Child Leaping for Joy Icon

I've always been attracted to icons of Mary, the Theotokos. A few times I have experienced great mercy and compassion sitting in front of her. That is why I was struck by reading "Mother Mary - Spirit of Mary" in The Lessons: How to Understand Spiritual Principles, Spiritual Activities, and Rising Emotions by Rev. Sandra Casey-Martus and Carla Mancari. (Remember that this book is made up of short sections entitled "lessons" and is more of a workbook about contemplative prayer than a book to read in one sitting.)

I especially liked these points about Mary:

"In the spirit of Mary, you may rest in a mother's expression of consciousness. When you feel unloved, unwanted, and not appreciated, it is Mary's spirit that dries your tears and tenderly holds you."

"The spirit of Mary loves you in places you could never conceive--in the deepest crevices of your heart, in the most disparate moments of your life, and during your most unlovable moments."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Icon of the Mother of God Joyful

The "Joyful" (Vzigranie) Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos appeared near Moscow on November 7, 1795 . Nothing is known of the history of the icon, except that many miracles have taken place before it.

Icons of this name are found in the Novodevichy Monastery in Moscow, and in the Vatopedi Monastery on Mt Athos. In appearance, the "Joyful" Icon resembles the "Pelagonitissa" Icon, a variant of the Glykophylousa ("Sweet-Kissing") or Eleousa type.

The Icon is sometimes called "Child Leaping for Joy."

Then I went looking for Glykophylousa ("Sweet-Kissing") icon:

Mother of God (Glykophylousa)

You can see by the other icons I've posted about, I like this type of "sweet kissing" or "loving kindness" icon best of all.

Movie: The Dark Side of Chocolate

Blogging Friends

So many of my first blogging friends, beginning 3 1/2 years ago, have stopped blogging. I miss reading their posts and getting their comments. At first, I thought they had gone to Facebook, but not even half are active there. I dislike losing touch with them.

I appreciate new blogging friends and realize I need to make a bigger effort to visit unfamiliar (and now unknown) blogs. I will try to do that soon. I guess I'll be going down the lists of your blogging friends to find new ones!

Save the planet!

I'll do my part! How about you?

Stuff and things

"What's going on?"

"Not much."

• As my oldest son DC would say, "we're in a holding pattern," waiting for the baby to arrive. DC's wife AA will probably have little Avery Elizabeth before Thanksgiving.

• I posted this quote on Facebook today and like it so much that it's going here, too:

“God makes three requests of his children:
Do the best you can, where you are, with what you have, now.”
~~African-American Proverb quotes

• If you like this quote about living the best you can, you will like this post about the need to Bloom in the Moment. Wise words by a wise soul, Contemplative Photographer.
  

• Sherry is always wonderful about posting interesting links on her blog A Feather Adrift. Her link to Roger Ebert's blog hit me into my introvert soul; I identified with much that he wrote. "Ebert’s post is about being an outsider, no matter how defined, and loneliness. It’s a powerful post. He wrote in response to hundreds of comments on an earlier post found here." (Sherry)

• I am concurrently reading two books about vegetarianism; both are written by novelists about their real-life experiences (and research). They are easy to read, but difficult to cope with as a carnivore.

• With Kingsolver's emphasis on local produce, I finally went to our local Farmer's Market this morning, which had about 4-5 vendors on this Saturday morning. The produce was more colorful and healthier than what is seen in the supermarket. If I bring an egg carton next time, I could purchase fresh eggs!

• Since returning from WA State a week ago, we have been having hot and humid weather down here in Corpus Christi, TX. For the past few days, the high temperature has been around 85 degrees F. Finally a cold front made it through here, so today the temperature got up to 59 degrees F. So nice!

• And I keep remembering that famous quote of John Wesley, known as "John Wesley's Rule":

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.

How many servings in that?

Fall Foliage

No autumnal leaves around us in Corpus Christi, but I took pictures of some pretty trees in WA State last week. Here are a few:

Boulevard Park
Bellingham, WA

north Ballard neighborhood, Seattle

Magnolia Hill neighborhood, Seattle

Friday Five: Winter (I hope) is coming

Singing Owl posted about snow where she lives and winter coming at RevGalBlogPals for Friday Five. Living in south TX does not give me the same winter experience of most people in the north. It is going to be about 85 degrees F. today with the optimistic outlook of 70's next week. (It DID snow on Christmas Eve in 2004--a miracle of four inches!)

Mustang Island, TX (Oct. 2010)
This is why there are so many Winter Texans!

1. What is your favorite movie for watching when curled up under a wooly blanket?
Probably light comedies, like "Love Actually" or "Notting Hill."

2. Likewise, what book?
It is wonderful to have some good mysteries. I could always re-read Maisie Dobbs mysteries (by Jacqueline Winspear) and I have thought of re-reading Dorothy Sayers mysteries with Lord Peter Wimsey, which I have not read for decades.

3. What foods do you tend to cook/eat when it gets cold?
Soups! I gained a lot of weight from baking cookies and breads and making soups when we lived in RI and NJ. In fact, when we moved back to TX in 1994, my kids said they'd be glad not to have so many soups too often.

I still like to make soups though and am considering making curry cauliflower this weekend, which is from a cookbook from the Eastside Cafe in Austin: Soup Someone Else. Go here to look at all their cookbooks.

4. What do you like to do if you get a "snow day" (or if you don't get snow days, what if you did)?
I loved snow days when my kids were little in the northeast. We would always have hot chocolate when they came inside. Root beer floats for those who shoveled off the driveway!

The 100-year miracle of snow in Corpus Christi in 2004 brought no crime at all for that brief 24-hour period. Everyone was out playing in the snow! It was perfect that this happened on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

5. Do you like winter sports or outdoor activities, or are you more likely to be inside playing a board game? Do you have a favorite (indoors or out)?
I would like to get more into the habit of playing board games again. I always liked Scrabble. Daughters AE and KA in Seattle play board games with friends in the winter.

Japanese Maples

on Magnolia Hill, Seattle

I love Japanese maples. CB planted one for me in front of our house in RI in 1991; when we moved in 1992, he transplanted it and put it in front of our house in Morristown, NJ. When we returned to TX in 1994, we could not take the Japanese maple with us. I wonder if it is still there; I hope so.in front of my parents' old house

Bellingham, WA

Let us pray for others

Your silence is full, irresistible;
your presence is joy unspeakable.
People drifting into mind
we lift to you and pray they find
health in sickness,
life in deadness,
strength in weakness,
light in darkness.
Their loss you bear, mysteriously;
Your peace you share, eternally.

~Anglican Church of Kenya, Our Modern Services (Nairobi: Uzima Press, 2002), p15.

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

Marine Corps Birthday

Today the United States Marine Corps is 235 years old.

My father was in the Marines for 24 years. I grew up seeing him and my mother get all dressed up to go to the Marine Corps Birthday Ball. He looked handsome in his dress blues, and my mother would wear an elegant cocktail dress with matching high heels. They always told me that when I was 16, I could go with them, but by that time, my dad had retired and we lived far away from a Marine base. Oh, well.

I grew up on Marine and Navy bases until I finished 10th grade, when my father retired from the military. When I was a little girl, he would always take me to the Officers Club to see the gigantic birthday cake made for the Marine Corps Birthday Ball. That's probably why I always wanted to attend--for the cake!

Since both my parents served in the Marine Corps during WWII and then my father continued to serve until 1966, I have fond memories of seeing parades of marching Marines, living on the bases, and seeing my dad dressed in his uniform. He was wounded in the Korean War (right before I was born). The only time I remember feeling fear around the house was during the Cuban Missile Crisis when we were at Camp Pendleton.

I was brought up believing that the Marines were the best, but I didn't realize the killing and pain resulting in wars until I saw pictures and read news of Vietnam and other wars. I still admire Marines.

Writing Letters

I have liked to write letters since we made our first move from Quantico, VA to Camp Pendleton after my second grade of school. I kept writing to friends with each successive move after that. Consistently writing letters to each other kept Nancy and me friends since junior high in Japan to the present time when we have both reached 60 years of age. We've stayed friends through all these decades because we did write to each other regularly. (Now we are more erratic, with the internet and cell phone accesses to each other, but there are still occasional notes.)

At The Letter Writer's Alliance, they alerted readers to an article about letter writing which shows a resurgence in interest in stationery, writing, and pens. I even saw that some people are spending time to further perfect their scrawling writing to be more legible. The article is here.

From Judith's Quiet Moments come these quotes about letter writing:

What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone call. ~Liz Carpenter

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives. ~Anatole Broyard

To be a Witness

To be a Witness

does not consist in

engaging in propaganda

nor even in stirring

people up, but in being

a living mystery.

It means to live in such

a way that one's life

would not make sense

if God did not exist.

~~Cardinal Suhard

Sun and Drizzle

Washington State has been in the sunshine for two days and now is back in the clouds, which is more normal for November. Today it is gray and drizzly and is about 50 degrees F.

When CB and I flew here on Wednesday, we were shocked to clearly see all the mountains from our plane. The woman sitting next to me said she had traveled to Seattle on business trips for the last 12 years, and this was the first time she had ever seen Mount Rainier while in the air! When we arrived in Seattle, it was a record 74 degrees F., which was warmer than the weather we had left in TX. It was beautiful; I went around taking pictures of brilliantly colored Japanese maple trees.

We flew here for my father-in-law's 85th birthday. The party was last night in Bellingham, and it was full of laughter, fun and love. All four children and their spouses were there. It was one of the nicest times we have had together. There were three birthday cakes--for beloved dad, son-in-law, and daughter-in-law (me), so there was a lot of blowing on many candles. Oddly, I had the most candles; my sister-in-law Chris said that candelight was much kinder to older faces.

Now in Seattle, we are visiting friends and daughters AE and KA. I loved meeting AE today near the University of Washington Quad. She looked lovely in a brown sweater and jeans and took us to see her office. It is wonderful to see the girls again so soon after their surprise visit to Austin for my birthday.

Two days in Bellingham and two days in Seattle, then we whiz back to San Antonio, TX, so we can take daughter MJ out for her birthday dinner on Sunday night.

We are fortunate to travel here and also to have a friend, who is also my massage therapist, stay at our house taking care of our three dogs and one cat. The first time Denise met Maisie, Maisie kept leaping on her, leaving muddy pawprints. Denise was a little worried about being with Maisie so much and kept those muddy clothes to be worn just around the dogs, calling them her "Maisie clothes." However, she says that Maisie has calmed down and all the dogs like her.

Today MJ is 21!

Happy Birthday, MJ!

May 1990

MJ, 6 months old

Happy Birthday, Dad!

HAPPY 85th BIRTHDAY!

CB's Dad and Mom
August 2010
Bellingham, WA

and there were no words

and you held me and there were no words
and there was no time and you held me
and there was only wanting and
being held and being filled with wanting
and I was nothing but letting go
and being held
and there were no words and there
needed to be no words
and there was no terror only stillness
and I was wanting nothing and
it was fullness and it was like aching for God
and it was touch and warmth and
darkness and no time and no words and we flowed
and I flowed and I was not empty
and I was given up to the dark and
in the darkness I was not lost
and the wanting was like the fullness and I could
hardly hold it and I was held and
you were dark and warm and without time and
without words and you held me

~~Janet Morley

Morley, Janet. "#71." The Book of a Thousand Prayers. Ed. Angela Ashwin. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002. 41.

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

Smally daily difference

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily difference we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

Marion Wright Edelman

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

I know these words apply to social justice, but right now they connect me to all my reading and thinking about fair trade, which is also social justice. My little effort at only buying Fair Trade chocolate bars has made a big impact on me, but it seems insignificant. But I'm sticking with this.

Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month

Today is the first day of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. I did not know about it until my mother was diagnosed with it in 1992 and died 43 days later. She was a fit woman at 72 years of age, who had recently retired. This was a shock to us all.



New research suggests that pancreatic cancer growth rate may allow time for early detection, which was unheard of in 1992.

"It has been well established that a huge hurdle in treating pancreatic cancer patients is the late timing of diagnosis. For the vast majority of patients, diagnosis takes place when surgical resection is no longer an option, and often these patients already have metastatic disease, or tumor cells that have spread elsewhere in the body." (This was true for my mother.)

"By studying the genetic changes and analyzing the growth rate of the cells, Dr. Iacobuzio-Donahue and colleagues were also able to establish, for the first time, a timeline during which the tumor forms and progresses. These processes occur over an extended period of time, suggesting that pancreatic cancer does not immediately grow rapidly or aggressively."

There's hope, totally unexpected from my limited perspective.