Perfectionism

1.  Prayer

Father, in the name of Jesus, I confess that I have struggled with perfectionism and I want to be free, so I ask you to unravel the cords of perfectionism over my mind and heart and soul.

I surrender to you my life completely and renounce all trying to keep in control of it. 

I want to surrender 100% Lord to Your will in my life. 

I renounce all religiosity, all perfectionism, all pride and discontentment, all ego and vanity, all frustration, intolerance, impatience, and condemnation with others and myself, and I thank you that You are removing them from my life; that you will give me abundant grace to over come all the works of the enemy that have hindered me.

Uproot and heal all the negative experiences in my life and help me to forgive those that treated me with perfectionism. 

Help me Lord to worship and praise You in all things. 

Give me a grateful heart, a heart of thanksgiving before You. 

Pour out Your manifest LOVE in me and set me free from all my fears Lord, in Jesus Mighty name! 

Amen!

2.  Meditation

https://youtu.be/vj0JDwQLof4

3.  Song

https://youtu.be/kFQ7qiqm6WA

4. Narrative

https://cac.org/daily-meditations/true-perfection-ability-include-imperfection-2015-06-16/

True Perfection Is the Ability to Include Imperfection
Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Facing our shadow self and our addictions is almost the heart of modern psychiatry and therapy. Religion had best catch up with the other disciplines and relearn the absolute centrality of what should have been its own original message, but we got into “sin management” instead of the healing ministry that we see so clearly in Jesus. Too often, qualities like honest self-knowledge, shadow work, spiritual direction, many therapies, and tools like the Myers-Briggs typology or Enneagram are dismissed with hostility and fear by many fervent believers. It makes me wonder, “Is their Christ really that small and insecure?” They disdain such work as “mere psychology.” A true believer is never grounded in fear. If honest self-knowledge is not good and important, then Job, Jesus, the desert fathers and mothers, Augustine, the Philokalia, Hildegard, Thomas Aquinas, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Ávila were on the wrong track. Fr. Thomas Keating calls contemplation “the divine therapy.” Surely it was God’s way to offer healing to people who existed before modern behavioral sciences, and to the poor in every age who cannot afford a therapist.

We all have our biases, and all we can do is be aware of them and account for them. There is no such thing as a totally bias-free position, as even good scientists now admit. As a “One” on the Enneagram—the type that strives for the ideal and the perfect—I know the necessary healing power of integrating the negative in my own life. Without it, I can find something to change in almost everything!  It is really a horrible way to live. You can imagine, then, why I deeply love Francis of Assisi and Thérèse of Lisieux, who both taught the integration of imperfection so beautifully. They saved me! They both realized that any upward-bound spirituality is only spiritual careerism and well disguised narcissism. Their way was the way down, not up, and they learned this, quite simply, from Jesus. The amazing thing is that so many Christians did not; that is what happens when you too quickly make Jesus into a God to be worshipped instead of Someone to follow.

In a spirituality of imperfection, we have a universal basis for how God “saves” humanity, and perhaps also a clear naming of what God saves us from—which is mainly from ourselves and our own feared and rejected “unworthiness.” We find it hard to love imperfect things so we imagine God is just as small as we are. One of the most helpful pieces of advice I ever received from Francis is found in the seventh chapter of the Rule of the Friars Minor. Here he tells us not to be surprised or upset by the sins or mistakes of others (and I would add, by our own sins and mistakes) because, he says, “such anger and annoyance make it difficult to be charitable.” His analysis is that simple, that hard, and that true. If we expect or need things (including ourselves) to be perfect or even “to our liking,” we have created a certain plan for a very unhappy life.

Gateway to Silence:
We must bear patiently not being good . . . and not being thought good. —Francis of Assisi

Reference:
Adapted from Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi, pp. 106, 110

5.  Meditation

https://youtu.be/zW3-9bUhbRw

6.  Sharing

7.  Prayers and Intentions

1. O Lord, You are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for Your help. – Psalm 86:5 NLT

Lord, thank You for loving me unconditionally and forgiving me time and time again. I know You forgive me for all my wrongdoings, Lord, please help me do the same for myself. Help me to remember that although forgiveness is not what I deserve, it is Your gift to me, and You have made me as white as snow. Thank You, Lord Jesus, amen.

8.  Song

https://youtu.be/iUV5T9JIJZ0

Why i write

Why I write  

"Memory is very often the key to understanding. Memory integrates, reconciles, and puts the individual members into perspective as a part of the whole."

To remember. To feel again in the memories feelings we felt before.

We tend to forget but once in a while as the song says try to remember the night in September …

It is good reminder how things were then. They forget. It is a bonding tool. Maddie my.granddaughter I feel got closer of sorts when I shared several blogposts like the different cookie cakes I baked every year for her to share at the daycare. They reflected what her favorites were that year or obsession 

To know well or better the person strengthens a relationship. To know better is the start of loving again that waned along the way. 

So we write. To know ourselves too. It is a tension reliever. Therapy for free. It becomes more beneficial if shared with ourselves later on when reading them again or with a group. They can learn too. Who can tell? The impact. 

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/50-quotes-making-memories-share-191100034.html

Unconditional and Conditional Love

 1. Prayer

Dear God, I come before you today, humbled by the vastness of your unconditional love. Thank you for a love that knows no bounds, that embraces me even in my flaws and failures. Open my heart to fully receive this love and allow it to overflow into my interactions with others. Guide me to love without judgment, to accept others as they are, and to extend the same grace and compassion you show me. May I be a vessel of your love in this world, reflecting your light and bringing warmth to those around me. Amen.". 

2,  Meditation

https://youtu.be/x32LraY4XqU?si=IlNLJYC9dmQw3zTT

3.  Song

https://youtu.be/qA0YKJ0_Ivk?si=Pp52nKeqKRJj7gUR

4.  Narrative

Unconditional and Conditional Love

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

The only happy people I have ever met are those who have found some way to serve. I do mean that. Such folks are not preoccupied with self-image, success, and power. They almost always began conservative and traditional with rules, discipline, and structure that created a kind of compression chamber. Only very comfortable people can believe in the performance principle for long. As we grow, the chamber becomes tight and oppressive and usually based on exclusion. So we begin to practice what we call “the sacred no” against self-serving laws, traditions, and cultural practices that pose as the will of God. We are no longer willing to prop up the status quo and believe this is all there is to life.

It seems many of the people raised in our culture in the last few decades grew up backwards by beginning “liberal.” This leaves the unconverted ego in the position of decider. I don’t think we’re doing our children any favors by raising them without boundaries or rules and largely letting them decide for themselves what is right for them. Basically, we’re asking them to start from zero. In an overreaction to the generation before them, parents and the church have been trying hard to love unconditionally. I know this from doing it myself with the young people in the New Jerusalem community in my early years as a priest. I was endlessly preaching about God’s unconditional love. To be honest, although we drew thousands of young people, most did not take this very far in terms of a deep and lasting transformation or service to the world.

Eric Fromm, in his classic book The Art of Loving, states that the healthiest people he has known are those who received from their two parents and early authority figures a combination of unconditional love and conditional love. This does seem to be true of so many effective and influential people, like St. Francis, John Muir, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Mother Teresa. I know my siblings and I received conditional love from our mother and unconditional love from our father. We all admit now that Mom’s demanding love served us very well later in life, although we sure fought her when we were young. And we were glad Daddy was there to balance her out.

I am convinced that Fromm is wise and correct, and his wisdom surely matches my own lifetime of observation. It seems we need a goad, a wall to butt up against to create a proper ego structure, and a strong identity. Such a foil is the way we internalize our own deeper values, educate our feeling function, and dethrone our own narcissism. We all need to internalize the sacred no to our natural egocentricity. It seems we need a certain level of frustration, a certain amount of not having our needs met. Then we realize there are other people who also have needs and desires and feelings. As my mother told me, “Dickie, your rights end at the end of your nose; that’s where somebody else’s nose begins.”

Gateway to Silence:

Take up your cross and follow me.

References:

Adapted from Richard Rohr, A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Franciscan Media: 2004), discs 1 and 2 (CD); and

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass: 2011), 32-34.

Posted in Daily Meditations | Also tagged conditional love, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eric Fromm, John Muir, liberal, Mother Teresa, New Jerusalem, St. Francis, The Art of Loving, unconditional love

 5.  Meditation

https://youtu.be/rc5MGwHtQGs?si=FJ2ZKBWWkvAlCTns

6.  Sharing

7.  Prayers and intentions

Help me today and every day to come to You and receive Your unconditional love in my life. Soften my heart and teach me to believe and receive Your tender love. In Jesus' name, Amen.

8.  Song

https://youtu.be/iO7ySn-Swwc?si=-nqSz4C04pD8agd

Gratefulness encourages

 

I did not expect a touch would mean a lot  Edith was so grateful to see me visit her. She thought the weather was more dreadful than it was  relatively speaking. She was grateful so was I by her surprise  She extended her hand to touch my hand. I was surprised since she is not showy with her emotions. It made making the trip to the hospital easier after this  

Photos cropped from past photos I took and posted in this blog 

Haiku  

Utterly surprised 

Thanks with touch of hand uplifts

Made task easier. 

Paula’s Prayer Meeting

Song

https://youtu.be/57sGMjPMXME

Reflection

The Epiphany Blessing

If you could see the journey whole,                                                        

you might never undertake it,

might never dare the first step

that propels you from the place you have known

toward the place you know not.

Call it one of the mercies of the road:

that we see it only by stages as it opens before us,

as it comes into our keeping,

step by single step.

There is nothing for it but to go,

and by our going take the vows the pilgrim takes;

to be faithful to the next step;

to rely on more than the map;

to heed the signposts of intuition and dream;

to follow the star that only you will recognize;

to keep an open eye for the wonders that attend the path;

to press on beyond distractions, beyond fatigue,

beyond what would tempt you from the way.

There are vows that only you will know:

the secret promises for your particular path

and the new ones you will need to make when the road is revealed

by turns you could not have foreseen.

Keep them, break them, make them again;

each promise becomes part of the path,

each choice becomes the road that will take you

to the place where at last you will kneel

to offer the gift most needed - - -

the gift that only you can give - - -

before turning to go home by another way.

                                                -----Jan Richardson

 1.  Prayer

We pray…

Dear God, help us to see the manifestation of your love

in the incarnational presence of Jesus and

in the world around us; guide us to a deeper reflection in the

infinite love depicted in the beauties of nature and of our

brothers and sisters

and an appreciation of your great gifts to us.

Through the Incarnation of Jesus, we can deepen our intimate relationship with You,

our brothers and sisters, and all of creation.

Give us the courage to share this gift of love with all of your creatures,

and to promote justice, peace and love of creation in all that we do.

2. Meditation

https://youtu.be/uTN29kj7e-w?si=nl6fRnidGoNS5l

3.  Song

https://youtu.be/qWoOn9em-cg?si=5dWBtRBt6c4hld9w

4.  Narrative

Incarnation Instead of Atonement — Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org)

Incarnation Instead of Atonement

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Incarnation Instead of Atonement
Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Franciscans never believed that “blood atonement” was required for God to love us. We believed that Christ was Plan A from the very beginning (Colossians 1:15-20, Ephesians 1:3-14, John 1:1-18). Christ wasn’t a Plan B after the first humans sinned, which is the way most people seem to understand the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Great Mystery of Incarnation could not be a mere mop-up exercise, a problem-solving technique, or dependent on human beings messing up.  The Incarnation was not motivated by a problem but by love.

Did God intend no meaning or purpose for creation during the first 13.8 billion years? Did the sun, moon, and galaxies have no divine significance? The fish, the birds, the animals were just waiting for humans to appear? Was there no Divine Blueprint (“Logos”) from the beginning? This thinking reveals the hubris of the human species and our tendency to anthropomorphize the whole story around ourselves.

The Franciscan view grounds Christianity in love and freedom from the very beginning. It creates a coherent and positive spirituality, which draws us toward lives of inner depth, prayer, reconciliation, healing, and universal at-one-ment, instead of any notion of sacrifice, which implies God needs to be bought off. Nothing changed on Calvary, but everything was revealed as God’s suffering love—so that we could change!

Jesus was precisely the “once and for all” (Hebrews 7:27) sacrifice given to reveal the lie and absurdity of all “sacrificial” religion. But we perpetuated such regressive and sacrificial patterns by making God the Father into the Chief Sacrificer, and Jesus into the necessary victim. Is that really the only reason to love Jesus? Is there no wondrous life to imitate?

This “being saved by his death” language allowed us to ignore Jesus’ way of life and preaching, because all we really needed Jesus for was the last three days or three hours of his life. This is no exaggeration. The irony is that Jesus undoes, undercuts, and defeats the sacrificial game. Stop counting, measuring, earning, judging, and punishing—ways many Christians are very well trained in—because they believe that is the way God operates too. This makes the abundant world of grace largely inaccessible—which is, of course, the whole point.

It is and has always been about love from the very beginning.

Gateway to Silence:
I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.

References:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking, disc 3 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2012), CD, MP3 download;
and Things Hidden: Scripture As Spirituality (Franciscan Media: 2007), 200-202.

5. Meditation

https://youtu.be/y1dtln4HFL0?si=eRsefQ1pFCjtbrTm

6.  Sharing

7. Prayer and Intentions

Jesus, thank You for coming physically to us.  You became human. A real human with a real body.  Who can imagine that God, the truth eternal life, became man?  The people who witnessed Your life saw You with their physical eyes.  They felt You with their actual hands. You weren’t a vision or a dream, but the real God that came to bring joy and life to us.  Thank You, Jesus!

8. Song

https://youtu.be/wNpwKJtOJ_Y?si=pP6vApYkq0xcc285

Mixed Fruit Nice Cream

reason it's called “nice cream” is because it mimics classic ice cream, but is better for you. It's also sometimes called banana soft serve because if you eat it straight out of the food processor, it's a similar consistency to soft serve.

Banana ice cream, also called nice cream, is my favorite healthy ice cream because it’s quick and easy to prepare. The main ingredient is banana which turns creamy when frozen. Today I’m going to show you how to make it, without an ice cream maker using just two other ingredients  Frozen mixed fruit and non dairy milk  

Mixed Fruit Nice Cream

 Ingredients 

1 frozen ripe banana

1/2 of a 48 ounce bag of mixed frozen fruit 

1/2 to 1 cup oat milk or any non dairy milk

Instructions on 

Place all the ingredients in a blender or food processor. Pulse till creamy. 

Scoop into a sugar cone or into a bowl.

You can place any extra nice cream in ice cube trays for later use  

Just thaw the frozen nice cream by microwaving for 20 seconds to easily scoop it into a sugar cone or into a bowl. 

This  is an easy and quick dish to prepare to fix your craving for the Chinese Sticky Rice dish but you do not have the sticky rice on hand.  

Instant Pot Chinese Rice

1/2 cup dried shiitake mushrooms (around 4 pieces)

1 cup long grain rice

1 and 1/2 cup water 

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 teaspoons Hoisin or Oyster sauce

1 tablespoon sesame oil (optional)

2 pieces Star anise

1/8 tsp schichuan pepper (optional)

Place all the ingredients in the Instant Pot and cook at high pressure/manual for 10 minutes. Then allow the pressure to release naturally for 10 min. Then quick release. Cut the mushrooms into smaller pieces before serving.