Foliage

This is a sampler of some of the foliage found in Massachussetts specifically, Marlborough, Northborough and Southborough. I was able to share the whole album from my Snapfish account, click on the sidebar to see the rest. Soon all the leaves will fall off and the branches will be bare as we look to another winter, but in the mean time today will be Indian Summer and we will delight in it.

The Process.....

As many of you know, the Mullaney Pilgrims have been wondering around the homeland, Massachusetts for the last 2 years. This past summer we went from a FL tag to MA license plates. After both the girls were off, I resumed house hunting. The search is not over but the packing has begun, trusting that God is indeed preparing a place for us. While going through some things I came across this bookmark that my friend Dawn gave to me years ago, it reads as follows:

"We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of inability and that is may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually - let them grow, let them shape themselves with out undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that God's hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete."

I do not believe I could have said it better myself. It was exactly what I needed to read this evening. I am looking forward to the new adventures that lie ahead. Yes, you can count on me keeping you "posted."

Fall pictures still to come......

Canopy of Colors

is a great way to describe New England in the Fall. Pictures to follow.

The First Word

Just over a year ago my daughter Grace while speaking to a group at a conference shared something that keeps coming back to me time and time again. I am pretty sure it came to her while she was at L'abri in the Netherlands. She was talking about people and when we encounter every person we ought to view them in the following way; the first word about people ought to be, "this one is created in the Image of God." It came up in conversation again, last night.

In Christendom, we often view people as sinners first who need the Lord's forgiveness offered by the shed blood of Christ. This is true. All people are sinners and we, as Christians quite regularly have this as our first word about people. Sometimes it is in a judgmental tone other times with compassion. Those thoughts can often lead to "they are on the highway to hell and they are beyond help" or "I need to share the gospel with them."

The judgmental tone needs to be left for the Only One who has a right to judge the living and the dead. And I know that I need to grow in my compassion for other people. I think part of the key to doing just that is for my first word about people to be: this one is created in the Image of God. Then I just may view the effects of The Fall i.e. sin, on this particular, man, woman or child with compassion. Knowing full well, that I am a fellow person, created in the Image of God first and that I too have been scarred by my own sin and that even though my sins have been forgiven and that I am a new Creature, I still walk around with that sin nature. I still mess up, fail, fall and yes, I sin.

Do we wish to be lovers of people? Is not the greatest commandment to love the LORD with all your heart, soul and mind? And the second, to love your neighbor as yourself? Can not the story of the Good Samaritan answer the question who is my neighbor be answer with a single word, "everyone"?

I do indeed wish to be a lover of people. I fail to love regularly but I wish to begin again and again. If I remember that we did not just simply evolve from Lucy or Ardi but that we were fashioned, yea lovingly created in the Image of God for His Glory them I just may have success from time to time as well.

What a wonderful thing to be learning this lesson from my own child who is now a young woman. I am so grateful that God gave me the gift of being the mother of Grace, Katie and Michael and that He would involve me in the creation process.

St. Francis of Assisi

The Peace Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace!

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon.

where there is discord, harmony.

where there is doubt, faith.

where there is despair, hope.

where there is darkness, light.

where there is sorrow, joy.

Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

I first encountered this prayer in what might seem to be a strange source in 1985 in the book The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. Although as a child we sang a song based on the prayer in church. It is a prayer that I wish to return to and keep close to me. It keeps me in third place right where I belong, with God in first and others in second.

Today October 4th the Franciscan brothers are celebrating 800 years of the order established by God through the humble servant St. Francis of Assisi who toke a vow of poverty. Franciscan rule of life is:

"To observe the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, living in obedience without anything of our own, and in chastity."

I was made aware of this and wanted to share it here on my blog.