Category: Music

Posted on in Challenge, Faith, Music, Obedience, Rest, Trust

First Heard During A Retreat

Quiet my soul in your silent presence
Gentle my soul in your stillness and peace
Tender my soul in your beauty and grace 
God of this moment 
Here in this place 

Quiet my soul
Gentle my soul
Tender my soul
God this moment
Here in this place

Recently this song was set to play on repeat on my speaker. I tend to panic and get fearful when health matters arise and I know there might be a potentially bad outcome.

The retreat when I learned this song was years ago. There is still a power in this song to center and bring me to stillness.

Psalm 131 has been a great help to me over the years. This is taken from Psalms in Inclusive Language, Joseph J. Arackal, Translator.

O Yahweh, my  heart is not arrogant
nor are my eyes raised too high.
I have taken no part in great affairs,
nor in wonders beyond my grasp.

I have kept my whole being quiet and silent,
like a infant at its mother's breast;
like an infant quieted is my whole being.

Let Israel hope in Yahweh
henceforth for all eternity.

The New Living Translation offers this:

Lord, my heart is not proud;
    my eyes are not haughty.
I don’t concern myself with matters too great
    or too awesome for me to grasp.
2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself,
    like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk.
    Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

3 O Israel, put your hope in the Lord—
    now and always.

I have always said that if we occupy ourselves with what the Bible says to do regarding our own personal behaviors we need not worry about the “Thou shalt nots.”

Here is my favorite rendition of Psalm 131. I love that John Michael specifically says we are to be like a child at rest on its Mother’s knee and then like a child at rest on its Daddy’s knee. Yes. God is both mother and father to us!

May these versions of Psalm 131 and these songs bring you to a place of peace and trust.

Posted on in Amazing Creations, Challenge, Faith, Just do it, Listen, Music, Obedience, Praise, Prayer, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth

All Are Welcome

We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders.

ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU

During the communion prayers we sometimes pray, “Jesus taught us that the liberation of the whole world will not be in the brutality of violence. Rather, it will be in showing kindness to our neighbor, in standing up against injustice, in returning hate with love, in transforming one heart at a time. It will be in the simple but holy task of dining together, sharing bread and wine, truly seeing one another as beloved by you.”

One of our favorite lines in the Communion service is when the priest declares. “This is God’s table, not ours. All are welcome.”

Oh Father, we have such a long way to go to bring you delight. Purify our hearts we pray that we might not sin against you. Open our eyes to see our fellow humans as made in your likeness. Help us to esteem others as better than ourselves. (Philippians 2:3)

We have also been learning a song by Michael Stillwater that goes, “One by one everyone comes to remember, we’re healing the world one heart at a time.”

This is a German speaking group. We also sing it in rounds at church. I found myself singing it one day last week and had to stop to remember where I had heard it!!

May your eyes be opened and your heart know that there are no outsiders. Just humans walking each other home.

Posted on in Aging, Book quotes, Faith, Focus, Humor, Joy, Marriage and Memories, Music, Praise, Prayer, Thanks, Trust, Yield

Morning of Our 56th

Awoke singing this in my heart:

I could have danced all night
I could have danced all night
And still have begged for more

I could have spread my wings
And done a thousand things
I've never done before

I'll never know what made it so exciting
Why all at once my heart took flight
I only know when he began to dance with me
I could have danced, danced, danced all night

Yes, after 56 years I am more than willing to dance with Robert Milan. We have FUN together. Sometimes he carries his teasing and jokes too far for my emotion at a given moment, but overall, we have fun.

We create humor and jokes between ourselves. We are friends, yes, even best friends. There are times he gets on my last nerve and I get on his, but we each get over that and move on.

On this date in Edges of His Ways Amy wrote:

It is the little things of life, the minute, unimportant-looking things, that are most likely to shatter our peace, because they are so small that we are very likely to fight them ourselves instead of looking up at once to our Strong God, our Barrier between us and them. “Close the gate, or bar up the way, as the cloudy pillar formed a barricade between the Egyptians and Israel” is Kay’s note.

The deaths of Ginny and Chuck Lynch have taught us how short life is, how unexpectedly death can come and now is the time to love and laugh, to cherish and sing.

When I saw Bob Dutina for the first time, at a distance, it really was love at first sight. I have never understood exactly how our lives came to be together; however, I am grateful and blessed to have been given the gift of this incredible marriage.. Thanks be to God!

Psalm 90:12. So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.

Posted on in Aging, Book quotes, Challenge, Faith, Joy, Just do it, Music, Praise, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Surrender, Trust, Worship, Yield

Rumi

Seems like wherever I turn these days folks are seeking direction and fulfillment for their everyday lives. I keep returning again and again to Rumi, the poet, theologian, Islamic scholar, and Sufi Mystic. I am not looking to replace my Christian faith, but this guy understood the depths of mysticism and genuine faith.

Merriam-Webster defines mysticism as a religious practice based on the belief that knowledge of spiritual truth can be gained by praying or thinking deeply. I know Jesus would agreed.

Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop. There are quite a few dead leaves dropping around here and summer is not even complete. How about the things we fill our lives with that do not fulfill us? Can we drop some of those and be more like the tree described in the Psalms?

Happy are those
    who do not follow the advice of the wicked
or take the path that sinners tread
    or sit in the seat of scoffers,
2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees
    planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
    and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper. Psalm 1:1-13 NRSVUE

Whatever lifts the corners of your mouth, trust that.  There is a local billboard that states “If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.” It is powerful advice. Our worship service has children participate especially in collecting the offering. There is also a special children’s sermon that is delightful. I am always refreshed by the children. And they know how to smile!

Before I had the recent foot surgery if I saw someone in a wheelchair I made an effort to get on their eye level and greet them with a smile. Since I have so recently driven electric wheelchair shopping carts in so many different stores I am even more inclined to do that. It is an entirely different world down there. Most people just hurry past and ignore those who are seated. Try giving those folks a smile of yours! If you have never driven one of those carts, the next time you see them lined up for charging you should try one, just to gain a new perspective! Of course, if there is only one or two please leave it for those of us who cannot walked the area of American mega-stores! There are some people who would see me reaching for an item and ask if they could help me with it. There is still kindness all around us!

Hard, but oh so true. Constantly flowing, never clinging, always embracing the new. Wowsers. Here are just a couple of short songs to keep you in the ways of a river today.

And an even better one is Ever Flowing!

Posted on in Faith, Joy, Listen, Music, Obedience, Praise, Prayer, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Yield

There Was Jesus

Last spring our contemporary worship band made a point of learning this song. We sang it this week as our offertory hymn, noting the death of Dolly Parton. The song was written by Zach Williams. In an interview he stated that he just kept hearing Dolly Parton singing it with him. He eventually contacted her. After hearing the song, reading the lyrics she said yes she would be glad to record it with him.

According to Williams, Parton was looking for more faith-based projects when his team reached out regarding the song. 

“We all knew it was a big ask and we were shooting for the moon to try to get her on the song,” Williams explained. “We originally heard that 90% of the stuff that comes her way, she turns down just because she has so many people asking to do songs with her.”

Williams recounted Parton telling him, the day she received the song, that she didn’t even make it through the first chorus, before she knew it was a special song and a “God-send.” 

“She said ‘I wake up and I pray every day that God just gives me the opportunity that I need for that day…I felt like that was the one that He wanted me to do,’,” Williams noted Parton said, when in the process of creating the track. –from https://americansongwriter.com/there-was-jesus-dolly-parton-zach-williams-song-interview/

Posted on in Amazing Creations, Book quotes, Faith, Focus, Illness and Health, Music, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Surrender, Trust, Yield

Struggle Continues

I came across this poem set to music after reading Amy Carmichael’s chapter entitled Rose from Brier in her collected writings in the book by the same title. (Pages 51-53) I found it enchanting. The photography, also, especially the raindrops on the pavement! She heard this poem as “a little song that sang within me” as she longed to be at a welcoming service in the House of Prayer, but could not leave her bed.

Amy Carmichael Rose From Brier

She describes the sweetbrier of England in contrast to the roses of India. “I saw a little, low, very prickly bush in an old-fashioned English garden; it was covered with inconspicuous pink roses. But the wonder of the bush was its all-pervading fragrance, for it was a sweetbrier. And I saw one who has long been in the land where no thorns grow, cutting a spray from the bush, stripping the thorns off and giving it to me. May these for whom a rose from my brier may be caused to blow, those who do indeed walk the dear familiar ways of home, and road, and street, as unregarded as a breath of air, but there in love and longing, always there, find no pricking thorn on the stem of this rose from my brier.

“I think that when He whom our soul loveth comes so near to us, and so gently helps our human weakness, then what Madame Guyon wrote more than three hundred years ago becomes a present truth. We are borne over the oppression that would hold us down, we mount up on wings, we find a secret sweetness in our brier. But it is not of us. It’s Love that lifts us up. It is Love that is the sweetness.

“Is the one who reads this in a great weariness, or the exhaustion that follows a sore hurt, or in the terrible grasp of pain? He who loves as no one else can love understands to the uttermost, is not far away. He wants us to say, He can give it to us to say, “My Lord, my Love, I am content with Thee.”

Beautiful pink and yellow flower of dog-rose, sweet brier

In America we often call the same plant a Dog Rose. My neighbor has them in her backyard. I will have to experiment next spring to find out if the foliage is also fragrant as the internet reports!

I find the fragrance of Amy’s writings a gift to my soul.

Posted on in Faith, Listen, Look, Music, Prayer, Rest, Trust, Yield

The Power of Maybe

Can you. Stop for a moment. View your situation through the lens of maybe? Maybe this is for the good. Perhaps this is going some place you had not imagined. Maybe you do not have all the facts. Could be you only understand in part?

Stop. Pause. Breathe.

Maybe is a powerful word. May – I am able. I am free to do.

Maybe shows uncertainty and also possibility.

Too often our minds decide a situation and close upon one conclusion like a steel trap.

There are many places we make major decisions in life and also the myriad decisions we make every day. Places where we can and ought to insert the word maybe.

It may be that I have misinterpreted something. This sort of thought dethrones the ego who wants to be God and by doing so invites the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of our heart to new insights, possibilities we might not have thought about.

Maybe this will give you food for thought. May Be.

Posted on in Aging, Faith, Humor, Illness and Health, medical treatment, Memories, Music

Did You Sing This?

As I child I remember the song that went something like this:

Great green gobs of 
greasy grimy gopher guts
Little oggy doggie tails
mutilated monkey meat

That is what my week has been like, coughing up the entrails of this nasty virus.

Bob even asked if our tissues are one ply. No, they are not. These are just two tissue blows!

They say the song is important as they give kids a way to express the gory truth about life, usually to the parents’ disdain.”It is extremely popular because children often enjoy taboo subjects and references to things that are disgusting!”

Nope, not something I coughed up. Just as Osage Orange you might see along the road!

So do not catch this summer cold. It is disgusting and exhausting. Spray, throat lozenge, blow, neti pot, blow, pills, throat lozenge, blow and pray for a good night’s rest!

All the while thumping around in this boot that is beginning to feel massive. Yes, I do need another ice pack!

Posted on in Faith, Music, Prayer, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Trust, Worship, Yield

Judgement Day

Awoke singing this. Memory from the past? Foretelling the future? Just a fact, Jack? Do not know, but it hangs in my brain this past week. 

Very Last Day
Peter, Paul and Mary
Everybody gonna pray on the very last day
Oh, when they hear that bell a-ring the world away
Everybody gonna pray to the Heavens on the judgement day

Oh-well, you can sing about the great king David
And you can preach about the wisdom of Saul
But the judgement falls on all mankind when the trumpet sounds the call
All equal and the same, when the Lord, He calls your name
Get ready, brother, for that day

Everybody gonna pray on the very last day
Oh, when they hear that bell a-ring the world away
Everybody gonna pray to the Heavens on the judgement day

Well, one day soon all men will stand
His word will be heeded in all the land
Men shall know and men shall see
We all are brothers and we all are free
Mankind was made of clay
Each of us in the very same way
Get ready, brother, for that day

Everybody gonna pray on the very last day
Oh, when they hear that bell a-ring the world away
Everybody gonna pray to the Heavens on the judgement day

Oh-well, the law is given and the law is known
The tale is told and the seed is sown
From dust we came into dust we'll go
You the know the Lord once told us so
Each brother takes his hand
Heed the meaning of the Lord's command
Get ready, brother, for that day

Everybody gonna pray on the very last day
Oh, when they hear that bell a-ring the world away
Everybody gonna pray to the Heavens on the judgement day

Written by: Noel Paul Stookey, Peter Yarrow
Album: In The Wind
Released: 1963
Posted on in Book quotes, Challenge, Faith, Music, Nature, Obedience, Spiritual discipline, Spiritual growth, Surrender

Enough?

There are t-shirts and bumper stickers about declaring, “You are enough.” An essential message for those struggling with mental health.

In her devotional Amy Carmichael quoted part of the following hymn this morning.

July 7 "Translated from the old German of Ter Steegen have been in my heart:

Am I not enough, Mine own? enough,
Mine own, for thee?
********
All shalt thou find at last,
Only in Me.

Am I not enough, Mine own, I, forever
and alone, I, needing thee?

YouTube had this rendition


Yes, God is enough to get me through this. God can see you through your difficulties and challenges, too. I am determined to remember the message from the Lord through Ter Steegen that yes, God is enough!

I am weeks away from existing as a human Do-ing; I am more at peace if I rest for now in Be-ing. Christ is enough to help me get through this, but the neighbors and church family have certainly helped! Food Train threatened to become food flood. Flowers and flower bed helpers. Watermelon, soup, an entire meal just dropped at the house. People have come to help me with little chores and putting away my laundry, getting a load of wash started, getting things out of the dryer for me to fold.

Early this morning I saw a buck with two does walk through the neighbor’s yard. A baby bunny appeared out back. Then this afternoon I saw the buck again in a different area. He is a young buck, but a buck indeed. What a blessing! The Lord did not have to let me see that animal. It did cheer me up though! I cannot sit in my prayer chair. It is too low and right now too hard to get out of.

I am reminded there are people who will live the remainder of their lives in wheelchairs. Hopefully, this is just temporary for me. It certainly changes perspective on life. I was sitting in the kitchen one evening and Bob asked me what I was doing. I was thinking how easy it would be to just get up and walk to another room. And then remembered I may not. I want this surgery to be successful. I want the healing to go well. I am working hard to keep my glucose levels even and low. It is tempting though to give in to emotional eating. Not good thinking Molly Lin. As some used to call this, “Stinkin’ thinkin’!” That will get me no place good.

So please continue to lift us and others you know who are not up to their usual activities. We all need grace and all the help we can get. Prayer works. God can provide for us and through us. I will do this well, with God’s help.

Lord, we need Your touch!