Which minority?

I had to copy this from Mystical Seeker:

Post Office today

The line was long at the post office today, but I didn't mind because I mailed ALL my Christmas packages! This is the earliest I've ever done this. Most go to Washington State, and it is a relief to get them on their way.

However, Christmas cards and holiday baking is another story. . . . At least, I've started to address the envelopes for the cards. Ever since my mother died in 1992, our family has been known for a Christmas letter where each member of the family writes his/her own piece. Over the years, there were sometimes struggles, but overall each family member has had the right to compose what he/she wants to. While the kids were still growing, we used to put heights and grades in school after their names, but that stopped when BJ went off to college. Now only MJ is in school (12th gr.), and I don't know what "grade" AE would be in grad school. . . .15th or 16th?

Prayer=Love

Prayer is an act of love, words are not needed. Even if sickness distracts thoughts, all that is needed is the will to love.

St. Teresa of Avila The Way of Perfection

Smile!

And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed round our incompleteness ...

-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Here in Corpus Christi--

This is Poenisch Park by Paula J. Becker, who very kindly allowed me to post this picture on my blog. She had it on her blog and wrote that she'd drawn it when she had biked down to this park. She has an art studio here in Corpus Christi, TX, but lives in Montreal, Quebec.

This picture shows what our weather this week and weekend are--up to 80 degrees F. but cooling down to the 40-50s F. at night. That's why there are "Winter Texans." This is like Bellingham, WA in the summer! It's nice, but not that seasonal, with only 19 days until Christmas.

Daughter MJ convinced us to go out and buy a Christmas tree last night. It's in our living room, with no decorations or lights yet. It smells very good. We have a Noble Fir, which is what my mother always liked.

My icon of the Theotokos

This (rather crookedly placed) icon is the one my friend NKE bought me in Belgrade, where it was painted. I believe this is the Virgin of Vladimir. Let me know what you think, if you know that icon.

Christmas Cookies

Last month I posted about Christmas cookies. I still haven't baked any, so I decided that I needed to look at the recipe site I'd listed on Nov. 12, so here is the cookie link that I wanted to find:

COOKIES!

Journal Prompts for Advent

Looking at the most recent ExploreFaith.org weekly newsletter, I found these suggestions for journaling each day of Advent. I'm not sure that I'll do it, but I may pick and choose a few. Here they are for your perusal:

Journaling Daily During Advent

Day 1 When I see someone in pain, I respond by… Day 2 When someone is being spoken of in a mean-spirited way, I respond by… Day 3 When I see a child laughing, I respond by… Day 4 When I feel my heart is heavy, I respond by… Day 5 When I encounter someone I dislike, I respond by… Day 6 When my activities are more numerous than the hours of the day, I respond by… Day 7 When I see a handicapped person, I respond by… Day 8 When someone is unkind to me, I respond by… Day 9 When I am asked to do an unpleasant task, I respond by… Day 10 When I have questions about my faith (or lack of it,) I respond by… Day 11 When people disagree with me, I respond by… Day 12 When I am surprised by grace, I respond by… Day 13 When my child or grandchild misbehaves, I respond by… Day 14 When I partake of an excellent meal, I respond by… Day 15 When things aren’t going my way, I respond by… Day 16 When a decision I make turns out to be wrong, I respond by… Day 17 When someone I love is thoughtless, I respond by… Day 18 When I feel warmed by another’s presence, I respond by… Day 19 When I lack what I need, I respond by… Day 20 When God seems far away, I respond by… Day 21 When I meet someone completely different from me, I respond by… Day 22 When others don’t listen to me, I respond by… Day 23 When I hear bad news, I respond by… Day 24 When I hear good news, I respond by… Day 25 What is the gift of my life that I will offer heaven this day?

Surrender

Beautiful is the moment in which we understand that we are no more than an instrument of God; we live only as long as God wants us to live; we can only do as much as God makes us able to do; we are only as intelligent as God would have us be.

- Archbishop Oscar Romero
From his last homily, March 23, 1980

Art to go along with Scripture

Every week I go to the Vanderbilt Divinity Library Revised Common Lectionary site to look at the scripture selections for the coming Sunday. I choose from them the short section of verses that we will meditate upon in our weekly lectio divina group. (It meets on every Wednesday morning, which is why I am doing this on Tuesday night!)

I was so surprised to find a link to a collection of art that matches with different scriptural passages! This is how they phrase this:

Click here to search the Art in the Christian Tradition database for images related to these texts.

The gospel for the second Sunday in Advent is Matthew 3:1-12. Here is one of the pictures selected for this passage. It is from Cameroon, Africa.

God's Love

Today in the Wisdom Class book study, an older man told us about how he was just then connecting a saying about love, "I love you and there's not a damn thing you can do about it," with Thomas Merton!

He said that when he was much younger, he had a friend who was "super-religious." This friend took eight of them (probably all service men) to Gethsemane in Kentucky to meet Thomas Merton. They spent a day with him. And now he thinks that's where he heard that saying, which has stayed with him for these many years.

He said he's pretty sure that "Tom" said this to him and his friends. I can imagine that this would be appropriate language for telling young servicemen of God's unconditional love (grace).

God says, "I love you and there is not a damn thing you can do about it!"

The Virgin of Vladimir is an icon who chose me. I have a reprinted copy of her that I pray with, but now I realize I also have a handwritten Virgin of Vladimir. I received her for my birthday from my friend NKE, whom I first met in Yokosuka, Japan Naval Base when we were both in 7th grade. This past summer she and her sister accompanied their parents on a trip to Belgrade, where she found this for me. I so appreciated receiving a handwritten icon from such a dear friend that I did not try to decipher which icon of the Theotokos she was.

Yesterday a more local friend (NKE lives in California) LP told me about the journey that brought her to teach about icons at All Saints. When she was going to the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX, she took an independent study course on icons with Fr. David Stringer (my former sp. dir.) at All Saints. For Advent that year, he suggested that she sit with her chosen icon every day of the season.

When she told me that, I felt like I'd been given a divine invitation, somehow enveloped in love of God and NKE's friendship with the icon she gave me. NKE and I have been friends for over 40 years; we were bridesmaids in each other's weddings; we've written letters (thanks to Snail Mail) and emails throughout these years, really at times being journals for each other.

Today I sat with the Virgin of Vladimir and found her eyes to be as piercing as they were the first time I ever sat with her. She holds the pain of the world in her eyes, which causes me to have tears. Tears are the gift of God, so I am assuming sitting with a few tears is my gift. We'll see if that continues throughout Advent.

At least it is the answer to our interim priest's question at the end of her homily yesterday: "What is one intentional way that will help me stay awake this Advent?"

And today I also awakened to the similarity NKE's gift icon has to the Virgin of Vladimir. I believe that she gave her to me, one that had been written in prayers.

Christians in Iraq

Go to MadPriest's and read about what the video below says!

I'm a Christian who believes in non-violence, but having had both my parents serve in the U.S. Marine Corps, blogging with Wyldth1ng, hearing about son DC's friends in the military, and watching the "60 Minutes" segment about Christians in Iraq, I am wondering what the viable options are in Iraq. The segment on "60 Minutes" brought the violence home to me in ways the regular news has not.

Excerpts: The Purge

National Debt Grows $1 Million a Minute

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day -- or nearly $1 million a minute.

What's that mean to you?

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.

Even if you've escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That's because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.

To read the rest of the article go to National Debt Grows $1 Million a Minute. I first saw this at Truthout.org.

"The Galaxy Song" by Monty Python

For a rousing song about our insignificance in this amazing universe, listen to Monty Python's song "The Galaxy Song" and watch NASA photography, go HERE.

Thank you Les Engrages.org.

NASA Image of the Day Gallery

Two galaxies perform an intricate dance in this new Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxies, containing a vast number of stars, swing past each other in a graceful performance choreographed by gravity. The pair, known collectively as Arp 87, is one of hundreds of interacting and merging galaxies known in our nearby universe. Arp 87 was originally cataloged by astronomer Halton Arp in the mid 1960s.

Advent Calendar

MadPriest introduced a lovely on-line Advent Calendar, which is sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Washington on their website. This is the art they use for the primary page:

Look and See

If your heart were sincere and upright, every creature would be unto you a looking-glass of life and a book of holy doctrine.
– Thomas a Kempis

"The pure in spirit, who see God, see him here and now: in his handiwork, his hidden purpose, the wry humor of his creation. The Lord has left us love notes scattered extravagantly across creation. Hidden in the eye of the tiger, the wet muzzle of a calf, the delicacy of the violet, and the perfect curve of the elephant’s tusk is a very personal, priceless message.

"Watch the lamb in awkward play, butting against its mother’s side. See the spider putting the final shimmering touches on an architectural wonder. And absorb a truth that is wordless. The grace of a deer, the soaring freedom of a sparrow hawk in flight, the utter self-possession of an elephant crashing through the woods – in every one of these there is something of ourselves. From the great whales in the blue Pacific to the tiniest of tree frogs in the Amazon basin, unity embraces us all. "

by Eknath Easwaran

The Thought for the Day is today's entry from Eknath Easwaran's Words to Live By. (Copyright 1999 and 2005 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation.)

Select the Thought for the Day for any day of the year.

I love books!

Go to Brian's Guide for these cute cartoons.

Nifty Nativity?

I am a person who collects nativity scenes, especially those where baby Jesus is HELD. Having been a La Leche League Leader and a mother who breastfed four children, I know absolutely that baby Jesus was held by his mother (and his father). Such a treasured infant was cuddled and nursed, not put aside in a straw manger, which was belatedly "invented" by St. Francis.

Whoooo is the son of God? Whoooo?

I thought I would like most nativity scenes until I visited Cavalcade of Bad Nativities, having been directed there by Deb who was sent by RevAnne. There are three pages of them. And even in these kitschy scenes, one at least shows that a baby should be held:

Desert Ammas

Mother Syncletica (4th century).

On Saturday, I am going to San Antonio to hear Mary Earle speak on the Desert Mothers and Fathers (Abbas and Ammas), which I mentioned in Waiting in Silence. To finish my master's degree in theology at Oblate School of Theology, I must finish three scholarly papers. I originally did research, now forgotten, on desert mothers, specifically Syncletica and Theodora. I am hoping to be renewed in this quest at the lecture tomorrow.

Eight Desert Mothers.