Kitty Crenshaw's Blog, page 15

January 23

The meaning of life is held in the wondrous mystery of God’s love. ~Betty

Suffering Blooms

Photograph and Words by Jenny Miller @the_ardent_alchemist

I went out in it. I went into the woods and found a path I did not know and I walked it. I walked my grief. I walked my loss. I walked my sadness and the cold fire of fear and the gray ash of disappointment. I walked my poem and I walked my story and I walked into all of the suffering and confusion until it had cleaned my heart and purified it and opened it again like a lotus blooming and this, this is Love.

A word from Betty:

I have been through the dark and lonely places, but I also have come to know the One who continues to lead me through them. As we choose to embrace the joys and the sorrows of each necessary season in faith and trust, the fog shrouding our soul slowly lifts and we behold, as in a glass, His glory and our glory in Him. Gradually then, we begin to mirror this eternal light of Love, claiming our true nature. After all these years, I still can’t explain it, but I can tell you that it is so because I have experienced it. The Hidden Life Awakened page10

Gentle First Truth

As we journey together into a new decade, a new beginning, heart to heart, all in Christ, I offer this meditation to you from the Source as a source of nourishment, hope, encouragement and love.

This meditation speaks of God as Truth who, when I answer the call to return, will begin to bring me to an ever-deepening awareness of my chosenness and the gradual realization that I need no longer take my identity from the world, but rather from the Voice within who calls me Beloved. I belong to Him; I am His.

In the process of glimpsing the truth of Whose I am, my eyes are opened to who I am in an eternal sense. If Truth is calling me and loves me enough to reveal to me my false self, then Truth will enable me to do my work of detaching from the false self I have created to survive in the world and attaching more and more to my true self, my God-created self. Thus, Truth recreates and liberates me. Remember what Jesus said in John 8:32, “You will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free.” This is a promise, but as a covenant people, we must keep our part of the covenant. We must do our work.

Prayerfully the Holy Spirit will speak to your heart as you read these words and make them your own prayer. They come in obedience with the longing always that you might begin to taste the joy, the freedom, the peace of Jesus.

Oh God, gentle first Truth,
    move in my heart.
Illuminate each dark corner
    where webs of self still hide.
Show me Whose I am
     that I might know who I am.
 Then recreate me,
     dress me in Yourself
         whose virtue is love,
         whose knowledge is truth,
         whose beauty is creation.
 
Oh God, eternal first Truth,
    You who created me in love
    and longs to recreate me in mercy,
Bring me to the foot of the cross,
    to the nailed feet, the gift of Your Son
And there, in His shadow
    in unspeakable gratitude,
Enable me to live consistently
     the endless dynamic
        of knowledge and love
           of gentle first Truth.
 
           BWS
 

https://www.thehiddenlifeawakened.com/blog/

January 9

It takes enormous courage and discipline to make the choice to trust God. ~Betty

A Letter From Betty

Dear
Ones,

As
I sit quietly in my chair looking out of my little window in this, my season of
solitude, silence and prayer, I feel the depth of Christ’s love within and a
longing to share it with you. As I come to prayer, I bring you with me. I feel,
once again, the mysterious awakening and awareness of His perfect presence with
me and an ever-deepening and renewed sense of gratitude to a God Who would love
me enough to give me Himself in the gift of His Son, Jesus. Thus the divine
plan—the Christmas gift—the transformation of our human nature into the likeness
of the One who is given.

I
pray that you too begin to feel a new depth of Presence and Love as you become
more disciplined in coming to prayer. As you come to the Source, may you come
to know more intimately Jesus, who is the Source. I pray always that you might
hear His voice, the voice that calls you His beloved. Trust unreservedly that
you are so loved that you might abandon yourself more and more to Him. “Give me
everything,” Jesus says, “And I will give you everything.” It is upon this
promise that we are always to base our hope. And it is in this hope that we are
to be persistent and patient in our waiting and in our crying out, “Come,
Jesus, come.”

There is always within me too a longing to remind you that the mystery of God’s love for us is not that He wants to take our pains away, but that He wants to first share them with us. Out of His divine presence with us in our suffering comes new life. “Come,” Jesus calls, “Let Me wipe your tears. I am the God of mercy and compassion, of pardon and love, of tenderness and care. I love you. I love you. I love you. I have always loved you.” This is the voice that calls us to return again and again to the One who created us in love and longs to recreate us in mercy.

Until then, let us be in prayer for one another that we might love one another as Jesus loves us, that we might see the beauty of each other’s uniqueness as Jesus sees ours, and that together we might be found by the Divine Love-the Love who holds all of humanity in a compassionate embrace.~Betty

With gratitude to Sally Chester for the beautiful image of Betty

December 26

God’s unspeakable love leads us to trust and obedience and from there to joy and the peace that passes understanding. ~Betty

December 19

It is difficult for us to grasp the truth that Jesus came not to astonish us with the great power and high visibility of God, but rather to show us the way of hiddenness and humility. ~Betty

Each Trembling Edge

Bachiacca. Madonna and Child. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

Beloved,
       I sense a lingering lament
       This Advent season
       That crushing grasp of Love
       My weary eyes are flushed with tears
       My ears discern a distant weeping
       A loneliness beyond all reason
       A separateness on earth, a search
 
Beloved,
       So much of You is lost
       In the shapelessness of clutter
       The false contours of life
       Its sharp edges and illusions
       Its starkness and its shimmering cold
      
 Beloved,
       This Advent season
       Grant new birth within my frigid sleep
       Intensify my desire and my adoring
       A knowing beyond knowing
       That underneath each trembling edge
       Lies One sweet forgotten secret
       The Gift of Love, a Child, the Christ, a Savior
 
       BWS

                                                                                             

December 5

When the channel of our hearts is finally clear enough for God’s love to flow through us unhindered, our lives begin to speak. ~Betty

Grateful Walking

While visiting Cashiers waiting for the leaves to begin their annual color explosion, I found myself wishing I could find Betty’s grieving tree1 or Julian’s rock.2 when my phone rang, Betty was calling unexpectedly, so I asked directions. I wanted to find the places that were so sacred to her, to walk where she walked and longed to hear the Voice and know the Presence she experienced there. It had been fifteen years since she walked up Rock Mountain, but I followed her directions and found the beginning at the end of a crowded residential area. The road was blocked. A barrier constructed. A posted sign and a camera installed. A five star resort was taking over.

Disappointed, I drove back to the house settling for a walk along the paved road. As I walked, I tried to see the leaves, observe the tree bark, and appreciate the breeze on my face. A patch of bright green moss growing lushly at the base of a tree caught my attention. It felt like finely woven carpet as I ran my hand across its surface.

I began to notice the variety of mosses. One I mistook for gray rocks peeking through the grass but with odd tiny coral colored balls sticking out of it on straight little stems. It felt hard but gave slightly when I pressed it. Another looked like green-spiked stars sprinkled through the fallen leaves. Another like dwarfed cedar branches standing between the star moss and the rock moss adding its own variety to the mix. Another was shaggy rather like short thick hair on a dog’s back.

A sage-colored moss spilling over the top of a fence post resembled heavily peeling paint or icing cascading over the edge of a cake. Further along the fence, wispy pale sage-tinted moss grew like hairs on the back of one’s neck alternating with the peeling paint moss, softening it and creating a balanced design of and proportion.

Captivated by the variety of the mosses I was seeing for the first time, the Voice spoke without sound but clearly, explaining the uniqueness of each moss, created to be just what it was, fulfilling its purpose, living out its destiny among the other mosses without competing, comparing, or controlling.3 Just being what they were created to be, what their DNA required that they be. No more. No less. And what they were was enough. More than enough to speak to me of contentment, of simply being, and in the being reflecting the One who created the moss and me. Fully being. And loving the me He made as He made and loved the mosses. The mosses were speaking, telling me of their Creator and mine. I was hearing the heart of the One Betty heard.

“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made.” Romans 1:20

It wasn’t Betty’s grieving tree or Julian’s rock, but He still speaks, and I can hear. I will go to see Betty soon and tell her the message the mosses spoke. She will remember and love the message and me.

A word from Betty:

“One morning I got up early to walk up the mountain. It was a brilliant sunny day, and I don’t think there is anything more beautiful than the early morning sunlight highlighting a color change. It  is so exquisite it makes you cry. I walked and walked and walked and filled up and filled up and filled up, but I just couldn’t get enough of the warm feeling of God’s presence. So when evening came, I went to a place where the sun sets and closed my day with God, looking out over the glorious painting of creation that He had made and makes new every fall. I was experiencing a profound sense of oneness and knew that God was walking with me. I understood, finally, that God’s love encompasses all of creation and all of humanity with oneness. He creates it all, loves it all, and sustains it all. I was waking up to the wonder and beauty of God in a deep, deep interior place. God, for me, was coming out of the box I had put Him in with my opinions, fears, and cultural conditioning and was speaking to me through the magnificence of that spectacular color change…These moments are eternal and they will live in my heart forever.”4