Hope for God’s Mercy…

Jesus decided to go outside the Israelites, the high priests, the wealthy and the clean to include the poor and blind and deaf in his mercy and salvation. He pours forth a gift of faith and watches to see if the called will serve with and show faith and good works! Even the poor will be welcome at the table of love and bread. They will open up and extend themselves to the needy. Include the needy in their boundaries, as Christ did.
James 2:1-10, 11-13, 14-17.

Love,passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord,sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes, that desire by which nature is sanctified, are all calling you…

August 27, 2021 Two of Cups
from Astrology Craft Today
According to The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by A.E. Waite, the Two of Cups is described as the following:

A youth and maiden are pledging one another, and above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, between the great wings of which there appears a lion’s head. It is a variant of a sign which is found in a few old examples of this card. Some curious emblematical meanings are attached to it, but they do not concern us in this place.
Divinatory Meanings: Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes, and–as a suggestion apart from all offices of divination–that desire which is not in Nature, but by which Nature is sanctified.
Duality is the theme of today’s tarot card, the Two of Cups. When this card reveals itself, it’s an indication of a strong attraction between two people. The Two of cups signify electricity, a spark of love shared by two past, present, or future lovers.
The Two of Cups shows you that you share a strong bond with someone. It’s essential to embrace the spark felt between the two of you and let the electricity flow. This is a unique union of connected souls.
Who do you share love’s spark of electricity with?
The Two of Cups speaks of connecting with someone in your life with an energy that flows back and forth like electricity. You may already notice it and know who you share it with, or you could be currently unaware that it even exists. The Two of Cups is here to point it out and hint to you who it may be.
An old friend or lover from your past may still have strings attached.
The Two of Cups could mean that you may still share a special bond with someone from your past. Perhaps it was an old friend or an ex-lover. Even though you have both moved on and are doing your own things, you still share a special bond.
If you’ve been feeling like you’re missing something, or someone, the Two of Cups suggests that your souls may still be connected and are yearning for one another.
Your current partner and the special connection you share.
The Two of Cups may also represent the partnership and electricity shared between you and your current lover. It’s a sign that your relationship is harmonious and you share a mutual respect for one another. You’re connected at the heart and soul, and this is truly a beautiful union of two people who deeply love each other. This is a love that’s meant to last.
Someone in your current life with who you may become more involved.
Is there anyone in your life right now with who you feel like you share a special bond? The Two of Cups indicates that someone in your regular day-to-day life may soon become a more significant part of your life. It could be someone who’s currently just a friend, and you both feel a special love connection with each other.
It could also be a coworker or business partner with whom you’ve been spending more time working on a project together. The Two of Cups see you getting to know one another more and more. It wants to show you the electricity that flows between the two of you. Be open to the possibilities and let the pieces fall into place.
Someone in the future which you haven’t met yet.
If you still have no idea who the other half of the union indicated by the Two of Cups is, it may signify that you simply haven’t met them yet. So, keep your eyes peeled and your heart open, because someone you’re about to become acquainted or start to spend more time with could be the one you feel the electricity with.
Don’t be surprised at how fast it may happen, either. When souls connect, it sometimes can feel almost instant.
How can you embrace and honor your unique partnership?
Expressing your gratitude and love for someone doesn’t have to be extravagant or complicated. Doing something as simple as writing them a note of appreciation or buying them a coffee can be just enough.
If you are in the mood to do something a little more special, however, take them somewhere that’s special to you. This could be your secret hiking spot or your favorite park. It’s a sweet and sentimental gesture of showing them another part of yourself.

We strive for the power of love rather than the love of power…

Lord make us instruments of your Peace
Where there is hatred, let your love increase
Lord, make us instruments of your peace
Walls of pride and prejudice shall cease
When we are your instruments of peace

Where there is hatred, we will show his love
Where there is injury, we will never judge
Where there is striving, we will speak his peace
To the millions crying for release
We will be his instruments of peace

Where there is hatred, we will show his love
Where there is injury, we will never judge
Where there is striving, we will speak his peace
To the millions crying for release
We will be his instruments of peace

written by Logan on August 17, 2012

your intentions create your experience…

“The intentions you send out into the Universe create your experiences. Ensure your feelings and thoughts reflect your innermost intentions.”
Your Angel’s Message:
What you focus on you create. With this in mind, you need to be careful about the intentions you send out into the world. If you feel negative, you may inadvertently create less than perfect energies within your life. Similarly, positive intentions make positive happenings. Have you ever noticed that happy people tend to receive many blessings within their lives? That’s no coincidence. They’re receiving the rewards of their good intentions.

When this card is drawn, the angels are asking you to look at your expectations of yourself, others and your life in general. What do you expect will happen in the future? The things you expect to happen become your intentions. For this reason, it’s imperative that your expectations are positive and imbued with love.
What You Should Do:
Envision yourself and the people closest to you as peaceful, happy and successful. Make every intention you have shine brightly with love. These beautiful and spiritual intentions actively help both you and those around you. Spread your light far and wide. Allow your joyous intentions to manifest. If you have difficulty replacing any negative thoughts or habits with positive ones, ask your angels for help. They are always there for you and will never desert you.
Your Affirmation:
“My intentions create my reality. I ask the angels to infuse these with love, light and positivity.”

hands in the Pandemic…

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely that has become clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise the world your love—
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
as long as you shall live.
Lynn Unger
in UU World

A Time for Everything

 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8


(New Living Translation)

For everything there is a season,


A time for every activity under heaven.


A time to be born and a time to die.


A time to plant and a time to harvest.


A time to kill and a time to heal.


A time to tear down and a time to build up

.
A time to cry and a time to laugh.


A time to grieve and a time to dance.


A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.


A time to embrace and a time to turn away

.
A time to search and a time to quit searching

.
A time to keep and a time to throw away.


A time to tear and a time to mend.


A time to be quiet and a time to speak

.
A time to love and a time to hate

.
A time for war and a time for peace.

New Living Translation

tongue in cheek love

Forms of Love” by Kim Addonizio,

Forms of Love
by Kim Addonizio

I love you but I’m married.
I love you but I wish you had more hair.
I love you more.
I love you more like a friend.
I love your friends more than you.
I love how when we go into a mall and classical muzak is playing,
you can always name the composer.
I love you, but one or both of us is/are fictional.
I love you but “I” am an unstable signifier.
I love you saying, “I understand the semiotics of that” when I said, “I
had a little personal business to take care of.”
I love you as long as you love me back.
I love you in spite of the restraining order.
I love you from the coma you put me in.
I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, except for this one
guy.
I love you when you’re not getting drunk and stupid.
I love how you get me.
I love your pain, it’s so competitive.
I love how emotionally unavailable you are.
I love you like I’m a strange backyard and you’re running from the
cops, looking for a place to stash your gun.
I love your hair.
I love you but I’m just not that into you.
I love you secretly.
I love how you make me feel like I’m a monastery in the desert.
I love how you defined grace as the little turn the blood in the
syringe takes when you’re shooting heroin, after you pull back
the plunger slightly to make sure you hit the vein.
I love your mother, she’s the opposite of mine.
I love you and feel a powerful spiritual connection to you, even
though we’ve never met.
I love your tacos! I love your stick deodorant!
I love it when you tie me up with ropes using the knots you
learned in Boy Scouts, and when you do the stoned Dennis
Hopper rap from Apocalypse Now!
I love your extravagant double takes!
I love your mother, even though I’m nearly her age!
I love everything about you except your hair.
If it weren’t for that I know I could really, really love you.

“Forms of Love” by Kim Addonizio, from Lucifer at the Starlite. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. Reprinted with permission of Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents.

have patience and indulgence toward the people…

 

This is what you shall do…

 

 

This is what you shall do


by Walt Whitman
“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
 
“This is what you shall do…” by Walt Whitman, from the preface of Leaves of Grass. Public domain.
Jefferson turned down a request to appear at the 50th anniversary celebration in Washington, D.C.; it was the last letter he ever wrote, and in it he expressed his hope for the Declaration of Independence:
“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be … the signal of arousing men to burst the chains … and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. […] All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. … For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

things that cannot die

the Kelly and Frank kids (LOVE)

 

Things That Cannot Die
by Paige Riehl
A spoon in a cup of tea.
Letters in yellow envelopes,
the way a hand pushed lines
into the soft paper.
Morning laughter.
A white shirt draped
over her chair.
An open window. The air.
Call of one blackbird.
Silence of another.
November. Summer.
My love for you, I say.
My love for you infinity
times a million, my son says.
Sounds of piano notes
as they rest in treetops.
The road from here to there.
Grief, that floating, lost swan.
 
“Things That Cannot Die” by Paige Riehl from Suspension. © Terrapin Books, 2018.

getting your illustrations out there

illustrator: Walter Koessler (dropping color on their heads)

 

It’s the birthday of advertising exec-turned-writer Ilene Beckerman (books by this author), born in Manhattan (1935). She didn’t begin her writing career until the age of 60, and even then, she became a published author almost by accident. She had written and illustrated a book for her five children, something to remember her by. She said: “My purpose was to say things to my children one doesn’t have the time to say. I wanted them to know I wasn’t always their mother. I was a girl, I had best friends, we did stupid things together. I was on a bus with my friend once eating dog bones so people would look at us. I wanted them to know.”
She took the book she’d written down to the ad agency she owned, to use the machines there to make a dozen photocopies. She put them in big red binders, with the illustrations she had sketched in plastic sheet protectors, and handed them out to her children and a few close friends. She was done, or thought she was. Then, the cousin of a friend got a hold of one of the binders and sent it over to Algonquin Books. Pretty soon, the publisher was calling her about publishing her book. Beckerman said that they offered her “an advance that had a comma in it. I think I fainted.”

The book came out in 1995, and was called Love, Loss, and What I Wore. It’s the story of her life growing up in Manhattan in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, accompanied by drawings of the clothes that she was wearing during that time. She insists that clothing plays an integral part in many women’s memories, that they can recall important events or distinct spans of their lives by what they were wearing at the time. When the book came out, bookstores were not sure whether to market it as memoir or fashion. It was later made into a play by Nora Ephron and Deli Ephron.
Beckerman insists that clothes are the least important part of her book, which she considered a memoir.

The book contains advice and aphorisms from her grandmother, who raised her, such as, “If you have to stand on your head to make somebody happy, all you can expect is a big headache.”