Peace for your Path...

"peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart." (unknown) http://www.labyrinthwellness.com

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Tortoise champion takes cause to FAU's president

Tortoise champion takes cause to FAU's president

So proud of Joshua Scholl's committment and of all the other nature advocates who share our same passion. Please share this story and help the gopher tortoises. Thanks.

Friday, February 18, 2011

there's just no place like it

Home.

Thanks to all of you who prayed for my husband's safe travels in Europe this week. He arrived home late last night. Amen!

"The Rosary Tree" meditation will be published soon - just in time for Lent. I will share it with you then. You may remember my blog post from back in the summer when I found this special rosary in my neighborhood: http://labyrinthwellnessllc.blogspot.com/2010/06/rosary-tree.html

Peace for your Path,
Robin

wishes...

Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you, Rob

Thursday, February 17, 2011

global-sized prayers from the center of the labyrinth


Such a lovely morning and afternoon at Good Shepherd today. A treasured labyrinth-walking friend from New Jersey I met a year ago came back to walk the Path with her beautiful family. Other walkers participated in special ways as well.

I also had some quiet centering time alone to pray for many friends and family members. Our theme today was one of "Connections". I used the Veriditas Global Healing Resources for the January-February-March quarter of the year as my prompt for walkers (pictured here in the center with my globe). At Veriditas, we'll be featuring this GHR again in our Winter 2011 issue of The Spirit of Veriditas, Voices From the Labyrinth and in each of our upcoming 2011 editions. The GHR theme for the entire year is entitled Coming Together.

The Global Healing Resources prayer for this quarter written by Jo Ann Mast of Veriditas meant so much to my heart today. I hope you like it, too.


Prayer



Turning to one another is as simple as a heart-felt conversation to restore hope. It is not our differences that divide us. It is our judgment about each other. Connecting through conversation is the natural way we as humans think together. Conversation takes time. We need time to sit together, to listen, to worry and to dream together.


As this age of turmoil tears us apart, we need to reclaim time to be together. When we begin listening to each other, and when we talk about things that matter to us, the world begins to change.


Reality doesn’t change itself. We need to act. —Jo Ann Mast







Wednesday, February 16, 2011

"so teach us to number our days...


"...that we may get a heart of wisdom." Psalms 90:12

I thought this was going to be a post entitled "Be Wise. Be Insured." after an old commercial that used to run on our local TV station back in KY when I was a little girl. It was paid for by a little white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed gentleman who owned an insurance company and stopped his horse-drawn carriage right in front of the TV camera to deliver this extremely serious and heart-felt wisdom. Even his scratchy voice sounded like an owl's, and I always stopped and listened intently whenever he came on the screen. He looked so very ancient and wise.

 I thought of him almost immediately when I looked up to see this amazing painting hanging over our table while out to dinner with dear friends this past Saturday night. And then I started thinking the rest of this week about how there really is no such thing as true "insurance." We might buy all the life, home, auto, fire, flood and hurricane insurance the world wants to sell us, but it will never really be "enough", will it? The world wants us to think we need all of it - and more - to feel safe. I think I need it to feel safe. Darn it! I want it to make me feel - make me be- safe.

But insurance is not "assurance."

Wisdom I can pray for, but it is Assurance that I already have in Christ.

So, tonight, I will rewrite my own commercial (with apologies for borrowing the idea from Mr. Gentlemanly Owl) because I need to hear it. I need to believe it. I think I am supposed to maybe even share it...

"BE WISE. BE ASSURED."

All Will Be Well. (It really will).

Peace for your Path.

Love,
Robin


Third Thursdays on the Labyrinth is TOMORROW, 2/17!

Join us at The Church of the Good Shepherd in Tequesta, FL anytime between 11am and 1pm (please note new time).

We'd love to walk with YOU...Everyone is welcome!

Peace for your Path,
Robin

Monday, February 14, 2011

love waits...

Sometimes in car lines, often for the phone call, or the text message or the email to say "I am here" or "the surgery went well" or "it's a boy" or "I miss you more than words can say." Humbly and patiently and faithfully and without fail and however-long-it-takes - Love waits.

my Valentine's funny...

Love for your Path, Robin

Friday, February 11, 2011

Come Thou Fount


Last week, Lily started barking out back to alert me of a couple of men in a tiny motor boat behind our home. This is a fairly frequent sight as they often monitor our little lakes closely, so I quickly hustled her back inside waving to them in apology. Later that same evening, my family and I went running out back again at the strange sound of a loud motor followed by great splashing. This new fountain had miraculously appeared just yards from our house.

At first, it felt like a tremendous blessing, and we all started dancing around with joy at our great fortune. However, by the following morning we realized that unlike the pretty fountain at the other side of the lake which we can enjoy from a nice buffered distance, we can actually hear this fountain's motor. A motor that runs ALL DAY LONG and far into the evening... 

And yet, yesterday, moments after learning some devasting news about one of my most treasured friends on the planet - one of my spiritual Saints - this very same fountain blessed me beyond measure. I was curled up on the couch, so sad I was unable to cry, searching for prayers, searching for hope, searching for any type of understanding I could grasp when it started raining so hard, that I could no longer see or hear our new fountain for a few moments. And I missed it...

For after the rain turned on the tears I could not find for myself, my new little fountain gave them wings.

This story has more meaning when you understand that normally I cry at the drop of a hat - anytime, anywhere, at any mention of anything the least bit sentimental. That is just me. It always has been. I cry with friends and for friends and for strangers. Sometimes I cry for myself. Often I cry for no reason. Crying is what I do.

But yesterday my sadness was so deep that I guess I needed God to open the skies for me.


Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Come Thou Fount of every blessing

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
Mount of God's unchanging love.
          Here I raise my Ebenezer
          Hither by Thy help I'm come;
          And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
          Safely to arrive at home.
          Jesus sought me when a stranger,

          Wandering from the fold of God;
          He, to rescue me from danger,
          Interposed His precious blood.


          O to grace how great a debtor
          Daily I'm contrained to be!
          Let that grace now like a fetter,
          Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
          Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
          Prone to leave the God I love,
          Here's my heart, O take and seal it
          Seal it for Thy courts above.


(Words adapted from original hymn written by Robert Robinson circa 1757)





Monday, February 7, 2011

nearly missed


Lily took me for a walk this morning. I nearly missed it. Too much work. Too many excuses. Too busy.
(Translation = Too lazy)

Had I not finally let Lily take me by the leash, here is a list of all I would have missed:

1. This unopened blossom now waiting to burst into beauty on my kitchen windowsill
2. The fragrance of sweet Jasmine on a soft, sunny February breeze
3. A spider resting in her web
4. A man riding a tricycle wearing a blue bathrobe smiling "Hello!" at us with a toothy old grin
5. All the cars with brake lights glowing lined up behind the man in the blue bathrobe riding his tricycle smack dab in the middle of the road
6. An idea for my newest Lenten reflection
7. Getting to see the bright yellow "Caution BLIND CURVE" sign and laughing to myself in understanding
8. Watching two white cranes fish for their breakfast side-by-side
9. Lily walking through the monkey grass just to tickle her tummy

and finally...
10. Remembering how much I love this quote:

"Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking." - Pablo Neruda


Saturday, February 5, 2011