“Each must do as already determined, without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”
With gishwhes week coming to a close for 2015, this was today’s reading at Mass. It is from Corinthians 9.
It is a good reminder that G-d is everywhere as are good people. Random acts can occur all year long beginning today.
Live gishwhes everyday. Love your neighbors and your friends. Pray for your enemies or those who mistreat you.
Do good.
Be well.
Science is another language we use to talk about the same miracles that faith talks about.
– Kala Dandeker, Mumbai, Sense8
This morning’s tea makes yesterday distant.
~Author Unknown
Tea is one of those substances that has universal appeal. It is both balm and cure. It is both home and on holiday. It is therapeutic and spiritual. It carries the weight or the lightness of the moment. It is steeped in tradition and ritual.
When my friend died, several of us drank certain teas that she liked or that represented her, and we wrote about the experience. I wrote about her, and our complicated relationship, about my own feelings for the tea I was drinking that day, describing the flavors and sensations of the drink, and I experienced several spiritual mindfulness. It gave me an opportunity for discernment and was an integral part in my spiritual journey.
It might be idiosyncratic, but I have my own rituals around my morning tea. When my tea is dark enough, I add the milk (if it’s not a citrusy flavor) and two teaspoons of sugar. I remove the tea bag, turn out the kitchen lights, and go to my favorite chair. Before leaving the threshold of the kitchen, though I always take two sips of the hot tea through the steam. I don’t know why; I just do. Every time.
But tea is also simple in its simplicity. It’s part of my daily life a part of my sacred space. I eat with it. I write with it. I pray with it. It is rare to find something that fits in everywhere and anywhere, and tea is that rare something.
Drinking a daily cup of tea will surely starve the apothecary.
~Chinese Proverb
Bread and water can so easily be toast and tea.
~Author Unknown
(This very strongly made me think of communion – the body and blood of Christ in the wafer and the wine.)
“And at this inexplicable moment the deepest night becomes day and faith turns into understanding.”
– Thomas Merton
“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own.
And you know what you know. You are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”-Dr. Seuss
“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
The military uses the codes, D-Day and H-Hour when the day and hour have not been decided or announced. That was the case in 1944 when the Allies were planning their invasion of the European continent. There were deception plans in place and troops were either moved or left in places to make the deception plans remain secretive and on the Nazi’s “radar”.
They were getting their plans ready for an assault of Nazi forces who were invading and taking over Europe with executions, concentration camps, and new laws forcing their sovereignty across the landscape.
That began to change with the amphibious attacks on the French coast in 1944.
Planning for the invasion began long before a date had been thought of, let alone set. So much depended on so many factors that the plans needed to be set, the logistics considered, alternatives, at what point to go ahead or abort. In the case of this preparation, the phases of the moon and tides were a major consideration as well as the time of day. This limited how many opportunities they had to make their assault. Preceding the landings were airstrikes, naval bombardments and an air assault just after midnight.
June 6, 1944. The Allied Invasion of Normandy during Operation Overlord during World War II. Now it is commonly known as D-Day. It was (and continues to be) the largest seaborne invasion in history, landing 24,000 British, US, and Canadian forces at 6:30am.
Out of 156,000 troops, there were at least 10,000 casualties with 4414 confirmed dead.
I can’t give this decisive victory the proper justice it deserves on my own, so please, please visit the D-Day website and support the national museum.
Or begin your reading about the Normandy landings and invasion, but remember Wikipedia is a starting point.
The USS Slater is the only remaining destroyer class ship that fought Nazi U-boats during World War II that remains afloat. It is a national historic landmark and museum ship moored on the Hudson River in the port of Albany, the capital of New York State.
More than 70 years later, there continues to be a profound gratitude to the American Servicemen and Women who liberated the Dutch and who sacrificed their lives: Washington Post article: Americans Gave their LIves to Defeat the Nazis. The Dutch Have Never Forgotten.
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
– Winston Churchill
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way
I have to go to bed by day.-Robert Louis Stevenson
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
-John Steinbeck
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
-Author unknown, commonly misattributed to Mark Twain
“Education cannot be neutral. It is either positive or negative; either it enriches or it impoverishes; either it enables a person to grow or it lessens, even corrupts him. The mission of schools is to develop a sense of truth, of what is good and beautiful. And this occurs through a rich path made up of many ingredients. This is why there are so many subjects — because development is the results of different elements that act together and stimulate intelligence, knowledge, the emotions, the body, and so on.”
“If something is true, it is good and beautiful; if it is beautiful; it is good and true; if it is good, it is true and it is beautiful. And together, these elements enable us to grow and help us to love life, even when we are not well, even in the midst of many problems. True education enables us to love life and opens us to the fullness of life.”
— Pope Francis, Address with Italian school teachers, parents, educators, pupils and other workers, May 10, 2014
My apologies. This was a pin that I wore for many years before it was lost. I remembered the phrasing backwards. This is the correct version, although either is appropriate. kb
Griffins and Ginger Snaps 