Found a wonderful blog the other day, check it out: Coffee and Canticles - The Divine Office in Your Life

The other is: The Cloistered Heart

Both are encouraging, and great food for the soul in this harried world. 

Fernando Ortega - Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

and with fear and trembling stand;

Ponder nothing earthly minded,

For with blessing is His hand,

Christ our God to earth descendeth,

Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, Yet born of Mary,

As of old earth He stood,

Lord of lords, In human vesture,

In the body and the blood;

He will give to all the faithful.

His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven

spreads its vanguard on the way,

As Light of light descendeth

from the realms of endless day,

That the powers of hell may vanish

as the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six-winged seraph,

Cherubim, With sleepless eye,

Veil their faces to His presence

as with ceaseless voice they cry:

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Alleluia! Lord Most High!

O Holy Night - Josh Groban

Sing of Mary

So much I wish to speak about, the wonder of our dear Lord...So much inside that yearns to be shared, spoken, and heard by friends... Friends who would dare to share, critique, and offer advice... So dearly, do we not all want the same thing?  To give all for the greater glory of our dear Beloved Lord.  For the Almighty, the most Mysterious of Beings- Our God and His mercy, what a wondrous Being that holds us so close, so tenderly!  Our sufferings so minimal, our sufferings tender lessons to bring us higher towards His union.  Glory be His name, wondrous is His love!   All praise is our Lord's name... all of us for our Lord..all of our Lord He gives to us, if we just become smaller in our being...if we just dive deeper into His living waters of live!

The joy of Jesus dying on the cross is He knows through His offering to The Father , Heaven opens to all people, starting with His precious mother.  Mother Mary is the perfected human through God's grace that shines for us all to embrace and follow always to Jesus.  She loved Jesus first and most deeply.  The love of the mother for her son is only eclipsed by the love of the Son for His mother.

"My daughter, we should never forget that our self love is the last to die. While we remain in this base world we will always be affected by its sensitive assaults and hidden operations; but God's grace is sufficient for us not to willingly succumb. This virtue of detachment is so excellent that the old man in us, the man of sin, nor the senses, nor human nature with its natural faculties were ever capable of possessing it. Not even the Son of God, who as a Son of Adam, although without any stain of sin, was completely free. He too confessed to His apostles that His soul was full of sadness; He too sought consolation; He too did not wish to die. However, He preserved His detachment, and we too must try to preserve it in imitation of Him, in times of trial and suffering, in the faculties possessed by grace."~ St. Padre Pio

God is so great!

A Post That Won't Last Long

Been awhile...many things happened and happening... 
Tired.
Tired of it all, again...



Never have I felt so old by hearing it so often from others who I hold respect for.  Why bother?  They see me as old and washed up; even  job hunting sees me as another too old and with too few skills... grey and brown..

all is just brown and grey ... all i can manage to hope for today is that maybe, just maybe, at my death God has mercy and let's me hide away in some little space on the distant edges of Heaven... if i trust in hope in this tiny little bit for I know He is love and mercy maybe this life will not be lived in vain? 

How i wish i could feel love, last few months has erased it from my remembering...i know it as an intellectual exercise, a memory that is hazily remembered when listening to a certain song, or saying a certain prayer. A flicker when out in public watching people, walking by with a smile shared. sad, that is the only time i can feel it for now, a stranger's glancing smile...  Instead I just add more lashes and pain to His Pain ... for His pain is my pain... sigh...so therefore i have to push on somehow even if it is dark and bleak and stuff the desire to just give up on it all away until it can be replaced with something more.

God's ways, God's time..never our own.  As it must be for us to be with Him.

Was to leave for my visit to Carmel last Friday but events occurred that lead to its delay.  At first I admit I was a bit frustrated because I was ready to leave town and start this next chapter of seeing where God might be calling me.  All things work out though.  Woke up the morning I would have left sick as a dog.  Not just any sick but a major ear infection which immediately made my hearing drop to levels I have not experienced in a few years.  Let's just say unless I am by the phone I cannot hear it ring, can barely hear a person's voice even when they are talking very loudly looking right at me.  Plus had a terrible chest cold and fever et al.  So glad I was not on the road trying to drive 1200 miles! 

My first thought was, "o crap!" as the pain stabbed my ear making my eye shut and face swell.  But no this is a blessing from my Lord who loves me.  He knows I have been faltering a lot lately.

"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in ......you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace." - St. Augustine (The Confessions)

Catholic Hymn, Behold The Wood Of The Cross, sung by Jesuits, Good Friday

6 Reasons to Become a Carmelite, According to St. Teresa of the Andes

Woke up this morning praying and reflecting over the road before me.  

A few things I know for sure in my life at this moment, in this place.  I know that all I want no matter where I am mentally, physically, spiritually is to give everything to our God, to love Jesus as completely as this miserable sinner can in this world.  He will and does give me the grace to help me along and He does love me too much to not let me learn the hard lessons to see myself more truthfully.  So many wondrous blessings my dear Lord gives me and has given me, most I have no clue because I am blind still in my heart.  Lord, please open my eyes, humble my heart, teach me, heal me so I may love fully as You love. 

I know I have not told you all about my latest trip!  I will but not in this post other then to say it was a slice of Heaven on Earth.  Never have I meet such a delightfully joyful group of women,  Immediately I felt comfortable and at home.  None of those shy, nervous uncomfortable moments I normally feel adjusting to new people.  They brought out the laughing, joyful, prayerful side of me.  The Carmel's silence and schedule allowed me to reopen that prayerful side.  That distracted part that too easily gets lost out here in the world, was pushed away by the routine and what a joy to have the day centered on the most important thing- God, Jesus, Mary,..listening, praying, talking to Him within.  So easy to return to that place within and to open myself more fully to Jesus' within.  

How rare and hard it is for me in the world to do that no matter how hard I try here. No matter how I ask for Blessed Mary's help.  Yes when I first came back it was easy,, but also I was learning and know so much more now and wish to get closer, ever more united with our dear sweet Jesus.


 Carmel is where God comes to unite with you..  Heard that quote in a movie I saw for the first time yesterday. It struck me. Yes, that describes what my entire time there was.  IN this place so humble, hidden, is where God comes to you.  Not that HE does not anywhere else, but to those who are not aware it is the way their life is lived.  The striving to always remove the hindrances of the self that block our seeing and hearing God who is within us all. To give everything joyfully.  That is what scared me.  I know I want to give all and to give up all for that hope of being ever closer to God to do whatever He desires, however... It scared me for the reality of who I am and my own laziness.  What of my cushy things?

Carmelite Sisters

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