Category: Challenge

Posted on in Book quotes, Challenge, Faith, Just do it, Listen, Prayer, Special Event, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Thanks, Worship, Yield

Retreat Looking at Life of Saint Clare

I attended an Associates retreat at the Convent of the Transfiguration in Glendale, Ohio. The theme was the Life and Inspiration of St. Clare. There is not much known about her. She was friends with St. Francis of Assisi. Like him, she removed herself from her aristocratic family and embraced a life of poverty and dedication to Jesus, praying in a cloistered monastery for 42 years until the end of her life. We are encouraged to follow her courage in finding our own place to follow Christ.

Here is a short prayer (called a collect) regarding Saint Clare.

O God, whose blessed Son became poor that we, through his poverty, might be rich: Deliver us from an immediate love of this world, that we, inspired by the devotion of your servant Clare, may serve you with singleness of heart and attain to the riches of the age to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Recently I learned that there is a Poor Clare convent in Cincinnati! I was thrilled to learn that the “female branch of the Franciscans” exists here. For a time I was a Third Order Franciscan through the Episcopal church. Below is a short video about the Poor Clare’s life together.

There are 20,000 Poor Clare’s worldwide in 70 countries. Francis wrote their initial rule of life. Clare added the commitment to poverty. The Poor Clare’s are a Catholic order.

The life of poverty centers around the beatitude in Matthew 5:3 when Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.” And also

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Matthew 19:21 NIV

Clare’s goal was to imitate Christ though total obedience to God. Francis said “You only know as much as you do.” Poverty was her way to unity with the Lord. The sisters made altar linens as a way to support themselves, as well as asking for alms.

Clare encourages us to transform our entire being into the image of God by contemplation. She urges us to go towards the margins, the edges of society and find the risen Lord there.

May her challenge lead you to a closer walk with the Risen Lord.

Posted on in Challenge, Faith, Prayer, Worship, Yield

Ever Heard This One?

Awoke from a nap with this in my brain. Worked to find it to share. Recorded 1963. Sadness here in 2023 over Israel, Palestine, Hamas. Please pray for the victims of yet another war.

People being taken prisoner. Even children. So many dead. Reserves being called up. Our ship moving to the area. Retired Israeli military officers grabbing their guns to protect their family. The unimaginable occurring. Possibly more militants from another nation moving into the war. And we hear nothing about the welfare of the Palestinian people. Hamas rages on. Death toll near 1,400.

Please pray for the victims. The leaders of the world are trying to decide their next move. Please pray for wisdom.

 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.

Matthew 24:6-8 NIV

It is possible we are about to see another world war in our lifetime. God forbid.

Not to mention earthquake in Afghanistan. Estimated 2,400 dead.

Lord, have mercy upon us all.

Posted on in Aging, Challenge, Faith, Family, Humor, Illness and Health, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Thanks

A Most Enjoyable Day

We stopped at Marcella’s donuts at 7:05 AM on the way to Mason, Ohio to watch our Grandson play soccer. This is his first year to play a neighborhood sport. So far it has been a rather dismal event to watch. When we went to pick him up our son was still at home. We don’t usually get up so early for soccer (35 minutes from our house), but our son had an out-of-town event and asked us if we were willing to attend an early game this once.

Much to our surprise they not only won, but our grandson actually kicked the ball 3 times! There was so much dew on the early morning field that most parents agreed when I said, “They did not tell us to wear our boots!” When the ball was kicked at certain angles you could see a stream of water flowing over and around it. We were delighted to witness the team’s first win and Rowan’s increased participation. In fact, he was on the field the entire game!

# 9 our Grandson
Such a wet morning!

Then we drove back to Batavia, Ohio where our youngest Grandgirl had a volley ball game with University of Cincinnati Clermont. Recently she was diagnosed with stress fractures in both calves and has been on crutches. She will miss playing the rest of the year. 😦 She is, however, required to attend all practices and games. When we arrived she was seated at the scoring table.

Our Ellie is #20 at the net, almost in center

Our daughter and son-in-law were also there. We knew our daughter had a funeral to attend. Much to our delight when it was time for her depart our eldest Grandgirl came to get her.

Wait a minute, except for Jeff’s wife, we were able to greet and hug the entire family as an unplanned event in a single day!!

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savor you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.

MARY JEAN IRION

This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.

Maya Angelou
Posted on in Challenge, Faith, Just do it, Listen, Prayer, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Thanks

Give Thanks Review

Last Thursday, September 21 I challenged you to give thanks to God, especially when awful things your imagination and fears created as possible outcomes did not happen. How did you do? Did you notice how many times you prayed, asked for an outcome, worried and then when it was resolved turned back to give thanks that your worst possible imagination never happened.

“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life,

most of which never happened.”

-Mark Twain

What I was referring to is deeper than Mark Twain, though I agree he is on to something! In our relationship with the LORD do we acknowledge when our worst imaginings never come to pass. Often it is by His hand that those things are averted.

Have you every had a child or grandchild you decided to bless, just because you love them? You were not necessarily looking for a thank you in return. There are usually two possible outcomes to this. Either they thank you and you are delighted with their gratitude, or they go on their way with no recognition of your grace and you think ‘What an ungrateful brat.’ In the eyes of my Father and my Savior I do not want to be the ungrateful brat.

In the painting Ten Lepers by James C. Christensen, I want to be the one young man who turned back to give thanks. Jesus did not take away the cleansing of the other nine, as far as we know. Just imagine the affirmation of healing that the one young man received by going back to the Lord and saying thank you! That is relationship! And that is what my faith calls for. Relationship with the indwelling Christ through the Spirit of God.

Are you in relationship with the Risen Lord? Regardless of church attendance or activity, do you know Him? Have you spoken with Him lately? I was meeting with a friend recently and we agreed that the gold star for church attendance or pats on the back for activity participation is not what our hearts long for. We want relationship with Him and friends who can challenge us to deepen that relationship. There is nothing wrong with church attendance and participation, but without that deep relationship with Jesus there is not much to keep us going on the journey. The challenges are huge and the cost is enormous. The Lord will not rest until we give Him all of ourselves.

As I go deeper and deeper into relationship with the Trinity the forgiveness I am offered and the immense love disarms me. I want to give my entire life and attention to this eternal cause. If you are flummoxed about where to begin I suggest you approach the throne room of grace with the same candor that you bring to a best friend.

Brandon Lake and Thomas Rhett have ideas for you here. “There’s no wrong way to do it. No bad time to start…”

Posted on in Aging, Book quotes, Challenge, Faith, Just do it, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Traveling, Yield

Amy Carmichael and Faithfulness lyric

This is from the writings of Amy Carmichael in Edges of His Ways.

Deuteronomy 2:3: Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward.
It would take too long to tell what this word has said to me. I will only say it spoke about a mountain of thought around which I have walked rather often. It is time to stop compassing that mountain.
After settling that matter, I remembered one who for two whole years has been walking around a certain Mountain of Desire. When the desired thing was not given at the expected time, there was great disappointment. Perhaps the Lord is saying to that one and to others who are constantly praying about something personally desired, “Leave the matter to Me: you have prayed enough about it. You have compassed that mountain long enough.”
I know another who always seems to be walking around a mountain of rubble. Self and the feelings of self, doubts and questions, grumblings, little piled-up ingratitudes, what are these but rubble? Is it not very dull to keep on compassing so dull a mountain? Hear the heartening word of the Lord, ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward. “Rise ye up, take your journey” (v. 24), “fight the good fight of faith,” begin to possess your possessions.

Trekking in Rubble

This morning after reading Amy Carmichael I kept hearing ‘strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.’ I had to find the source of that line. It is from Great is Thy Faithfulness, by Thomas O Chisholm, verse 3.

Vs. 1 Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

Refrain:
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see:
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Vs. 2 Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.

Vs. 3 Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow—
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

What mountain are you trekking around? In the Old Testament God told the Israelites to “take another lap around the mountain.” They were ungrateful and unbelieving.

10 For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,

They shall never enter my rest.

Psalm 95:10-11 NIV

I think the New Testament has brought us hope and a challenge to put down our ungrateful hearts and enter into His rest through the shed blood of Jesus. Will we embrace His faithfulness today and marry it with our own? Our faithfulness comes from the faithfulness of Jesus.

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

2 Peter 1:3 NIV

Jesus can help us live a godly life and stop trekking about the same mountain ’round and around and around. Are we willing to stop and listen for His direction off the path of endless repetition and futile thinking? He gives us strength for today. There have been days I thought I would never get through. Yet, He gives me strength. Sufficient strength for today.

Bob and I find that as we age (seemingly faster and faster) God gives us strength for each day. Just as the Israelites could not store manna for the next day, but needed to gather it each day, we draw our strength from Him one day at a time. He gives us faith and if we are willing to look for it, joy, too.

looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:2 NIV

I pray this blog helps you to stop walking in the same old ruts, around and around. Stop and ask the Lord of your faith to help you as Amy Carmichael wrote, “Hear the heartening word of the Lord, ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward. “Rise ye up, take your journey” (v. 24), “fight the good fight of faith,” begin to possess your possessions.“

Posted on in Amazing Creations, Book quotes, Challenge, Faith, Journal, Just do it, Listen, Nature, Poetry, Thanks

You had Me At The Title “God’s Worship”

I have always loved cello music. Try this one!

Worship in God’s service. I love it!

I have been reading You are Here by David Steindl-Rast. In Chapter 6 called The It he quotes Martin Buber, St. Augustine and Robert Frost to name a few.

What I ultimately encounter in any You, I can also encounter in any tree: Mystery. This happens, as Buber says, “through decision and grace.” Both are necessary. I must decide to open my heart wide for this experience and receive it as a gift. “All is grace,” said St. Augustine, all is Life’s gift. And Life is the story of our adventurous encounters with that “Secret,” of which, so far, we only know from Robert Frost that is “sits in the middle and knows, while “we dance in a ring and suppose.” Draw out the line of relationship into infinity and it will lead to that “Secret” – the Mystery, which we encounter in and through all that exists.

-Brother David Steindl-Rast

He ends the chapter with this comment. “What we need to relearn is to ‘kneel and admire’ in reverence and amazement.”

My body SO protests kneeling in the sense of next to my bed for prayer or at the altar for communion, but the Prayer of Manasseh in the Apocrypha helps me with the line in verse eleven: “And now I bend the knee of my heart, imploring you for your kindness.” The Prayer of Manasseh is a part of the Apocrypha, accepted by some as biblical though not necessarily accepted by all persons as biblical. I personally love this prayer.

So I bend the knee of my heart in admiration, reverence and amazement towards the creation of the Father. This is one of the chapters I was reading while sitting on the porch recently when observations and poems seemed to pour forth out of me.

Imagine if we would approach each person as mystery. We are so prone to make judgements and stereotype people this could bring a radical change in our every encounter! Instead of being exhausted by people the introvert might see meeting as an adventure? Instead of thriving off others, the extrovert might see meeting another as an unknown treasure. Just thinking on the page here.

I hope this blog helps move you towards the decision and grace to move towards life with your eyes wide open and your heart seeking Mystery. May you be blessed with abundant life.

Posted on in Amazing Creations, Art, Challenge, Humor, Listen, Nature, Poetry

Poetry

Waiting for Autumn ©Molly Lin Dutina 

Neighbors yard is filled from
First tree to drop her gown
likely Yellow Poplar
We have a few buttons
And ribbons in our lot from other
Ladies preparing to drop their gowns

Cicadas still sing afternoon melody
Sun shines brightly
Some maple branches turning
getting ready to disrobe
Mostly green on our horizon
Autumn waits at the corner

So humor from proof reading blog. Must have thought I had deaf cicadas in our yard because I wrote “Cicadas still sign afternoon melody.” Oh Molly, bad humor.

One cicada was so loud last evening, for a moment Bob thought it might have gotten into the house. Saw a huge one on the sidewalk when I walked Lucky this morning. Not dead, but certainly slowing down. Was this who we heard last evening?

Posted on in Amazing Creations, Challenge, Faith, Just do it, Nature, Poetry, Prayer

Bachelor Buttons©Molly Lin Dutina

Going inward with the deep blue of the bachelor buttons I sink down. 
I take the encompassing blue with me. Down. 

I drop my shoulders 
Down I breathe the blue petals. 

Knowing the blue from the petals will fade. Down.
For now they wrap me in stillness. Down.

Wash me in the blue brightness I pray. Down.
Not Mrs. Stewart’s bluing agent. Down.

But the true blue of fresh flower. Down.
Peculiar petals, Down.

Not like tea rose. Down.

To where I am nestled inside the flower.
Down.

Beyond the pollen gathering bees. Down.

Sitting still in the Blues
And restored.

As you can tell I have been riding a wave of poetry. The book Every Day is a Poem by Jacqueline Suskin has helped to challenge and inspire me. Uncertain how long this wave will last. Hope you are enjoying it!

I was frustrated as I have 4 photos of the flowers that I wanted to intersperse with the verses. Word Press was having none of that. I suppose if I spent enough time changing blocks and formatting I might get it. Hopefully, you grasped the idea, even without all the photos!

Posted on in Aging, Amazing Creations, Art, Challenge, Faith, Thanks

Quote from Another Writer

When we are open to beauty, it is more likely to appear to us. When we share that gift by pointing it out to others, we find we have even more of it to celebrate.

Trebbe Johnson

When I looked up who is Trebbe Johnson on the internet I found her website https://trebbejohnson.com/about/ and learned some about her. You might want to look into her work more deeply?

I certainly agree with the quote above from her. Many times when we are out and about, Bob with his camera and me with my iPhone, I will point something out that I think would make a great photo. He is so good at capturing those ideas! He is very good snapping photos on his own, too! Imagine that!

Every year we try to get to the Moler race track at least once during the summer. It is a quarter mile clay oval racetrack. We call it ‘eating dirt’ since the dirt flies over the fences and often into the stands. Helps us get in touch with the amusements of our country neighbors. This year I spotted this fellow dressed for an evening at the track. I like his hat with buttons, his hair pulled into a ponytail, his overalls and food for the next race.

At racetrack by r m dutina

Then my Wish-I-was-her image.

Hope she is always this confident! r m dutina

This was amazing. Duckweed, frog and leaf shadow. How does he capture these so nicely?

r m dutina

The busy bees!

r m dutina

“You planted these, here, just for me?” asked the goldfinch.

r m dutina just out our front door
Glory bee by m l dutina

Keep watching for treasures in plain sight! And always give thanks.

always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 5:20 NIV
Posted on in Aging, Book quotes, Challenge, Faith, Illness and Health, Just do it

Gratefully Breathing

Have you ever tried to slow and deepen your breathing? If so, you may resonate with this quote.

That moment of inward breath, that pause and awareness of “how beautiful this is” is a prayer of appreciation, a moment of gratitude in which I behold beauty and am one with it.

Jean Shinoda Bolen

I have a friend who is participating in a church plant. They are going to have something like a seven minute silence following the sermon. I think that is terrific! Seven minutes to sit together, breath together, rest in the worship and prayers and sermon you just heard. Almost sounds like the Quakers.

It has been said that as Americans in 2023 we do not know how to breathe properly. That’s right a simple, deep inhale followed by a simple deep exhale. And then again. And once more. We want our autonomic nervous system to do it all. In case you have forgotten that science lesson, here is a very short refresher.

You don’t have to think about breathing because your body’s autonomic nervous system controls it, as it does many other functions in your body. If you try to hold your breath, your body will override your action and force you to let out that breath and start breathing again. 

https://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/respiratory/lung3.htm

BUT there are health benefits to learning how to breathe, how to rest, how to stop and feel what is happening within ourselves.

The lungs are like sponges; they cannot get bigger on their own. Muscles in your chest and abdomen tighten or contract to create a slight vacuum around the lungs. This causes air to flow in. When you exhale, the muscles relax and the lungs deflate on their own, much like an elastic balloon will deflate if left open to the air. 

https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/lungs/body-controls-breathing

“A prayer of appreciation” the first quote says. Do we appreciate our breathing? Are we willing to make the most of it? My sister recently suggested this book to my husband. As you may recall his lungs are compromised. I have read parts of the book and intend to finish it. Book description below is from Amazon.

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly.

There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor

I do not think we can master her prayer of appreciation until we become conscious of our breath. Are you willing to learn something new that simply might change your life for the better? Video below is about 11 minutes. Maybe not smoke and mirrors!