"Brothers, have you found our king? There he is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table, with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep..." - from Creation in Christ by George MacDonald

Out of the mouths of babes. Praying for their vision of the world to become reality. It's a little long but so worth your time.

Hope for our future

Yes. This.

I'm going to be happy. I'm going to skip. I'm going to be glad. I'm going to smile a lot. I'm going to be easy. I'm going to count my blessings. I'm going to look for reasons to feel good. I'm going to dig up positive things from the past. I'm going to look for positive things where I stand. I'm going to look for positive things in the future. It is my natural state to be a happy person. It's natural for me to love and to laugh. This is what is most natural for me. I am a happy person!

-Abraham

Jerry and Esther Hicks

Yep. 

What Pooh said...

I just looked and it's been just over a year since I've been here. Bad, bad blogger! But in the spirit of Pollyanna, today is a new day, yes? It seems to have been more difficult to stay on the sunny side and yet still, I persist! And  here's a lamb, just to make me happy.

So I'm setting a goal to post at least one happy thing a day even if it kills me. So there. 

Okay, so I'm back. Took an unplanned hiatus from being Pollyanna for a few months. the main reason was that my bff died of  pancreatic cancer on December 19th. The tumor that was declared "all dead" was not as dead as they thought and it came back with a vengeance. Stupid, stupid cancer. So between that and a six-month unit of CPE, I was pretty well done in for a while. But the Pollyanna in me refuses to be squelched forever and hopefully both of those experiences will help to make me a better chaplain. Maybe even a better person, who knows...

Four reasons to remember your creator in middle age. Good reading!

Good advice

Best advice of the day:


Growl less. Wag more.

Being Pollyanna is Hard (apologies to Stephen Green)

During this past week:

• I attended the memorial service for the husband of a dear friend who drowned on their honeymoon
• I found out that my BFF's pancreatic tumor has been rendered "all dead" from the radiation and chemo, there is no sign of other tumors and she is officially in remission
• I visited a beautiful hospice patient who is only a few years older than me whose body is being ravaged by ALS. She welcomes my visits with joy on her face and loves to pat my face with the one arm & hand that still work. She loves Jesus and cries tears of joy when I pray. 
• My community group that was formed to make our neighborhood a better place to live is imploding due to grown people acting like spoiled pre-teenagers.

Guess which one makes me not want to give a rat's rear? And yet I feel compelled to love, care, and pray for them all, even the badly-behaved ones. Sometimes being Pollyanna is a pain in MY rear. Good thing that God provides what I can't muster up for myself. 

Unforgettable...

I have noticed something in my visits with hospice patients who have dementia. There is one thing that will often get a reaction out of them when nothing else will and that is to sing "Jesus Loves Me" to them. Often, dementia patients who can't put together a coherent thought much less a sentence will join me in singing the entire song. It's a beautiful thing.

Jesus loves me, this I know.
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him belong
they are weak, but He is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.

Amen.

Prayer du jour

St. Theresa's Prayer:

May today there be peace within.

May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you....

May you be content knowing you are a child of the universe....

Let this presence settle into your bones, and
allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is here for every one of us.--Unknown

Happiness is an Inside Job

I started leading a book study yesterday on John Powell's book Happiness Is An Inside Job. Great little book that helped me to learn that I am the one and only person who is responsible for my own happiness. It doesn't come from anything or anyone else and I can't pursue it directly. It comes as a byproduct of doing other things. Conversely, nothing and no one else can make me unhappy. It is my choice how I act and react to people and situations in my life.

God, help me to act more thoughtfully and deliberately and to react less and less. Amen!

Get Certified!

I think everyone deserves to have one of these

 certificate of right to play

That's Irritating

"But in a sense I welcome irritation. Irritation keeps you alert. It keeps you from settling down too long in one spot. For a speaker, it forces him or her to find new approaches, new insights. Who knows, if people get enough sand in their shell they may, like the oyster, make a pearl. Without the challenge of irritation it is possible to answer questions eloquently that no one is asking, to invent cures for disease that no one has." - Dr. Maurice Berquist, The Miracle and Power of Blessing


Well that is certainly a different way of looking at life's irritations than I have seen before. I know that God speaks to us in many different ways but I have certainly never thought of life's irritations as a being a message from the Lord. I have just thought they were irritating. I guess I am going to have to pay closer attention when God is trying to tell me something. 


I found this book on the Two Listener's website this morning and it looks like a veritable gold mine of blog posts so stay tuned. 

Hello..... can you hear Me?

“The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.” - C.S. Lewis

That is one profound and amazing thought right there. And I think it holds the key to living the better, happier life. "They" may say that you are what you eat but I think you are what you think is closer to the truth. (Or at least I hope so because otherwise I'm comprised mainly of chocolate and ice cream, cashews, cherry twizzlers and fiber one chocolate pop tarts.) In fact I think it's spot on the truth. The key is to hold not only your wishes and hopes at bay, but your fears and your worries and your distractions as well until you can stop and listen long enough to hear that "other, larger, stronger, quieter" voice's comfort and guidance and inspiration. Some folks say that we can't hear God speaking anymore like our ancestors did. I think it's just that it's gotten way to noisy for us to hear him anymore. We're drowning him out with all the noise and the "stuff" in our lives and in our world. The trick is to learn to hold it all back long enough to get quiet for a little bit of time every day so that we can pay attention and then we will hear. God hasn't stopped talking, we've just quit listening. Or we've tuned our ears only to hear other sounds, other voices. And they're not the ones who can or will bring us peace. Shhhh.... are you listening? 

Re-start

Well, here it is, a little more than two years since I last posted here. Not that I have ignored you on purpose, little blog, but life just got too busy and complicated. But you've always been in my heart and now I'm back. Back to consider and comment on things both holy and bizarre. Because life (mine at least) is compromised of such. And it's much more enjoyable and interesting to do so. For example, here is a post by someone named Kurt who is right on the money as long as by when he says "me" or "Kurt" he is actually talking about me, Ms. Pollyanna....

RIP Michael

I can't say exactly why I've not had much to say here for so many months. I have my suspicions but that's a thought for another day. Today I'm just compelled to comment after having looked at this video after the death of Michael Jackson and be struck wondering about the demons that must have moved in and taken over at some point. It's clear that they destroyed him and who knows how many with him. This performance was inspirational almost to the point of a revival experience with the Gospel choir and the exhortation to look inward and begin the change that can make a difference in the world. I'm going to have to go search for the complete lyrics now to think about this a little more but just making a comparison to this performance vise the increasing anger (not to mention just bat spit craziness) in his work and life is startling and starkly disturbing to me. Most of us don't have to contend with demons on this level to get us off track, I wonder what could have happened had they been conquered.

The Women with Jesus

So I agreed to be in a production of "The Other Twelve Disciples" at church this year. I have successfully avoided being cast in this production previously but this year I decided, what the heck and signed up. I got to play "Lazy Mary" as I referred to my part, Mary of Bethany. She's the one who would much rather sit at Jesus' feet listening to his stories and teachings much to the annoyance of her busy sister Martha. Not too much of a stretch actually...

Anyhoo... as we were rehearsing our various parts I came to realize that my part and another one and possibly even one more were the same woman! Directly after I finished speaking about myself, Martha, Lazarus, Jesus raising Lazarus and annointing Jesus, bathing his feet with my tears and wiping them with my hair, the next character, the woman with the alabaster jar, spoke of the very same incident with the annointing and the tears and the hair.... We have had this play at our church for many years and the script no longer has an author attached if it ever did so I don't know who wrote it originally. But apparently it was enough of a stretch for them to find 12 women associated with Jesus that he or she had to attribute stories of one woman to two. If you add Mary Magdalene to the mix, whom some folks believe is the same Mary of Bethany then there are three. So, I just rewrote my part to expand the first two sections and I left off the last one all together and let the alabaster jar woman take the whole annointing, washing, wiping scene for herself. Everyone seemed to enjoy the whole thing and it was kind of fun. Don't know if I'll ever volunteer to do it again but at least I can say I had the experience. And I'm always glad to bring some attention to the women who served Jesus and ministered with him. I'm going to be interested to find out just how much we didn't know about them when I get the chance to meet them in person.

A Reminder

As often happens when doing pastoral care, I found myself looking square in the face of my mortality this afternoon. We tend to live "in the moment" most of the time and get so caught up in our day to day struggles but sometimes things happen to make us stop short and get a new perspective, realigning our priorities. I'm telling you people, life is so short and things can go south in the blink of an eye. So I'm just trying to remind you (and myself) not to get caught up in the things that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Enjoy your life, treat others kindly, overlook the petty small things and be grateful for whatever the good things are in your life. It's apt to be gone before you know it.