Perhaps everyone who reads this blog will not read it today because they are preparing for a happy Thanksgiving celebration? I hope so. I hope there is not one who is lonely, or alone on this day, but if they are I want to say to you that you are not really alone at all. Maybe God is waiting for you to finally turn your face toward His.
On my blog I have a link to the web site Gratefulness, http://www.gratefulness.org/. You can sign up for words for the day that are sent through email. What a beautiful thing it is to receive them when I open my email. No one is around with me as I click on the email and see the lovely messages that arrive for me each day. I think I am alone, but actually someone took the time to design, set up, and execute the program and some one inspired them to do such a wonderful thing knowing all the while that I would one day be a recipient of those inspirations. I want to pass this along to you if you are there.
Everyday, think as you wake up: Today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive. I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself to expand my heart out to others for the benefit of all beings.
This Thanksgiving week I want to post only about gratitude. I spend a lot of time posting about problems, and I some times that focus can have a negative affect on me and maybe you too. I think it is a wonderful idea to take the time to focus on our gifts and blessing this week.
Today, I am grateful that I can take the time this week to look for beautiful and uplifting images,music, and videos to share with you. What are you grateful for?
Women have come a long way from the days when they felt they needed a man to take care of them. Right? At least that is what we are told to believe in 2009. Maybe we are more independent financially, but I wonder if we didn’t cut ourselves off from our basic instincts, and inner shepard. That important part of ourselves that help us make the right decisions for our lives.
Are those of us who were raised Catholic any better off? Those of us that have been taught to look to our priests to be our shepards can get confused when we feel particularly lost. Sometimes we can get confused between spiritual shaperd and personal shepard. Do you feel like a little lamb lost in the woods?
What does it mean to love and be loved? There are many definitions, but today I want to talk about one aspect of love and that is having the courage to really protect and care for ourselves. We need to look for the Shepard inside ourselves. She is there. Inside every victim lives a protector and she is waiting for the courage to step out. However, the victim mistakenly thinks that courage means lack of fear. Actually, courage means acting even in the face of fear and taking small steps to do what we need for ourselves even when it hurts. When we act on our behalf by giving up something or someone who isn’t right for us it will cause pain. This pain is normal and it is necessary and good. Every time it hurts we should thank the pain and remind ourselves to say, “ This too shall pass.” Get in touch with that inner shepard and give her just a little power. You’d be surprised at the strength she has been waiting to display.
If you want to change your life, change your attitude. However, first you need to know what your current attitude is.
I loved painting this picture because it was so simple in the lines and color. However every time I try to photograph it I get a different result. The colors and texture are not easily captured. It would take much more expertise in photography than I have to get it to come out exactly as it is originally. This caused me so much frustration because I was trying to make a photo that could be used as a print to sell on http://www.imagekind.com/marcieart_poster. What I am now able to capture in the feeling of the piece. The wave and curve of the lines, the intense color contrast, and the blending and connecting of forms. I finally decided that it is okay to have a print that is not exactly the same as the original. I like them both in their own way.
Just as it is not easy to photograph, it is also not that easy to explain. What was I painting? What did I intend to say? What does it say that I didn’t intend? Those are questions only I can answer, but the viewer has an interpretation and they will see this work through their own imagination.
Just for the sake of experimentation get a pencil and paper and write down the answers to the following questions. First, try to see this painting as a painting of your relationship with your husband or your significant other. What would it be saying to you? Are you in the picture? Is the one you love in the picture? What is happening? Are there changes you would like to make to the picture? Would it feel more comfortable turned upside down, or vertical? After you’re done, answer the same questions with another point of view, and do this as many times as you can.
Attitude is an important factor in how we live, make decisions, and choices. What did you discover? What was it like for you to do this exercise? Can you share with us?
To find out about other wives of priests, I still have to go to bookstores and libraries to search for the brave few who are willing to share. Why do they want to share? Is it just to sell a book or make a name for themselves?
I think people, who are not famous, who feel compelled to write about their lives do it because they are still trying to answer some underlying questions that need to be wrestled to the ground and forced to stand in black and white or else they will elude them in the tricky way the mind works with memories. They also write because they are reaching out and they know there are others who are like themselves somewhere hiding and hoping for answers too.
The lovely memoire The Scent Of God by Beryl Singleton Bissell is a compelling and powerful story of one women’s choice to love. I hesitate to use the term book when I speak of her story because it was so much more than reading an account of someone’s life. Her story was shared so honestly and so vividly that I felt like I was a friend there walking with her. Though our lives were very different on the surface, I could identify with so many little things she revealed about herself growing up and her struggle with her relationship with the priest she loved and married. There is as much to be learned in contrast as there is in similarities.
If there was one lesson in her life story that I took away, it would be that God walks beside us in times of sorrow and suffering, but we really feel we are walking inside of God in times of love and happiness. That is why it is so difficult to keep from loving another and hoping, wishing, and sometimes falling into and cherishing relationships that might not always have a perfect ending. Interestingly, When you love and really share a life, sorrow is so much a part of happiness too that to separate them is impossible. To separate them would be to dilute the truth. There is no shame or blame for loving, but there might be for not loving enough.
Everyone’s story is so different and yet there are always elements that connect us to each other in more than the obvious ways. When I have tried to share bits of my story, I have felt trapped by the fact that my husband doesn’t really want to share his story. I have the need to make my questions about my life and my choices stand still and reveal themselves. He does not have the same need. I sometimes wish I were more like him in that respect. However, I accept the fact that I need to take that night drive through my life. I just wonder if I’ll be brave enough to encounter the unexpected that might pop up on my page the way that a deer might run in front of my headlights on a dark night.
I thank Beryl Singleton Bissell for being brave, generous, and for teaching me much about myself in revealing her own story.
Have you see my new polls? At the Top of the page across the top where you see the tabs for home, about etc. Check them out. If you can’t locate them let me know. Thanks.
I don’t really now anything much about Paula White. I just came across her on YouTube when I was looking for resources for this blog. I don’t know if she is a good sincere preacher and life coach, or just another money grabber, but what she says in this video really spoke to me. Maybe it will speak to you.
I Recieved an eamil from SNAP and I want to post it here for all of you see.
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
Friends,
CNN will be airing a segment this Thursday, November 12, at 9:00 pm CST about Pat Bond and her son Nate. Nate is the child of a priest and is currently battling brain cancer. Pat, Nate’s mother, has been forced to fight for support for her son. Until the article appeared in the New York Times, the priest was still a pastor in a Wisconsin parish.
Note – he’s also accused of molesting a girl. We suspect that unless other victims and witnesses come forward, sooner or later, he will be put back into a parish.
This show will have a call in segment. Please call and express your feelings about this story.
I received a comment on my art blog http://marcieart.wordpress.com yesterday concerning some artwork of mine that was on the cover of CORPUS Reports last May/June. The man who identified himself as Joe called those pictures that I did of Mary “so-called pics” because it seems he had seen statues and other pictures of her that are similar.
My pictures of Mary were oil pastels rendered with lots of texture and deep rich and contrasting color. I worked form a photo I took of a small white cement yard statue of Mary, which I saw in a garden. Yesterday, it was my thought that maybe Joe was upset because he felt that every work of art should come strictly from the imagination of the artist. I explained that some art is created that way, but most of the time artist, like photographers, use models or people, places, and things that they see and give them new and different interpretations. I was surprised that this was not common knowledge. Today I am wondering if Joe was upset because I did give a new interpretation to Joe’s personal image of Mary.
It is okay to have a favorite image of Mary, but it is okay too that others see her differently. This idea that we can’t give new life, form, or interpretations to what is already available in our lives is a common thought habit for people with rigid thinking. It is this kind of thinking that keeps people in situations they don’t want, and leading lives they don’t believe in because they can’t see what is there with new eyes.
You women who are in relationships with priests that have been formed by tradition, that are controled by others, and causing you pain need to step back and look with new eyes. Maybe you need to open your hearts, minds, and attitudes to new possibilities. Does your relationship have to resemble all of those that came before you? If you were going to draw a picture of your relationship, what would it look like, what would you look like? How would you change that picture? Your relationship is not a paint by number. We are in partnership with the greatest artist and He allows you to put your own brush strokes down and chose the colors, and take responsibility for your creations.
