Posts
Today is our 48th anniversary.
Query: What are the blessings, strengths and struggles of long term committed relationships?
How are the younger generations shaped by long term committed unions?
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
Impatience as a Virtue
I was startled to hear James Watson and Charlie Rose speak of IMAPATIENCE AS A VIRTUE. I'm always being told that I need to learn to develop patience. (October 29, 2009, Charlie Rose, PBS)
Patience is defined as the capacity for waiting, the ability to endure waiting, delay, or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties. (Microsoft Office Word 2007)
When is PATIENCE an excuse for inaction? accepting oppression?
When there are chores to be done, is IMPATIENCE the energy in motion to accomplish the tasks?
Does IMPATIENCE provide eagerness to find solutions? to make discoveries? to create reconciliation?
In contrast, does IMPATIENCE result in violence, intolerance, or genocide?
BLESSING is a commitment to find peaceful solutions to bring about reconciliation, to create jobs, to provide healthcare for everyone, and to build community in a diverse world.
Where is your energy?
Monday, October 12, 2009
Simplicity & Stewardship
Simplicity & Stewardship
"Simplicity deals with the ownership of property, stewardship with the use of it. Simplicity tells us to ask for no more than we need: stewardship reminds us that we need less if we take care of what we have. Simplicity insists that we get rid of encumbrances: stewardship helps us decide what are encumbrances and what are not. It does this in a very straightforward way. If a possession, a or task, is an encumbrance, using it properly rapidly becomes much more trouble than it is worth, and the possession falls into disrepair, or the task remains constantly undone. It is this point that stewardship says: 'Wait a minute - we have too much to care of here,' and it becomes time, in the good Quaker phrase, to lay something down." Bill Ashworth, Oregon, 1986 in Daily Readings from Quaker Writings Ancient & Modern, edited and published by Linda Hill Renfer.
This message touches a deep place for me, leading to my own queries:
What is stewardship of space?
of beauty?
of clutter?
of stuff?
of recyclables?
of clothes not worn?
of books spilling out of bookcases?
of supplies kept just in case?
of time?
of energy?
of friendship?
of family?
of health?
of resources?
What do you put in your list concerning your practice of stewardship?
Am I living simply that others may simply live?
And then I return to the practice of blessing: what encumbrances get in the way of blessing?
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Resuming Life
Great News
I am Well and Off oxygen!
I have lots of energy.
I am resuming Life!
Mayo Clinic reports
neurological problems
are Resolved.
Query: What does "resuming life" mean for yourself?
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
A Beautiful Day
Today is a beautiful day in Pocatello with cool breezes and sunny skies. This is an unusual year, we are having monsoonal rains for weeks. No telling what the weather will be later today. Everything is green and mushrooms are growing abundantly, quite different from dry, brown, hot, very hot. Lots of flash flooding keeps us on our toes. Can't help wonder what global warming has to do with these changes?
I'm feeling better and doing more. Fooled myself into believing I was back to normal, (Whatever normal is?) I agreed to be a mentor in a two week READ program, three hours each morning for ten days. Monday was the first day, I got through it okay, but slept for three hours and the next morning my leg was collapsing. Welcome back reality!
How are you weathering reality?
Where is the blessing?
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Neuro-Degeneration Takes a Toll
I am committed to living a blessing life and this year I am challenged. The decline worsened with what we all believed to be Parkinson's. The offs and on's from Stalevo (a Parkinson's medication) became so drastic and short timed that I lost quality of life.
On March 5th I stopped taking the PD med AND THEN I started to improve. In six days when I saw my neurologist, there were no signs of PD. No tremor. My balance was normal. I could swallow. The mood swings were gone. I could think clearly. My sense of humor returned. I was given back my self hood!!!
This all seems good, but what came into focus is generally called a autonomic degenerative disorder, a large umbrella which includes PD, PD plus, Multiple Systems Atrophy, and many more. The commonality is that the dopamine cells die off and the neurotransmitters affected fail to deliver their messages.
The decline with the autonomic disorders is rapid. My breathing is particularly affected. I am on oxygen and the liters needed to keep going continue to increase.
HELPFUL BOOK
Dr. Daniel Brooks just published "I Will Go On, Living with a Movement Disorder." I highly recommend it for those living with movement disorders and for those who love and care for us.
DO YOU LIVE WITH A MOVEMENT DISORDER? OR DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO DOES? Please, leave a comment. What is your experience?
WHAT ARE THE BLESSINGS YOU EXPERIENCE RECEIVING AND GIVING AS YOU LIVE WITH ILLNESS?
On March 5th I stopped taking the PD med AND THEN I started to improve. In six days when I saw my neurologist, there were no signs of PD. No tremor. My balance was normal. I could swallow. The mood swings were gone. I could think clearly. My sense of humor returned. I was given back my self hood!!!
This all seems good, but what came into focus is generally called a autonomic degenerative disorder, a large umbrella which includes PD, PD plus, Multiple Systems Atrophy, and many more. The commonality is that the dopamine cells die off and the neurotransmitters affected fail to deliver their messages.
The decline with the autonomic disorders is rapid. My breathing is particularly affected. I am on oxygen and the liters needed to keep going continue to increase.
HELPFUL BOOK
Dr. Daniel Brooks just published "I Will Go On, Living with a Movement Disorder." I highly recommend it for those living with movement disorders and for those who love and care for us.
DO YOU LIVE WITH A MOVEMENT DISORDER? OR DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO DOES? Please, leave a comment. What is your experience?
WHAT ARE THE BLESSINGS YOU EXPERIENCE RECEIVING AND GIVING AS YOU LIVE WITH ILLNESS?
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Confluence of Tough Times and Hope, THIS WEEK'S QUERY
Tough times for me, the Parkinson's progresses and I wonder how I am to continue sharing God's healing love with others when I have become so restricted in where and what I can do?
Tough times for all the world. I watch the festivities of our whole country as we prepare to inaugurate our 44th President. The people say that in celebrating, in coming together as a diverse community, we find hope to go on. How do we go forth from here, when so many are without shelter, jobs or health care and so many more are to be made naked?
Tough times and someone points to the top the crucifix and asks, "What do those letters mean." I am surprised as the conversation opens. Our little group of four Quakers is gathered in a Catholic meditation room and we are at the beginning of Meeting for Worship. I answer that it goes to the conversation of Pontius Pilot when Jesus is declared "King of the Jews." We talk about Jesus and Paul and the other followers of Jesus as being Jewish and not intending to start a new religion. We ponder the meaning of Messiah and what it means to the Jewish world, then and now? We reflect on passages from Isaiah. My Jewish Friend says we will know when the Messiah comes because the second temple will be rebuilt, in other words, he says, there will be a building up, not a tearing down. I ponder the meaning of hope in times of great turmoil?
Tough times and our beginning Worship reading is written by O Theodore Benfey, 1986. "When we, with our limited human intellect, see only more calamity, death, and destruction in our personal, community, or national life, when all we have lived and attempted to leads to nowhere, turns to dust and ashes, and the future looks hopelessly bleak, Pentecost tells us that the bleakness is of our own imagining, that our intellect and our fears blind us to deeper layers of reality." Turning to John Woolman we are reminded "to turn all that we possess into channels of universal love." Benfey prays that our hearts may be "filled with God's hope, the faith and the love that will prepare us spiritually, mentally, and physically for the tasks yet unknown or only dimly sensed, in a world which when looked at objectively seems quite doomed, with no sign of redemption or improvement. And may we have the courage to take on the tasks chosen for us and to carry them out in God's companionship and service. [p. 18, Daily Readings from Quaker Writings Ancient & Modern. Edited by Linda Hill Renfer, 1988, Serenity Press, Oregon.] I ponder the guidance each of is to be given and once again wonder how can this be for me who has become so restricted in the movement outside of home and now even with whether there is enough dopamine to allow me stand and walk inside my home?
Tough times and it is in the afternoon and a Stephen's Minister comes to visit. Again I am surprised by the opening and guidance we are given. We speak of Paul of the New Testament. I talk about how Paul was open to allowing gentiles to become Jewish and how he was less restrictive than Peter, who would require the gentile men to be circumcised. Paul, I say had the strength to follow the leadings he received, even to be imprisoned. My visitor asks me to stop and consider Paul as he was imprisoned in the house. His imprisonment, is like your being imprisoned in your body, how was Paul able to carry out Jesus' message of hope? and what might this mean for you? We talk about my two writing projects and how important they are in sharing God's words of hope for healing and for finding ways to live peaceably in tough times. I tell my visitor that during morning worship I was thinking about the writings I am to share with the world and even further, how my knitting may be of service to keep me on task. I love to knit, but I allow it to become all consuming, leaving no time for the work that God calls me to complete. During the Silence of morning worship, I thought about how I might bring the knitting to the writing by knitting the images of God's spirit of love, healing and peace as I am led. Tough times, living in the growing imprisonment of my own body, I ponder my sense of God's love and Jesus' presence with me. What is to happen next, I wonder?
Tough times, I receive a phone call from two friends living in Maine. It is early evening and the sun has set. They ask how I am doing and instead of minimizing the struggle I am experiencing, I tell them how it is. Later in the conversation my friends talk about the emergency landing of the Airbus in the Hudson River. One tells how she thinks of the event as an allegory for our times. She says that Bush's policies and actions are being sucked and shredded into the turbos while the hope Obama brings is the skill of guiding the plane to a safe landing where no one is lost. Ah, yes, the guidance we are to receive to make a safe landing, even in the face of death. May I remember this picture my friend has painted.
This week's Query: What is your sense of being personally guided in these troubled times?
Let's have a conversation, a forum, through the Comment feature.
Blessings,
Judy
Tough times for all the world. I watch the festivities of our whole country as we prepare to inaugurate our 44th President. The people say that in celebrating, in coming together as a diverse community, we find hope to go on. How do we go forth from here, when so many are without shelter, jobs or health care and so many more are to be made naked?
Tough times and someone points to the top the crucifix and asks, "What do those letters mean." I am surprised as the conversation opens. Our little group of four Quakers is gathered in a Catholic meditation room and we are at the beginning of Meeting for Worship. I answer that it goes to the conversation of Pontius Pilot when Jesus is declared "King of the Jews." We talk about Jesus and Paul and the other followers of Jesus as being Jewish and not intending to start a new religion. We ponder the meaning of Messiah and what it means to the Jewish world, then and now? We reflect on passages from Isaiah. My Jewish Friend says we will know when the Messiah comes because the second temple will be rebuilt, in other words, he says, there will be a building up, not a tearing down. I ponder the meaning of hope in times of great turmoil?
Tough times and our beginning Worship reading is written by O Theodore Benfey, 1986. "When we, with our limited human intellect, see only more calamity, death, and destruction in our personal, community, or national life, when all we have lived and attempted to leads to nowhere, turns to dust and ashes, and the future looks hopelessly bleak, Pentecost tells us that the bleakness is of our own imagining, that our intellect and our fears blind us to deeper layers of reality." Turning to John Woolman we are reminded "to turn all that we possess into channels of universal love." Benfey prays that our hearts may be "filled with God's hope, the faith and the love that will prepare us spiritually, mentally, and physically for the tasks yet unknown or only dimly sensed, in a world which when looked at objectively seems quite doomed, with no sign of redemption or improvement. And may we have the courage to take on the tasks chosen for us and to carry them out in God's companionship and service. [p. 18, Daily Readings from Quaker Writings Ancient & Modern. Edited by Linda Hill Renfer, 1988, Serenity Press, Oregon.] I ponder the guidance each of is to be given and once again wonder how can this be for me who has become so restricted in the movement outside of home and now even with whether there is enough dopamine to allow me stand and walk inside my home?
Tough times and it is in the afternoon and a Stephen's Minister comes to visit. Again I am surprised by the opening and guidance we are given. We speak of Paul of the New Testament. I talk about how Paul was open to allowing gentiles to become Jewish and how he was less restrictive than Peter, who would require the gentile men to be circumcised. Paul, I say had the strength to follow the leadings he received, even to be imprisoned. My visitor asks me to stop and consider Paul as he was imprisoned in the house. His imprisonment, is like your being imprisoned in your body, how was Paul able to carry out Jesus' message of hope? and what might this mean for you? We talk about my two writing projects and how important they are in sharing God's words of hope for healing and for finding ways to live peaceably in tough times. I tell my visitor that during morning worship I was thinking about the writings I am to share with the world and even further, how my knitting may be of service to keep me on task. I love to knit, but I allow it to become all consuming, leaving no time for the work that God calls me to complete. During the Silence of morning worship, I thought about how I might bring the knitting to the writing by knitting the images of God's spirit of love, healing and peace as I am led. Tough times, living in the growing imprisonment of my own body, I ponder my sense of God's love and Jesus' presence with me. What is to happen next, I wonder?
Tough times, I receive a phone call from two friends living in Maine. It is early evening and the sun has set. They ask how I am doing and instead of minimizing the struggle I am experiencing, I tell them how it is. Later in the conversation my friends talk about the emergency landing of the Airbus in the Hudson River. One tells how she thinks of the event as an allegory for our times. She says that Bush's policies and actions are being sucked and shredded into the turbos while the hope Obama brings is the skill of guiding the plane to a safe landing where no one is lost. Ah, yes, the guidance we are to receive to make a safe landing, even in the face of death. May I remember this picture my friend has painted.
This week's Query: What is your sense of being personally guided in these troubled times?
Let's have a conversation, a forum, through the Comment feature.
Blessings,
Judy
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