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love is more thicker than forget
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
It was in the seventeenth century, during the last violent outbreak of the plague in Europe, that St. Joseph became especially known as patron of the dying. Faced with the prospect of sudden death, many people urgently desired help for dying a good death.
Why is St. Joseph the Patron of a Happy Death. Why? Because he was the only person on earth given this privilege, or rather, reward by God to die in the arms of Jesus and Mary. Can you imagine dying in the very arms of Jesus and Mary? What a privilege for St. Joseph. Well, you know, St. Joseph was given by God this mission on earth to take care of the two most important treasures of God, namely, Jesus and Mary. He was the one to take care of Jesus and Mary. And so, as a reward, he was given the privilege to die in their arms in a happy and peaceful death. 
It is said that he died before Jesus and Mary, also as a privilege, because God wanted to spare him from the sufferings that Jesus and Mary suffered. It would be very, very difficult for him to see Jesus dying on the cross and to see Mary suffering at the foot of the cross. He had suffered so much on earth, and that was enough. He was exempted by God from the pains of that suffering.
Wendy's husband took us up to the meditation room at an upper level of the hospital, and we participated in a Compline Service from the Book of Common Prayer. He spoke with us about his wife, and we were blessed to be together to pray and support each other. He said it was a miracle that Wendy had lived to be one year old, let alone an adult who had married him twenty years ago. Afterwards, one at a time, we each went with him to say goodbye to Wendy in her ICU room. She looked very peaceful.
On a different floor of the ICU is the husband of JDH, a friend from the Friday Renovare Group that meets each week at my house. He has been there since Friday with an infection that has not been identified yet. He is not responding to treatment and is septic.
When I walked the labyrinth on New Year's Eve, I was dedicating the walk to Len, JDH's husband. While I journeyed the labyrinth, I found myself lifting up both Len and Wendy. God guided me to pray, and I am grateful.
Life is very fragile. Both these people suddenly went into the hospital with infections. Almost like--one day here, next day gone. With both Wendy and Len and their families, I sense reliance upon God. They are not asking, "WHY?" Instead, they are seeing WHO is with them. In the sadness and darkness, there is the Light of Love and gratitude. I am blessed to be among their friends.
Please lift Wendy and Len into the Light of God.
Mary Earle, an Episcopal priest, spiritual director, and author, writes often for ExploreFaith.org. I also heard her speak about the Desert Ammas last month. (She also provided the quote from the post below this one.)
Today I received the ExploreFaith.org newsletter, and she had an excerpt entitled “A Celtic Christmas: Celebrating the Sacred in All Creation” from which the following quote is from. Go back to the article to read the rest of Mary Earle’s article.
“The first time I went to Wales in 1994, Patrick Thomas, Welsh author and Anglican priest, told us that in every Welsh nativity scene, a washerwoman accompanies Mary, Joseph and Jesus at the manger. For the Welsh tradition, if Jesus isn’t born daily into the common household, then there’s really no point of celebrating the birth at Bethlehem. Jesus’ birth, singular as it is, also shows us the sacredness of each child, knit together in the mother’s womb by God’s own Spirit. Jesus’ birth reminds us that each household is dear to God.”
Nothing is more practical than finding God,
That is, than falling in love in quite an absolute, final way.
What you fall in love with,
what seizes your imagination will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read,
who you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in love,
stay in love, and
1. I will live in the present moment. I will not obsess about the past or worry about the future.
2. I will cultivate the art of making connections. I will pay attention to how my life is intimately related to all life on the planet.
3. I will be thankful for all the blessings in my life. I will spell out my days with a grammar of gratitude.
4. I will practice hospitality in a world where too often strangers are feared, enemies are hated, and the "other" is shunned. I will welcome guests and alien ideas with graciousness.
5. I will seek liberty and justice for all. I will work for a free and a fair world.
6. I will add to the planet's fund of good will by practicing little acts of kindness, brief words of encouragement, and manifold expressions of courtesy.
7. I will cultivate the skill of deep listening. I will remember that all things in the world want to be heard, as do the many voices inside me.
8. I will practice reverence for life by seeing the sacred in, with, and under all things of the world.
9. I will give up trying to hide, deny, or escape from my imperfections. I will listen to what my shadow side has to say to me.
10. I will be willing to learn from the spiritual teachers all around me, however unlikely or unlike me they may be.
“Any normal person can develop a habit of making every glance at another a gentle pressure of prayer, until, at last, the whole day is as full of little prayers as the sky is full of stars. There develops a sweet flowing into us from God, and an endless flowing out toward humanity. The quiet rhythm of heaven can be ours in the midst of a crowded, troubled, and desperate world. And the terrible world itself gradually changes around us when we live in His peace.”
Frank C. Laubach, Prayer: The Mightiest Force in the World, pp. 90-91
I originally had the idea of selling sagebrush on the internet, but the idea was stolen from me by my sister's husband's girl friend's father, who lives in Alaska.
I teach skateboarding to mothers.Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.
– Bhagavad Gita
"With infinite tenderness, the Lord lets it dawn on us only gradually that we are not separate, that we belong entirely to him. If this realization were to come overnight, ordinary people like you and me would not be able to withstand it; it would be more than our nervous systems could bear. That is why the Lord is so gentle with us; he spreads the transformation from separateness to unity out over many years so that all these changes in the mind and body can take place gradually. Often we are not even aware they are taking place until we look back and remember how we were some years before.
"We should not ask when illumination will come. We should have a patient impatience to reach the goal. Finally, after many years, no matter what our past has been, we will begin to live in the light that knows no night. The temple may have been dark for a thousand years, but once the lamp is lit, every corner will be ablaze with light. "
~~Eknath Easwaran
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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.) |
Silence by Shusako Endo"Shusaku Endo (1923-1996) used these themes in his many novels and short stories. Endo, baptized at the age of eleven because his mother had turned to the faith in the wake of personal difficulties, described his Catholicism as “a kind of ready-made suit…I had to decide either to make this ready-made suit fit my body or get rid of it and find another suit that fitted…”
"As a Christian child in Japan, Endo was taunted by his peers for his religion. As a student come to France after World War II to study Catholic novelists, his faith was irrelevant to those who may have shared it, but who deplored him nonetheless because he was Japanese. It seemed, at that point, that it would have to be the suit that changed – it brought him nothing but suffering.
"But on the way back to Japan from Europe, Endo visited Palestine. In walking where Jesus himself had, he came to understand that the Christianity he had known was incomplete, for it had never revealed to him the Jesus who had lived, suffered and died for the outcast. It was this Jesus, he realized, who could reach beyond culture and connect with the Japanese soul."
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This is such a monumental book that I need to re-read it. It is not easy to read, but I highly recommend it. Here is a quote to give you a glimpse of the imagery Endo uses about harsh circumstances:
"As I pushed open the wet door, the song of the birds broke in from the trees like the rising of a fountain. Never before had I felt so deeply the sheer joy of being alive. We sat down near the hut and took off our kimonos. In the seams of the cloth the firmly entrenched lice looked just like white dust, and as I crushed them one by one with a stone I felt an inexpressible thrill of delight. Is this what the officials feel when they capture and kill Christians?"
"The stars have no voice, no way to herald the news of God, but they have something greater than words—they shine in darkness. And those who have eyes to see follow the light right into the presence of Jesus. Can you imagine how the world would be if more of us acted like stars pointing the way to God? If our spirits were so filled with light, that others could find their way to God simply by following our light?"
To read the rest of the article by Renee Miller, go here.
