Isabella Bird Miscellany

It's Holy Week, and I don't feel very "holy."  Things are coming apart and are broken. There's a friend whose husband has been dealing with serious health issues for a few years. A family who lost a dear loved one and marriage struggles for other friends. My job is coming to an end. And, heck just don't even bother to watch the news. It's Holy Week, and why don't I feel "holy?"  Because I'm consumed by what I see and what's happening all around me. Lives are shattered into mosaic pieces. And, I desperately need the One who controls life and breath and everything else to put the pieces together. When I think of the word holy, visions of a perfect, devout person comes to mind; someone like Mother Theresa or St. Augustine. They probably didn't feel holy either. Stuff happened around them as well. I don't have a corner on the market for crap going on. You want to know what holiness is really about?  Look at Jesu...

station 12, the grotto, pdx It’s funny, and not in a comical way, how the writing prompts from two different sites are polar opposites of each other – jealousy and hope. One is full of causalities and destruction, the other resonates with possibility. All gets weighed in the balance we call life. Our scales tip back and forth until they settle; balanced, landing on one side or the other. Desperation dissipates in Your presence. We go from utter hopelessness to the apex of joy. Things eat away at our well-being . Jealousy revels in discontentment, driving us to more and different, instead of finding satisfaction and enjoyment with enough. Hope, on the other hand bursts through the darkness that tries to engulf. Hope is possibility. Hope is being ok with the now. Hope knows a quietness of soul. Hope differs from a wish, it’s substantial. Hope has weight and substance and an innate security. Hope inspires love and trust, a belief that is solidly rooted in the thoug...