Psalms Of Ascents—120

WEEK 1: PSALM 120

REPENTANCE

https://youtu.be/JYfzcYohWZg

Repentance means to “turn to or toward.” 

The psalmist writes, “Too long I have had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace.” 

By setting our sights on the cross, desiring to imitate Christ, we discover that there are places, things, attitudes and behaviors that we will need to leave behind, to never pursue.

https://youtu.be/ogGOlGswStA

This first psalm is placed in a remote and foreign location far from home (in Meshech and Kedar–good luck finding those on a map). The pilgrim has a very strong sense of being out of place and not belonging. It’s not just that the location is far from the temple, it’s also the fact that lies and deception, conflict and war are the preoccupation of those on every side.

Let’s pray for peace, speak up for peace, and set our hearts on journeying closer to God this year. Don’t live like someone settled down and at ease especially with the hatred, conflicts and deception that is too common around us. Shake it off and set your direction to head home to God. Let’s start climbing!

Father God in Heaven,

I am feeling restless, scattered, far from home. In my relentless pursuit of home I find myself in a war—a battle within (for I do that which I do not want to do) and a battle without (I am an alien in a secular society). I long for peace Abba Father, a journey from restlessness to rest. I desire only you; bring peace upon my aching heart Lord God as I journey toward you.

For it is only through Christ that I am made righteous unto you that I lift my prayer.

Amen and amen

Trish...

...

This may hurt, but know that I speak out of love ❤️  and to cause you to reflect 🧐.
These words come from a place of what I have experienced of you.

Have you ever completed something you began, or told me you began? Aside from OxyPlayers.
1) When I first moved here (to Germany), after Pastor Debbie first took over, she offered distance Bible Study so I could participate. You told me you wanted to participate because you could not attend physically due to work. But you did not complete that. 2) You told me God was calling you to Lay Speaking, or beyond, and yet have you completed any further Lay Speaking courses? 3) You had wanted to be a USDA Volunteer, early on, or even help Jack and George with the Car Care but you were never able to make it, even on Fridays or Saturdays that you were off or when you were unemployed. And now, 4) You seemed upset that I had invited Jack alone to participate in the drawing challenge. Honestly it was because I believed he alone would commit to the challenge. Robin has surprised me. 😲

I honestly did expect you to quit because that has been my experience of you. Say “yes” but not complete. And I know Jack didn’t draw every single day. I know he draws for 4 or 5 days at a time and then uploads them each day. That’s fine. I knew Jack would complete the challenge if he accepted it. And I knew you would not. Jack, unlike me, learns nothing from the act of drawing. Jack just loves the opportunity to draw. He is good and he enjoys it. But at least it causes him pause and reflect, “hm Day 20-Someone I Love ... well that’s easy, the grandkids”. “Day 15-A Silly Monster ... I’m going to draw Big Foot relaxing on a beach in the sun with a foofie umbrella drink”. He may have had no thought beyond that but to me it screamed Jack needs some down time to just relax, maybe down in Florida because he misses it. But you didn’t get that far. You got to Day 9-My Favourite Candy. That is telling as well. Easy to draw because you are busy. Individually wrapped for convenience, because you don’t manage your time well. Dark chocolate with a burst of mint that lingers in your mouth long after. After tastes are always interesting experiences. It is the after taste of you not getting beyond day 9 that has led me to write this very long, verbose ponderism.

And I know you never want to hear the words unreliable because you believe yourself to be totally dependable. “Monica, look at work! I busted my butt there!” “Geesh Monica, what about my commitment to Danny?” “I was there through thick and thin at all the drama rehearsals and performances!” “I alone am still there with and for Suanne.”

Ok, I hear you.

Working 14 hours a day/7 days a week is taxing, draining, plain exhausting. You had no time for anything else at all when you worked O’Reilley’s. Not even for yourself.
And we have discussed that Danny relationship ad nauseum, I won’t go there.
And Suanne? Honestly, you are right, I did quit the “support group mentality”. She seems always to be in a pitiful state, Penny and Michael, her Mom and Grandmother are always getting to her. The girls as well. And she never takes any advice to heart. She does nothing to improve her situation, her emotional state, her mental state. I determined she enjoys the drama and I could not stay in that relationship for my own mental and emotional health. I can set boundaries and draw lines. Good on you to be empathetic enough to sit in the deep pit of wallow with her. I tried but I kept looking up at the blue sky with white puffy clouds that looked like dolphins playing happily in the ocean or pups chasing butterflies. It wasn’t for me. The dark, dank pit of misery and despair may fit Suanne but not me. And that you remain in that pit beside her, well ... that is telling.

If, IF you complete this journal book thing you began, I will take all these words and swallow them. But honestly, I don’t believe I will have to.

Prove me wrong. Or not. Really you have nothing to prove to me, only to yourself and God.

BUT you need to commit to something, Trish. You cannot be grey, you cannot sit on the fence. You can’t be both a sheep 🐑  and a goat 🐐 . You have to develop a passion for something. Heck even Suanne has a passion for something - herself and drama - but you? It was O’Reilley’s I suppose, sad as that is. Regain that passion for God that you once had. Take those Lay Speaking Courses. Earn that License and then get that Certification. You were called, called.by.God! Remember? And when you ignore a God call, well, life gets immeasurably more difficult.

Again, commit to anything, follow through, complete ... something.

Go ahead. Prove me wrong.

You can’t.

forgive me, Lord

i cried endlessly last night,
my heart was heavy,
my mind raced,
my head heated ...
i am bitterly angry.

i leave the comfort of my bed,
after tossing for an hour,
after kicking my husband twice,
after elbowing his side once ...
i cannot sleep in that bed -

- not with her in the next room,
in my son's room,
invading my space,
my peace,
my grief ...
claiming my family!

and yes, i did listen to her story;
stressed from a 60 hour work week,
little pay that barely pays the bills,
and no ability to further herself in life ...
and i am unsympathetic.

she is jealous of so many others;
young adults who live with their parents,
my own son and daughter
who have help for living expenses
and school ...
a care - free - life.

she is jealous of her sister;
her "sugar daddy",
who has a wife who
"turns a blind eye",
her sister;
who is cared for,
and provided for
for her every need ...
and my neck hairs rankle.

and i want to throw her out
right then and right there.

and forgive me, Lord
but i do not care.
and forgive me, Lord
for my lack of compassion.
and forgive me, Lord
that i wish her to just disappear.

forgive my anger, Lord.
be disappointed in me, Lord,
for honestly ...
i will not change -
- MY husband
will NOT be
her "sugar daddy".

and i will NOT
turn a "blind eye".

forgive me, Lord,
for i hate ...

Slice Of Life: A Daily Story

Day Five

Tuesday, June 26th

Nothing

Meribeth stood beside the bed. The beeping had ceased. The fervor disappeared. She hugged herself and stared down at the bed. The tubes remained yet in her arms. Life ends so suddenly. Walking closer to the bed, Meribeth stared down into the face of her mother. It wasn’t as she expected … death. It was so brutal, almost cruel. There was the look of terror on her face just before a bubbling, gurgling sound. Her eyes open wide, moving erratically, almost in frenzy, almost like she was fleeing, or trying to. Death didn’t come peacefully to her mother. Death came forcefully and her mom tried desperately to escape its clutches. Why? Why Mom?

Meribeth lightly reached out her hand, brushing her mother’s hand ever so lightly. It wasn’t cold like she expected. It wasn’t anything, actually it just was, just is, well, there. That was it really. All that was left of her mother was just, well, there. There lying in that bed as nothing; just a body, a bag of bones and flesh and nothing more. But oh mother, where have you gone? Not in this bag of flesh. This isn’t you any longer. Meribeth pondered as she stroked her mother’s lifeless hand. Mom seemed so extremely terrified of death that surely she hadn’t seen the bright light and walked a path where family members greeted her warmly and the love of God surrounded her. So where did you go, mom?

What happens to the soul after it leaves the body? Does it “hang around” here, completing unfinished work in the afterlife? Does it go into a form of “purgatory”? Are there levels of heaven that each soul has to work up through to reach God? Or is there nothingness, sleep eternal that seems but a moment in time. Is heaven for real?  Are you there Mother? Can you look down upon me, cheer me on, weep with me? But would you be so frightened of heaven? Could you be in hell? Was that the final look that I saw in your eyes, wide and frantically searching for a way to get out?

Meribeth shivered. The thought of an eternal hell sent chills down her spine. There would be no knowing. Her mother lay dead in the bed and could never come back and tell her. That is the way of death. It is to remain ever a mystery. Philosophy wasn’t something she enjoyed, theology even less. No Meribeth lived in the reality of the physical world, that which can be touched and seen. There were things that needed attending to now, arrangements that needed to be made. “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever; the goal is to create something that will.” Good ole Palahniuk. While she didn’t believe in any form of immortality she did like to ponder that which would outlive all of humanity. The cockroach, it will definitely be the cockroach.

Meribeth reached up and closed the still wide open eyes, closing the terror that she still saw lurking behind the glazed over globes. A nurse walked into the room. The funeral home had arrived for the body. She nodded and stepped away from the bed, taking one last long look at the body lying in the bed. After all, that is all that it is. There is nothing; nothing but a bag of bones and flesh. Her mother was not there, not any longer.

Snapshots of Life

Snapshots of Life. Of living. Of being.


A photograph ... capturing a second of a moment in time and space. People frozen in time, forever.


Like this ...

Jeff and Karen in Paris

Looking at this photograph we, the viewer, have no connection or attachment to it or the setting (some of you don't even have know who Jeff and Karen are). We look at this photograph and say "gorgeous setting" or "don't they look happy" or even "wow". But we are not there, we are not Jeff and Karen, and we are not the photographer. Jeff and Karen, however, will look back on this photograph someday in the future and will remember not only where they were but who they were with (Bernard and Tracey), what they were doing moments before this photograph was taken, where they went moments after. Maybe they will remember where they ate breakfast or lunch, maybe where they shopped, or where they ate dinner. This photograph, to Jeff and Karen, will bring back a memory of visual images and a flood of emotions. They are connected to this photograph, to this event, to this moment in time and space. We, we are merely outside observers that have knowledge ... you now having more knowledge after reading this paragraph than you may have had just looking at the picture. But knowledge isn't a cue to memory and knowledge does trigger emotional responses.

Now, imagine living your entire life as the unattached viewer of a photograph. Imagine you have no connection to not only the visual cues of photographs but also the visual and audible cues of video images. Imagine having no emotional correlation to anything that you are seeing or hearing. You would not, could not, ever be involved in a life that you have no relationship to. 

That, THAT has been my life to this point in time. Snippets of a life that I have lived, a photograph of a moment forever frozen in time but not connected to me. Until this point in my life.

I imagine that most people can recall a moment in their life and remember what they were doing, where they were, and who they were with. I imagine that THIS is finally how things are becoming for me. Finally, after a lifetime of lack, I will have a full and complete picture. Not merely what I know, for knowing is different that memory, than remembering. I will have a complete picture of a life not only known about but also remembered. 

It is a scary thing. It is an exciting thing. It is a miraculous thing. It is a first. Finally, it is all me.

Monica and Kim

This is me and one of my very best friends on Rosedale Dr. in Las Cruces. It was taken on the way to high school, Mayfield High School. We had just stepped out of the house and her brother, Danny, snapped this picture of us as he was teasing us (an activity that he did often when he was home). We will come back to her house after school and listen to Donny Osmond and the Beatles White Album, drink sodas and munch on chips, and we will talk about the boys in high school, the girls in high school, and we will try our hardest to fit in even though we both know that we will not ever fit in. 

I remember, not only this day but many days such as this at Kim's house.

The End

And so it all comes to an end for yet another year. The Lenten Dailies, the Stations of the Cross, the Encouraging words that I have been doing (on Facebook). I have learned so much about myself through the writings this year, through the readings of the posts by my friends, through the comments made by friends and acquaintances. I have grown and the most important thing through these Lenten encounters is that I have seen the growth. Even more impressive is that I like who I have grown into.


Change is hard to embrace at times, especially change within oneself. It has taken me some seventeen years to reach this point of maturity, to become the woman that I see myself as today. It has taken me some seventeen years to say honestly, I like the person I am becoming. 


I thank God for this journey during Lent this year.

Ok Mad is Done

I knew it wouldn't take long and that once I got the other side of the story I'd see reason.

I have and I do.

50 Years

The church, St. Marks UMC, is 50 years old.

I am 50 years old.

We have seen so much in 50 years.

The church, St. Marks UMC, has changed
     a LOT
in 50 years.

Me?
     not liking change,
has only changed physically
in 50 years.

We had a great celebration for the church, St. Marks UMC tonight
     continuing tomorrow.

I had a quiet, quaint celebration that was marked by
the death of Jim Richardson
     phone calls to circle chairs
     e-mails to ladies of the church

Reunions are amazing
     former ministers,
     former members
     current ministers,
     current members
memories shared, stories told
     laughter and
     tears
     hopes and
     fears

Celebrations are hectic
time-consuming
     carefully planned
  artfully designed
    spontaneously evolved
          callously embarked upon

50
congratulations church, St. Marks UMC

here's to the next 50!

Color Splash

I have found a new love ... Color Splash. It's a program that converts any photo to grey scale and then allows for the colorization of objects for dramatic effect.

I'm having soooo much fun!

i know it's not all about me but still ...

sometimes i think that i prefer the god of my childhood - 
     - the god who told me to invest all my energies in him
     - the god who told me the only relevant relationship in my life is the relationship i am to have with him
     - the god who demanded all my attention, all my devotion, all my love

here in my adult life, with my adult mind, i find that God is a god who is all about relationships -
     - personal relationship with God himself
     - social relationship with people
     - just relationship with all things around me

when i was a kid people were not very significant in my life. i wasn't invested in people, didn't form relationships with people (or at lest didn't form lasting relationships with people), didn't particularly 'love' or care about people.

now i'm an adult and i find that having a relationship with God through Christ Jesus means being in relationship with others, 'loving' those around me, being vulnerable and caring for them.

honestly, right now, that stinks!
honestly, right now, i find that i just want to curl up in a ball and shut out the world and pretend that the God of my adulthood never made such demands on me.
honestly, right now, i believe, that the God of my adulthood is crueler than the god of my childhood. 
     how cruel it is for God to demand that i 'love' others and then to cause them to be ripped from heart.
     how dare God cause me to deeply care for another and then burden my heart so with the prospect of his death.
     how could God bring me to a point of vulnerability and then crush my soul and cause such pain?
     how could a 'loving' God do this to any one at all;
          why does suffering have to exist?
          why can't God recreate the Garden, Utopia, sanctuary?
          why doesn't He bring about His kingdom on Earth now?

i sit here and feel the pain and hurt of the suffering of a dear friend, of the pain and sorrow that he and his wife and family are going through.
i sit here and shed tears for him, for her, for their dearest friends, for myself.

it was easier when i was kid and didn't have to feel. and i imagine that, since i am created in the likeness of God, that these feelings are not lost upon God. i imagine God feeling these same feelings; the hurt, the pain, the suffering, the sorrow. i don't believe that God ever intended life to be so filled with such heartache when He created all of the universe and everything within it.

i long for the light to guide us through the darkness. i long for the strength that surpasses all understanding. i pray for the comfort and care of my friend and for his wife and family and friends. i seek comfort for my own self this night as i weep and grieve for the inevitable loss.

why do we have to get sick, why do we have to die, why must we be separated one from another? i don't pretend to understand; i pray only for the patience to wait upon the Lord for God's Kingdom come when i will be reunited with those that i have cared about ... those that i have 'loved' ... those that my heart longs to see.

you are in my prayers jim and joann.
you are being remembered this night bill and mary alice.
my heart breaks with yours sally.
my thoughts turn to my st. mark's family this night especially.
my soul cries out to my Lord and my God and i thirst.
    

What A Wonderful Day.

So myPie got home from Kill Devil Hills JUST as I was walking out the door to go get myShelb.
You want to go with me?
I haven't had lunch yet.
Shelby will want to go get something to eat.
I know, why do you think I told you haven't had lunch yet?
Oh, so you'd only go if we were stopping to get food.
And I need to go to Walgreens at 2:59 to pick up my photos. They have a one-hour photo too, I had to go there because the one in Wal*mart is broken.


So I grab the dog and we hop in the car and head to HHS. I shoulda left the dog at home though because she was miserable and hot and panting and I swore she was having a heart attack at one point because her breathing got so heavy. Shelby got into the car and we headed over to Chick-fil-A. As we got there Annie perked up. 
She remembers receiving doggie bones the last time we were here. 
myPie gets strips and a vanilla shake with whip cream and no cherry, myShelb gets nuggets and a cherry coke and I get a sandwich and sweet tea. The food comes out first and then they hand me a drink holder with the three drinks. I pull forward slightly and take the drinks and place them in the cup holders, passing myShelb's back to her. Pierce dropped my wallet into my purse and in the three seconds that he was distracted Annie had licked out half of the whip cream from his milk shake!
 NO Annie!


I laughed so hard that I didn't think I'd be able to leave the parking lot. 

Faces In The Trees

"Do you ever see faces in things?" I ask my husband whose back is to me.
He sighs heavily and shifts in the bed knowing that sleep would  elude him for now.
"What do you mean?" he mumbles.
"Well, I see faces in everything - like the leaves in the trees" I respond, looking into the face of a young child dancing in the trees in our backyard.
"What do you see?" he asked. "A little girl," I begin, "with ... wait, it's changing, morphing."
I watch as the face lengthens and matures. "There is a moustache and the hair is long, well it covers the ears," I correct myself, "and the hair on the ... left side of his face covers his eye slightly."
He doesn't say anything other than a soft 'hm'. I hear the sound of water and get out of bed to check that it isn't the toilet in our bathroom.
"I hear water," I say, returning to bed, "but jiggling the handle proved it wasn't our bathroom."
He shifts in the bed again. "I only hear the air conditioner." he sighs.
I climb back into bed and am captivated once again by the face in the leaves of the tree outside. It is fully developed and locked solidly into place now. A man in his late twenties with a definite air of 1974. Now don't ask me how I know this, it's just some gut feeling that I get. I note the lay of his hair, the length of his moustache. It's at times like this that I wish I could draw.
"Do you think that these faces could be people from my past or that I just have an overactive imagination?" I ask him, struggling to find missing pieces of a childhood I have no memory of.
Oh don't get me wrong, I know things about my childhood, stories told by family over the years but that is fact knowledge of a childhood spent yet lost; sketches with numerous gaps and no feelings or emotions attached. "Why overactive?" he asks.
Hmm...I ponder. I guess I just assumed that I alone saw faces in inanimate objects, faces of all ages, races, and gender, faces that haunt me in my twilight moments, in the spaces just before waking or sleeping. I hear the flush of the toilet in another room again and mention it to my husband while yelling at my dog to stop licking. I really need to find out why the sound of her licking bothers me so! My husband testily throws the covers off and I try to grab at his arm as he goes to get his bathrobe. "You don't have to check on it." Yet he leaves the room without a word.
I turn back toward the face in the tree. The eyes are captivating; there is so much care and concern there and the whole face radiates with a gentleness and ... what? love? I feel awash with something I so rarely feel, security. I snuggle deeper into my pillow, languishing in the sense of safe but as I stare into the eyes of the face I note that it is beginning to change yet again. The moustache gives way to full lips and the hair recedes revealing a large forehead. The head loses the narrowness and becomes rounder, the eyes squint and appear sinister. Evil surrounds this face and it both frightens and worries me.
My husband climbs back into the bed and I turn to him and bury my head into his shoulder. "Is the face still there?" he asks. "Yes", I whimper, "it's evil and I don't like it."

fooling around

Sampling this font while watching The United States of Tara, though I’m not sure that I’ll be able to use this font in my blog. L


Update: I have realized that while I can see the D'Nealian font just fine on my computer, other computers change the font to something different (probably because they don't have the D'Nealian font uploaded onto their computers!). 

Finally

my bff graduated today ... finally. i know that she's relieved to be done and glad it's over with and excited to walk through the door and do great things at her new job. this is just an official "i'm proud of you!" note.

Associate of Applied Science

Ok so

So ...


when can you tell when you're electrolytes are off,
when you're potassium is low,
when the magnesium affects it?


Can it be when you're heart is racing 
and you're throwing up at 2:00 in the morning
and then can't lay on either side 
and need the weight of your husbands hand across your chest
to slow down your speeding heart?


Yeah.

Kairos

Kairos =  an ancient Greek word meaning the "right or opportune moment," or "God's time."

The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos.
While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies "a time in between", a moment of undetermined period of time in which "something" special happens.
What the special something is depends on who is using the word.
While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.


When have you had a kairos moment?

I believe that I've not experienced an opportune moment.
Jeff has opportune moments, it seems, whenever he sets foot into Hardees. There, before him, God presents a person in need and Jeff - a quick evaluator of a situation - readily is available. Safi had several opportune moments at the last USDA Food distro.

Oh how I long for kairos. 

I'll NEVER Understand!

I guess just because it makes sense in my mind
I shouldn't expect it to make sense in the minds of others.
It usually never does. 

Art as Courage

I stole this word for word from the Art Blog at the Episcopalian Cafe'.

Art begins with the courage to make a mark—whether that mark is made with a brush, a pen, the hand, or the click of a lens. Whatever inclination or inspiration exists, it must be partnered with courage—because that first mark is the first breath of the creation of a world-view. With that first mark we are breathing a world-view in repetition, response, or even homage to that First Breath that brought us into being.

And what then, after courage? A promise to continue with this creation until it breathes its own breath, and dreams its own dream. And then, if it is after all to be art, that breath and dream must be recognized outside its own soul, outside its own creation—it must reach out to Other. The images seen above and below are of calligraphic art by Melissa Dinwiddie, who names this world-view she created “Kinetic Metaphor: Three Alphabets of the Self.”

Using marks from the Latin-based English alphabet, the Hebrew alphabet, and the imagined alphabet of her own internal language, she has brought into being a world where there is flow rather than separation, unity rather than division. This is a place you recognize as both of humans and spirits, new to you, but instantly also about you.

The intuitive use of marks and color in this three-dimensional space allow both tactile and spiritual considerations to speak to the viewer. And even though alphabetic tools are used skillfully, we don’t want to “read” here, we want only to “listen” and “feel” as we move as in a dance through the walls and pages of this world-view.

I was especially moved by the first paragraph of this article. The courage to make the first mark which is (to me) a metaphor to living life because in anything that we do in living life it takes courage to take that first step, to make that first move, to embrace that first occasion. If you are too wary to set the pencil to paper then you'll never sketch even a stick figure. If I am afraid to even attempt a new "technique" that has a proven track record then I am stuck in my life forever as I am. Something that must cause me to pause and reflect.


The one thing I didn't agree with in the above quote so brazenly stolen from the Episcopalian Cafe' - "we don't want to "read" here, we want only to "listen" and "feel". While I do admit that I love the flow and movement of this 3-D piece of art I (personally) am drawn to the writings and I long to read the alphabetic tools that are scrawled upon the surface. That, I imagine, is the difference between an artist and a writer. I am drawn to the piece instantly (thus my longing to recreate the entire blog here) but there is much more than the visual pull - the letters draw me into the world of the artist and I long to read what is written, to catch a glimpse into the mind of the creator of the piece, to understand her, to know her. I can never do that with just a visual representation - as much as I am moved by the piece in its entirety. No, to understand her I need to know what she wrote and why she wrote it. I am particularly intrigued by the use of "the imagined alphabet of her own internal language". You see, I too have my own internal language and have symbols that are used a an alphabet to that internal language. I know why my own internal language was created - I long to know the reason for hers. The writings upon the sculpture only increase my curiosity and cause me to re-examine the piece more closely ... over and over again. 


I'd be curious to know the interpretations, opinions, comments of others who read this post. Is it just me who is so attracted to the piece because of the words, the letters, the alphabets? 

I'm Fine

No Fear