Sunday, January 2: Only a Beckoning Star to Follow

[link to full email]: https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/word-of-the-week-jan2

[excerpt from email]: To Practice: “Help me find myself as I walk in others’ shoes.” This last line in the poem by Kate Compston is an invitation and a challenge. In the coming week you are invited to see the Divine in unexpected places, in people different from yourself or in circumstances contrary to your own preferences.   You might want to journal or doodle about your discoveries and share them in the community forum.

Betsy. Betsy Rock. I learned a few days ago that she had died at age 69. I met Betsy when she was a guest at Interfaith Shelter in Albany NY. She said that she had been living with her grandmother in northern NY state until she was presented with a one way ticket to Albany and told to never come back. Eventually she obtained social security benefits and found a studio apartment. She had little formal education, could read very little and did not write except for her name. She taught me so much and took joy in the simplest of things. She loved to give people things, even when she did not know them. She advised me that I would be much happier as a blond?. She taught me more than I could ever have learned from books. I have a whole collection of Betsy stories.

This week I am intentionally open to be surprised by manifestations of incarnation, seek and find….., follow the star…..

Sunday January 2: Only a Beckoning Star to Follow

To see the Divine in unexpected places allows for new ways “for the expansion of that life to the whole of our lives and to the healing of the human community in which we live.” Father Keating invites us to experience Divine life in daily life, to heal our communities by seeking to be the light to others. I cannot know who, where, when; I just know with fidelity to my practice, I can be that healing light. <3 linda

“I cannot know who, where, when; I just know with fidelity to my practice, I can be that healing light. <3 linda”

Thanks, Linda, my trust and firm conviction, too.

Help me find myself
as I walk in others’ shoes.
– Kate Compston, I get a call from Marie that my voice mail box is full. Checking and deleting , there is Jane’s message. Jane passed away a couple of  months ago following an aggressive cancer. Jane suffered from severe bouts of depression. Over the years I walked her through the deep darkness times. This message and the final time I saw her, Jane was living deep gratitude and was exuberant in that I know this. “Theology on Time” interviews from the Catholic College on our University campus and there is Mike, now Father Mike and a “very reverend”. More than a dozen years ago I walked with him through discernment. Then Eva came into aware this week, age 16 some 50 years ago. There was unfinished business on my part and so I let the Spirit walk me though this into the future. Then there is Dorothy, Tonny, and the list went on and on  this week. This week I was invited to join in a discernment regarding a formation program that initially I was very much a part of. Initially I was finding all the reasons to decline;  Sarah  is also invited. I have big unfinished business. I am filled with gratitude, even though it may mean humiliation. Does the Spirit invite us ” to cease walking in another’s shoes or what? I am open to the reveal. Is it a calling?

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