Faith is tasting the Saltiness of our Tears

Sometimes

faith is building an ark

when there is no rain,

dipping seven times in a muddy river

when you have open wounds,

 or marching in circles

and shouting praises

when your enemy is ready to do battle.

And sometimes

faith is

tasting the sweetness of God

in the saltiness of our tears.

Stacy L Sanchez

www.heartprintsofgodcom

In the Woods

 In the woods we return to reason and faith.  The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.

Letting Go to Move Forward

 

"We know that our loved one has died.  Do we recognize that in that death a part of us has died, too!  The part of us that lived in our relationship to that person alive in the world has died.  The part of us that lived in expectation of a future on earth together has died.  The part of us that enjoyed the commonality of shared memories has died.  This is a lot to lose...  We have to let go and then in the spaces where those deaths have occurred, new life will spring.  Some of the new life may be our new relationship with our lost love."  ~Martha Hickman  

"At every point in the human journey we find that we have to let go in order to move forward; and letting go means dying a little.  In the process we are being created anew, awakened afresh to the source of our being."  ~Kathleen Fischer

My journal of grief for my daughter Crystal involves a part of me dying.  I have turned to the spirit of her creativity in her art work to help move forward.  My new relationship is with her as an artist and her legacy of writing notes and cards for the people she loved.  I have continued that legacy with  my Card Ministry "Crystal Expressions."  I joined multiple groups "Cards of Kindness, Cards for Cool Kids, Small Acts Big Change, Braid Missions, Smiles for Seniors, etc. to share her passion for coloring and designing cards.  It gives me comfort sharing her artwork with others.

I have opened my hand and heart to relinquish and to receive.

"For God so Love the World"

The way to find life is to pour out love on the rest of creation.  The earth will help us -- the cycle of the seasons is alive with the promise of rebirth.  Jesus promised us rebirth if we believe in him.
Corinthians 15:20-22 "But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.  For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die so also in Christ all will be made alive."
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only  begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

"The best way to know God is to love many things."
Vincent Van Gogh

'A Room With A View' Whakapapa Village

This was the back deck from our room at Whakapapa Village.  Mt. Tongariro is the large mountain in the above photo.  Taranaki Falls Trail started at the Village. There were only two places to eat and there were no shops. The view was spectacular in all directions.

Quotes from "Room with a View" by E.M. Forster

“It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”

“When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.”

   

“The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View  

  

E.M. Forster (1879 - 1970), was an novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society.
 He had five novels published in his lifetime, achieving his greatest success with A Passage to India (1924) which takes as its subject the relationship between East and West, seen through the lens of India in the later days of the British Raj.

Fiery Sky over Matanzas River

Matanzas River after sunset glows like a smoky fiery sky.  Reminds me of the book "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers.  A hometown girl like me from Columbus, Georgia. Listed below are some quotes from the book.

 

“The Heart is a lonely hunter with only one desire! To find some lasting comfort in the arms of anothers fire...driven by a desperate hunger to the arms of a neon light, the heart is a lonely hunter when there's no sign of love in sight!”

 

“In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone.”  

 

“I´m a stranger in a strange land.”  

 

“the way i need you is a loneliness i cannot bear.” 

 

 Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American writer of novels, short stories, plays, essays and poetry. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the U.S. South. Her other novels have similar themes and are all set in the South. She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia, in 1917. Her mother was the granddaughter of a plantation owner and Confederate war hero. Her father, like Wilbur Kelly in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, was a watchmaker and jeweler of French Huguenot descent. From the age of ten, Lula took piano lessons. When she was fifteen, her father gave her a typewriter on which to compose stories.  Carson McCullers was one of the leading female writers of southern gothic fiction in the twentieth century. 

Her last published book, a collection of poems for children:  Sweet as a pickle and clean as a pig

Unfortunately, not many people will ever have a chance to read her poetry since the only copies are between $99 to $125 each.

 

A "Huckaberry Finn" River

"We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next."
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Huck and Jim, Chapter 12.

Pogo:"We have met the enemy and he is us"

The animal characters Walt Kelly created for his classic newspaper comic strip Pogo were known for their seemingly simplistic, but slyly perceptive comments about the state of the world and politics.

None is more remembered than Pogo the ‘possum’s quote in the poster Kelly designed to help promote environmental awareness and publicize the first annual observance of Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970:
“WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US.”
In the poster, under the quote, Pogo is seen holding a litter pick-up stick and a burlap bag.
He appears to be getting ready to start cleaning up the garbage humans have strewn over Okefenokee Swamp, the part of the planet where he lives.
Kelly used the line again in the Pogo strip published on the second Earth Day in 1971.
The words poignantly highlight a key concept of environmental stewardship: we all share part of the responsibility for the trashing of planet Earth, so we should all do our share to help clean it up.