It's Raining. It's Pouring. The Old Man is...(er) isn't Snoring

Above is a National Geographic wallpaper photo of when Hurricane Allan hit Texas. I lived in Kingsville then and helped with the safety and recovery measures.

Hurricane Dolly is hitting the south Texas coast today. That's big news for Texas. Even though a good bit of our border sits on the Gulf of Mexico not that many hurricanes come straight into Texas. But when they do...it's a doozy. Since I was born in 1952, there have been 9 hurricanes affecting Texas of which 6 actually made landfall on the Texas coast. There is a nice history list of them here.

San Antonio is getting 80% chance of rain today too. We are the disaster staging area. The last few times a hurricane hit the south Texas coast it bundled into Mexico shortly after landfall. That's what they are predicting this time too. The odd thing about our area is the Rio Grande river is the border between Mexico and Texas and it rides straight down to the coast where Dolly is supposed to hit. A bit of legality here...if the river bed shifts so does the Texas border. Citizenship issues have come out of river shifts before. Between Weslaco and Mercedes (5 miles away) there is a flood plain that I saw filled once when I was a little girl. There are 2 dams in place to help manage the water rise but you never know. South Texas soil has a fair bit of clay in it and the water table is only about 50 feet down.

When I was in high school hurricane Carla came into town and Weslaco got enough wind that it blew a huge branch down from one of the trees in the house we lived in back then. My folks still live in Weslaco, about 8 miles from the Rio Grande River.

When San Antonio had their 100 year flood way back in 2002 all the water ran down to the coast and inundated that area for a lot longer than it did San Antonio. I have friends who live in Corpus Christi and when I drove down to see them Lake Mathis, that had been small with campgrounds all around it, was a huge field of water and no one was living there anymore. It stayed that way for over a year. A lot of Corpus Christi has bay water inlets and such. You can drive back a fair bit from the city and find water ways and such. So even if the hurricane doesn't stay long in Texas the rains up and down the coast are going to make things a mess for a while. Sandi was the one who reminded me that, because of the drought Texas has been experiencing recently, the water will likely stay on the surface and cause more damage.

As I mentioned, we pretty much expect the hurricane to turn aside and affect another country even more and those people will be really hurting too. So I'm praying for the residents of Mexico too. In some cases what affects Texas will affect Mexico too. Where will the people of Mexico go?

If the dams on the river break my parents will evacuate. They'll leave in their own car. If that happens I hope the highways are still drivable. My parents can also move onto higher ground by moving from their cottage to the main building of their retirement community and going up a few floors. That would at least avoid the water which probably won't get as high as Katrina's waters did. There are of course other concerns like power outages and clean water shortages but I think my folks are savvy enough to have planned ahead. Dad is a strong one for safety measures.

If this sounds like I'm fretting a bit, I guess I am. And I can't do anything other than keep my hands together in prayer and monitor the news. So you know what I'm gonna do? Pray, keep the TV on, and try to enjoy the rain that is going to hit San Antonio. I just hope my nerves over my folks being down there so close to the gulf doesn't spoil the fact that rain, normal rain that is, is my favorite kind of weather. All prayers for those along the Texas coast and in Mexico appreciated. Peace! & Hope!

New Meditation Link

I was looking for some peace this morning and started browsing through my own meditation links. Hamish Fulton seemed to be soothing but also not quite what I wanted. It was just a little too busy for my present need. So I went to handy old Google and typed in Meditation. Now my Google has Stumble Upon links to show what pages others have liked and a friend of mine had reported on two as being helpful in his meditation practices. So I went to them. The first was just a page on how to meditate and looked rather nice but not what I wanted. Then I found his Zen link.

Zen is a cool little website whose purpose is to teach you the beginnings of Zen and meditation. It is interactive and you just click your way through it. You should allow pop-ups for this site because they are part of the instruction and not harmful in any way. I found a couple of them amusing. Have your speakers on because this site also has sounds, such as those you might notice only in meditation and also a really nice gong you get to strike at the end of the process. I found this site soothing and helpful. There is even a short part on breathing where you can practice. If you are looking for a peaceful site please go check this one out. The link is on my side bar under Meditation at the top, "Zen".

Namaste

The Labryinth

The image is an example of the Chartres Labyrinth. It is the pattern for the one at my church. Walking a labyrinth is a form of meditation and prayer.

The story of the labyrinth, as it was told to me, is lovely and right out of medieval times. Back in the days of old faithful members of the church longed to take pilgrimages to the Holy Lands. This was seen as a life goal of the faithful and many saved for years to go on one. Then along came the Crusades. Suddenly it wasn't safe to travel over there anymore. This made walking a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands very difficult. To compensate for the lack of opportunity Labyrinths started springing up all over the place. On them one walks one's pilgrimage in silent meditative prayer.

Church of Reconciliation Episcopal introduced the Labyrinth to San Antonio. We have a ministry with a portable one which we can cart from place to place and are in the process of building a permanent one. We see it as a resource for the entire community. Several other churches now have labyrinths or are in the process of building one in town. One of the nice things about labyrinths is that you don't have to be rich to walk one. You don't need to be Christian either. It is truly an interfaith tool.

I've added a link to The Labyrinth Society in the new Meditation section. This is a lovely page that covers just about as much information about the labyrinth as you might want to know: its history, different types, where to find one, how to walk one, and there is also a section on labyrinths and children. There are also instructions on how to make a labyrinth and several animated drawings so that you can draw a finger labyrinth. I think this art might be a good thing to use in the classroom. Children know instinctively how to use a finger labyrinth and helping them draw their own would make a nice cross-cultural art project. In the mean time, I plan on trying my hand at drawing several of the labyrinth forms. Somehow, I suspect the drawing of one is almost as effective at calming stressed nerves as tracing one.

This is a finger labyrinth. You can trace it online with your finger. Here's a link to one in PDF format that you can print out and keep.

Peace!

Meditation - a new link category

Prayer is meditation. Walking can also be meditation. To my mind, so can singing and dancing. Meditation is a focus on the spiritual. It comes in many shapes and forms and crosses most religious boundaries. It connects us with our past, present and future.

My best friend meditates as frequently as she can fit the time in. Susan seems to meditate through her daily exercise. My sister, when she was younger, took one of those courses on transcendental meditation with a guru. This was during the 70's. She still meditates today in the structure of her faith and life. I'm finding myself doing a form of meditation that has nothing to do with clearing the mind but a lot to do with finding a focus and a connection to the spiritual. My church has a prayer garden which is so meditative in nature that even the spirits of past members rest there. We are in the process of building a labyrinth.

Because so much of faith and communication with God centers around a form of quiet reflection (a.k.a. meditation) I decided that it would be a good thing to include a list of meditation links here. The ones I have found so far are linked to one another. The first is the World Community for Christian Meditation. It led me to The Spiritual Site. From them I found Hamish Fulton who is an artist who loves walking. WCCM has a lot of good information and some really good articles on meditation. One I particularly like is about silence in the Eucharist. The Spiritual Site is a work in progress. They have some very good links in addition to some audio interviews with Laurence Freedman. Hamish Fulton's website is a work of art in and of itself. There is a constant sound of walking and some very beautiful images that fade in and out and blend as you progress through the site.

I'll add more links as I find them. Enjoy!

Personality Types and Spirituality

Psychological profiles seem to be cropping up a lot this month. My Diocese newspaper had an article on personality types and prayer. It tied the Meyer Briggs Types Inventory (MBTI) to different methods of prayer and suggested several for each type. I'm an ESTJ and it was suggested that I would enjoy body prayers in beautiful surroundings. Music was suggested and also incense and candles to create a sensual environment for prayer. This is a very accurate view of how I prefer to pray. When I am in the mood, dancing can be a kind of physical prayer, an exultation of life. Singing can do the same and, for that reason, I'm working hard to bring back some music skills I once had but have sadly let lapse for life style reasons. The Personality and Prayer article came out of a book on the subject, Prayer and Temperament: Different Prayer Forms for Different Personality Types. My PC recognized it when I brought him the article. I may get it someday. In the meantime I have the article to tell me more about something I was already somewhat familiar with...good ways for me to pray.

The other psychological profile came in the form of enneagrams. I'd never heard of them till I had a discussion with my PC on the MBTI. He told me about these and I looked for a page and took a test. The test was free and probably not the entire battery of questions, still I liked the results and learned a little bit more about myself. If you are interested in taking the same test I took go here. There are two different forms of the test on this page. One is the RHETI which may be the oldest version of the enneagram test and someone declared the least accurate (only 65%). I took it anyway. The second form is not labeled except as the New Test by Tal. It has a broader range of answers for you to choose which I thought made the results more personal. It also gives broader ranges of scores in each of the 9 types so it might conceivably be more accurate.

Among the 9 types, I turned out to be a peacemaker. From the page's description, "Peacemakers are receptive, good-natured, and supportive. They seek union with others and the world around them." That pretty much describes me. I'm accepting and accommodating. My secondary type is that of artist/romantic. For this one the site declares, "Romantics have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive." Well, I'm not sure about that description but the rest of the page told how to get along with a romantic and what was cool and not so cool about being one. Those bits I did find sensible and pretty much accurate.

Being the good client that I am, I took this new info about myself with me to the latest PC session and learned more. It seems that these types can be used to connect to faith functioning as well as life and social functioning. That was more interesting to me since I am trying to see ways to make my faith work better for me in both private and social areas. My PC gave me a web page which described that in some detail. If you are interested in reading more about that go here.

Did all this new info change me? Not really. But it gave me food for thought and plenty to discuss with friends and PC alike. It also gave me something in common with my sister. She too is a peacemaker. That's nice to know. What can come of all this? Well, if you want you can go find your type and look for ways to use it to make your spiritual life better or more conducive to growth. You can also try to use it to avoid the bad side that each personality seems to have. For me it is enough to learn a bit more about myself and how I function. Plus I plan to use the prayer guide a lot. That part of my life definitely could use some improvement. In the meantime, there is lots of cool stuff out there about enneagrams, and personality types that you can learn and connect to whatever suits you. Go ahead, find your personality type, and explore! And in the nature of my type, "Peace!"

Prayer for today & Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's off to work I go.

Today I start a temporary job. I'll be scoring math tests for one of those major test publishing firms, Harcourt. The job is supposed to last about a week. I'm glad to have something to do and a little money coming in. Yay work!

Looking to start my day with prayer, I went to World Prayers, a new link on my sidebar. There I found the following under Celebrations. Let's all try to do that more.

Wage peace with your breath. Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds. Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields. Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees. Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact. Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud. Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers. Make soup. Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages. Learn to knit, and make a hat. Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish. Swim for the other side. Wage peace. Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious: Have a cup of tea and rejoice. Act as if armistice has already arrived. Celebrate today.

wage peace - judyth hill - september 12, 2001 P.S. If you click on the arrow cross above the prayer you will be taken to the World Prayers index of celebration prayers. Please go and have fun looking through this all faith inclusive site.

More Decluttering and a New Prayer Method

Yesterday, in the process of putting together a grocery list, I went through my freezer. While doing this, I took out a few things I couldn't remember when I'd bought them. I also threw away some I knew had reached the freezer burn stage (Never go shopping on an empty stomach). Suddenly I have room in my freezer. I also feel less burdened by the need to use something up and not knowing what to do with it. Now I understand why you often see suggestions to make a menu and shop from it. Yay for decluttering!

My spiritual director gave me a new way of praying which is supposed to be a favorite of Teresa de Avila. To do this put an empty chair in front of you. Sit in yours facing it. Imagine Jesus is sitting in the other and looking back at you with loving eyes. Meditate on this image. That's so easy! I've been doing the empty chair thing for years; I'd just never put Jesus in it. This will work almost anywhere. I tried it out on the drive home while sitting at a long traffic light. It felt so good that it brought a smile to my face. After trying the prayer I found my focus had changed. Things felt more connected, more in the moment. This is definitely something I want to do more of!

Prayer Books

Because Lent is coming our church is doing a group of home studies on prayer again. This time we are reading "Becoming Jesus' Prayer: Transforming your life through the Lord's Prayer." I picked up my copy on the way out of breakfast at the fellowship hall.

Yesterday's poetry workshop was held in the church library. While there I tried to talk about "Genesis Meditations" by Neil Douglas-Klotz. Not remembering his name, I went looking in the card catalog just in case we had a copy. We didn't but we had another book under his name. "Prayers of the Cosmos," which I have sworn to get around to reading, is translated by him and has commentary too. The description of the book on the dust cover says it has body prayers that will, "take us beyond reading and understanding the teachings of Jesus by teaching us to experience the sound and feeling of Christ's words." This sounded so enticing to me that I checked the copy out from the library, not being able to wait through the task of purchasing a copy of my own. Because the material in this book are copyright protected I feel awkward about even typing a sample here. Instead I am sending you off to read the Amazon site where you can "look inside" the book and read the first prayer here.

Because, as I've mentioned, things sometimes come to my attention in threes, I think it is significant that I am now enmeshed in three prayer books. I have the Book of Common Prayer, the Lenten study book "Becoming Jesus' Prayer", and "Prayers of the Cosmos." It seems to me that my prayer life will be taking a step forward. It has been rather sporadic of late even though I know that I need prayer daily to keep my connection to God vibrant. I hope that the upcoming weeks and studies of prayer will encourage better prayer habits in my spiritual life and daily routine. If you are reading this and have any good prayer books or individual prayers you would like to share I hope you will. Peace! Hope! & Joy!

Continuing stories and prayer build

My mother has accepted the challenge of writing a 6-word story. I'm waiting with bated breath to hear what she comes up with. Several of my friends blogs are now freckled with these small gems. This is fun and such a good use of creative energy that I hope it continues to generate short bites about and from my friends for many moons to come. (g) I'll ask my mom if I can publish hers when she has them written.

Genesis class was once again a delight. This time, in part, because we keep being reminded that it is so full of folk tales. Today the words fairy tales were used. Yeah! I love those. So much so that when some of my favorite fantasy authors started researching Grimm's stories and after getting back to the original versions, which are often truly horrific, rewrote them from new perspectives I found a whole study of literature that I was willing to pursue solo. Usually I'm happiest hearing other people lecture on a subject.

The stories covered were Cain & Abel and Noah and the Flood. There's lots of room for commentary in those stories. Lots of symbolism too. On a personal level it is fun to try to imagine why and how God did some of the things claimed in Genesis. But I don't take that mental play serious. Or not often. What I do take serious is that God is able to take these folk stories and teach us something with them. These aren't easy lessons. They take in an entire society and its growth. So it would take far wiser minds than mine to come close to grasping all they imply and whole libraries to explain them. Suffice to say that I had a lot of fun in the class today. I was even able to contribute something to the discussions and maybe the teacher's growth as well. When getting ready to head to church this morning I remembered I had a book called "Types in Genesis" by Edward Jukes. It is a very old book written in old English. I like it for the imagery it has which echoes throughout scripture of God's power in both creation and action. I took it to class with me and the teacher asked to borrow it.

When class closed, we used the prayer build method that the teacher introduced last Sunday. We took from today's discussion to find our images. The prayer images are divided into 3 categories. God is-; We ask for-' and So that-. Today we said that God is almighty, forever, and mysterious. We asked for patience, harmony, and insight; So that we might love him more, hear him better, and see others as he would have us see. The reason I love this prayer build is that it makes the group prayer so relevant and personal. I don't feel that I have it down quite right yet. So I intend to keep on listening closely when she does this again. If I find another small bit that will add to the instructions of how to accomplish such a successful prayer I will add it in.

Genesis class & building a prayer

Yesterday's Sunday school class was the second one on Genesis. When the teacher started a week ago she and a co-teacher talked about Education For Ministry (EFM) which is where they got their training. The Episcopal church seems to support this schooling and from all accounts is seems pretty good. I don't know a lot about it but when I am done with my present schooling I may look into it more.

Sunday's lesson covered the first 3 chapters of Genesis which is the creation story. I had fun with that. The teacher talked about there being two creations stories in Genesis. I think there might be three. The reason I think that is because back in the 80's, when I studied Genesis before, some people liked to take the words in the first two sentences and say that there was an entire story possible in the gap between them. The NRS Bible, which is the approved Episcopal version, edited out the potential gap in time. The NIV left it in. The way the play with words goes is that the first sentences declares, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The next sentence starts with the word "Now" which can be taken as either a literary styling or a way of implying that there was a gap between the time that God created the world and the time that the story teller is talking about. Lots of people who like their stories filled with mystery loved that potential gap in time. It gave rise to the idea that perhaps the world had been created, destroyed and now was perhaps being recreated. What fun! So we talked about that a bit in class. Since there isn't a way of discovering whether the writer meant the "Now" as a styling or otherwise we can't really solve this one. Possibly better read people will have an answer to the current view on that question.

Then we talked about the idea of whether Eve or Adam was responsible for man's fall from grace. Remember that Eve was the first to eat the apple? Well you can argue that she was deceived having never heard the instructions of God first hand and that Adam had known full well what he doing and had decided to do it anyways. And we wondered about that. Knowing that you might fall from grace is it possible that Adam just couldn't bear to be apart from Eve? Was that why he did as she asked? We also looked at the decision that Eve made and how she saw the tree of knowledge. It was good for food, attractive to the eye, and it gave knowledge. So she made a God like decision instead of following God's instruction. That too has tons of implications in it. I wish I was better at remembering the things that were said in that classroom. It was intriguing and we all enjoyed the discussions these topics generated.

At the end of the class the teacher asked us what in the creation stories we saw as God...she wanted 3 responses. We gave her creative, sustaining, and breath as in breath of life and creation. Then she asked us what was needed from God in that story or what were his actions, again 3 responses, and we gave her forgiveness, guidance, and connections. Finally she asked what we wanted to take with us from this story and our responses were: do your work, creation restored, and live as you designed us and made us to be. Then she used our responses to make a prayer. In it we named/described God, asked for something and gave it purpose. It went something like this:

Creative, sustaining God, you are our breath of life.
We ask your forgiveness, guidance and connection
To help us do your work, restore your creation, and
Live as you designed us and made us to be.
In Jesus name, Amen.

Everyone of us felt that was a really beautiful way to pray and wanted to take the method home with us. I think we will be watching this teacher closely to determine how to build such a meaningful prayer so that we can enrich our own prayer lives.

Small additions

There are two new links in my sidebar now. One is a link to the American Photojournalist website. It is there as a gift to a friend who is really into camera work. The other link is to Sacred Space. It is a place where you can go and do daily prayer. Run by a group of Irish Catholic Jesuits, the entire website has a meditative and purposeful feel to it. From it you can go on a virtual retreat or just find a few moments of guided meditation. I hope you'll take the time to check them out.

Holy Longing

For the past two Sundays, a class called "Holy Longing" has been going on at church. It has been wrapped around the scripture, "As the deer longs for the water-brooks, So does my soul for you, O God." Psalm 42:2. This beautiful verse talks about the desire of man to know and draw closer to God. And that is what we discussed in class. Our longings, our desires to know Him, what made us on fire to know God, all were shared in that room of church family.

There are a lot of different ways to see God or to be on fire for him. In the last class we listed some of the ways we felt that longing, or what set us on fire. Answers received were, "Wild Joy", "Awareness of life together", "Passing on_____ (to ones children)", "Wholeness", "Connection", "Be the prayer", and on and on. We had the entire board filled with responses by the time we were through.

Some of it was delightfully amusing. One man, happily married for many years, said that to name 3 ways he was set on fire he would have to say his wife's name 3 times. While we were talking he expressed a love of growth through learning more about communion. I felt a connection to that reasoning. My service as a Lay Eucharistic minister is a function of my desire to understand more about the ritual, sacrament and mystery that is Holy Communion.

We then started talking about knowing Jesus and seeing him in our longing. It was brought to mind that Jesus looked at each person with love and knowledge. For some reason that inspired me. I started writing down a poem/prayer. I don't do poetry often but I thought I might share this one because it describes what I hope to see in others as I strive to know Christ. It doesn't really have a title so I am giving it the title that was the question we were answering at the time.

What is the pattern of Jesus Christ?

Learning of others,
a longing to know.

Communion of spirit,
a meeting of soul.

Love reaching out,
heart knowledge grows.

Christ brought to life
in the you that I know.

May the spirit of Christ be with you through this holiday season and all the coming year.

Peace! Hope! and Joy!

On being a friend...

Friends have come and gone in my life. There's a sense of longing when I hear people talk about holding onto friends forever. Those kinds of relationships are blessings. When you keep friends for life you get to watch them grow and change as they experience it. Often, you change with them. When people pass out of your life, depending on how close you were, something goes missing. It can be as simple as good company and memories of conversations shared or as important as knowing that someone who helped you grow, or maybe you helped them, is gone from your life.

A while back, my church was having a small group discussion on what it meant to be a friend as Jesus had been. This was surrounding the story where Jesus tells the apostles that he had been their friend as the Father had been his by laying out his plans and life for them to see. At the time I was frustrated with having few friends in my church and had said so to the body in general. There was, however, one person who had recently made a difference in my life.

We weren't friends in the traditional sense. It was more of an acquaintance in that we had been attending the same church for 3 years. When this person's actions in church created a change in my relationship with God, I decided that I should start acting like a friend but didn't know how. We barely knew each other. When we tried to talk the conversation was either horribly stilted or inane and not conducive to getting to know one another better. About this time he started pulling away from the church and heading towards life someplace else. So even as I was imagining a new friendship I was losing the opportunity. It occurred to me that if there was one thing I could do before he left it was to let him know that he had made a difference in someone's life.

I really didn't know what else I could or should do. Isn't knowing that you've done some good one of the things people want to know before they die? At least that is what I've been led to believe. I don't think I was being very imaginative at the time. It is frustrating seeing a potential friendship go before it has come. Anyway, I ended up trying to tell him. It didn't quite get the reaction I had hoped for but it did seem to please him. Did it make us friends? Not exactly. It might have opened a door for the future but we aren't bosom buddies or anything like that.

Since then I've gotten more creative in my being a friend efforts. When I get the chance, which isn't often these days, I ask how he is doing and what his plans are. He has been added to my prayer list. I let him know he is there and that his concerns are going from my mouth to God's ears. While all of that hasn't made for closeness it has opened the door to communication and provided the opportunity to do so on occasion. More importantly, I know that in some way I am hopefully returning the good he did with some of my own.

Recently when Lynn Johnston, who writes For Better or For Worse, put a story line in her comic strip that helped me through a difficult time I found a way to let her know. It wasn't exactly easy to do. I had to use the "ask a question" feature on the FAQ part of her website. It's kind of sad when public attention causes a person to need to insulate themselves from people who really like them for what they do. I don't expect a letter in reply although that'd be nice, but I feel better for having done it. In the same way, I returned the favor of being thoughtful when a coworker had been caring and gone out of her way in a gracious manner towards me.

My friend, Susan , says that she places the label "friend" on people who treat her well. If they don't then they aren't friends. This is a very realistic and practical attitude towards defining friendship. No one should have to put up with friends who treat them badly. I'll go one step further. Your friends should make you feel valued. Hopefully, you make them feel the same way. Some of the ways that my friends make me feel valued is by putting up with my not catching their jokes, not understanding when they are talking about something that is not within my realm of experience so that I don't immediately commiserate, and my getting distracted in the middle of their talking and popping in with a subject of my own which has little or nothing to do with whatever the conversation was about. They accept me for who and what I am, faults and all.

Another way that my friends help me is by teaching me their sense of humor. Humor is so unique and personal a perspective that it can be really enlightening when you see it in action. It can also be educational. There were occasional jokes told at home when I was a kid but most of them I learned at school. It wasn't over the dinner table. My grandparents weren't into joking either although they had wonderful senses of fun and humor. I've learned about humor from books, TV shows with comedians, my ex, friends, and now my students and web pages. The lessons haven't always gone smoothly. When I focus on subject matter I often miss their humor and my friends stop and explain it to me. Anger was such a serious matter at my home as a child that it was a real shock when a friend yelled at me and was joking the whole time. It was the same when another friend insulted me and expected me to catch the joke.

It took me a while to realize the gift they were giving me. They expected me to understand that they thought well of me and that the insult that was the joke was to be understood as not how they saw me. They saw me as strong and confident and not the kind of person who would be devastated by being insulted casually. It was eye opening when I finally realized that. They were delighted when I made tentative efforts to return the compliment. I'm not good at it yet but I'm getting better. More importantly I'm getting stronger; and because I am stronger in my self-view, when someone actually does insult me, I no longer fall apart. So to the friends who have taught me humor...Thank you!

If you are reading this and have something to add on how to be a friend or how friends help you grow or make a difference in your life I hope you will take the opportunity to share. Friends are too valuable to lose and when one does go I hope you or I have left them with the knowledge that they were gold and had value in our lives.

Comics and Comfort

In an earlier post, Comics and Ritual, I mentioned reading comic strips to start my day. Usually it's 3 of my favorites: For Better or For Worse, Rose is Rose, and Luann. Lately, For Better or For Worse has been putting out a story in which Jim, the grandfather of the family, has had a stroke and how it is affecting everyone. This isn't a cheerful subject for a comic strip to write about but, one of the things I like about For Better or For Worse is that it gives me insights into family dynamics, feelings, and how these can interact. The story line today was about how April, the granddaughter who is still at home, was worrying about her grandfather all day while she was in school. She was constantly seeing pictures of him in her head. The closing frame expressed, in the loveliest way, how simple a prayer can be. And how meaningful.

If you've been keeping up with this blog then you'll know that my best friend, deby, recently passed on. Today's comic went a long way towards making me feel better about missing her so much and remembering her a lot. Knowing that my remembering her echoes the thoughts of her friends and family, and that these thoughts don't go unheard, is also very comforting. Spiritual reminders like this are another reason I choose to make a ritual of reading the funnies. Plus I keep learning from them and that makes me feel good too. To read today's comic on the official web page go here.

From Grace to Chaos

Yesterday I officiated at the performance of Morning Prayer. That is a pleasant time for me because it is solitary and gives me much needed, and often neglected, time with God. As it turns out I really needed that time. Some of it was spent in prayers for others but some was spent asking for healing for me. I'm still hurting over the loss of my friend.

When I was through with Morning Prayer I thought the day would go well. Instead it was almost total chaos. The teacher in charge had a meeting to attend so she left 3 aids in charge of the classroom. During that hour and a half we had: 2 students who hurt each other's feelings and thus weren't cooperating with each other in loud angry voices, one student who just totally refused to cooperate with the aid's requests and left the room twice without permission to go wandering the halls thus requiring an aid (me) to leave the others in charge and go following him around to be sure he didn't run off the campus, yet another student was so late from a quick trip to the restroom that she was given a "tardy" thus destroying her perfect record (they get rewards for this) and later that day she made a rude hand sign to another student and was put on report by the teachers who caught her in the act, and to top it all off I got to watch eight 8th graders retake a history test which they had all done poorly on and the administrator of this test gave them the answers as he was reading the questions to them. Now where is the education in that? Heck, where is the plan?

Saving grace? When the teacher got back and heard what had happened she went on discipline mode and had a long talk with the kids. The end result is that they are assigned the homework of writing letters of apology to each aid. I was pleased to hear the lecture. The apology letter makes me squirm almost as much as Susan's evening made her uncomfortable.

I'm not sure why this assignment embarrasses me. The students are certainly going to think about what they have done when they write it. It is a good learning activity. The aids are definitely entitled to the apologies. Maybe this is my old "could I have done things differently and better" alert system raising its head. When I watched the student who roamed the halls walk into our Spec. Ed. Clerk's office and talk to her and a teacher I watched compassion in practice. They recognized he was having a bad day. They tried to joke him out of it. I guess I was too far along to have seen it till it was shown to me. That makes me feel so guilty because all of my career as a teacher I am going to run into kids who are having bad days. One of my jobs is going to be to teach them how to handle that kind of thing. I don't think I did very well yesterday.

The day closed better than I hoped for after that. A teacher friend gave me the needed transparency film thus saving me a trip to the store. I have written a letter of sympathy to the teacher who was in the meeting because during her lecture to the students she mentioned having a friend who was probably going to lose a family member to illness. This was the same teacher who went out of her way to write me a sympathy card earlier. I want to show her the same care and consideration she showed me. And so I grow even as I struggle. Are we back to Grace? Not quite, but we are getting there. Now if only I could think of a way to teach my students what I learned from yesterday, which is that even when you are struggling with not having done well in areas that matter you can still find some places to redeem yourself.

Prayers for the Anglican rosary

My friend JSD has posted about her discovery of praying through the use of the Anglican rosary. It is a lovely way to pray. I was given a set when I went through my Cursillo. Mine wasn't as fancy as JSD's were but they are filled with sentiment. I promised some of the prayers that came with mine so here they are:

Prayer of Oblation
Cross: And here I offer and present to you, O Lord, myself, my soul, and body, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice to you.
Invitatory: Accept, O Lord, my offering.
Cruciform: All from you, O Lord, and all for you.
Weeks: I give of all the days and hours of my life.
I give of my strengths and of my weaknesses.
I give of my talents.
I give of my treasure, the work of my hands.
I give of my joys and of my sorrows.
I give from the places of darkness within me as well as from the places of light.
I give of my whole self, holding back nothing.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving
Cross: For every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh from the Father.
Invitatory: Thank you, God, for the many gifts you have bestowed on me.
Cruciform: I give you thanks, O Lord.
Weeks: For the beauty of all creation - for earth and sky and sea.
For home and family, friends and loved ones.
For work to do and for time to rest and play.
For food and drink and all the bounty of the earth.
For the freedoms that I enjoy.
For the gift of health and for the patience and strength to bear weaknesses.
For the examples of the saints of God now and in the past.

A Prayer based on the Hymn of St. Patrick
Cross: I bind unto myself today
The strong name of the Trinity
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.

Invitatory: I bind this day to me forever,
By power of faith, Christ's incarnation.
Protect me, Christ, till thy returning.

Cruciform: Christ be with me.

Weeks: Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Cross: Amen

A Litany for Lent
Cross: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

Invitatory: You desire truth in the inward being; therefore, teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

Cruciform: O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.

Weeks: Cleanse me and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
Against you alone have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out my transgressions.
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore me to the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Cross (last time): Amen

Voices in our heads and from our hearts

Disclaimer - I'm not a prayer warrior. Effective prayers and long hours on my knees aren't my forte. And I am not going to be sharing any great secrets or insight here. But if you've ever had God answer back you know the joy of hearing his voice. That joy makes me want to share, but I realize that not everyone is comfortable hearing about prayer and voices from God. So if that will upset you please don't read any further. I promise not to be offended if you help me to not offend you by going elsewhere. Ok...disclaimer finished.

Sometimes, hearing voices in our heads isn't a good thing. That being said, God speaks to those who listen. And he listens when we answer back.

When Martin spoke of that still small voice I knew just what he was talking about. Many faithful people do. It means we are listening. We listen with our hearts, not our ears. We are hoping to hear from God. Sometimes we do. And when we answer back, we speak with our hearts, minds, voices and sometimes our bodies. God listens to them all.

We are also supposed to listen with our minds. When God speaks to me I am supposed to use discernment to know that it really is God who is speaking and not my own emotions. Sometimes this isn't hard to do. His voice has a distinct feel and flavor. The message I hear is usually in-line with the things I know of God from scripture. Seldom has he spoken in a way that didn't have multiple consequences. His words and meaning spread out from the primary message like the rings one gets from a pebble dropped in a pool of still water. Sometimes, however, I want to hear his voice so much and want something so bad that I can create my own voice and that is when it is hard. When I want a good result based on what I want, and not on what God has in mind, then I can find myself hearing a voice and not knowing for sure if it is God. I know enough about scripture to make the message logical. When that happens, even my efforts at discernment fail. Hopefully yours are better.

Does God's voice sound the same every time you hear it? It doesn't to me. His voice takes many forms. So I guess it seems normal to me to speak back in more than one way.

When we talk to God we use many different voices. These voices come from our heads, our hearts, our guts (especially when they ache), our needs, our wants, and hopefully our joys. Scripture talks about tongues and also about a special language that only the indwelling spirit and God understand. But tongues mean voices as well as language and it is as natural to sing our prayers as to weep them or rant at the heavens. I've even had a friend tell me of visualizing your prayer and just sending the picture heavenward.

A few years back I sang my prayers. This was during the 80's when Praise songs were so popular. I think they still are but they have moved into a different genre. Those songs can be sung repetitiously and that is very conducive to meditating on the message they are giving which is usually very simple. It would be me in the car, on a trip, and singing songs of praise while I drove. After a while, I'd get so in touch with the spirit that the need for formal song would stop and I'd start singing whatever my heart felt like saying to God, and using what ever melody popped into my head. It was a kind of free form song and never had any real verses, although once God did give me a praise song. That was a form of exultation in the joy of life in the spirit.

Last Lenten season my church held a "come pray with us" series of classes which taught different forms of prayer. We had contemplative prayer, lectia divino (please forgive any misspellings), prayer of the senses, and guided imagery. All of it was wonderful and I learned a lot in each class. During that period they opened the labyrinth (maze for those who call it that) and we even did some Christian yoga one evening.

For me motion is akin to prayer and, because I love music, dance is often the form it takes. When the rhythm and flow of the melody invades my being, my body becomes a conduit for the expression of life. The beat is my heart beat and my breath. The flow of the melody is my motion; arms, feet, and body taking flight as I express what I feel in a very focused and yet totally free form.

So do I think I can dance? LOL Not really. I never got a lot of training so my form and style are definitely amateur. But when I start to move to music which excites me it doesn't matter. It is sheer exultation and self expression. It is thanking God for life. And I'm okay with that.

If you have a favorite form of prayer or an answer story I hope you will share it.

Peace, Hope, and Joy!