Author: Susie

If only we could know whether our "crazy ideas" are any good! and that is what I’m wondering as a friend told me if I’m too political, no one will listen. In the weeks of Easter we have been reading from the Gospel of John and, reading as if I am there listening, I have been inspired by how many times Jesus told me (us) he loves us. When he says, ""Remain in me. Follow me. Do what I teach. What is the law?" I answer him, "love you God with my whole heart and mind, and love my neighbor." "Who is your neighbor?" he asks. "It is the Samaritan lying in the road; the one I have been taught, or I just feel, is my enemy, but I must help him; so say you Lord," I answer. "Is your neighbor a small child who might be a handful of trouble?" he asks. "Yes Lord," I answer. "You know the law," he gently whispers, "Act on the law. That is all you need." I stand in awe before my God. The Word is in my hand (Bible), and in my heart, where Jesus and the Holy Spirit reside.

Starting soon, the news will be full of the arguments in the Supreme Court which are to begin in October. People of all races, sex, and ages will be arguing about the law which Jesus God spoke. It involves kiling a child. The tiny one might only just have a heartbeat, but its a human heartbeat. The argument is, "can I kill him or her?" The tiny one is not an "it" because that is a human heartbeat. What has come into my mind on this day of Pentecost when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost), is that this shouldn’t be in the country’s law courts. Isn’t it the law of God whether we kill or not? Isn’t it dependent on what is in my heart? Oh pray my dear friends that we realize the answer to this vital issue. God bless us as we drop making and obeying human law and we begin to "follow him". Angels with us.

My dears. I couldn’t think of anything to say after typing the title yesterday so I closed the computer. I mumble around and and bemoan the fact that I’m not inspired, I’m lazy, I want ice cream and wine… I want Covid to be over, but if we don’t get vaccinated as a nation, Covid isn’t going to go away like measles, mumps, chicken pocks, pneumonia, leprosy went away with vaccines. The director of CDC asks us to get vaccinated. Dr Fauci asks us to get vaccinated and wear masks. Can we, tough, stubborn, Americans save ourselves? Chuck and I are both vaccinated and we wear masks inside buildings. We have been isolated.

For me, another way to save myself is to take hold of my tummy roll that wasn’t there 2 years ago. I stepped on the scale at the Doctor’s office and I was horrified. I "never" weighed that much!!! Oh boy; Save myself. Jesus is taking care of my soul, but it is up to me to take care of my tummy. So I went on the web, and looked at pools in the backyard which Chuck doesn’t want to do. Expensive to build and then you have to maintain it. OH. Maintain is not in our vocabulary!!! So after going through many web sites, I said, "We have Yoga in Lake Placid." Indeed! I then went to my local Bealls Outlet store and bought new yoga clothes (in a larger size than I used 10 years ago). This morning I suited up in my new yoga pants and top. I also took cover up clothes if there was no yoga and I went to church instead. The yoga place is at Main street and Dal Hall, right at the market near town center, on the way to Publix and … it takes 10 minutes to get there!!! There were 10 ladies and a really great instructor. Ahhhhh! Yoga breathing! OH! my right knee was very unhappy when I went into "child’s pose!" which involves kneeling down which I haven’t been able to do lately. Breathe! Relax! Ease off! OH! The right knee continued to complain until I got off it and moved to my back and lifted my legs to stretch. Then the hamstring gets into the game!!! Whew! Both hams refused my stretching efforts, and started to cramp! Breathe!!! Relax!!! Breathe!!! Isn’t that what life is like? We don’t necessarily want to do what is good for us. Or someone tells us to do something, and we don’t want to do it. So we struggle without help. For me, yoga is great help. I was thinner in yoga class on Big Pine Key 10 years ago and I sang and danced as my tummy got smaller. This time it will be a little tougher as I have developed bad habits of wine and ice cream. If you come to visit, bring yoga clothes. Everyone can do a little! I’ll be the one singing and dancing!!! Love you my gentle reader! God bless us.

Pray for the people in India. Less that 2 percent of Indians are vaccinated. That is astounding but their government hasn’t responded and they are a poor country. We are shipping airplanes full of oxygen to India. Pray for them.

Yesterday and Today the readings at church are so beautifully supportive. If anyone wonders how to act, or what to believe, all we have to do is read the words of Jesus or his brilliant disciples John and Paul. Jesus said, "Remain in me" 8 times in the story of the Vine, "I am the vine, you are the branches…" (John 15). Like fertilizer and water, the word of Jesus is given life in us, and we give fruit to good works if we hang on. Saul breathed hate, but Jesus took him on as a late born disciple. Imagine Jesus says to us, "I’ve been waiting for you Saul." Put your name in place of Saul’s.

Today I discussed politics with my nurse at the opthamologist’s office. She is a gentle woman who was preparing me for a second excision of a lesion on my eyelid. Somehow we got talking about "If you don’t like it, you have a vote in 4 years." She said, "I like that!" I often speak out on complainers who bust the government in the face. I’m begging for people to take in the words of Jesus…. Remain in the gentle arms and on the chest of our God. He forgives. He brings peace. Lean back and rest. God bless us.

While visiting my friend Karla, I read an article about Mother Rivers who lives at over 101 years of age on Hilton Head Island! She is a respected elder who credits her longevity to her life principles: "It’s important," Mother shared, "It’s important to make sure you give your body a rest. God can’t work on your body if you don’t allow yourself to rest. Remember to give one day to the Lord. Always think about other people and share what you have. Remember to treat people like you want to be treated. And always do the right thing the best way that you know how." In 2019, Mother Rivers celebrated her 100th birthday while ruminating, "I feel good… I must have done some good somewhere down the line. I just put all of my trust in the Lord."

Looks like we won’t get too much from the infrastructure bill. The President offered a rousing speech on using government money to raise up families, repair bridges and rehab water systems among other declining systems in America, but the "opposition" in a sense offered the advice that nothing is really wrong and we aren’t going to spend money on it. So pray we don’t crumble. We have heard that the rich get richer and the rest of us are OK. I wonder what the people living in slums think about that. Go to the part of town none of us go safely into at night. Look at their poor stores, neighborhoods, and homes. Thank God for mothers and families who forced us to pursue education and good jobs. Try to live as Mother Rivers advised: "Always think about other people and share what you have. Remember to treat people like you want to be treated. And always do the right thing the best way that you know how." God bless us. Angels with us.

In Karla’s garden: Shades of green and yellow in a large ginger bush interrupted by a touch of red geranium coming up in the ginger’s midst. A blue green frog sitting with his back against a pine tree trunk. He’s thinking deep thoughts! A large white egrit across the lagoon pecks at the pine straw. A bright red cardinal with red beak joins a small brown bird at the bird feeder, woops, 2 small brown birds at the bird feeder. They all peck at the seed and then, swoop! they move on. South Carolina blue sky with a margin of pine tree tops overhead and I am reminded of the osprey love making we witnessed at the top of one of those pine trees! St Francis stands quietly praying in the corner in a patch of sunlight. Life feels good here in Karla’s garden. We have spoken of the past hurts and not so long ago nightmares we encountered while we drink wine at this little garden table. We have spoken of hurts that could have taken us down, but strong, praying, resilient, we emerged to celebrate life with Vivaldi playing on the little cylinder called Alexa. "We got this," is our chant. If you don’t have a space like this, try to set out a table with a few comfy chairs, a bird feeder (they will come!), and wind chimes. At the market in Lake Placid you can get wind chimes made of forks! Listen! Hear it? A still small whisper, "My peace I leave with you! My peace I give you." God bless us. Angels with us.

I am visiting my friend I went to Barry college with. We were both English majors and she wanted to be a journalist but became an English teacher. I went on to take Masters in English and became an English teacher. Poetry never leaves my mind and I think that is why I lean toward the gentle and the beautiful. Keats wrote, "Beauty is Truth, and Truth is Beauty." I always stop and smell flowers, gaze at clouds, and I mourne the loss of life and gentleness. Here on retreat, Karla plays classical music, Vivaldi just finished… I woke up with a poem in my mind. Something about Lara, Jupiter "overshadowing her" and written by Keats. This was stimulated by, while on our 4pm walk, we witnessed 2 osprey "doing it" amidst a great clashing of wings and wild cries in a tall pine while we watched from below. We finally left them to their love making, and we walked on. But in my dreams, the poem came. Now to find it!

I woke up at 820am to find Karla having already walked for an hour, at her computer. So I poured a cup of coffee and settled in at my computer to find the poem. She remembered it… but neither of us could identify it. I scoured Keats and found Ode on a Grecian Urn and remembered Truth is Beauty… but couldn’t find "Lara and Jupiter." I kept googling (what a marvelous search engine google is!) and it came up! "Leda and the Swan" by WB Yeats. My brain was close with Lara, Jupiter, and Keats! Leda was a young girl who was violently raped by Zeus who left her after impregnating her, dropping her from his "indifferent beak." Her child, Helen (of Troy), sparked the Trojan War and "Agamemnon dead." We then traveled in memory to another Yeats poem of similar dramatic quality called "The Second Coming." It is also about the violent stimulous of war as "what rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born." I offer these two poems to you to read. They are easily found courtesy of google. Both poems predict our loss of innocence and gentility… Our loss of Christ in many hearts.

As Karla and I talk and come upon one seemingly hopeless situation after another, all we can do, we say, is pray. My sister Sarah said the same, "Susie, what can I do except keep my own balance and try to walk straight." I agree. God bless us as we pray for our own balance.

Oboe concerto by Brahams, Pachelbel’s concerto, and many others soothe and stimulate in the same way. I listen to Music Choice all day (country music; and I sing along) but today I am visiting friend Karla who now lives in Hilton Head. I can’t sing along to piano and oboe and maybe that is more soothing. It’s possible that a country song that I sing along to keeps my practical brain awake…. There’s lots of "stories" in country music, and I wonder if the story part of our brain is different from the "just beautiful" part of our brain? I’m not sure, but I think I will research that. I intuitively think that music without words often causes us to relax. Today is Shakespeare’s birthday. Somehow this led me to quote a line from a poem that I love "I wandered through fields of golden daffodils." When we remembered the poem was by William Wordsworth (Karla remembered it was Wordsworth) I went and looked it up. Turns out it is really, "I wandered lonely as a cloud." In reading the poem we discovered "Fields of Golden Daffodils" is a lovely image for me.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

I have always loved daffodils. My mother called them Jonquils. What soothes us can often be as simple as that!

What is soothing to us? We need to know this in a world growing more chaotic every day. Karla repeated something that my sister Sarah and niece Erin said to me. When the President came on TV on the night the Chauvin jury was sequestered he was soothing… He is sincere, humble, and grandfatherly. We can tell "the President" our fears and troubles, and I get the feeling he will not put me off. I have been praying a lot for "our world." Having faith that we are in God’s hands, but "it" still gets under our skin and irritates. "It" might be, people in our world getting killed by violence and by Covid. I received 2 emails today to pray for our church family members dying of Covid. "It" might be Financials, it’s tax season, and the Cable bill needs to be paid! It’s medical worries: "should I fix my teeth, my toes, or my…. " you name it. It costs money. So… Lets give the worries a nod and then head out if possible (I don’t know if my sister visiting Idaho can get out yet!), but get out and find the clouds, flowers, breezes. Get to the water if you can! These are the beauties of our earth. Absolute beauties: things that never change because man’s hand cannot stop life from growing. Love, honor, justice, faith, never changing, always present. Ah! Present! In Luke 24:35, two disciples who saw the Resurrected Jesus on the way to Emmaus told how he "made himself known". At that point that they believed the Lord Jesus is Present; they chose to believe he is with them, they relaxed and became fruitful. "Look! Touch! See!" says the Lord as he directs discussion to himself present in the world. As my sister Sarah said, " Great photos of sunrise, make my brushes want to dance!" You go girls and boys! Let’s get those brushes and pens dancing. Angels with us!!!!

I asked my friend what should I do to "be heard? to make a difference?" He said "To make a difference we must speak up. The problem is when we speak up we may be ‘canceled.’" I have "lost" several friends in the past year because I refuse to listen to the hot and critical rhetoric used in this past year, so my friends I have lost think I cancel them. No, it’s the ugly unsubstantiated criticism, Words and Attitude I’m canceling. I also will not tolerate the use of invective by anyone, especially someone of some stature making a speech. So just this last weekend at a "retreat" a political someone we all know called another political someone we all know "a dumb son of a bitch." Yep, I just sullied my blog. It gets worse: He still criticizes the ex-Vice President for not fighting the certification of electoral college results. (Remember when War raged inside the Capitol building January 6, 2021 and he talked about a rigged election rather than sending in the National Guard to save our Capitol from outrage and death?) About his remarks…. His supporters say, "If they were reported accurately," the remarks might hurt Republicans. So we might all be misreporting and lying about him saying, "Fauci is ‘full of crap.’" Is he full of crap who is concerned about all of us lining up to end the pandemic and get shots? 6 people out of over 6 million got sick with blood clots that "might" have been caused by the vaccine. Fauci says "wear a mask; get vaccinated." I have been maligned at least twice by asking people to social distance… They reply, "It’s not ordered here in Florida" (Thank you Governor…) … I didn’t say it, "You need a law to protect yourself and others?" After you finish washing this blog out with soap, please read on!

Remember when we used to ask: "What would Jesus do?" Jesus realized how weak we are so he kept coming back after the Resurrection and showing his hurt hands and side. "Here, put your hand in the hole in my side," he said to Thomas. "Here, eat some bread with me." He finally said he had to go to the Father, and St John wrote: "that which we have seen and touched… Word of Life made manifest… we proclaim to you." Yet, we don’t grasp the moment of Grace we are offered. Do I whisper "Lord, I trust in you" or do I mouth ugliness and bad news. The Nation is crumbling and maybe we deserve it. We who don’t seek the good news need to step back and say, "What can I do?" My friend wants me to criticize Biden for "allowing" the surge at the border and I say, "It’s been surging for years." Nope, it’s Biden’s fault" Life in filthy mud is awful and life in the United States looks a lot better. Chuck and I have taken "tours" through many foreign islands and i have been sad at the dirt and mud. Our streets are paved, and we have sidewalks and toilets. Many don’t. Many do not have running water. Yet they have their babies and mix powdered milk with water from a dirty looking bucket they carried from a spigot. Is there anything we can do for our brothers rather than just build walls? We can put up obstacles to keep people out, and we can shutter up to keep the dirt and hunger out, or we can give from our bounty. We sit in silence. Oh wait, no we don’t. We yell at our leaders and we block any efforts to rebuild our own broken country. Are we waiting for more riots? Are we waiting for a big overcrowded crumbling bridge to collapse? Grace abounds in this Easter Season, yet we act like dirty children hugging our toys and not letting the poor children play. Consider the never changing Absolutes of Love, Honor, Justice, Faith, Truth. In John 18:37, Why do you think Jesus didn’t answer Pilate’s question, "What is truth?" Because Jesus knew we wouldn’t listen, but Grace will help us listen. Listen to Luke 24: 13 ff: "Did not your heart burn within you when you heard the Word spoken?" What was that Word? "Blessed are the Merciful… Blessed are the Peacemakers… Be salt and Light." Read Matthew 5 and Listen… What we can do is there. It’s in a gentle whisper. Can you hear it? God bless us. God be with us.

Monday of Holy Week is a gentle look at the final days of Jesus when he entered Jerusalem, knowing he would be killed there that week, and still he entered, preached, and healed. Isaiah describes the coming of God’s son in Isaiah 42: "Here is my Servant upon whom I put my spirit." He will not cry out; he will not break bruised reeds. He will teach love. He will make the blind see. He will heal the sick, and he will bring out prisoners from confinement to the light.

When Isaiah wrote these words, the Jewish people were in confinement in Babylon. Exile. Lost. But God promised a gentle servant, not a fighter. Not a king. Not a rich man. Gently, quietly he will unmask us. He eats with sinners. He raises the dead to glory. He is beloved of the Father. He does point to the Law. He teaches the Absolutes of Love, Faith, Truth. He is pure heart. We are invited this week to get close to his gentle heart and listen. He sings and prays for us. God bless us! Angels with us.

Many Christians celebrated Lent from Ash Wednesday (5 weeks ago) to today… Palm Sunday! Actually Lent won’t end until Wednesday so we have 3 more days to "repent." During Lent Christians think about the role Jesus had and has in our lives. We are like the Jewish people wandering in the desert. Hungry and thirsty. Cursing our "lot" in the hot sands. We are asking God to make things better or get away and give us "the good old days." We are looking back and condeming the present. We are verbalizing out our frustrations and our hatreds. I wonder how the people in the Ark felt with all that stink and noise. "Lord, let me out; I can do better out side of this place you put me in. I can do better on my own." Yesterday I raised my voice at a friend who was saying stuff I call conspiracy. Instead of accepting our current world, she and her friend were complaining and wishing we had old leadership or just not this leadership. Get over it!!! Make today better! This is a time of taking responsibility. A time to love and listen to the Lord. What does he want? He wanted Mary to totally give herself up, maybe to face stoning for carrying a child when she wasn’t yet living with her bethrothed husband. She was an adulteress in the eyes of her people. But she "got on with it." An unwed pregnant woman was stoned back then. Nobody wanted to hear her story. Nobody wanted to accept that maybe she could do good things for us…. It’s a far comparison I make but the reason I raised my voice at my friend was "get over it." It (politics, the election) happened, now just live this life and do what good you can. Then get out and vote. Go to God and ask what we should do… Climb into the arms of an unwed mother who carries a child. Stay in this Ark, near Mary’s heart. Ask Mary to lift us up, even to the Cross where we will see her standing on Friday. Ask Mary to lift us up to the true harbor, God’s arms. Ask God: "Be merciful O Lord, for we have sinned." (Ps 51) Be quiet. Quit complaining. Quit gossipping with "Conservatives or liberals". Just be quiet and listen to the heartbeat of God. Take the steps this week to be quiet in front of the Cross this coming Friday.

Thank God I’m not sick! I had 2nd Covid vaccine on Friday morning. I took Aleve after shot and that night before bed. I feel fine. Maybe a little tired, but it’s hard to separate that from being out of shape! I’m beginning to paint that closet that Chuck and I cleared out and he built 2 shelves that need painting. That wore me out! Ick it’s hot here already! Chuck and I visited the Market yesterday and listened to music and watched butterflies. All seems to be well! God bless us! Angels with us!