By Rena Oynes:

My friend, Dale loaned me this book and with the booming thunder, and flashing lighting, and pouring rain I opened it up.  What a delightful book about quilting and friends.  I’m about half way through and couldn’t help but to read the last chapter which I always enjoy doing.   I thought you might like this direct quote from the author Marie Bostwick Skinner on page 327-328.  “Quilts are made of broken lines, just like life.  Over and over again, we try to walk a straight path but run into dead ends, sharp corners, and uneven ground that cut us off and forces us to change direction.  Sometimes it’s painful, other times joyful.  But it isn’t until you take a moment to stand still, step off the line, and back away that you finally see the truth.  Those unexpected turns and startling about-faces, the path?  It wasn’t chaotic at all.  When you step back to see where you’ve been, you discover the shape, the reason, the intricately beautiful pattern and vivid colors of a life stitched together from what, at one point, had seemed nothing more than mismatched scraps and broken lines.  Stepping back, you see there has been a design all along, and a designer.

 
At that moment, standing in a shaft of late-day sunlight that bounced beams of light off the sparkling windowpanes, and made the paint on the door glow a brighter shade of red.  I was happy.  I turned around and looked up into the sky. “Thanks,” I said, “For all of it.”
 
 I wouldn’t always be happy; I knew that.  Things would change whether I wanted them to or not.  My line would be broken again and again.  But now my line intersected with others.  I had companions for the journey, and whatever we faced in the future, we would face together, each a part of a bigger design, bound by a single -thread.”
 
ImageMary, Dale and me

What’s on your mind today?

My, son Christopher recently sent me this article by David Burns:

By David B. Burns
“Isidor I. Rabi, the 1944 Nobel Prize winner in physics was once asked, ”Why did you become a 
scientist, rather than a doctor or lawyer, like the other kids in your neighborhood?”
”My mother made me a scientist.  Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child 
after school: ‘So? Did you learn anything today?’ Not my mother. She always asked me a 
different question. ‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘did you ask a good question today?’ That difference 
made me a scientist.”
Isidor Rabi wasn’t just any scientist.  He was in the top one-percent.  In addition to his Nobel 
Prize, his work contributed to the invention of radar, the atomic bomb, the laser and the atomic 
clock. His excellence stemmed from asking good questions.  And he is not alone in 
understanding that success is driven by asking good questions.”
It’s never too late to ask the right questions? Whoa, when we hold those little ones so close and drive them back and forth to school, church, sports, music or vacation what are we asking? How have their lives answered us?

What’s on my mind today? As we look down the highway what will we see when we turn the curves of life each and everyday? Will I see an Engineer? A Statesman? Or, will I see my questions were in gear just to please me?

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Lent!

DSCN0450(a Valentine gift from my son 2013)

“Sarah Parsons (Bio) recently completed a master’s degree at the University of Tennessee College of Social Work and intends to become a psychotherapist. She holds a BA in Religious Studies from Yale University and a master of divinity degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School.”

Impressive, don’t you think? I do! I love the words she shared recently in one of my devotions:

“Lent…The goal is to make a change that sinks deeply into life, drawing us closer to self, others, and God. Lent is about intentionally opening ourselves, preparing to receive God’s goodness.”

I paused to reflect early this Saturday in the dark and cold of the morn and thought about Sarah’s words I shared above. I know little about Lent. But, I desire to know more about “drawing closer to self, others and God.”

I thought about my two last posts here. First,  writing mine… and then asking others to tell their story of ‘what they wanted to be when they grew up.’ Secondly, share and give a yell out to someone(s) a written line of Valentine Love.

I had to struggle a little, sure not thinking of lent, just a struggle to express something! I was asked by a stranger on another website to tell my story.  I had to share story to myself and then to others and if and when I did I knew deep within it would draw me closer to God and give me a deeper recognition of Him. My story might show that I could be a little angry with Him, and that being God. Or, I might find He was even greater than my finite mind thought since I had to open my heart to acknowledge Him.

I overcame my struggles and wrote my little simple words and I have been in awe from responses of those I know and those I know not.  And, so amazing how goodness and mercy surely have followed my words.  I am in awe of a stranger, Sarah Parsons, whom I have never read to my remembrance had a line just for me on this cold and dim Saturday AM!

Hope you will find the blogs below and write your story and show your love. It’s never too late in the seasons of life to live out a lent of giving up a little of the old self (maybe shelf)  life for the divine!

What did you want to be when you grew up? Or when you grow up?

 I wanted each child to have enough bread to eat, beautiful dress and bonnet to wear. And, yes, a perfect match of purse and shoes. The color and match suited for each child and not what another thought might be right for them. I would dress the little goats and lambs alike. (Literally the animal) I was shy@times so my voice could not express my heart. So off to the little Creswell stores to convince the owners to charge to my Mom’s account enough food and other to feed and clothe a hungry child. I would take my Mom’s crochet, and colorful fabric she needed for her own child and turn them into wraps that were weird, to say the least, but thrilled many a child. I have been able to continue my joy of being a grown up dressing and feeding the hungry child. I’ve travelled to Nations and given from my heart hoping to develop a gift of another’s heart. Yet, little it seems in the light of the needs. But, I won’t lose heart of wanting each child to be feed and clothe in beauty and loved regardless of _____? I believe your poetry, your art, your song, story and other’s gifts coupled with love continues to make a road for others to travel and reach their destinies and goals.Maybe I’m just a dreamer!

Cold

and windy! ‘I’m going to huff and puff and blow your house down’….is the way it sounded in my neighborhood last night and still puffing a little. The big bad wolf is on the move! 

What’s the weather like around your home? 

All about me!

All about me!

Sara’s Words and Debi’s art. See Debi’s children’s books with original art  @Amazon.com, Deborah Chaves

I think a major hold back from experiencing the new is ” letting go” of things in our past. Could be one or all of these three; people, places, things….Always wanting to look back either in thought or word. Trying to go back, instead of enjoying the surroundings of our new wanting to run back to the old. Things we onced enjoyed…leave them for others to enjoy. Could be our youth, clothes or cover girl? Heck, we might as well leave our minds free from this old …because it could only be a fallacy for some of us. We might just be the shopping bag to hold the items that just robbed us of our time, dime and fun. People we let go of are happy to be free of us and we them but we sure can clay mountain build in our minds a fantasy bigger than life. Some precious people we had to let go of because their journey here had ended but we won’t let them go because their memory helps to bury another old poor me thought. This blocks our view and cripples our limbs from serving others with compassion, love, giving and doing.

Do I have dead limbs or am I a sick stick tree?  Would one see me flourishing like a green olive tree in the house of The Lord? Behold, beauty is seeing lush- fresh- blemish free fruit- ripe -and ready to eat not hours invested in a spa while I try and dream my way to make myself believe I deserve this. This comment is all about me. I sure hope in 2013 I crawl out of the old me hole!

 

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Earth Gospel

This (see writing below, Hamilton) brings to bear; thoughts of our prayers when others, or ourselves, are aged, sick, dying. When Nations are at war. When a little child has cancer or other illness. When so many unknowns lurk around us each day, how does one pray, think and act?:
UNTAMED SPIRIT:
Rough up my “conventional values”
with the wildness of your love and creativity.
Help me to let go
of my need to predict and control
and let me enter
the unmapped regions
of your grace.- Sam Hamilton-PooreEarth Gospel
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