I eventually added:

…but above all for the means of grace, for the hope of glory and for the glory of hope.

Hope can be elusive and I find it glorious when I can grasp it! These are the things I often ponder with my prayers.

How about you? The hope of glory is a wondrous, majestic thing that only the Holy One can pull off for us. What about the glory of hope? Have you found holding on to it difficult in your life, too?

I have a clear blown-glass woman which I just love. Yes, I could live without it, but she reminds me of how I am to live before the Father as stated in the beginning of the Holy Eucharist.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your Holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

BCP, Holy Eucharist: Rite Two, Page 355

Many people think they have to clean themselves up before they come to God. We each know we have fallen short of his calling. What we often fail to realize is that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is sent to show us how to get cleaned up!

Christian society has decided that certain sins are worse than others, though no where in Scripture is one stated as being worse than others. Rohr wrote, “Organized religion has paid much attention to some things that Jesus never once mentioned and rather totally ignored others that he stated with utter clarity.” (God help us all!) “No pope, priest, or parishioner has ever been excommunicated for living too rich a lifestyle, or for being ambitious, greedy or prideful, even though Jesus condemned these things much more directly and openly than for what most (religions) usually excommunicate people.” Just like we sometimes try to clean ourselves up in our own strength, the Holy Spirit can show us the actual root of our unrighteousness and help us cleanse the thoughts of our hearts. “That we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name.”

As some of you know, I collect handmade cotton washcloths for Empower Youth, a ministry to underprivileged children in our county. Each year they hold a “Winterfest” where the kids get various blessings, a gift, a stocking and breakfast. This blog opens with a photo of some of the washcloths. We wrap them around a bar of soap and tie them with leftover yarn. The kids can use them in the bathtub or moms and grandmas can use them in the kitchen sink. Generous volunteers donated 300 this year! Cleansing is the idea.

So this Advent season leading into Christmas I pray you will let the Holy Spirit inspire you to stay open to God and learn how to let him cleanse the thoughts of your hearts that, indeed, “we may perfectly love God and worthily magnify His holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” To God be the glory!

Posted on in Book quotes, Faith, Listen, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Thanks

Inspiration From Amy Carmichael Again

I frequently read dated selections from the writings of Amy Carmichael collected in a little book entitled The Edges of His Ways. I even love the humility in her title. She has experienced just the edges of the ways of Christ.

I have been helped very much by some of the “Evens” that the Revised Version brings to light. You know how sometimes words take life for us. It is as if they were made known to us in an altogether new way, and we are conscious of the Touch of God. I think Proverbs 22:19 R.V. explains that: “I have made them [those words] known to thee this day, even to thee.” So every such experience is a definite act of the Lord, even to me.
Then in chapter 23:15 there is a lovely “Even.” It is all of Him if we are made aware of His Presence and listen when He speaks, and so receive wisdom; but in His extraordinary love He speaks as if it were all our doing: “If thine heart be wise, My heart shall be glad, even Mine.” Is that not an amazing word? Think of such as we being allowed to add to the gladness of God. It is an overwhelming thought.
And then there is the dear “Even mine” of 2 Sam. 22:2 R.V.: “The Lord is my Rock, and my Fortress, and my Deliverer, even mine.” The comfort of that comes again and again.

The Edges of His Ways, December 5

I read my copy on my tablet and that is good because I likely would have worn out a paper copy by now!! I purchased it for a very minimal cost from Olive Tree. https://www.olivetree.com/store/search.php?q=Edges+of+his+ways They offer thousands of titles, Bibles, commentaries, audio and written.

Even is such a small word, with such powerful impact. Yes, let’s make the Lord’s heart glad this December with a wise heart (which He will direct us to).

 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

James 1:5-6 RSV

This certainly not a gift you can wrap, yet one you can present to God daily!

Your wise heart unwrapped

My son, if thine heart be wise,

my heart shall rejoice, even mine.

Proverbs 23:15 KJV
Posted on in Faith, Just do it, Listen, Music, Prayer, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Worship, Yield

He is Worthy of It All

In case you are not familiar with the song I referenced yesterday, here it is!

So is it Immanuel or Emmanuel? One answer is at https://www.christianity.com/wiki/holidays/is-it-immanuel-or-emmanuel-biblical-meaning-and-significance.html

Immanuel and Emmanuel point to the same meaning with two different spellings. Think of how we do this with modern names. For example, Cathy, Cathie, Kathy, and Kathi, or Alexander, Alexandre, Aleksander, and Aleksandr.

Christianty.com, Danielle Bernock

Regardless of our spelling, He is worthy. And we are created to have fellowship with Him and to praise Him. May your hands be lifted high in thanksgiving to Heaven!

Posted on in Art, Challenge, Faith, Just do it, Listen, Music, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Worship, Yield

Last Week My Christmas Worship Began …

…with this song. I cannot hear it too many times because it leads me into the Throne Room with praise and worship. What is it about Chandler Moore? Must be the anointing of the Holy Spirit. He knows how to enter the Presence of the Throne Room and lead us there with him. Twelve minutes is NOT too long to spend worshiping the Presence of the Mighty God.

One of my fondest memories is singing this refrain at Women’s Aglow as a way to enter into praise and His Presence. I was unfamiliar with Jekalyn. Watching this video gives me more perspective on her style. You have to be strong to sing peacefully with Chandler. He has such power !

Yes, Lord, we give You all the glory and praise, adoration and blessing! And the transition to another song, “You are worthy of it all!” How masterful! Yes, He deserves the glory!

Please listen to it prayerfully and worship Immanuel. “Born in the dirt and sitting on the Throne.”