Happy Spring to all!
Spring is busting out all over and the world is full of beautiful color! I love Spring!!!! My very favorite season!
Last year I did a Spring newsletter http://songsfromthevalley.com/March%2011%204.9%20Spring.pdf
Claiming the Sacredness of Our Being
Are we friends with ourselves? Do we love who we are? These are important questions because we cannot develop good friendships with others unless we have befriended ourselves.
How then do we befriend ourselves? We have to start by acknowledging the truth of ourselves. We are beautiful but also limited, rich but also poor, generous but also worried about our security. Yet beyond all that we are people with souls, sparks of the divine. To acknowledge the truth of ourselves is to claim the sacredness of our being, without fully understanding it. Our deepest being escapes our own mental or emotional grasp. But when we trust that our souls are embraced by a loving God, we can befriend ourselves and reach out to others in loving relationships.
Henri Nouwen
http://www.henrinouwen.org/
Batting!
Toward the end of winter I came upon
the Lord on a diamond, batting.
I said, “ Lord, what are you doing?”
“These are your sins,” he said,
as a shadowy figure on the mound
with a vicious arm pitched.
He had no instinct: swung at everything,
even dirtballs. And hit ’em every time.
He had a beautiful swing,
fluid, sure, and joyful.
He hit pitch after pitch, endlessly.
I lost myself, watching.
“Out of the park” he said, his eye
on a nasty looking knuckleball,
and swung like a dancer,
gracefully unwinding. Chock!
It rose up over the fence, over the trees,
released from all earthly bonds,
floating free until it disappeared,
infinitely gone, still rising.
He watched it go, as if
he’d never seen such a beautiful thing.
“I love this game,” he grinned,
and set for another pitch.
I think he was honestly
pleased with himself.
______________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Used With Permission
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
happy spring training baseball people!
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. – 2 peter 1:5-8
Our Unique Call
So many terrible things happen every day that we start wondering whether the few things we do ourselves make any sense. When people are starving only a few thousand miles away, when wars are raging close to our borders, when countless people in our own cities have no homes to live in, our own activities look futile. Such considerations, however, can paralyse us and depress us.
Here the word call becomes important. We are not called to save the world, solve all problems, and help all people. But we each have our own unique call, in our families, in our work, in our world. We have to keep asking God to help us see clearly what our call is and to give us the strength to live out that call with trust. Then we will discover that our faithfulness to a small task is the most healing response to the illnesses of our time.
– Henri Nouwen
http://www.henrinouwen.org/
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life: acoustic & amplified 