I wrote this years ago. It remained unpublished. I find them comforting so I decided to publish it. I really needed this. It restored my faith in the goodness in God and everyone.
From Movies
Hayley mills in parent trap touching her grandfather clothes since she has just met him.When asked why she said she just wanted to make memories.
Casper the friendly ghost telling christina ricci who was sleeping “can I keep you”.
Personal ones
Chocolate kisses from a ccd kid when she learned my mother died
A shy person at wccc telling stories about his aunt when my mother died to show sympathy.
My students listening to me talk about my cancer in class and later I learned they told others three years later.
A student eating adobo that he might not like but did anyway. He later asked for recommendation but at least he knew and grateful it meant alot that somebody ate my national dish
An office mate talking to me when I came back to the office after the news I was let go. Everybody else found I awkward to talk to me but he had the courage not to feel that way.
Wendy touching bettina on the shoulder when she found out she had a cyst in her pancreas.
Unexpected call for me to show kindness
Listening to my mother tell me how she spent her last moments with my father.
Listening to a friend talk about how difficult it was to keep their unborn child.
Heavenly Father, I come to You today to ask for Your joy. I know You are the source of all joy, and I ask that You would fill my heart with Your presence. Help me to see the good in my life, even when things are tough. Help me to be grateful for all that You have given me. And help me to share Your joy with others. Amen
Dr. Barbara Holmes describes how we can find joy through practice and surrender:
Joy is a choice. Our lives are so short; to live with joy seems to be a no-brainer. Why waste time on issues that we can’t control? Your body holds memories of both joyful and difficult moments in your life. Think about something that made you angry, and your body will supply the distress and angst to go with the memory. Think about joy and happy moments in your life, and your whole body smiles. Joy offers a peace that surpasses all understanding. Once you experience joy, once you find those inner pathways, it leaves markers toward those inner resources so that you never lose sight of them again…. So, how do we foster embodied presence and joy? I believe we do it through practice and through meditation. Left to your own devices, the natural state of the human brain is a wandering and critical mind. Meditation helps bring that chaos into a more peaceful state. If it’s difficult, begin with sitting in silence. Let your mind do what it wants before slowly bringing it into the present moment. Use music if it helps. The second thing I would suggest is to awaken to the joy in nature. Purposely pay attention to sunsets and sunrises, to the sounds of nature, and other expressions of joy in the environment. Third, I would suggest that you develop an appreciation for the everyday graces, the sound of children playing, the traffic that won’t let us get home when we want to but allows a pause in our frenetic going.
Fourth, I would suggest that we begin to ritualize transitions, such as births and deaths, transitions from child to teenager, and from teen to adult. Mark these events as special moments of joy. You may be surprised at the numbers of incidents of joy during the ritualization of sad occasions. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Be peace,” I’m suggesting that we “Be joy.” You may not feel it, but embody it. Live it. Smile it. Is that being fake? I don’t think so. I think it’s holding space for the joy already given and received that you may not be aware of yet. It’s helping your body to express an inner state of being.
Finally, don’t forget the power of community to create spaces of joy when you cannot engender the joy yourself. That joy comes during worship, during fellowship, and even during crisis. Civil rights workers found their joy in music as they came together. I’ve always said, the greatest antidote to depression and oppression is joy. There’s joy coming together of one accord. In the upper room, preparing to grieve the loss of the Savior on Calvary, suddenly there are tongues of fire and joy with the impartation of the Holy Spirit. When you feel alone, look at those who are with you in the struggle, and those who have gone before. No matter the circumstances, it was community that empowered the justice movements in this country and in others. It was a momentum of like minds focused and trusting in God that gave activists the energy to face their fears.
O God, My Exceeding Joy, You teach me the way of life. In Your presence is a total celebration! Beautiful things surround me every day. Your blessings await me when I awake and gently lull me to sleep at night. Good times are a testament to Your love, as are trials, but today, I pause to praise You for the joy bubbling to the surface of every moment. In You alone, God, I find true joy. Amen.
Lord, I sing praises to You! I give thanks to Your holy name. Days of darkness will come, but You bring joy in the morning. A day does not exist that is not infused with joy, for I am Yours, and You are mine. Thank You for the freedom to rejoice, to be happy, and to overflow with joy in the good times and every day. Amen.
You accept us--at times of self-doubt Thank you, God of all, Co-creator of our world, For allowing us to be imperfectly made: Because it makes us, if we are wise, forgiving. Do you accept us as we are? We condemn people too quickly: We judge them for flawed thinking, disguised egotism, Unworthy acquisitiveness, or skewed opinions. But we can forgive them once we accept our own shadow, And realize how well we ourselves fit Into the ranks of a less than perfect human race. You, Holy God, accept each of us, Prophets tell us, just as we are: Provided our moral judgments of others Are reciprocally generous and compassionate. Imperfection fits this evolving reality, For the universe thrives on diversity, Including random failure, One of the very preconditions for the unfolding advances. May it be so.
Love is not really an action that you do. Love is what and who you are, in your deepest essence.
Love is a place that already exists inside of you, but is also greater than you. That’s the paradox. It’s within you and yet beyond you. This creates a sense of abundance and more-than-enoughness, which is precisely the satisfaction and deep peace of the True Self. You know you’ve found a well that will never go dry, as Jesus says (see John 4:13-14). Your True Self, God’s Love in you, cannot be exhausted.
Material gifts decrease when you give them away. Spiritual gifts, by contrast, increase the more you use them. Yes! You get more love by letting it flow through you, just as modeled by the Trinity. If you love, you will become more loving. If you practice patience, you will become more patient. If you stop the Divine Flow, you will be stopped up (“sin”).
Love is not something you can bargain for, nor is it something you can attain or work up to—because love is your very structural and essential identity—created in the image of the Trinity. When you are living in conscious connection with this Loving Inner Presence, you are in your True Self. God is forever united to this love within you; it is your soul, the part of you that always says yes to God. God always sees God in you—and “cannot disown God’s own self” (2 Timothy 2:13).
Many Christians live with a terrible sense of being rejected, because their religion is basically a worthiness game where no one really wins. That’s precisely not the Good News. It’s bad news.
The Gospel will always be misinterpreted by the false self in terms of some kind of climbing or achieving. Since the false self can’t even understand the command to love one’s enemies, it has to disregard the message as naive, which is exactly what most of Christian history has done.
Jesus’ rather clear teaching on love of enemies has been consistently ignored by all the mainline churches. Christians have been fighting one war after another, and excluding, torturing, and killing enemies right and left because the false self can never understand the Gospel. Yet we have been baptizing, confirming, giving communion to, and even ordaining false selves throughout our history. It is probably unavoidable, and God surely must be patient.
Once, after I gave an anti-war sermon, a businessman came up to me and said, “Well, Father, maybe in an ideal world. . . .” I know he meant well, but that’s what we’ve done with most of the teaching of Jesus. We interpret his meaning for some ideal world. Of course, the ideal world is never going to come so we can just ignore 99% of the actual teaching of Jesus, as the institutional church (and I too!) have usually done. We concentrate instead on things that Jesus never once talked about, like birth control, homosexuality, and abortion—bodily “sins” because the body can most easily carry shame. We shouldn’t disregard bodily shame or addictions, but they are not the core problem.
Jesus focused on issues of power, prestige, and possession—which all of us have largely ignored. I don’t think the church has had intentional bad will. It has simply tried to get the false self to live the Gospel, and that will never work. In other words, we’ve tried to have a church without fundamental transformation. Thus, we whittle down the whole Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’ direct teaching that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword” (Matthew 26:52); and we look for absolutes in ever new secular places—like the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution which allows us to carry weapons. And this is done by a vast majority of Bible-quoting Christians.
*These thoughts were originally shared as one of Richard’s Daily Meditations. Sign up for them here.
You are my shepherd, and in your presence, I lack nothing.
Your guidance and care have led me through green pastures and beside still waters.
I am so thankful for your constant provision and protection in my life.
As I stand before you, Lord, I am reminded of the very real love you have for me.
Your love is like a seal over my heart and arm, a seal that binds me to you.
It burns with the intensity of a mighty flame, unyielding as the grave itself. Just as many waters cannot quench love, I am reminded that your love for me is unwavering and unending.
It is a love that has no limits, no bounds, and nothing in this world can separate me from it.
Help me, Father, to embody the love that you have shown me in my relationships with others.
Your Word instructs me to love deeply, for love covers over a multitude of sins.
Grant me the grace to be patient, gentle, and humble, to bear with one another in love.
I long to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace, knowing that it is your love that binds us all together in perfect unity.
Lord, may your love shine through me, allowing me to be a vessel of your grace and compassion.
I pray for the ability to love as you love, unconditionally and without reservation.
Thank you for being my Shepherd, for your unfailing love, and for the wisdom and grace to love others deeply.
My husband, my picky taster, loves this Shall I say more? Six ingredients almost all can be found at ALDIs grocery. I got the chopped garlic at the Asian Store but you can use fresh garlic.
Penne Tuna
Ingredients:
8 oz penne pasta
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 medium onion, diced
1 tablespoon pesto
2 -3 tablespoons chopped olives with red pimento peppers
2 cans 5 oz tuna in water, drained
Black pepper to taste
Instructions:
Cook penne in 3 cups water in microwave for 18 minutes
I remember the spectrum of emotions my psychology teacher in college used which Fr. Joseph Groetz, an SVD priest at the university, created in the textbook we were using. I remember at the end of the spectrum the word despair. The teacher explained this by saying that at this point there is nothing left to feel.
Perhaps this best explains the quote in the poster above that I heard in the movie I saw recently, karate kid the legends. I surprisingly love the movie. We chose this over tom cruise’s mission impossible when given the choices by our financial company in their free movie with popcorn and drinks promotional event.
Though the movie was a bit trite in its approach I could not help appreciating another insight from it. I gained understanding and empathy for some friends’ choice for picking a venue the owners of which I felt did not want us to rent out anymore. The power of bonding with the past is making them choose what I felt was hard to understand. The memories they made there are hard to part with. This was illustrated in the movie when the main character could not shake off the memory of freezing and not helping his brother when he was attacked by an enemy kung fu gang members. Compassion in me was stirred up for my friends’ choice.
Anyway I had a great time at the movie house. And still had half a bag of buttered popcorn to share with my grandson who I baby sat after the movie. I was faced with a dilemma if I would recommend the movie to him which had kind of killer instinct vibe in its kung fu karate choreographed fights. Overall for me a good feel good movie.
Heavenly Father, today I come to you in prayer asking for the gift of happiness. I truly believe that I can only achieve it when I feel content with the things I have in life. Help me to appreciate what I have. Sometimes I look at the world and wonder if there is any hope for us. I think about the way we treat each other and how things never seem to change for the better. These thoughts can be a bit upsetting at times. I wonder how so many people call themselves Christians but treat each other this way. Grant me happiness and joy. Help illuminate the good in the world so that I can take notice in a world mostly cast in darkness. With your help I know I’ll be able to achieve true happiness. Please help me become fully content with the life I have. You have showered me with so many blessings, and I’m very thankful for them. Even though the world is full of hatred and negativity, it would bring me great happiness to see everyone united in prayer. Until you have your Son return let me find joy in the little things in life. This I pray in Jesus’ name.
I pray for happiness in my life. Help me to find joy in the small moments, to appreciate the blessings that I have been given, and to cultivate a sense of love and hope in my heart. Surround me with positive energy and support, and help me be a source of happiness for others as well. Guide me towards making choices that align with your values to bring me towards true happiness .
