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Archive for the ‘Love’ Category

HOLIDAY SURVIVAL KIT

Posted in faith, Holiday giving, Love, tagged , , on December 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I used to both love and hate the holidays.  In many ways, I still think my “best” holidays were when I was a child and when my children and grand children were young.  Having youngsters around helps us all to see holidays through the eyes of a child, and that is something we all need now and then.

 

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Over the years, I have prepared for myself a virtual kit of tools that allow me to enjoy the holiday season and keep my sanity.  The tool I use the most is keeping my expectations realistic.   I used to have so many people in our house that I often wished for smaller celebrations.   I know God has a sense of humor, because he lets me know that when she gives me something I wish for, I am still frequently unhappy with it.  Our celebration these days (and for some past years) has become much smaller so I have learned to enjoy what I have instead of yearning for what it not possible.

 

 

My next most used tool is trying not to overdo anything.  I send fewer Christmas cards, I try to eat less sugar, I make sure I get more rest, I plan my shopping in small junkets.  I accept whatever physical limitations I have.  They vary from year to year, but with the aging process has come a few that are with me all the time.   This year I have had some back difficulties that make bending over painful, so I am wrapping less boxed presents and using more gift bags.

 

Another tool I need to pull out of the box frequently is to ask myself if I am having fun.  If I am not, I can ask myself “why not,” and then go on to ask myself what I could do that would make things fun for me.   Sitting by my parlor window with a nice warm shawl, a cup of coffee or tea, and a few Christmas cookies while I watch the snow fall can make me feel very peaceful and happy.  I have learned that I also need to stay focused on the fact that I am, indeed, feeling happy.  Awareness is a beautiful thing, but it is transient and needs to be cultivated.

 

I wish you a blessed holiday season, whatever you might be celebrating.   Use some of my tools or create some for yourself.  You will be glad you did.

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VALENTINES DAY

Posted in Love, trust, Uncategorized, tagged , on February 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not
irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things. (1 Cor. 13:4-7)

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Today is a perfect day to think about love. Are you aware of how many different kinds of love there are? In English, there is only one word for love, but in Greek there are several. Valentine’s Day most often, though not exclusively, seems to exemplify the romantic kind of love. But there is also a fraternal kind of love we have for close friends and family, often referred to as brotherly love. Agape love is that which we feel for all of God’s creatures everywhere.

 
And of course, there’s self-love, which all of us need, but which easily becomes complicated. We need to love ourselves, but not in an egotistical way, and that is often difficult for many of us. Right after birth, we see ourselves as the center of the universe, but we soon begin to learn that there are many others sharing the universe with us.
As you progress through life, your ability to give and receive love  changes. As a small child, my love was almost entirely conditional—I loved those who cared for me and provided for me. As I grew into my teens, I found myself starting to deal with the “sexual attraction” kind of love—exciting, frustrating at times, complicated, and at times frightening in its intensity.
Maternal/paternal love is something else again, and can feel verwhelming until you get past the fear of doing something wrong and harming your child. For many of us, it may be the first time we have truly loved someone more than ourselves. Today, think about all the kinds of love you experience.   Reach out to someone with love.   Show love in an unexpected way.   And remember that nothing can separate you from the love of God.

Taken from “Talks with our Creator” for February 14th

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SIMPLIFYING THE HOLIDAYS

Posted in Gratitude, Holiday giving, Love, reflection, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have. Just dreaming about nice things is meaningless; it is like chasing the wind. (Eccles. 6:9)

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Have you ever gone hungry for any length of time? Have you ever left a table wishing you had more to eat? Think about how this feels, even if you have not experienced it. Quite a few of us doubtless have even more than we need of the world’s goods.   Many of us regularly donate used clothing and household goods to charities, which is an indication of our abundance.

It never ceases to amaze me that I can have so many “things” and still find myself attracted to more. During holiday periods, just reading the advertising (or seeing it on television) can make us long for more.   If I am honest with myself, a lot of the things I purchase are things I want rather than things I truly need.  Our culture (and our advertising and our media) encourages us to think that something new will be better than that which we already have.

Every year, I am amazed that once the Thanksgiving holiday is over in the U.S. (and now even before) people line up waiting for stores to open so they can get great “deals” on the things they wish to purchase.  Watching what happens when those stores finally open looks like a feeding frenzy in an aquarium.   Does all that buying fill some need in us?  If we feel some elation over our purchases, how long does this last?

It can be very helpful for all of us, no matter how much or how little we have, to cultivate a grateful heart. I lean toward being the kind of person who sees the negative rather than the positive side of things. It is one of the things I work on almost daily. The strange thing is that negativity produces more negativity, but when you become aware of the many things you should be grateful for, you find even more of them.

I got some help from a book called Simple Abundance which suggested keeping a gratitude journal in which you wrote down at least five things you were grateful for at the end of each day. I did it for over a year, and still do it at times. Some days my list only includes my gratitude for breath, vision, hearing, food, and shelter, but often I find other, far more specific and special things—especially if I look for them.

When we become aware of how much we have, and regularly give thanks for it, we will be far less likely to buy things just for the sake of buying them.   Cultivating an attitude of gratitude helps to feed that ‘hunger for more’ that all of us feel from time to time.   There is nothing wrong with buying gifts for others (or ourselves) when we can afford to do so.   However, we humans need to be more aware of enjoying what we already have.

Taken from “Talks with our Creator” for December 7th

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RENEWAL

Posted in changes, faith, Love, meditation, tagged , , on November 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;  the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Cor. 5:16-17)

 

 

 

Have you taken time recently to think about renewal?  Do so now as you reflect on how you might become a new creation. Would it be a quick change, or would you more likely make a change that is slow and over  time?

 

If we think about it, it is a true miracle that we are renewed every day  if we choose to be—that Spirit has the power to change and transform us and makes us into new beings. Regular periods of meditation can facilitate this process. My knees no longer allow me to sit cross-legged on the floor, but I have found it works just as well sitting on a chair. It’s a struggle to sit still and simply follow my breathing, but I keep trying because I feel it is in those quiet moments that we most connect with God.

 

Actually, I have been largely unsuccessful in quieting my mind. But I keep trying, and keep telling myself that this is all that is required of me. Every now and then it seems I slip into a different state where I stop struggling and tune into something for which I have no name. It is then that insights apparently get implanted in my head. I wish it happened more often, but it is not something I can force.

 

We will soon be entering the month in which we celebrate Christ’s birth. What better time for us to set aside a period each day in which we can seek to feel serene.

 

Taken from “Talks with our Creator” for November 27th

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THANKSGIVING

Posted in changes, Gratitude, Love, tagged , , on November 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love enduresforever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.  (Ps. 100)

 

 

In the United States, a day is set aside to give thanks on the fourth Thursday in November. Why do we not, all of us, take more time regularly to be thankful for what we have? Why does it seem so much easier to complain about what we do not have than to appreciate that which we do?

Some of us may tend to feel a bit saddened as days grow shorter and we have less light in our daily lives. One way to deal with depression is to get into actions of some sort, and yet this is often the last thing anyone who feels depressed wants to do. What seems to help me most is shifting my attitude from one in which I complain about all that’s wrong with my life, and begin trying to be grateful for all the things I do have.

An attitude of gratitude can work absolute miracles in our lives. When we stop to think about it, we can usually find mountains of things for which to be grateful. Perhaps the most important is that we have allowed Spirit to be a regular part of our lives. Sometimes it’s hard to find subjects for these reflections, but I keep writing them because I have begun to believe that Spirit speaks to me (and hopefully sometimes to some of you) as I write them. Today, I am particularly grateful for the voice of the Spirit—that still, small voice that always speaks to us if we are but willing to listen.

May we all have a Happy Thanksgiving and may we remember to try to carry that attitude of thanksgiving with us throughout the year.  When we focus on our difficulties, we see more of these in our lives.  However, when we focus on those things for which we are grateful, Spirit allows us to see more and more of them.

Taken from the Thanksgiving page in “Talks with our Creator”

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CATASTROPHES AND GOD’S WILL

Posted in acceptance, faith, Love, tagged , , on July 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I would like to dedicate this piece to all of those in pain because of the recent massacre in Colorado.  

 

When horrific things happen in this world (and they always do, it seems) many folks seem to have some questions about how God can allow such things to happen.   I believe that God cries with us when such things occur.  While I firmly believe that God is always available to us and that He or She does direct our paths when we wish to follow His will, I believe also that God gave man free will and does not intervene to stop nature from taking it’s course.

 

There is simply no way that I could accept that the God in whom I believe would will to have tragedies happen.   Slaughters, mass murders, natural catastrophes and the like are caused either by Nature or by man himself in some sense.  I cannot believe that these things happen because God intends for them to happen.   However, I also believe that out of all tragedies come good things eventually.  I am only able to see an infinitesimal portion of the mosaic of my life, so I am required to have faith and trust that God will take care of all of us.  Our Creator knows what She is doing.

 

I hate it when others are in pain, but I know I am not powerful enough to take away that pain.  God is powerful enough and will do so, eventually, if He is summoned.   As many in the media have already said, I pray that those involved will find comfort and, eventually, peace of some sort.  God might not prevent disasters from happening, but He is surely available to comfort those who need comfort.   When bad things happen to good people, I used to feel quite cynical and insist that this was just the way of the world.    God has helped me to see that cynicism does nobody good, while prayers and hopeful thoughts can work wonders.

 
My brother recently suffered a tragic loss when his beautiful home in the Roosevelt National Forest was consumed by Colorado’s fires.   Thankfully, he and his wife (and their dogs) got out safely, but everything was lost.   Why did it happen?  Why was his home in the path of the fire?   We can always torture ourselves by wondering why terrible things happen.   Or we can slowly but surely try to accept that these things are part of our lives.  We don’t and can’t know why these things happen.  But we can help one another to get through them.

 

 

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GOD IS LOVE — ALWAYS

Posted in acceptance, Love, spirituality, tagged , on July 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)

Would you agree that God is love? Would you agree that whoever does not love does not know God? Think about this as you reflect and consider those people in your life that you love. What does it mean if you do not always feel love for them?

Meister Eckhart once said, “The best chance of finding God is to look in the place where we left him.” It is odd to think of losing God, but we humans often seem to be out of touch with our Creator—especially when we are not feeling loving. Whenever God seems far away from us, we are the ones who have moved. God is always available to us if we wish Him/Her to be.

As much as I like to think I stay focused on spiritual things, there are many times in any given day when I get caught up in busyness and forget to seek God. In a definite crisis, I generally am sure to think about God, but in the usual, day-to-day activities of life (where God is often most needed), I forget. Perhaps we all forget to practice the presence of God.  If we happen to be feeling angry or resentful, we most likely have grown out of touch with God. We might then ask ourselves, “Where did I leave God?” And the answer is that we didn’t leave Him, we temporarily forgot that He is always with us. We have simply forgotten to be aware and that God is love.

Taken from “Talks with our Creator” for May 17th

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