12/7/13

This day, just to be different, I picked a scraggly, clumpy hill to climb. It doesn’t matter what I mountain or hill I climb, only the amount of effort that puts me into the right mood to visit with the others of our group. So I stepped lightly up the steep hill and at times I needed to grab hold of a clump of grass growing on the steep sandy slope. As I got close to the top, I lifted myself over the edge and looked back to admire the slope and its beauty. Even scraggly is beautiful. So far, I haven’t found anything on the earth that isn’t worth admiration. I can be walking on the sidewalk and a struggling purple-green plant growing between the crack catches me up with such amazement and wonder I need to stop and admire it.

I could feel that God was pleased with my love of his earth this morning. When we stood together higher up on the hillside, God actually put his arms around our group as if to hug us. I know that sounds silly. How could God have arms to hug with? But, why not? How dare we define or limit God? So I grinned in delight and spread this great love around and down the green hillside into towns and villages and cities around the earth. As I watched the light roll like a glowing fog over the land I thought of Disney and how aptly he could have shown this. Walt Disney always put an aura of love in his movies and this was certainly love that flowed down the mountain from God to encompass the earth. God loves all of his works dearly, even us, even though we often rape and plunder the land and waters, even though we over build and then destroy. Yes, even though we don’t deserve love, when I stand upon the mountain with the others I can feel the depth of God’s live penetrate my mind and soul.

Snow is beautiful unless you can’t get out of it

12/14/13

I read about the Syrian Refugees who are standing bare feet in snow because they needed to burn their own shoes to keep their children warm. I can’t stand knowing their pain and said so during meditation.

I asked Jesus, “Wouldn’t it be better for them to go out side and lay down in the snow to die?” Isn’t death preferable?”

Not only did Jesus say, “No,” but I felt God’s disapproval roll around me as well.

I remember God also implied this when I was taken up to see him many years ago. But I don’t really understand. Is life so precious that it is even worth such horrible degradation and suffering? Suffering like what happened in the Nazi camps. Even there people tried to stay alive because something within their psyche knew the sanctity of life. Then I remembered reading a book by Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, (1959). In his book, after living through the Nazi camps, he said that even suffering is meaningful. He said, “The salvation of man is through love and in love.” Quote taken from Wikipedia. This from a man who suffered greatly. I read his book a number of years ago and intend to read it again.

As I continued to meditate and visit with Jesus, he told me that the refugees are being supplied with heaters and fuel and also shoes and blankets. I begged Jesus to help me understand why life is so precious. His answer was to show me an older man shivering with cold in Detroit because he couldn’t go back into the warming center until later in the evening. The man sat inside a corner, his back against a brick building, an empty wine bottle laying on the ground. As we stood watching him, I wondered why he kept up the struggle to live when he seemed to have nothing to live for.

As Jesus reached down and gave the man a loving touch, I realized that this person could still grow within himself, still find God, if he hasn’t already. It is never too late to find God and learn love and thereby find the ability to live again. That is the answer to why life is so precious—it gives us time to learn love. I saw it then, both young and old, every life lived and reborn walking up a tall mountain to stand with God. Some reborn in this life, some in the next and next. All of these people of different character worthy to exist and thrive in love. I wondered: Does God live through us and we through God?

I learned so much today that I can’t remember all of it to write down. I know I have asked this same question before and received the same answer—life is love.

A short time later, I gathered with the others and felt God’s life giving light spread upon us and the whole world. This invisible light from God is life’s essence and all the souls it touches are given an extra bit of aliveness. The invisible light moves through the population and encourages love just as every good deed, every prayer, every smile, every kindness spreads good food for our souls. And the longer I live and think, the more I understand what my relationship with God should be. And I imagine this is true for all of us, that life teaches and instructs and gives and takes away but it always moves us forward towards God, if not in this life, then in the next.

12/14/13

I am so proud that the couple who call themselves, Secret Santa, came to Detroit. The photos of people receiving $100.00 bills were heart warming. I almost cried with happiness myself to see photos of the face of so many poor people astounded by such a gift. I just wish the Freep would have put the photos in the Sunday newspaper which gets more circulation instead of the Saturday paper. Maybe they will. I hope so. I want to give my own “Thank you” to that amazing couple and also thank the police department for escorting them around town. What a remarkable event.

12/20/13

Last night I watched a rerun on Nova, Extreme Ice. The photographer showed through time-lapse film how the glaciers are shrinking. This was scary enough but the program was a few years old and nothing was said on it about the weather. We now know that the cold north and south help regulate the weather around the globe. With the north getting warmer we can expect more severe weather events such as flooding, draughts, excessive snow, fires, tornados, etc. We still tend to shrug it off, but what of the young children of today who will have children and grandchildren. Those grandchildren will grow up in a frightening landscape of bad weather and hardship many times worse than we have today.

I know this to be true: One day we will be look on as the people who used up the earth, maybe the people who killed nature. Many people see what is happening, the problem is what can be done about it. Personally, I can’t see there is much I can do. As an older person I don’t tend to use up resources and the same can be said for the poor, they consume less therefore they damage the air, land and water less. Perhaps we should thank the people who ride the bus.

If we play the blame game, America is most at fault, therefore it should be first to begin the healing process. It is up to us to show the world it can be done. All we need is a congress willing to change a few rules. We expect scientists to keep learning and inventing until they come up with a solution. But it will take more than a solution, it will take an agreeable government to implement the ideas. The thought gives me the shivers. I don’t have much hope on that score.

Yet, Jesus is walking the earth. He sees all the huge problems and the small. This earth belongs to God; how dare we destroy it and the life upon it. We need to start walking with Jesus, not push our self inflated wind against him. Cooperate, flow together for the common good of everyone. It will take a different mind set, an agreement between peoples that wealth and money and a gadget filled life isn’t everything because there is no escape from bad weather. Unless the rich can get to another planet, they have no place else to go and are in the same boat as the rest of us.

I suppose the biggest problem in all this is that not enough people believe it will happen. We look at movies of this majestic earth or our green gardens and food stuffs and think it will last forever. Well, the earth is almost forever, the danger is to the life living upon its surface and in the oceans. I am beginning to think that our prayers should not only be for the most needy but also for the most ignorant, those who have power but can’t see what needs to be done. Yes, we must pray that the eyes of the blind will be opened and the lame thinkers walk because there is a sickness in denial.

As I wrote this complaint, Jesus spoke to me and said, “There is still time.”

In other words, the situation can still be remedied if we begin now. I see that our president is trying and other leaders, but more leaders who make decisions need to step in and agree on change. Most of them have children and grandchildren they love. We all want the best for our children’s children. We want them to have clean water and breathable air and ice at the poles and glaciers to climb. We don’t want them to live in tunnels like gophers who never see the blue sky. It could happen, but doesn’t need to. It is up to us.

12/21/13

This morning I met with Jesus and we walked in a Spring meadow because I wanted to get away from the snow and rain and cold. As we walked through the tall grass I let the blades and tiny flowers swish against my gown, breathed in a deep lungful of fresh air, and wondered at the amazing blue sky. We were on earth and soon the others joined us as we swam within this beauty of emerald green and cerulean blue.

I asked if we could spend these few minutes calling out to people on earth to come and join us. Everyone liked the idea so that is what we did. We held each other’s hands in a circle and sent our spirits out into the world to call to all people who wished to pray along with us or who had God on their mind. We reached out to this person and that person and called them to join. We called to any person who wanted to help other people, who cares and loves. We called to a myriad of people living upon the earth.

Remember that silly debate in the middle ages about how many angels would fit on the head of a pin. Well I have the answer—billions. Because when we all gathered together as spirits we didn’t take up any space at all, we intermingled one with the other. I watched as if from on high as we formed into a flower with a thousand petals. At God’s touch, we shivered in delight and dispersed, every petal floating back to where it come from to spread God energy and happiness, like a dandelion sending seeds into the air, our spirits floated around the globe. Pure joy touched my soul. Is there anything on earth that feels better than spreading love?

Notre Dame - Paris

12/28/13

My visit with Jesus this morning was a exercise in contrasts. We met in the deep dark woods by the natural fountain during the height of summer. As I stood with Jesus I could smell the damp earth and reached down to touch a soft fern leaf as the water trickled into the natural well behind me. The sun peaked through the trees in a dance of light changing all it touched into sparkling green diamonds.

Then we walked through greenery to meet the others who chose to gather and pray with us. I remembered the special Nova feature about Cathedrals and suggested that instead of a mountain, we stand on the roof of a cathedral such as Notre Dame in Paris. So there we gathered high up on this beautiful man made mountain of glass and stone, a monument meant to rise up to God. We prayed for the busy people below and people everywhere.

So I had went from the scents of nature to the dizzying heights of stone as tall as the pyramids in Egypt. From there after calling on God to fill us with the invisible light of love energy, we all went to the hot spots in Africa to spread love and hope where we could. I believe that this huge continent that takes up half the land on the globe will one day become a collection of great states, perhaps like the United States. But for now it is going through severe growing pains, bleeding lives into the ground.

Next contrast: I went back home to these United States where the people’s hearts are bleeding badly but who can’t see the wounds. I prayed that we don’t grow cold like stone, that we keep in mind the love Jesus taught us. This is what I prayed as I spread God’s light into and through out the boardrooms and richer countryside of our nation. From earthliness to stone and to poverty to riches unimaginable a few hundred years ago. And everywhere from above Paris to the raw brush of Africa to the rich lands of America there were human souls in need of God’s nurture and love. My own soul grew and was gladdened by this awesome vision of life.

I saw a few cardinals in the yard but I didn’t take this photo

12/31/13

Jesus asked me to feed the birds. I thought this a strange request because he has often said that the birds can fend for themselves. I suspect that we are having a particularly harsh winter with extreme cold and the birds will need extra energy. I usually throw old bread to the birds in the winter, but this year, I intend to buy a large bag of bird seed. I wonder if the problem is a combination of cold weather and infection. I watched a robin last spring for a while but then it stopped coming to my yard. Are the birds going to die off like the bees? I pray not.