My brain

When I skip meditation prayer for several days on end, this is a good representation of my brain.

Mud pots at Yellowstone.

or maybe

 

 

 

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Nail's It #5

From Elizabeth Elliot's biography of Amy Carmichael, " Chance to Die." Chapter "Grey Jungle, Crystal Pool."

Ponnammal with Two of the Orphans

 

"It was a solemn meeting around the sickbed, the women dressed as usual in their handloomed saris, but white ones for this occasion. They laid a palm branch across Ponnammal's bed as a sign of victory and accepted whatever answer God might give, certain that whether it was to be physical healing or not, He would give victory and peace. It sounds like a simple formula. It was an act of faith, but certainly accompanied by the anguish of doubt and desire which had to be brought again and again under the authority of the Master.

"The answer that came was that Ponnammal, from the very day of the anointing, grew rapidly worse. She lay for days without speaking, her dull eyes half-open, seeming to see nothing. The pain was violent, kept under only by large doses of morphia. "She has been walking through the valley of the shadow of death. I never knew how dense that shadow could become, for I never before watched anyone dying in this slow, terrible way ... Nothing was visible but the distress and depression of this most fearful disease."

"Once when she seemed to be in unimaginable misery she told Amy how she had longed to be allowed to stay. She thought she could help a little "if the pain did not pass this limit." "It seemed to me the most unselfish word I had ever heard from human lips." Ponnammal touched the limit at least - the limit divinely set to pain- and her "warfare was accomplished" on August 26, 1915. She would never be replaced. She had been among the best. But "we shall have our best again, purified, perfected, assured from change forever." That was the ground of hope."

 

Reading things like this assure me that though I lost my parents when I was under 25, I never had to observe this sort of suffering with them.

 

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Nail's it #4

Continuing with Book Quotes I have liked ....
Anne Lamott wrote Help, Thanks, Wow a small book about prayer. The women at Journey Together in Stitches highly suggested it. At first attempt I could not even read it. I was at a season with MUCH anger towards God and did not want anyone else's perspective on prayer. A few months later I found it to be a good book off the beaten path of most "religious" books.

 In this passage Anne is talking about the death of her cat, Jeanie. I found it to contain truth for many situations.

    "I called to have the vet come by to put her down. I said, "Help. Also, I gave her a lot of morphine, what had to have been an overdose, which she just slept off. All I wanted was for her not to die miserable and afraid. That's all.
     It is nighttime now, and Jeanie passed an hour ago, miserable and afraid.
     When the vet came, we tried to gently get her out from under the futon, and she went crazy, and the next ten minutes were so awful that I won't describe them. Suffice it to say that she did not go gently into that good night. It broke my heart. But she had been suffering, and is suffering no more. She had an amazing run of love with my family. She was a proud little union cat, and also a model of queenly disdain with a bit of grudging affection for most people, and pure adoration for me.
     Was my prayer answered? Yes, although I didn't get what I'd hoped and prayed for, what I'd selected from the menu. Am I sick with anxiety, that I did  the wrong thing? Of course. Sad? Heartbroken. But Jeanie hit the lottery when she got me as her person for thirteen years, and the bad death was only ten minutes. So let me get back to you on this."

A friend recently had a difficult divorce in progress. Then a corner was turned and both husband and wife agreed to release the other. Before the divorce was finalized he was diagnosed with fatal illnesses and died rather rapidly. She was a cauldron of emotions. One neat item was the letter he had sent her on Mother's Day thanking her for being so good to his children when they were young and in need of love and tenderness. And for being such a good wife to him, even though he was never willing to participate in counseling or bettering their relationship. This letter helped her through some of the worst emotions.

I sent this passage to her. You see, he had "hit the lottery" when he got her for a wife. The bad parts at the end  were a few months long and the injuries to her from his adult children during the last days of his life and funeral were bloody and agonizing. But it was mere moments compared to their over 20 years together. Did it end the way she prayed and wanted? No. Has she been sick with anxiety that she did it wrong? Yes. Was she sad? Yes. In some ways heartbroken, yet in other ways she came to see that the marriage had died years ago. No, she did not get the marriage she had longed and prayed for, but her life is still on-going and God is at work.

Nail's It #3

In God's Hotel  Victoria Sweet writes about Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco prior to and during it's remodeling. She wrote researched her PhD on Hildegard's concept of viriditas. In the chapter entitled "The Miraculous Healing of Terry Becker" she writes,

Not only did her healing take a long time and need a long time, but time was the most important ingredient in her treatment. Premodern medicine knew about that special ingredient; it was called "tincture of time." Almost everything, it had observed, healed in time under the right conditions. And the most valuable thing that Terry received at the hospital was just that: enough - that is, the right amount of - time, the right amount of time being time without pressure and without end.

Hildegard referred to veriditas and Victoria tried to understand what she meant by it, "I discovered that premodern medicine did have a name for this magical act that the body performs. It was called the vis medicatrix naturae, usually translated as "the healing power of nature." But this is not a great translation. Vis is related to vim and vigor and means the force of life, of youth, of newness. Medicatrix is related to remedy and  medication. And naturae does not  mean nature as in "Mother Nature," but rather your nature, my nature, Terry Becker's nature. It means the nature of us to be ourselves. So the vis medicatrix naturae is really "the remedying force of your own nature to be itself," to turn back into itself when it has been wounded.

The idea goes all the way back to Hippocrates, who wrote that "what heals disease is nature [physis]." And what did he mean by physis? Physis comes from phuo, which means to grow, and signifies the observation that a seed grows into the only plant it can: a mustard seed into a mustard plant, a seed of wheat into a sheaf of wheat. By physis Hippocrates meant the "nature" of a being to grow into itself; and it was, in part, what Hildegard meant by viriditas.
But like anima and soiritus, physis and the healing power of nature were exiled from medicine more than on ehundred years ago. They were victims in the battle between two completely different conceptions of health, disease and healing - mechanism and vitalism.

Nails it Again!

I won't ad photos to this one as Wallace Stegner writes so clearly in Crossing To Safety I am certain you WILL see the pictures in your head!

Okay, one or two for those not familiar with the exact plants...

At the four corners we turn up a dusty secondary road. Dust has whitened the ferns along the roadside, gypsy moths have built their tents in the chokecherry bushes, the meadow on the left is yellow with goldenrod, ice-blue with asters, stalky with mullein, rough with young spruce. Everything taller than the grass is snagged with the white fluff of milkweed.  On the other side is a level hayfield, green from a second cutting. The woods at the far edge rise in a solid wall. In the yard of an empty farmhouse we sample apples off a gnarled tree. Worms in every one.  But Wizard {the horse} finds them refreshing, and blubbers cider as he walks.

Goldenrod

Asters

Mullein

Nails it!

Sometimes the authors I read just nail a description that I have never been able to put into words.

Try this from Nevada Barr in Liberty Falling:

Cloaked in darkness, the world was utterly changed. A supreme gentleness personified eastern summer nights that, living so long in the West, she'd forgotten. A kindly, dreamlike quality that the sharp dry air of Colorado could not emulate. Two floating sparks caught her attention and she laughed in delight. Ellis Island had fireflies. Fireflies put her in mind of Tinkerbell and she wanted to clap because she believed.

Butterfly Living

Those who have known me for some time realize how much I am fascinated with butterflies and their life cycle. Somewhere around 1982 my love for butterflies and my faith walk joined in this short poem.

"Butterfly living

Now that's for me!

Glory bound and

Incredibly free.

Made to be

A joy to Thee.

Strengthen me for

The wings of liberty."

We do need strength to use our liberty properly. Even Jesus said that of Himself He could do nothing, but only what the Father did through Him.

My constant prayer goes something like, "You have to help me, Lord. Left to myself I will always mess it up."

Radical acceptance requires Total Surrender to the Holy Spirit.