What goes around, comes around

 

How did I miss this before Christmas?  So glad it’s still up.

     Aren’t second chances the best?  Big or small.  And JC said forgive seven times seventy. That’s a lot of potential do-overs.  Maybe that’s the point of my dream, yesterday and today:  Back to teaching, this time as an elementary classroom teacher with maybe forty little kids and a head full of ideas but no specific lesson plans.  Felt nervous but eager and dismayed by an enthusiastic parent who seemed kindly intent on taking over before I could get off the mark.  Hmmph!  Felt like “Be patient.  It will work out.”

      Lord, we need help from You to develop our patience.  Help us to see our second chances on all levels.  Awaken our awareness of our relationship to You, to each other.  May we extend kindness and generosity as the continuation of Your desire and will for our actions. IJN

     

Crabcake

Me and the other deplorables lunching at Sam’s yesterday 

     No such luck as crab there, just pizza and hotdog and Dr Pepper for 3.76. Not bad. Red gets most of the wiener.

      So what has this to do with You and me?  It’s my telling crab face. I awoke angry to even consider talking to You this morning. My, aren’t we rebellious, and where’s that going to get us?  Ignore God, and just see how good your life, heck, just your day, will be!  

       I could list situations, events, that landed me in this nasty attitude, but I won’t.  No point.  Free will.

     Let me sincerely pray instead. God, help me out of these doldrums; reach down Your hand, as you did to Peter sinking in the stormy sea.  If discomfort truly helps us grow, as we repeat in our Work groups, Lord, help me see how. And let me fix my eyes on Your eternal light.   IJN

     We all need help.  Lord, have mercy on us all.

Mortality

 

Family picnic, MD, early ‘50s

     I am grateful, Lord, for my natal family and the time and place in which we have grown up together. Two more arrived in the decade after this photo was taken, and we have always loved and supported each other.  What a blessing! Not so many families are given that.  

     We are aging out, rapidly approaching the end of our lifetime together, our parents deceased so many years now I can’t remember.  Go gently with us, Lord, and protect those we leave behind, in family and world.  IJN

Perhaps

 

More moon shots from yesterday 

     Perhaps the moon was a portent, but my prayer had not the result I sought, since death of a person I knew, though not well, occurred last night.  Death feeds the moon, say Gurdjieff followers, and my astrology friend says many people choose the time of the full moon to leave life.  Coincidences like this can surely prompt pondering the nature of death.  And it is no inconsequential exercise to look with compassion at each one we encounter, remembering that we each shall die.

     God, grant each of us peace when we die, and accompany your believers.  IJN

Gurdjieff says in the final two paragraphs of the chapter, “The Result of Impartial Mentation,” in his master work, “All and Everything…” (aka “Beelzebub’s Tales”): 

    The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would

be to implant again into their presences a new organ like kundabuffer, but

this time of such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the

process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the

inevitability of his own death as well as of the death of everyone upon

whom his eyes or attention rests. 

    Only such a sensation and such cognizance can now destroy the

egoism completely crystallized in them that has swallowed up the whole of

their Essence and also that tendency to hate others which flows from it—

the tendency, namely, which engenders all those mutual relationships

existing there, which serve as the chief cause of all their abnormalities

unbecoming to three-brained beings and maleficent for them themselves

and for the whole of the Universe

Portents?

 

Super full moon, actual 1-3-26, 5:02 am; these pics1-2, 4:17 pm just after moonrise over BAM at mall

     Lord, how I am wasting this day, blaming my behavior and choices on cold and ice, sensing only snuffles and stiffness in my joints as I lazily sit minute after minute in this easy? chair, not the healthy body you endow.  I haven’t been willing to talk to You or myself all morning.  I’ve just idled precious moments tapping iPhone keys to order/cancel Apps or Amazon plus the ubiquitous password changes my inefficient memory and notes require.  Is it  Plato’s cave Ocke always reiterates, where chained men face shadows on a wall cast by passersby and think they see real life?  That’s me today. Lord, help me escape my own chains, today and every day. 

     In fact, help us all in the ways each needs help, please, Lord.  Especially today IW.

      And thank you for this amazing universe, as shone in that super moon. IJN

Life class

 

Mine, from life classes, 2013

     Lord, I’m not the best at rendering, but I’m grateful to have had some ability and motivation in that field.  

     To appreciate our gifts and riches, all from you, is good to do at this time of year.

    

      Bless us every one.

Happy New Year

Sunset today after a light snowfall all day

         Lord, I seem to address you each time in this medium with immediate -habitual?- thanks and gratitude.  I’d prefer to be a little more original, as if this is a foolish, habitual attachment to vanity intended simply to please or somehow placate you.  But I feel thankful to you for all of It—all of my life as I live. Still I question, if I describe the impressions of the day now, am I not pleasing my self, my personality, more than considering you?  The question does not mean I will stop the descriptions and wordy gratitude, so habitual request for forgiveness must also ensue.  I am indeed a weak and confused creature!  I need your continuous guidance.

          And I must say truly I thank you for relationships, for all the friends who visited today, and relatives spoken and heard by phone.  Let us all hear you as well as each other every moment.  IJN.

Cyrus and Annamae; she was such a baby then, now both darlings are gone.