Two puppies and two dogs now

We have the two puppies until Saturday. They are very loving and not too much trouble if they are frequently taken outside. Cisco and Baillie have learned to tolerate them.

Cisco is the shepherd mix, who was given to husband CB for Christmas 2006 by our kids after our old Lab died. Baillie is the cocker, whom AE gave me as a surprise when MJ was in 1st grade. The puppies are brother and sister, but look quite different. They belong to husband CB's friend who is gone for a project with AmeriCorps. He got the puppies from a litter born in the yard next to one of the Habitat houses they were building.

Troy attacking Cisco before Troy's surgery.

BJ left with hyper Troy, who had to stay in his crate much of the time so he wouldn't break open his stitches from being neutered. I felt so sorry for that poor big dog in the crate. But if he got out inside, he wanted to chase our cat. So it's better that Troy can wander BJ's trailer at will in Victoria, TX.

So Troy is our first grandpuppy. Sampson is the second, and we visited him in Austin over Mother's Day weekend along with son DC and his wife AA.

Klutzy Mom on Mother's Day!

Z Tejas Grill is where DH and AA's wedding rehearsal dinner was held in September 2006. It was wonderful. This location in downtown Austin is the original restaurant, which now has locations in Arizona, California, Utah, and Washington, besides Texas. I never knew that until I started trying to find a picture of the wooden STAIRS at Z-Tejas!

When we learned that we would have to wait almost 2 hours to get seated for breakfast on Mother's Day, we left to go elsewhere. As I'm watching someone come up the stairs with bouquets of flowers, I tripped and fell on the stairs. I got up pretty quickly, even though husband CB later told me that he wasn't sure that I would get up! And somehow for the rest of the day of eating (at Juan in a Million Mexican restaurant, which was very good), visiting, shopping at the Outlet Mall (for MJ), and coming home, I did not realize that my ankle was swollen.

So today my ankle and foot are swollen, but only slightly sore. I certainly feel like I continue to be a klutz.

Mother's Day

A friend from church created the above picture, Carolyn Staut.

We're home. We had fun. The house is fine, as are all the animals. It's a day of mixed feelings--for what was, what is, and for what might have been-- and still a happy day. I am thinking of friends and others who do not have living mothers and hope the day has been pleasant despite that emptiness. I am blessed to have four children, really six-- counting spouses.

5 dogs at home while I'm gone!

Husband CB, daughter MJ, and I are in Austin, TX at son and daughter-in-law's house, both of whom are napping right now. So I am using DC's computer upstairs while the others who are not sleeping are watching old Indiana Jones movies.

Oddly enough, one son, BJ, is at our home in Corpus Christi. He came home to go fishing with friends, because he seldom has weekends off from work. He brought his big Brittany Spaniel puppy Troy.

We already have two dogs--12 year old cocker spaniel Baillie and 4 year old shephard mix Cisco. A few days ago they were joined by two part Chihuahua puppies that we're pet-stitting for. They are small and cute.

But the combination of them all seems somewhat chaotic. Already this morning Cisco bit Troy on the neck, even though Troy is bigger than Cisco now.

I'm wondering how they're all doing at our house while we're gone and BJ is probably out with his friends. . . .

If you want to see pictures of all the dogs, except the two little ones, go here.

Check out the Veracity of E-Mails!

I feel like Wyld when he wrote about his Pet Peeve. So I am expressing my irritation about forwarded emails, especially political ones. Lately, I have received various ones about Democrats' taxes, Obama's link to Kenya, windfall tax on retirement incomes, etc., etc., etc. One was really a blessing, because I learned that Obama (and others) proposed a bill to aid the accomplishment of the Millenium Development Goals: Global Poverty Act of 2007 (H.R.1302, S.2433). I am definitely for the developed nations of the world donating 0.7% GNP towards this and was glad to hear that an effort was being made towards this goal. But the original email was purporting to warn people about the bill that would have the U.N. taxing U.S. citizens.

These emails usually scare people about their future, especially financial futures. I wish people would check out the facts before sending these messages on to cause more furor and hysteria.

Check out Urban Legends at Snopes.Com.

There's also About Urban Legends. That site has these interesting links, if you have time to explore:

• New / Updated: Check here for the latest Internet hoaxes & urban legends
• The Top 25: Most popular topics of the past week
• Definitions: Hoax, rumor, urban legend

Prayer: Magic or True?

I've been blessed to find several posts about prayer today. I am copying the portion of one by Maggie Ross, Anglican solitary, author, and mystic:

"In our desperation to pray for a loved one in crisis or for our own needs and desires, we often feel strongly about what the best outcome should be, and we frame our prayers (and sometimes fill them with bribes) toward this end. These prayers are useful if they help us examine what we think and feel, but our knowledge and understanding of the larger picture, much less the depth of the heart of the person we are praying for, is at best fragmentary and provisional. In reality it is impossible for us to know what will work for the highest good, and unless our prayer is underpinned and ringed about with “Thy will be done” it is no better than magic.

"By contrast, true prayer tries to gather what needs attention and let go of it in the love of God. Or, to use a metaphor that arises from the story of the old man and the rainstorm, prayer creates a space in which things have a chance to work themselves out without being limited or distorted by human pressure or interference (Eph. 3:20)."

Go to Maggie Ross' blog Voice in the Wilderness to read the rest--and explore her other writings.

Another wonderful article is by Gerry May of the Shalem Institute, which is entitled "Trying to Be Contemplative." I first found a reference to it at Carl McColman's blog Anamchara: The Website of Unknowing.

(May wrote:) "Another Lama gave me similar advice. "When you sit down to meditate," he said, "stop trying to meditate. Stop meditating!" A Zen saying also warns, "The stillness you achieve by trying is always in motion." Another says, "Quit trying. Quit trying not to try. Quit quitting!""

Two problems with my prayer is striving and sometimes believing in the magic of it all, instead of sitting and loving God, as Anthony Bloom wrote about. "Thy Will be done."

Whew! Let go, let go!

Shona Sculpture

Before this morning, I had never heard of Shona Sculpture. The Shona people live in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The reason I am even paying attention to these people and their stone art is that I saw 12 sculptures from Zimbabwe at a friend's house this morning. DT and her family went to Africa a few months ago. She bought several wonderful pieces that look similar to this one:
Kevin Maes writes about these people and their art here. I really found this article to be interesting. I love these various kinds of Shona sculpture.

Silly Test for Colors

By the FIFTH try, I finally got them all right. Our mind is so programmed to react to the words we read. . . .Go and try this silly test:

The Color Test

John Dear's "Persistent Peace"

I heard John Dear talk at a Pax Christi meeting in San Antonio two years ago. He was funny, real, and inspirational. He told us NOT to call him "Father Dear" but "Father John." I still remember his story about making his decision to enter the priesthood after being at the chapel on the Mount of Beatitudes in Israel with bombers flying very near.

John Dear wrote:

"Then right after graduation and before I entered the Jesuits, I decided to go see where Jesus lived. I backpacked by myself for several months through Israel. The day I left, Israel invaded Lebanon and I ended up seeing war, and it scared the daylights out of me.

"I was camping out at the Sea of Galilee and saw jets dropping bombs on the border of Lebanon. I'm there reading the gospel, and I thought, if I'm going to be an authentic Christian, I have to commit myself to the Sermon on the Mount and do what I can to stop war. I have to love my enemies. That's what I've been trying to do ever since, to be part of the peace movement and to live according to the Sermon on the Mount."

Make a list

Pray for our country

From The Book of Common Prayer:

Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart [and especially the hearts of the people of this land], that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(page 824)

Flag Art

Icaro Doria, a Brazilian designer, has done some amazing graphic interpretations of common flag designs for countries around the world. They’re incredibly evocative, comparing sections of each color on the flags to segments of their population. The campaign is called Meet The World, and has been running in Portugal since January. There are eight flags finished, and portray topics like the divisions about the war in Iraq (shown here), the violence against women in Africa, social inequality in Brazil, and more. Go here to see the other seven flags.

I am grateful to my oldest daughter for directing me to the flags of Icaro Doria.

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu is a Pre-Columbian Inca site in Peru, which was probably built around 1450. Fran got me thinking about it because of today's post and its picture. I'd love to go here, but don't know if I ever will.

It was newly brought to my attention at the last Shalem Residency I attended in MD because I met the grandson of Machu Picchu's modern-day discoverer: Forgotten for centuries, the site was brought to worldwide attention in 1911 by Hiram Bingham, an American historian. I am much more interested in Machu Picchu since feeling connected to the discoverer through his grandson. (In fact, this is the person who told me about the Greek words to the Jesus Prayer.)

Choosing Health!

Thanks to
Miss Cellania.

Sentimental Celtic Christianity?

MadPriest commented on the post below about the tendency to sentimentalize and glorify the "Celtic Christianity," which I observe to be a wide American phenomenon. I loved Mary Earle's presentation on Saturday. She is a learned Episcopal priest and an excellent speaker. However, I need to remember how each of us speaks through our filters of preferences and dislikes, just the way I listen, too! Every person does this, so there is no escaping, except for the awareness that we do so. That is why community is so important--different angles are observed by various people to present a larger (but not complete) image.* So I am appreciative of MadPriest for pointing out the tendency to paint a "golden age" of Christianity. I have a lot to learn!

Now here I am quoting someone I found through google, not know anything about her except that she wrote a book--Visions and Voyages: The Story of Celtic Spirituality by Fay Sampson. However, she says that she wrote yet another book on this topic because:

"There is a tiresome amount of sentimentality about Celtic Christianity. Many people are searching for a golden age which never existed. I wanted to show them something as close to the reality as I could get. The Celtic saints were often hot-tempered and wrong-headed, but at their best gloriously in love with God and utterly careless of their own welfare. This book expresses my enthusiasm for them, but also shows they could be pretty uncomfortable to live with. Yet they have insights of real and lasting value to offer us, truths which for centuries were suppressed. Today their values resonate with people outside as well as inside the Church."

Now here's another avenue of exploration for me. . . .books by Ian Bradley are the first to find.

Still, from Saturday's talk, I gratefully take the nuggets of truth that hit me--everything is holy and I am never alone.

*HOW we see shapes WHAT we see!

Celtic Christianity

On Saturday I went to San Antonio with my friend MB to hear Mary Earle speak about "Celtic Christianity," which was the last session of Year 1 of Christian Mysticism: History, Wisdom and Insights. It was worth the drive of 120+ miles, even leaving at 6 am. I've vaguely heard about Celtic Christianity, but never delved into it, but now want to learn much more!

Some insights that intrigue me:

• Our lives are to be prayer
• Spirituality and prayers are of the ordinary things of life
  
• Whole creation is full of the Presence of God
• Gospel of John was very important to them with language of mutual indwelling
• We are words ourselves uttered by God
• How we see shapes what we see
• Theology of accompaniment: always accompanied by Presence of God and the saints with us
• All that is is in the Holy Undivided Trinity: We are never alone
• Life of God is in all, even the worst
• Deep invitation is to trust the current of Love
• St. Brigit: A person without a soul friend is like a body without a head.

Let me know if you've read a really good book about Celtic Christianity, ok? I resurrected an ancient copy of Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations from the Gaelic by Alexander Carmichael, which I'd barely looked at it when I bought it years ago. Today I read and prayed some of the prayers. There's always the "right" time for something, and here is the time for that book.

And here is one of the prayers from this book that I find to be so lovely:

Bless to me, O God,
Each thing mine eye sees;
Bless to me, O God,
Each sound mine ear hears;
Bless to me, O God,
Each odor that goes to my nostrils;
Bless to me, O God,
Each taste that goes to my lips;
Each note that goes to my song;
Each ray that guides my way,
Each thing that I pursue,
Each lure that tempts my will,
The zeal that seeks my living soul,
The Three that seek my heart,
The zeal that seeks my living soul,
The Three that seek my heart.
(199)

Be yourself!

Everybody is unique.

Do not compare yourself with anybody else

lest you spoil God’s curriculum.

~~Baal Shem Tov

To receive such quotations every day, subscribe to Word for the Day at Gratefulness.org.

My daughter and her prom date

Last week was the Senior Prom for MJ and her date CS. They have been in school together since they were four years old. In fact, my friend LT taught their four year old preschool class and their first grade class. She also saw MJ as a newborn even before the pediatrician! Anyway, here is a picture of MJ and CS when they were four years old:

Love the Questions

I don't want to detract from my post below about the disappointing result of voting at the United Methodist General Conference, but I want to post the poem that my first priest read to me over the phone last Saturday. Today I received an envelope from Fr. Winn, with the poem as well as a handwritten letter with quotes from the book Quantum Theology by Diarmuid O'Murchu. How wonderful to get personal mail in our mailbox!

So here is the Rilke poem he read and also mailed to me:

Be patient
toward all that is unsolved in your heart,
and try to love the questions themselves.

Do not ask
the answers that cannot be given
because
you would not be able to live with them.

And the point is
to love everything.
Love the questions now.

Perhaps
you will then
gradually
without noticing it
live along some distant day
into the answer.

~~Rainer Maria Rilke

UMC maintains its stand about homosexuals

Some delegates stand to protest the outcome of the vote. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey.

I am saddened and very disappointed, as are these people at the United Methodist General Conference in Fort Worth, TX, that the majority of delegates (55%-45%) voted to keep the exclusionary wording the same for the United Methodist Church.

You can read about this at "United Methodists uphold homosexuality stance."

Rev. Richard Bates wrote:

"It's been a sad day. The Plenary Session this afternoon lasted from 2:30 until 6 pm dealing solely with the issue of homosexuality. The majority report from the committee of which Carl was chiefly responsible was defeated 55% to 45% in favor of the minority report which retained the exclusionary language, with the sole exception that they added back a phrase from an earlier Social Principles admonishing parents and friends to not alienate themselves from their GLBT loved ones.

"When the vote was posted on the giant screens, almost everyone wearing rainbow stoles stood in silent witness either with a black veil over their face or wearing a black arm band. There were probably between three and four hundred people in the visitors galleries who stood in solidarity. Gradually more than one hundred fifty people on the floor of the convention hall began also standing in silent witness to this injustice. There was a profound sadness throughout the hall and many were observed sobbing. Randy Miller, a lay delegate from the Cal-Nevada conference (and a friend of ours from our old church in San Francisco) then began to softly sing over and over again, "Jesus loves me, this I know." This was gradually picked up around the hall as more and more people joined in the singing and linked up hands. At this point today's Plenary Session was dismissed for the day. "

I've received his writings from a friend that forwards me emails from Etc., which is a grassroots organization formed in the Southwest Texas Conference to extend to persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities, full inclusion and participation in the life of the United Methodist Church, both in policy and practice.