Jeez Louise

 Word of the day:     Await:  be in store for!        Diamond ♦️ Lake, slowly thawing as we all await  our                   Return to SPRING                            Anne Lamott writes in “” Help, Thanks, Wow” : Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.  Somehow Lent has slipped away without daily meditation.  I know that cultivating a quiet time each day would be helpful for my own spiritual growth.  BUT, BUT…. Always excuses, which really mean nothing.  It is about carving out time each day to reflect and be grateful 😇  Jeez Louise!

 Word for the day: Spring: 1.  A season  2. Jump forward 3. A metal coil   Yes! The 1st day of spring and weather above 50! Got the leaves raked, finally!  And the crocuses are in full splendor!  And life is good, very good really! Blessed!   I am reading “Brown enough” by Christopher Rivas.  He talks about the beauty and the wisdom of the redwoods:  “I had been to church as a child, and yet nothing felt this holy.  Nothing spoke this loud while simultaneously being this quiet, 3000 years of existence  will do that to you—it will teach you how to just be present, how to just hold space.”          ……….,,.,,,,,,… I find that feeling looking out at Diamond ♦️ Lake when I am there.  Nature has a way of making me feel whole and at peace! Jeez Louise!

 Word of the day:  LENT…..lent, a season of fasting and abstinence prior to Easter…… lent, granted the use of, in the expectation that it will be returned.   So, Lent continues. And my good intentions of daily meditations has gone by the wayside!  But, I have had a fabulous couple of weeks!  Celebration of my dad’s 99 birthday with 150 people!  Seeing cousins and friends!  And being grateful for having my dad be a part of my life for so many years!              Dad thanking all for attending, a gathering for             Joy rather than a funeral!   Catherine, Braden, Bennett, Scarlett & Julian!                      Dad looking at all his cards!           Dave, Eileen (home from Spain), Scarlett                            The kids at...

 Word of the day;  delight.  Let me delight in the joy of the lord, the beauty of each day!  I am in Idaho for my dad’s 99th birthday party!  I’m delighted that it snowed last night and am delighting in the beauty of the quiet!  Delight is both a noun and a verb. A feeling AND an action!  Great pleasure, greatly pleasing!   While I try to write weekly, I am stymied by the recent readings.  The angry God who banishes Adam and Eve, plans to destroy the city of Nineveh, but stops when the people repent.  so many references to evil and sin.   We see both of these daily in man’s (and Woman’s) inhumanity to man, and other living beings of creation. We continue to kill innocent people in war, “collateral damage.”   And destroy entire communities and nations.  And then, we condemn the refugees who are seeking a better life. And provide them with literal hellish living conditions in the border refugee camps.  What a joke on th...

 Word for the day:  ashes: the remains of something destroyed.   But for me, ashes are a sign of new life.  One needs only study the changes to Mt. St. Helen’s following its eruption! Or how the burning of the earth can revitalize the soil and perhaps the soul.   The dirt which produces the dust and the nourishment to many at the farm in Homedale!  Beautiful Owyhees! Here’s a lovely Ash Wednesday poem  y Jan Richardson: Blessing the Dust For Ash Wednesday All those days you felt like dust, like dirt, as if all you had to do was turn your face toward the wind and be scattered to the four corners or swept away by the smallest breath as insubstantial— did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust? This is the day we freely say we are scorched. This is the hour we are marked by what has made it through the burning. This is the moment we ask for the blessing that lives within the ancient ashes, that makes its home inside the soil of this sacred earth....

Word of the day: Transfiguration: an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change.   Perhaps that is what I was expecting on the Camino, to a degree. Rather, it was a more subtle, quiet, meditative change.  I am more mindful, and place kindness and gratefulness as my day starters!   in Marrakech, a mostly Muslim city, the Mosques 🕌 and the Imams would chant their beliefs 5 times a day. I would arise in the morning for the 6:30 am prayer, and pause when their prayers were repeated throughout the day.  There is something powerful about praying at dusk and dawn, to start and end the daylight hours in  Prayer 🙏               The Medina in the enclosed city   Eileen and I at Cafe Franc overlooking Marrakech         Eileen and her friend Hamza, who arranged our Riad at the home of his family friends. According to Wikipedia and other sites:  Faith ( iman ) includes six primary beliefs: [11] Belie...

 Words for the day:  How did time get away? The State of the Union Address, 🌎 Super Bowl Sunday,  🏈Valentine’s Day 💜 and now almost President’s Day, 🇺🇸, Mardi Gras 🎭, and Ash Wednesday 🌋.  Perhaps it has been negligence on my part.  Negligence:  A failure to behave with the level of care that someone of ordinary prudence would have exercised under the same circumstances!   So has my lack of meditation 🧘‍♀️ been a lack of discipline that others may have exercised.  But it seems to a bit of a blaming connotation!  I’d like to think that life got in the way!    And I hope to return to near daily musings during Lent!  And perhaps share and review the 2nd half of my Camino.   So, I attended the latest exhibit at the Museum of Art and Culture (MAC) on the 11th of February with my church.  There were 2 profound exhibits. One on Native American culture & stereotypes titled: “Savages and Princesses”.   The oth...