God abide with us

50 years old at least, big and yellow

And thank you for your support 

As always, take special care of S today. Send her everything she needs to survive and thrive the day. 

Lee Daily Five Substack today, to remember itsnature: 

“ When the connection to gravity is a sound one, 

without interference from thought 

and when the stillness is more perfectly aligned with being, 

the taste of the vibration that arises in sensation is more concentrated. 

And this is the taste I wish to carry forward into life today. 

To remember its nature here in the body. 

And to stay with it in every moment that I can.”

Change of season

I love fall color. In Greenfield from LL corner about 5:30

Sky’s still gray after three days of rain, 

but the the leaves held fast 

We just came off the Saturday full moon which we could not see for constant rain. Surely its cosmic influence had some effects on us all this week

  J and A are watching Sox vs Yanks right now, first time together, and I’m hearing lots of laughter and spirited conversation. Such a delight to me!  Thank you Jesus for that young man. One of your angels, maybe, though he would laugh if I said that. 

  Another angel is moving on, to MDOT from hair dressing and daughter-like consideration. She’s in my will even. Bless her whole life and career change. It is the right move though a loss for us. 

    Daily must I lift up S for healing as she goes through this cancer experience.

  Nor would I neglect to ask your blessing on my other children and husband and family. We seem so fragile when a few shocks occur close together. 

   You are and must be the great addition. Buoy us up in every hour with realization of love from and for you, blessed savior.  Comfort us, like the mother hen gathering her chicks under her wing, as the Word describes. IJN

Must imagine the chicks

4-13-26 in the ‘hood

I give thanks

 

September 24, 2023. Knitter

Before the events of this day, whatever they are, let me watch my heart open to give thanks.  Let me see that the kingdom of heaven is truly within and its atmosphere is peace, the peace of God. Fear opposes it, doesn’t it?  And fear would deny it. So help me stand, gird in the assurance of That peace—Gods forgiveness and love. The unity that Lee and Master Eckhart discuss in Sermon Twelve. Lord, knit my uncertainties into the assurance of presence. IJN

Prayer ACTS

 

Friday  Sunset, Corn Harvest moon Saturday

4:49 am. Awake fussing with cPap and then phone storage over an hour. 

S may be awake. Help and comfort and heal her I pray. I asked her whether she prayed or if I was asking too personal a question. She said I was. I hope that means yes

Adoration. Jesus, you are totally lovable and beautiful. I love the good you brought into the world, including the the structure of Judaic Christianity and the trinity. Blessed awesome Jhwh. 

Confession I Sam a sinner, I have fallen so short of goodness and treating well the people I know 

Thanksgiving. I thank you for this life and this earth and sun

Supplication For S again but for A and me as aging affects our actions. For I, E, A and my siblings and their families. Help us grow our inner lives and move to you. As we move through our time. Bless B and all my GIG friends,  IJN

Meister Eckhart sermon 12 from Lee ‘s substack, Inner Christianity, today

“ [Reading begins]

Now he says, that we should want his forgiveness. That is why our Lord rightly says, it is my will that you beg them that harm you. (Luke 6:27.) That is how important it is that we should beg them that harm us. Why? That we may do God’s will, that we should not wait till they beg us, we should say, Friend, forgive me that I have made you sad. 

And that is how serious we should be in our practice of virtue. The greater our pain, the more seriously we should strive for virtue. So much should your love be one. For love does not wish to be anywhere, but where there is likeness and oneness. Where there is a master and servant, there is no peace, for there is no likeness.”

I know not how

Season is dying

Bit not ingloriously

As Lee repeats frequent:

Lord, I call to thee from the depths of mine iniquity. 

I have not delivered myself sufficiently unto thee. 

I now not how

  

I find it really hard to push away depression these days. I pray your help. For S too. And for all suffererers. 

 

I watched UT short about an absolute murderous Chinese emperor 2k years ago, who he buried alive under the 8000 clay warriors: 700k workers and enemies and relatives. What would RB say to that after the atom bomb comment last week?  Almost inconceivable how buoys people are in their pursuit of “mutual destruction.”  So repeat, did God know or care?  But also is there some meaning in this horror?

Again, “ through a glass darkly, but in face-to-face.”  We hope. And pray. 

Kind of raises another question:  I assume I need God’s forgiveness    But do I and humans need to forgive God?  Look out I’m waiting for the lightning to strike!  And cover myself by saying God forgive me for my lack of Humility. IJN

Lord have mercy

 

Yesterday evening. A beautiful end of a harsh day

Just want to say “I gave at the office!”

Do we really need any more bad luck?

And since we have it, support our bearing of it, to conduct ourselves with love and remembrance of what’s important .  

And I pray with some anger, they smile the enemies of your chosen people, and that right soon and incontrovertibly.

IJN

What to say

Ordinary street scene, life most graceful

Helps to borrow the words from someone else. 

I listened to part 2 of Peter B Haas 8 part prayer series, Prayers to Ponder and Pray,  in his Substack. If I didn’t mention it before, he’s got Parkinson’s and a broken sister for whom he prays. A metaphor he used really caught me:  death is a flower  he said or meant; it’s the bloom at the end of life. That relates to Now I see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. The great hope for Death, I guess.

    His repeated injunction:  don’t pray for what you can’t, pray for what you can 

    Again, to remember:

       A adoration 

       C confession

       T thanksgiving 

       S supplication 

   The low afternoon sunshine feels warm and comforting on my bare toes. Thank you, Lord. 

    Baruch is traveling today. Grant a safe journey 

    Two sisters have tickets to come for Thanksgiving. Grant them same travels as well. 

     

   Give A strength and hope. 

IJN

  

On Christianity

 

Red and F playing yesterdsy

Lee van Laer, on Christianity Substack today, “ called inwards towards Christ”

“In any event, the point is that the call to Christ is an inward call to an inward experience. He called it the kingdom of heaven. 

That’s a very good way of putting it, even though it’s not everything by a wide and long and deep measure; for the kingdom of heaven is too vast for a single phrase to encompass it. 

He was calling for us to see that every contact with every moment of life is precious and sacred. 

He was calling for us to have a new experience of our sensation and our feeling within. 

And it’s important not to let the facts about things as they exist in the outer world to get in the way of that, because the history of Christianity isn’t a recap of stuff that happened 2000 years ago. The history of Christianity is what’s happening in us now. We, in a strange way, are someone else’s future history. It is our practice now that keeps Christianity alive. And it is to this inward moment that we must attend. 

For in every instant it is possible, absolutely possible, that God will flow into being here and be with us personally. that is what is meant in the Gospels when someone says that we are in Christ. We have entered God’s being so that we are with him inwardly. 

Well, that’s quite a mystery, isn’t it? I’m just saying this because I don’t want you to get too caught up and interested in the temporal recaps of Christianity and the faith, even though they’re fascinating. but to call upon yourself to become intimate with this moment. Search for a little contact with that female substance of the soul which can be prepared to receive God inwardly“

Today’s the day

 

Morning peace

Lees Substack post on Morning Five, As I Wait, recalled Parable of the virgins and the Bridegroom:

“ And I see that I am called to meet this life of mine, 

and drink this day more deeply, 

deep into every cell and molecule here in the body. 

so that it concentrates itself and prepares 

for the arrival of light. For I know not when the light shall come. 

I simply resolve to be prepared here as I wait for it.”

And I am trying to sense the point and place where air enters body: lungs to heart: to feed the molecules and cells, as he references every day but I never feel. It’s too fine

Lord go with S on this cancer journey that starts with first chemo today. Help. Us each to play our parts with love and tenderness and efficacy. She is not the only one suffering this experience. Help all in her position, pray IJN

Evening grace

Solace

 

Park Street walk yesterday 

You do send me messages of comfort. Today include Substack sermon on praying by Peter Trajan Haas. I subscribed. One take away ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication

   Indeed. thank you, Lord. There is meaning and growth in pain and suffering. 

Home again

Medical waiting room, yesterday, 2:30

I told A I don’t want her to travel to anybody else’s house again!  I think I mean it. Be that as may be. 

Thank you for my playful little dog and a beautiful autumn day  Sunshine and Cool Air

And thank you for the McDonald employee yesterday who may have been another one of your angels. A middle-aged, friendly Mainer who looked like she’d seen a thing or two and smiled even wider, saying, “I like my job” when I complimented her. TNJ again.

More to remember from Lee van Laer, A constant joy, Inner Christianity Substack yesterday

I come here to my life now in my 70’s with the twin burdens of conscience and remorse, which are hard enough to earn— and harder to carry—that one wonders why one would even bother to acquire them, seeing as so many folk live out their whole lives without the inconveniences and nuisances of either. 

I carry them in the rightful cosmological sorrow a being of substance ought to absorb and become responsible for, although I always question whether or not I have done enough in this area to become worthy—almost certainly, I have not. Yet another stone to add to the bag.

Yet despite all this, I can assure you, there is a constant joy that flows into being.

It is a strange thing; for, it turns out—at least as far as I understand it—that that joy would never be here but for the suffering I’ve endured, and which even now must always—as is ever the case— form the true foundation of Being in this cosmos.

This is an objective fact that can only be appreciated with age; here, one begins at last to know what Gurdjieff meant when he spoke of these things. They are serious matters, matters for men and women of a certain age who have worked, so to speak, “with blinders on” for many years, struggling to understand ideas no one, objectively, will ever understand, and confidently asserting countless falsehoods on the way to actual humility. For those of us fortunate enough to taste it—many fall by the wayside and refuse the gift— this seasoning is ultimately conferred both from the distances and the close proximities of our memory and life. 

It comes, in the end, only to help us.

Yes, they are serious matters, and as I put it to myself this morning, it stands thus:

We’re put here on the surface of this planet to receive God’s Grace. Why God has done this is inscrutable and will ever remain so. Indeed, as we judge from dimly lit interiors, the fortresses of our tiny little lives, it even appears to be a folly of some kind on His part.

Yet here it is; and the Grace keeps flowing.

Knowing, then, that this strange and wondrous Grace is ever present, flowing into Being everywhere to make birds sing, and worms crawl, and clouds enshrine the glory of the sky:

knowing this, why do I forsake the Grace and replace it with the dark words, and darker worlds, of man’s construction?

I could turn my face towards the light; and yet I forget, until that gentle hand that always hold the soul turns me back towards it—and always with a love that cannot be measured.

Unsafe

The Stillwater River

I am aware I’m being abused by a loved one who believes I’m abusing her.  I am tolerating and even documenting it as an attempt to save her life (Lost post; rewrite)

I realized lying awake here at 4am that  l might die in the attempt from my heart disease  

Ironic to think I could pass in this old house, in A’s old bed!!  Even  my FIL was  brought to our house from whence he passed, not alone, not in squalor.

A says we’ll get through it together  but I must say  it’s hard to see any togetherness , which requires compromise and forgiveness as part of that unconditional love ideal  guess that is what confuses me about the big L that even Lee says is the basis of God  good flowing and composing life, being.  These devastating behaviors of people who supposedly love one another.  Of course I may be conflating the sacred and mundane  Wouldn’t be the first time  Help me, Jesus  and thank you for your angel in the waiting room yesterday 

Psalm 23 (KJV)

1. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in thepaths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of theshadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thouart with me; thy rod and thy staff theycomfort me.
5. Thou preparest a table before me in thepresence of mine enemies: thou anointestmy head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow meall the days of my life: and I will dwell in thehouse of the Lord for ever.
7. Amen

And this from Lee van Laer this morning, Inner Christianity this am, “a Constant Joy”

I cannot reconcile what has been, or where I am, or what will be.

I cannot gather my past into manageable folds or piece it together into what will hide my shame, or keep me warm and cool enough.

But I know that with God’s grace flowing into being, I can and must go forward. This is the only thing I can rely on; and so I turn my heart in that direction, to this unknown place, here and now, where Grace doth enter.

To be in Christ.

It is, in fact, safer than the known way