mission
Shared Wisdom: Collected Works
Although my creative Muse was on vacation or dormant for the last couple of months, scraps of paper with scribbled words still accumulated on my desk, in my handbag, and in the car. All carried words of wisdom that somehow continue to make their way to me. I’ve decided that one of my missions in life seems to be to share as much collective and collectable wisdom as I can. So here’s the latest and the greatest!
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life, by what we give.” Sir Winston Churchill
“You and I share the serenity of understanding – a warm glow in the silences between us. When we have talked and
talked and come to the end of words, the speech of our hearts continues on………… Anonymous
“If I have achieved anything in my life it is because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God.” Jim Forest
“If you wish to travel far, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fear.” Cesare Pavese
“Your spiritual growth does not happen when you are peaceful and content. It happens when you get angry, sad,
greedy, jealous, critical, impatient. It happens when you lose your “spiritual mask” and realize that you are not
superman or –woman, but just an ordinary human being learning how to love.” Paul Ferrini
“No matter what age you are, or what your circumstances might be, you are special, and you still have
something unique to offer. Your life, because of who you are, has meaning.” Barbara De Angelis
“The lure of the distant and difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.” John Burroughs
“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work
for it, however.” Richard Bach
“Woman must come of age by herself ………. She must find her true center alone.” Ann Morrow Lindbergh
“Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps
the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point.” Harold B. Melchart
“Happiness exists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day than in great pieces
of good fortune that happen but seldom in the course of life.” Benjamin Franklin
Here’s to the next time. May I wish you all a peaceful, healthy, abundant and joy-filled 2012!
Shared Wisdom: The Last of the Batch
So these are the last group of wise words that came to me as we were doing our retirement ride. I know there will be many more words of wisdom to share with you, there are so many wise people past and present! But these particular words just seemed to jump out of the woodwork wherever I found myself in those twenty days traveling this continent.
“Life is a mirror – if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile at it, it returns the greeting.” (Chinese proverb)
“Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” (Jim Rohn)
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” (Marcel Proust)
Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, in as much as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.” (John Keats)
“Take time every day to do something ridiculous.” (Philipa Walker)
“Insist on yourself. Never imitate.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.” (Thomas Merton)
“You’re the strongest person I ever met, she said, I said, you too and we decided we’d know each other a long time.” (Brian Andreas)
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” (Helen Keller)
“Most people don’t know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don’t get too comfortable and fall asleep and miss your life.” (Anonymous)
“Your outer world reflects your inner world; peaceful thoughts produce peace.” (Joan Gattuso)
“Every artist was first an amateur.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
I have already accumulated more quotations to share with you, so it won’t be long before another “Shared Wisdom” posting reaches you. I think my secondary mission in life may be to spread these words to as many people as possible.
Spiritual Growth: The Lenten Mission
I’ve just checked through my archives and cannot believe I didn’t write a piece on the Lenten Mission from 2010. In my blog, Spiritual Growth- The God Path June 15, 2011, I told the story of my first experience of Fr. Jim Curtin. Although I tried to get him to come and give a Lenten Mission at our church in the period of Lent 2009, we already had someone booked for that year, so I had to be patient and wait to invite him the following year. He finally came to our church during Lent of 2010 and gave a Healing Prayer Mission which truly rocked our parish. Out of that experience a fledgling Healing Prayer Ministry was established and I guess God realized that we needed a little more help along the path and by some miraculous divine intervention, Fr. Jim was invited once more to present a second Healing Prayer Mission in Lent of this year.
This time around, the Mission was probably even more powerful than the previous year. Fr. Jim brought four of his parishioners with him, two men and two women, all Healing Prayer Ministers. Much of the content was similar to the previous year and yet, somehow, it all seemed new. The first evening was focused on physical healing and Fr. Jim reminded us that Jesus himself invites us to continue his work on earth – and some. “Those who follow Me will do not only the works I do but greater works.” (John 14:12-14). He also pointed out that Jesus’ work was about touching and praying over and healing the sick and even raising the dead.
His subsequent exhortations to his apostles and disciples, his mandate to them if you will, was to do the same and more. In fact the work of the early church was just that: telling the story of Jesus, healing the sick, raising the dead, and forgiving people’s sins – also mandated by Jesus. Somehow, over the centuries the church has moved away from this simple mandate of Jesus. Man-made rules and regulations were established and the church became very “powerful” and political. It is only in recent times, partly because of the changes brought about by Vatican II in the 60’s and partly because of the upsurge of the charismatic movement, that there has been a desire to return to “doing the work of Jesus”.
The second evening of the Mission focused on the the Holy Spirit and how important it was to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. On the third and final evening we heard about healing on the spiritual level. After the presentation each evening, prayer teams would be stationed in the area surrounding the altar and parishioners were invited to come up and ask for healing. It was truly a remarkable experience to watch people go up, be prayed over, and then be “struck” by the Holy Spirit. Many people were so overcome by the Spirit that they “went down” to the floor and lay “resting in the Spirit” for some time.
The fact that people came back to each evening of the Mission was testament itself to their hunger for an experience of the Spirit as well as an indication of the success of the Mission. People from many other churches attended this Mission because they had heard through friends what an impact it had made on their lives the previous year. The church was full all three evenings. My husband had an extremely powerful experience as he requested Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I cannot reveal the details here because that is his story to tell. Suffice to say that it changed him dramatically.
A friend, who I felt inspired to invite to the third night of the Mission, had her own very powerful and personal experience. She was not of our denomination and I remember her saying that never would she have imagined having anything like that experience in a Catholic church. She likened it more to a “revival” than a “mission”. But whatever label she gave it, her experience led her to make a personal decision that she had been hovering over for some time. She has since set up in her own business – a life-long dream.
Since the Mission, Richard and I have felt compelled to become part of the Healing Prayer Ministry. It is growing and blossoming into a fruitful work of the Lord, and we feel blessed and privileged to be a part of this group and to offer this service to our fellow parishioners. As I look back to that conference in 2008 and the growth which has come from that, I am so grateful that I remain ever open to the beckoning of the Spirit.