3 month old Avery with her family

Here are some of the many pictures I took of Avery at her home in Austin this past weekend.

Avery and (big brother) Sampson

Grandpa CB and Avery

Nana Jan and Avery

Mommy AA holding Avery and Daddy DC holding Sampson

Smiles

Avery, 3 months old

We had a wonderful time in Austin visiting son DC and his wife AA with 3 month old Avery. We all were enamored with her smiles and would do silly things, trying to get her to smile for the camera. She is a happy and pretty baby, and I am a proud grandmother! You can see her "crazy toe," which they point out is just like her mommy's little toe.

More pictures will be posted.

Baby Visit

Avery, 3 months old

We are going to visit Avery and her parents this weekend! CB and I are very excited. A friend is staying with our three dogs, so they will not notice our absence. Holding our grandbaby will erase all thoughts of our pets left behind.

Cozy Chair

Maisie loves to climb up into CB's lap. In this chair, she likes to sleep on his lap. (In TX, CB often wears shorts in the winter. Today it was 89 degrees F.!)

Love=Meaning

Love was the meaning.
Who showed it to you? Love.
What was shown to you? Love.
Why was it shown to you? For Love.
Keep yourself in that love and
You will learn more of it,
And you will never learn anything else--ever!

~~Julian of Norwich (Gerald May's translation)

Good night; sweet dreams!

Texas and guns

Doesn't this image startle you? It seems to be the image many Texans endorse with the prospective law (in the Texas Senate) that concealed weapons may be carried by students and professors on university campuses. More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. And probably most of those members of the Texas House are "Christians."

Christians or not, it is ridiculous and stupid to allow students and professors to carry weapons on campus (and elsewhere). For protection? Or for a "final say" in a dispute? Adolescent fury coming forth at the drop of a hat?

It doesn't help that Texas has a governor who likes to shoot off his mouth and guns.

In this April 15, 2010 file photo, Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry fires a six shooter filled with blanks as NASCAR driver Colin Braun looks on at an event in downtown Fort Worth, Texas. Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns into their classrooms, adding momentum to a national campaign to open up another prominent part of society to firearms. (AP Photo/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Rodger Mallison, File)

"University of Texas President William Powers has opposed concealed handguns on campus, saying the mix of students, guns and campus parties is too volatile.

"Guns occupy a special place in Texas culture. Politicians often tout owning a gun as essential to being Texan. Concealed handgun license holders are allowed to skip the metal detectors that scan Capitol visitors for guns, knives and other contraband.

"Guns on campus bills have been rejected in 23 states since 2007, but gun control activists acknowledge it will be difficult to stop the Texas bill from passing this year. "Things do look bleak," said Colin Goddard, assistant director of federal legislation for the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, who was in Austin recently to lobby against the Texas bills."

Go here for the rest of the article.

Also, Dating God blog has a more inspirational take on "Guns and Christianity."

The truth of grief

Trust is
Cynthia at Reverend Mom directed me to Kristin Noelle, who creates cartoons that touch my heart. You can sign up for 30 days of sketches based on the theme of trust here. If you want to see a sample of what you'll be getting, click here and here. It's like the New Yorker cartoons, but with kindness and grace.

Thanks to Cynthia, I signed up for the 30 days of cartoons. The one above was the ninth of 30.

Technology and Me

A void in your soul

There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
You feel the separation
from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it
cannot be learned in any school.
~~~Rumi

Friday Five: Words

Today's Friday Five for RevGalBlogPals:

There is a dramatic and surprising venue for Spiritual Formation/Sunday School classes at my church: Each week a different person teaches about a "word" that expresses his/her passion or interest. The first week someone spoke about "hospitality" with abundant treats on her mother and grandmother's china arrayed on tables. Other words have been "connectivity," "Trinity," "money," and "dreams." No one knows which person will be teaching until the class convenes. I am teaching this Sunday and plan to talk about "stirrings."

For this Friday Five, please list five words that identify your passions, spirituality, and/or life. Describe as much or as little as you wish.

And now I have spent the day trying to organize my thoughts about "stirrings," as mentioned above. So I am quickly and briefly doing this FF:

1. procrastination: Obviously, what I do, especially about writing. I even have a blog label entitled "Procrastination."

2. stirrings: Coming from that time at Lebh Shomea where I was first struck with stirrings, I am trying to be more attentive to these subtle feelings within me.

"A glimpse is not a vision. But to a man on a mountain road at night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon."
~~C. S. Lewis

3. yearning: As my blog title shows, I yearn for God, now realizing that this yearning is actually the presence of God!

"Julian regards prayer as an act of yearning which leads to beseeching, and beseeching leads to beholding. Yearning is the first mark of awakened soul, the beginning of its movement back to its source, its deep rootedness in the being of God."
~~Kenneth Leech

4. connection: I thirst for connection--with both friends and family. It is surprising how the internet can provide a depth of relationship, although personal/physical connections are the most intimate.

5. meditation: Since beginning to practice Christ-Centered Prayer, which is centering prayer without a word to focus upon, I have found greater peace, confidence, and even some detachment.

Christ, Cosmology and Consciousness

Today I received this two-cd set in the mail from the Center for Action and Contemplation. I urge you to listen to it somehow. Go here to read more about it.

I am still pondering Richard Rohr's introduction where he replaces "word" and/or "logos" in the beginning of the gospel of John with "blueprint." Listening to this section merits buying the cd set (for $15).

God in our emptiness

When Feeling Down and Out

by Ronald Rolheiser

"At the end of the day our task is to recognize that God is in the silence, the frustration, the loneliness, the emptiness of our lives.

"We should never be shocked at our own emptiness, nor should we run from it and think that God is dead. God is in the emptiness. But the God who is found there is not God as we imagine Him. The God we find in loneliness and emptiness is the real God, the God that nobody can look at and live because that God is too real, too ineffable, too infinite, too unnameable, too wild, and too much pure fire to be captured in any concepts, words, imaginations, or even feelings. That God, of course, can be met and known; but, this side of eternity, perhaps that God is most easily met precisely when our own words sound flat and empty."

Go here to read the rest of the article.

If you would like to receive Fr. Rolheiser's twice-weekly column via email, subscribe here.

Happy Valentine's Day, Dear Friends!

“I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let’s face it, friends make life a lot more fun.”

~Charles R. Swindoll (American writer and minister)

“A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.”

~Douglas Pagels (American inspirational author)

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

~Anais Nin (French born American author of novels and short stories)

“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.”

~Dalai Lama

The Star of the Evening

For the past 15 years or so, my husband and I have been involved in a monthly dinner group, which was first made up of (his) company's employees and spouses and now most of the employees are retired. It is sometimes laughingly called "The Casserole Club."

Tonight was our turn to host this dinner, with five couples, counting us. Oddly, the star of the evening was CB's Keurig coffee maker.That was my surprising Christmas gift to CB a few months ago. He is notoriously difficult to buy gifts for. When our sister-in-law Chris told me how much she loved hers on our visit to Bellingham last summer, I decided to get one for him.

It is a silly extravagance, though I am told that it makes excellent coffee. Since I do not drink coffee, a single-cup brewer seemed ideal for my husband. He likes the coffee.

Tonight the friends from this dinner group were amazed by it, never having seen or heard about one before. (You have to realize that most members of this group are 10-15 years older than us.) I am betting that one man is going to go buy one very soon. His wife, my daughter's former piano teacher, made mugs of coffee for anyone who wanted one tonight. It was cute.

Power of the People

By Mike Peters
Found here.

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Friday Five: Love in My Heart

by Lisa Wolk

Singing Owl brings today's Friday Five for RevGalBlogPals:

In two days my husband and I will have been married (ulp!) forty years. And, of course, Valentine's Day is coming soon so I'm thinking about love. For today's Friday Five, tell us about five people you love, people who will remain in your "heart" forever. This can be a friend, teacher, family member, mentor, pastor...

FIVE already would be fulfilled if I just listed my husband and four children. They are always in my heart, plus more are added with my children's marriages and offspring (Avery!).

Friends have already been discussed with my failed January Naplobomo.com on Friends. They are special friends, but I am going to try to stretch myself and think of others who are in my heart besides all of the above.

Today I tend to think of people who have died who continue to exist in my heart.

1. My mother: She died in 1992, and I am accustomed to her absence now. She was my friend, confidante and encourager. Even though she lived in WA State, she visited us at least twice a year and then we went to Washington every summer.

2. Judy Dickson: Like my mother, she died quickly with pancreatic cancer. She was the therapist who saved me while I suffered from depression. After going to The Meadows, I was sent to aftercare here in Corpus Christi; I lasted only one day, because I knew more than they did! I remember one of the activities was to make something out of beads, like in kindergarten. My dear husband negotiated with the insurance company for me to have therapy three times a week, which occurred for years with Judy. Her wisdom, humor and spirituality connected deeply with me.

3. Margy Hoffman: Margy was the kindergarten teacher for three of my four children. Her husband worked for the same company as mine, and so we became friends. We also went on our pilgrim Walk to Emmaus together in 1994. We shared spiritual yearning and an abused childhood. She was the first person to show me how to listen--Margy waited and never filled in the spaces with words!

4. Helen Brauer: Helen was a member of the weekly Wisdom Class, which is a book study group at all Saints Episcopal Church. She always looked elegant, down to a matching purse and shoes. I still remember a charming little shoulder purse that was quaint and unusual. Helen showed and expressed love, especially as she neared death. Her dear husband is now attending the Wisdom Class, because she loved it so much and he feels connected with her there.

5. Joe Lovelady: Joe died in September 2008. He was married to my good friend Mary Jane, who has since moved to California. They moved to Corpus Christi from Montana to retire and he died of cancer. Joe was a funny, caring, musical and teaching sort of man. Mary Jane gave me a little pottery moose of his, which sits on my kitchen windowsill.

Of course there are others--a heart is never too crowded for more love.

O Eternal One

Eternal One,

Silence

from whom my words come;

Questioner

from whom my questions arise;

Lover

of whom all my loves are hints;

Disturber

in whom alone I find my rest;

Mystery

in whose depths I find healing and myself;

enfold me now in your presence;

restore to me your peace;

renew me through your power;

and ground me in your grace.

Thanks to Ellie at The Anchorhold.

This prayer is also posted at A Place for Prayer today. Please visit this ministry blog of RevGalBlogPals.

Shoved from behind

I have rarely been pushed from behind, but that happened to me yesterday when I visited my doctor. He told me to stand in front of him, facing away and then shoved me! I almost fell and moved my right foot forward, which is what the doctor expected. He told me afterwards that he tried that to see if my "power" foot was the one that has been hurting, which it was. Staying on my left foot showed that I push off with that foot and it is more stationary. My left foot is the one hurting since Christmas. I had never heard that before, and "power foot" doesn't come up when I google it.

Future goals

Though it is Tuesday, which is a very busy day here, I stopped in at yesterday's RevGalBlogPals Meet and Greet and thus visited a new member's blog Fruitful Words, more specifically her category for "Declutter." I am struck by the idea of "Goal Planning Monday" (even though it is Tuesday):


There's a seed for my future. . . .as well as visiting the other new blog members, plus old regulars, since I have not been blogging much lately.

New baby Avery picture!

Sampson and Avery

A book and a prayer

This flashy cover caught my eye at the library and is now the book I am currently reading, having let Paul Tillich take a rest. The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama takes place in India and is about a retired gentleman who starts a marriage bureau out of his own home, mainly because his wife was tired of him being underfoot. The descriptions of food and customs in modern-day India, with cultures colliding, are interesting and entertaining as are the various snippets about people. It's a good book!

Oddly enough, today I found a prayer:

"After a few minutes, she started reciting the three-thousand-year-old Gayatri Mantram under her breath in Sanskrit, as her father taught her to do whenever she was unhappy or confused. 'Om bhoor bhuwah swah. . . O God, Thou are the giver of life, the remover of pain and sorrow, the bestower of happiness; O Creator of the Universe, may we receive Thy supreme light; may Thou guide us in the right direction.'" (243)

Zama, Farahad. The Marriage Bureau for Rich People. NY: Amy Einhorn Books (G. P. Putnam's Sons), 2009. 243.

That's a prayer we could all say!

Girl Scout Cookie Time!

It is Girl Scout Cookie Time again. It is a tradition to buy them and eat them, especially when they are frozen, at our house.

The thought of Girl Scout Cookies brings back lots of memories:

• Selling door-to-door, lugging the boxes around with me--back in the 1950's!
  

• When my mother was our Brownie leader in Quantico, VA, she brought some of the girls to stand outside the Mess Hall and sell cookies. We sold a lot, which now seems understandable with those young Marines probably having younger sisters our age! A few years later, we may have done that at Camp Pendleton, too.
  

• When I was the cookie chairperson for AE's Girl Scout Troop in 1989, we had cases and cases of Girl Scout Cookies around our living room. I vividly remember this, because that was the time I found out I was pregnant with our fourth child, MJ. This was unplanned, and I worried so much that she would not be developing well because some days I would eat an entire box of Thin Mints or Peanut Butter Tag-a-longs for lunch! This was before I knew I was pregnant, as one could not learn that as early as women can nowadays. (Fortuitously, MJ is healthy, pretty and smart and did not seem to be adversely affected by all that sugar, or by cans of TAB, which accompanied the cookies.)

• Now we rarely get girls selling at our door, but find groups selling in front of stores or on street corners. I found my cookies at the corner of a busy street where I was turning right; I kept on turning right--into the parking lot!

And now that I am trying to return to healthier eating, the cartoon below really struck me as funny.

Rare icicles in Corpus Christi, TX

This is the observable ice in our yard at noon today. Highly unusual for Corpus Christi, TX! My son in Austin and friends of his in Fort Worth have posted pictures of inches of snow on Facebook, but we only had ice and some sleet here.

The sun has just come out, so it seems warmer, even with the temperature at 31 degrees F. When the wind was blowing and the skies were gray yesterday, it seemed much colder at the same temperature.

Yes, Texans are wimps. Even though we lived in NJ and RI in the 1990's, those cold temperatures are long-ago and faint memories. It is nice to see the sun out again, knowing there will be only a few more days of freezing temperatures--and way too soon I will be complaining about the HEAT!

Gracie, all warm and cozy, on my winter coat today.

It's cold, even in Texas!

I know we are not inundated by snow and ice, but the difference in temperatures from the norm is about 50 degrees colder than a few days ago. Low temperatures for the next few days will be in the 20s F., which is very unusual for south Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course, there are over-reactions. Public schools are closed for the next two days. A friend told me that her husband's medical office has received appointment and surgery cancellations due to the impending weather. Snow is predicted for Thursday-Friday, but it is unlikely in my opinion, though the local meteorologists are enthusiastically predicting the worst.

The only significant snowfall in recent history in Corpus Christi was the amazing 4-6 inch snow of Christmas Eve 2004. We never expected any to be left when we woke up on Christmas Day, but the snow was still there. They say that Christmas Eve was the first night ever to have NO crimes reported! (Everyone was out playing in the snow.)

There are rolling blackouts throughout the state of TX so that the state power grid will continue to operate. We did not lose electrical power today at our house, but about a mile away, neighborhoods were without power for a couple of hours. Traffic lights were off at some major intersections, too.

I am happy because a new book was delivered from Amazon this evening: The Essential Tillich edited by F. Forrester Church. I was so excited by this week's chapter on Paul Tillich in the fourth year of EFM that I had to find out more about his theology.

I have only read a little bit, but already love what Paul Tillich wrote in 1958 for the Saturday Evening Post:

"The first step toward the nonreligion of the Western world was made by religion itself. When it defended its great symbols, not as symbols, but as literal stories, it had already lost the battle. In doing so the theologians (and today many religious laymen) helped to transfer the powerful expressions of the dimension of depth into objects or happenings on the horizontal plane. There the symbols lost their power and meaning and became an easy prey to physical, biological and historical attack.

"If the symbol of creation which points to the divine ground of everything is transferred to the horizontal plane, it becomes a story of events in a removed past for which there is no evidence, but which contradicts every piece of scientific evidence." (4)

Tillich, Paul. The Esential Tillich. Ed. F. Forrester Church. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.

This all makes so much sense to me; I will later find out how he concludes this essay!

STAY WARM and SAFE!

Groundhog Day!

Groundhog Day

Celebrate this unlikely oracle,
this ball of fat and fur,
whom we so mysteriously endow
with the power to predict spring.
Let's hear it for the improbable heroes who,
frightened at their own shadows,
nonetheless unwittingly work miracles.
Why shouldn't we believe
this peculiar rodent holds power
over sun and seasons in his stubby paw?
Who says that God is all grandeur and glory?

Unnoticed in the earth, worms
are busily, brainlessly, tilling the soil.
Field mice, all unthinking, have scattered
seeds that will take root and grow.
Grape hyacinths, against all reason,
have been holding up green shoots beneath the snow.
How do you think spring arrives?
There is nothing quieter, nothing
more secret, miraculous, mundane.
Do you want to play your part
in bringing it to birth? Nothing simpler.
Find a spot not too far from the ground
and wait.

~ Lynn Ungar ~

(Blessing the Bread)

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And go and see Sherry's more cynical (and realistic?) look at Groundhog Day!