Not much to pray

Power lines edited out. As long as storm doesn’t do that !!!

     As said in other blog, very tired today, now evening is coming on. Words fail me. So I will let another pray for me, with reverent thanks.

Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;
the darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away.
Change and decay in all around I see.
O thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need thy presence every passing hour.
What but thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who like thyself my guide and strength can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me.

I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless,
ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes.
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee;
in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

                         Henry F. Lyte, 1847

None of us works alone

 

    Natural geometric solids. Natural reaction to deep chill.

     Bright sunshine on deep white snow. Bracing but frigid air convinces me to stay in my warm cozy little room and take it all in from the rocker beside the gas stove which insures hot tea to sip. Odd that walking Red in the cold dark early evening doesn’t disturb.  Impressions. Contrast between passive and active.  Thank you, Lord. 

     I received such an uplifting email from our dear Baruch last night, with fascinating info on amber, (Bernstein in Deutsch), and best of all energy and empathy.  It brought real evening peace to me.  Thank you, Lord, for such a friend.

      In morning sitting, I practiced exercises presented by Ekant (he and family are ill today: Jesus heal quickly) and RS, then said a few personal prayers and worked to “practice” what Lee van Laer “preached” in two of his posts today.  I spelled out his name so you can check out his daily Substack posts; he’s well worth following.  

     I want to say his prayers are much better than mine, but I know I need to pray my own prayers; there’s no competition.  He reminds us “none of us works alone.”  He also offered this, which tickles me:  “Yet, as Zen Master Dogen once said, ‘It is difficult to give oars to mountaineers, yet I must expound the Dharma.’”

      Thank you lord for the helpers and guides you send our ways. May we recognize and appreciate their faithfulness.  IJN

It’s not the first time

Chihuly Exhibit, Franklin Park, Columbus, Oh 2005

     Everything I know I learned in movies. A favorite very instructive pronouncement occurs in 2005 (really that long ago?!) version of Pride and Prejudice to Jane from Mrs. Bennett regarding Lizzy “It’s not the first time we were wrong.  I dare say it won’t be the last.”

     I do rethink things. I see a woman’s saucy grin from her van seconds before she was shot, possibly smack in that smile. I learn the ordinary name and decent occupation of a foolish man who carried a gun to a “peaceful” protest. I was and am deeply sorry for them.  I am also sorry for their shooters, who likely will never outlive their actions.  I recognize the “narratives” of both sides of the ICE issue with the insistence to rush tojudgment and place blame.  It’s all messed up. 

   Gurdjieff asserts that humans have a “strange psyche” marked by “the ‘urgent need to destroy everything outside of themselves’….  The point is that when during the apogee of the development of such a peculiarity—terrifying to every Reason—“ they carry out “the process of reciprocal destruction…,” that is war, destroying objects, productions (and each other) without deliberate aim or need.  (BT, chapter 23, pp 310, 313). 

     This surely describes the most recent US riots, but also the 3000 or 30,000 Iranian protesters deliberately murdered by their regime.  I’m barely thinking of “old wars,” Russia Ukraine. So much death!  Other GIG terms— soolienensis, feeding the moon—apply, but you will have to check for yourself if you dare.  Does it help to ponder these concepts? Cold comfort, I think.  But…

    In the same pages GIG also says, “Love should predominate always and in everything during the inner and outer functionings evoked by one’s consciousness, such a Love as can arise and be present only in the presences of concentrations formed in the lawful parts of every whole responsible being in whom the hopes of our COMMON FATHER are placed.”

     Lord, l reach out to you for that Love.  Help me see and move correct my wrongness.  IJN

Plenty of snow, more to come

 

On deck this morning 

     Snow is surely one of your greatest gifts, Lord, though we complain and rearrange it and even have some awful accidents in it. For its cleanness, stillness, beauty, I thank you.  For its inconvenience in human plans, I acknowledge that’s our doing, requiring awareness of our need for patience and of our wonderful ability to use “problem” solving skills.  We are such clever little monkeys who must remember that we are yours, not our own 

No pics again

Mt. Rainier, SB pic, yesterday
Surprise! Google is posting them again tonight 

      Feud with sis L over Minneapolis.  Discuss later.   It’s later.  Read my yesterday blog, Bargaining, and you will have the gist of it.  She’s in the opposite camp. Other siblings suffering too, so six phone calls today, mostly devoted to misery and frustration, with a bad weather topper,

      Lord may I endure my suffering and learn its grace.  Send your ministering angels to aid my  loved ones  and this suffering world.

     And thank you for sacred high places, including Mt. Rainier, and bless the friend who shared her picture and the one who sent unsolicited words of comfort.  Thank you for A; minister to his abused sense of self; we know he doesn’t deserve such treatment from one he only loves and supports.  IJN with love

Bargaining?

      

      It’s not that I don’t care about the “good” individuals and families who came into this country illegally. And I truly sorrow to see their images as they are apprehended. It’s that I care how they came into this country illegally in grotesquely unmanageable numbers, that they gobble up material resources of legal citizens, and that they are pawned out as voters to keep petty Hasnamusses in political office, power, and wealth.  

     If I am saying this to to You, God, it can only show me what a fool I am; among a world full of fools.  Today I can not imagine a godly, ideal world, if I ever could, this no matter how many or whose scriptures I take in.  

       My husband reminded me that Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience” (1849) said, paraphrasing, that individuals should indeed follow their conscience, but be prepared to endure the consequences of defiance of law.  MLK and Gandhi followed his lead in their own later civil conflicts.  And I wish more of these modern activists were reading this essay than the “Communist Manifesto”or “The Little Red Book.”

      This is frustration that I would not talk about even on my webinars “Lest ye be judged.”  Practically no one I know agrees with me, but then, I don’t agree with them. I would never say God is on my side, even if they might, if they have God, not just “spirituality.”  This may be my huge sin for all I can surmise, but neither can I be convinced God is on “Their” side.  Pretty sure God does not take sides in horrendous, huge human conflicts, and that’s what makes living through hard times so hard.  This is the suffering I must endure for opposing the opposition.  Feels like a dog chasing its tail.

     I reach up to You and wish for guidance, and thank you for my “white female privilege.”  Not mocking You intentionally; making a joke to myself.  I just can’t believe there is white femaleness or black maleness, rich or poor, smart or stupid, or any human distinctions in Your realm. I can’t guess why my life has been “fortunate” in so many ways.  But I am grateful and mostly because after all my time I still reach out for You. IJN

Lord have mercy

God have mercy That's all I have to say at this moment Therefore, let us go forth into this day with our hearts open, prepared to serve others in love rather than to make bargains for our own good. LvL on ME on merchants in the temple