Greetings for 2015

Marking the New year 

is a little like drawing a line in the sand of the beach.

The great ocean of time washes over it

 and we realise it was

just a mark of our own making.

The moment of a New Year breaking

helps us take stock perhaps;

in truth every moment of life offers us new opportunities.

How great is that?!

http://stylipics.com/happy-new-year-2015

May You and Yours Know the Richest Blessings

 In the Year Ahead.

May Not the Least of These Be

 Laughter!

http://happynewyear2015wishesquotesmessagessmsimageswallpapers.com/

Winter Afternoon in Kenilworth

 We walked the paths of Abbey Fields today as the winter sun sank over the frozen water.

If we had come across monks from the long disappeared abbey,

or the Virgin Queen's courtiers making their way to the ruined castle, 

it would have been no surprise.

Why does dusk have this magic sense of timelessness

and edge of mystery I wonder?

I only know,

 even as we await the beginning of a New Year tomorrow,

there was a sense of seamless eternity in the chill air today.

Be Blessed

Twixtmas - Again.

Frankie off for a Walk   photo:- Kate Bendon



At this time last year, following the custom of receiving a word for the year ahead,
 the word that came to me for 2014 was
Freedom.



It throbbed with promise as well as challenge;

after all who does not want to be free?

Knowing there are many definitions of freedom,

I need to tell you my definition in this instance is

 the freedom to love.

Love alone can soar beyond the fear which keeps me shackled by my circumstances

and fastened in the narrow confines of my self absorption.

I have always coveted the idea of that sort of freedom to love.

I sensed fear would be the guardian that would march along in step with

 any movement into freedom I might gain, and
I have certainly been forced to face many fears,

some of which I thought had been laid to rest.

The freedom has come
as I have seen myself no better and no worse for my continued weakness,

and learning yet again,

 fear does not have the power to destroy me. 

 Only my avoidance of fear,

 (refusing to face the issues it shows me)

 can do that.


Whether I have grown in love I cannot say, but ending this year,

 and taking stock of the freedom I have gained,

 I am left with one giant challenge.

If love is ultimate freedom from fear as I have claimed,

how is it

 I so often fear for those I love?

*


It is comparatively easy to see loved ones take their first independent steps away,
 learning the coping skills they will need to face a strange, and often alien, world.


We usually learn the right moment to release the supporting hand;
when to wave goodbye,
even turning to look away when the time is right,
 and learning our proper place on  the sidelines of their lives..


Still, I admit to ongoing work on the journey into freedom to love,
 because it's the letting go of the heart I find so hard.


*


Hubby reminds me how Mary,
 pondered things in her heart".(Lk. 2:19),
and yes, it is often the way of women, (though not exclusively so),
to take things in, and to, heart.
For myself, I know I am not sufficient for what I tend to hold,
or for what can pierce my soul. (Lk 2:35).


The power I do have is in allowing my own human, even anxious, love,
to release loved ones to God.


It is a constant discipline;
a continual movement of trust.
Not a permission to worry in God's presence,
but a giving up of all I am, and all I carry.


It may be incremental
but it is part of a commitment to know the freedom I have been promised.


So, the "word" for 2014 will travel on with me.


Will there be one for 2015 I wonder?


How about you?


Be Blessed

The bright Christmas wrappings are fading into a quieter hue at last...

The bright Christmas wrappings are fading into a quieter hue at last.

The moment to truly consider
 the gift of God's unguarded offering of Himself ,
made real again this Christmas,
 has arrived.

May  you and yours know the blessings of peace, love, and joy,
and may Christ,
beyond all division of creed,
 be born afresh in all our hearts.

*

I hope the haunting Wexford Carol helps us reflect,
and the joyful Calypso Carol

helps us dance our response.

Nothing like a dance around the kitchen to help the cooking along!

Send Out Your Light! - An Advent Cry

Light breaking through winter clouds by emmwah-d5kyskq

I have been attempting to keep as deep an interior silence as I can this Advent season, 

  so I have cut out as much unnecessary exterior "noise" as I can to help me

 in my waiting for the new light of Christ to break in on me.

Blogging and facebook were the first to go,

 driven by my longing to see more clearly,

and to make an inner space for the coming of the light.

 Well more accurately my longing is
 to be ignited by a greater light of compassion and love.

Of course what has happened has been a deafening rise in my inner confusion,
 and own dark voice,

with a couple of winter bugs for me and hubby as a back ground accompaniment.

+

I am a seasoned traveller on the faith journey,
 so why,  when I set my face to go deeper
 am I always so surprised and seemingly overwhelmed?

Each descent into my own darkness, each waiting out the dark tide, feels so new.

 Even well known paths become uncharted wilderness seen, as they are,

from a new vantage point of time, grace, and experience.

In the outer winter darkness of the world,

other destructive forces have raged and sobbed,

 too terrible to contemplate.

Each news brings appalling facts

 that I can only wish with all my heart did not exist,

 wreaking havoc as they do.

And this news is not new to me,

but familiar echoes of the dark state within which I wait

 for the new light to break within my own heart.

Yet in my waiting gloom something shimmers.

There is the memory of my own story.

The story I have begun to tell, and faltered over,
 leaving it as yet not fully told, (though promising I will),

when going over old suffering proved too much to encompass in the time I have had. 

Can I merely short circuit the full telling of it now by saying,

 at a time when I was desperately sick

a physical and spiritual light broke in on me

 that healed me all the way from the outside in.

The thing I need to say right now is I was no more

 "holy".

nor "righteous",

no more "deserving",

then than I am now,

 and yet the light came.

So I have every reason to believe, and to hope,
 for that same light to come for others.

Unholy, unrighteous, undeserving like me.

And that is the Advent hope,

and the Advent promise.

The people living in darkness have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." 

 Matt 4:16

Out of these last days of Advent waiting I offer you the glorious promise that

the darkness of death and evil do not have the last word.

He who is light comes,

even to you and me.

Be Blessed

P.S.  One thing I have maintained in my Advent silence is my faith companion at Ennis Blue. 

 For more glory than you can handle why don't you do the same?