Chapter of the Fathers

“It is not up to you to finish the work, and you are not free to stop doing it.”

From the Chapter of the Fathers

Giant Orb

Cathy wrote, "My husband took this picture in our backyard on August 13th.  We have always had orbs in our home, but this is the first like this we have ever seen.  Can you give us any insight as to what this one might mean?

Thank you for sending it to us.  The white light is actually made up of three large orbs and Mustafa said, “There is a state of tension within the home that is not there all the time, but the memory of it tends to be unsettling.  The orbs come in with a powerful energy source to return balance and harmony, where there has been this unrest. The orbs give you strength to do what is right and to say when situations get fraught.  They are happy to protect and bring love in to redress the balance.”

The One Great Scorer

“For when the One Great Scorer comes

To write against your name,

He marks - not that you won or lost -

But how you played the Game.”

(from the poem "Alumnus Football")

Henry Grantland Rice (November 1, 1880 – July 13, 1954) was an early 20th century American sportswriter known for his elegant prose. His writing was published in newspapers around the country and broadcast on the radio.

Peace Pilgrim

“We spend a great deal of time telling God what we think should be done and not enough time waiting in the stillness for God to tell us what to do.”

Peace Pilgrim

The Serenity of Perfect Security

“Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us.  It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little.

“When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.”

William Barclay

Are We Doing Enough and If Not - Why Not?

The following variation on the prayer attributed to Francis of Assisi was delivered by Mother Theresa when she addressed the United Nations in 1985.

Make us worthy Lord to serve our fellow men throughout the world,

who live and die in poverty and hunger.

Give them through our hands, this day, their daily bread

and by our understanding love give peace and joy.

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace.

That where there is hatred I may bring love,

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness,

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony,

That where there is error I may bring truth,

That where there is doubt I may bring faith,

That where there is despair I may bring hope,

That where there are shadows I may bring light,

That where there is sadness I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted,

To understand than to be understood,

To love than to be loved.

For it is by forgetting self that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven,

it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Amen.

What have we learned and what have we done to ensure that poverty and hunger have been eliminated from this planet of so much wealth?

What are we doing to ensure famines and war never blight the lives of those who God has created and expects us to protect and love?

Made To Be Immortal

Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were to be immortal.

Nathaniel Hawthorne