Seguin

and other aimless musings

Saturday, May 2, 2009

I am grateful for

my sister and brother

Posted by Hope at 8:01 AM No comments:

Labels: siblings

Cutting up . . .

The bittersweet art of cutting up

books

Handbags made from book covers at Rebound Designs

Posted by Hope at 7:41 AM No comments:

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The Gift of Tears

a time to weep

About Me

Hope: Seguin, South Central Texas, United States; Who am I? I'm still discovering just who I am, I suppose. A. Powell Davis writes that "Life is just a chance to grow a soul."

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My Blog List

A Progressive on the Prairie

Goodbye, South Dakota
2 years ago
Aimless musings

tears
9 years ago
AimlessMusings2010

according to WordPress
12 years ago
Bluestocking

Vermicomposting, a small set-up with large returns
7 years ago
Can't Sleep

Merry Christmas
14 years ago
Holy Ordinary: Quaker Thoughts on Life

"Between the Lies" -- a Book Review
6 years ago
Intentionality

according to WordPress
12 years ago
Judy's Lovelies at Ruby Lane : Antique & Vintage Porcelain, Pottery, Glass, Books, Tins, Collectibles, Papier Mache, Tole
Lagniappe

clouds
14 years ago
ME, MOVING FORWARD

Prayers
12 years ago
Scobberlotch (v.) to loaf around, doing nothing in particular.

Celebrating Pat Conroy
8 years ago
Seguin (TX) Photo Blog

Stormy Spring
11 years ago
WILL'S TEXAS PARLOR

Hello texas
8 years ago

Grace

THE MYSTERY OF GRACE

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”
~ Anne Lamott

The agony and ecstasy of a reading life

~ A Good Blog Is Hard to Find
~ Blog of a Book Slut
~ Book Dwarf
~ Neglected Books
~ New West Books
~ Rain Taxi
~ reading matters
~ Seguin Guadalupe County Library
~ Short Stack
~ The Elegant Variation

Roxie Laybourne

An Amazing Lady

Roxie's Rules of Success

1. Share your knowledge. 2. Keep your mouth shut. 3. Keep an open mind. Keep it your whole life. 4. Take care of your body.

Spread Your Wings

Living Well

"Order your soul;
reduce your wants;
live to charity;
associate in Christian community;
obey the laws; trust in Providence."
St. Augustine of Hippo

gentleness

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength - Francis de Sales

The human heart is made by and for the God of Love

What the Spirit brings is very different: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.
- Galatians 5:22-23

The knowledge of God is a mountain

steep indeed, and difficult to climb.-Gregory of Nyssa

struggle on the slopes

Spiritual reorientation often leads to upheaval in the psyche and in personal life. Relationships may not be able to remain the same....We may be led into situations that painfully stimulate new capacities or demand digging deep to cultivate new virtues like patience or courage....Through it all, the spirit is at work.
- Robert C. Morris

The Spiritual Life

spirituality

The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of every man's life; and until he has realized it, he is not a complete human being, has not entered into possession of all his powers."
~ Evelyn Underhill

Solitude

solitude as loneliness and solitude as grace

each of us walks a solitary path

Thomas Merton writes that
"The contemplative has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that if you dare to penetrate your own silence and risk the sharing of that solitude with the lonely other who seeks God through you, then you will truly recover the light and the capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations because it is too close to be explained; it is the intimate union in the depths of your own heart, of God's spirit and your own secret inmost self...."

Inspiration

Brenda Ueland - Inspiration

slowly and quietly

I learned ... that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness. ~ Brenda Ueland

fragments

gather up the fragments

Percy Ainsworth

IN A WORLD WHERE LIFE
goes hard with us all in turn, I say that tenderness and the loving will to help are never out of place, and never wasted.

Prayer

Richard Foster

We today yearn for prayer and hide from prayer. We are attracted to it and repelled by it. We believe prayer is something we should do, even something we want to do, but it seems like a chasm stands between us and actually praying. We experience the agony of prayer-lessness.

Wonder

Awe

"He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."
~ Albert Einstein

Explore

Throw off the bowlines

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Mark Twain

Holiness

sacred lives

Every aspect of our lives has the potential to become holy.
- Christopher S. Webb

Be Still

tranquil and quiet

Enough for me to keep my soul tranquil and quiet like a child in its mother's arms, as content as a child that has been weaned.
(Psalm 131:2)

Grief

the hardest love we carry

The divine often appears veiled in the unlikeliest of forms

Grief has its own way with us, stirring in the depths of the unconscious, piercing the surfaces of our distracted minds....
- Mark S. Burrows

HUMILITY

Teresa of Avila

HUMILITY
does not disturb
or disquiet
or agitate,
however great
it may be;
it comes with
peace,
delight,
and calm.

ATTENTIVENESS

Thomas Merton

Life is this simple.
We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent
and God is shining through it all the time.
This is not just a fable or a nice story
It is true.
If we abandon ourselves to God
and forget ourselves,
we see it sometimes
and we see it maybe frequently.
God shows Godself everywhere,
In everything,
In people and in things and in nature and in events.
It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and
in everything and we cannot be without God.
It is impossible.
The only thing is that we don't see it.

ABANDONMENT

to what thou wilt

let me be full,
let me be empty;
let me have all things,
let me have nothing;
I freely and heartily yield
all things
to
thy pleasure and disposal.

The Road

finding the way

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. . . . A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it.
~ Elaine M. Prevallet

A Circle of Belonging

belonging

Across the threshold lies a landscape that I can hardly perceive or imagine.
~ Jan Richardson
__________________

I have loved you with an everlasting love...
I have called you by name, you are mine.
Jeremiah 31:3; Isaiah 43:1
__________________

Music (click 'mute' on the playlist if you don't wish to listen)

"tears well up from the heart" - Catherine of Siena

When the soul grows tearful, weeps, and is filled with tenderness, and all this without having striven for it, then let us run, for the Lord has arrived uninvited and is holding out to us the sponge of loving sorrow, the cool waters of blessed sadness with which to wipe away the record of our sins. Guard those tears like the apple of your eye until they go away, for they have a power greater than anything that comes from our own efforts and our own meditation.
- John Climacus