Kitty Crenshaw's Blog, page 22

December 3

The chaos around us never changes. What changes is we begin to view it differently. ~Betty

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November 30

Control stifles the very life it needs to survive. ~Betty

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Temporal Sleep

Betty Skinner, the inspiration for The Hidden Life Awakened, shares her awakening via "temporal sleep," and a poem she wrote of the same name.

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November 26

All of life runs on a divine energy that at its core is unconditionally loving. ~Betty

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November 23

How you chose to live your life, moment by moment, is either going to help bring the world together in Christ or to separate it. ~Betty

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Gratefulness is Prayerfulness

 

Heaven is breaking through the veil all day, every day. Hot coffee, warm fire, beautiful sun diamonds on the river, eyes of love looking into ours, animals, children, art, grass, cool breezes, changing seasons, beautiful melodies, delicious smells, warmth, wine, great food . . . all of these wondrous gifts are received through gratitude and thanksgiving. Gratitude opens the door. Gratitude completely rewires the architecture of our brain. Gratitude opens us to receive more and more of the good which lifts us into whole new ways of seeing, perceiving, feeling in our body, and relating to others.

Gratitude creates happiness, not the other way around. Gratitude will bring us to a joy that no longer depends on happiness. Our interior life will become so rich and full of all that we are experiencing and tasting of God in all the moments of our life that we don’t need as much from others or the world anymore. Nothing that the world can give can begin to compare with this state of deep, quiet, unspeakable joy. It is the joy of Heaven.

Gratitude is the infinite giving and receiving of love between us and God and the whole of creation. Gratefulness is prayerfulness. Prayerfulness is prayer without ceasing. Gratitude is all we can offer in return for our awakening to the great Mystery in which we live and move and have our being.

Gratitude is everything.

The Hidden Life Awakened

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November 19

Trust God to be as creative with your children as He has been with you. ~Betty

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November 16

Deep acceptance of however God chooses to enter your life will soften you and enable you to move into a new place of healing in spite of the pain. ~Betty

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A Letter from Betty

Dear Ones,

Our Christian spirituality is relational. Our relationship with God is one of perfect giving and perfect receiving.  God is the giver.  The gift is love.  We are the receivers.  We are the thanks-givers. The gift is loving gratitude. God becomes the receiver.

We, as His chosen, must endeavor to live our lives in this sharing flow of love.  How do we get caught up in this endless spiral of love, this spiritual energy?  By coming to God in prayer with a grateful heart.  Our gesture of gratitude completes the exchange, accelerates the spiral in which the giver gets thanked and so becomes the receiver.  The joy of giving and receiving rises higher and higher until our gratitude becomes the reflection of His mercy.  It is this which makes us like Him.

It is important for us to remember that all that is is a divine gift.  Every breath we draw is a gift of love.  Every moment of our existence is a grace.  Thus, our sacrifice of thanksgiving can only be offered in gratitude.  Such gratitude implies not just a quick easy word of thanks, but rather our whole lives given over in grateful response and loving obedience.

The great mystery of gratitude is that what is accepted in thanksgiving multiplies in the sharing of it with others.  We give more than we receive when we accept it in gratitude.  Five loaves and five fishes, when received as a gift in gratitude, were enough to feed a multitude of people.

Would this in itself not be enough to call forth our hearts to prayer, to offer all that we have, all that we are, all that we could ever hope to be, back to Him in a deep sense of gratitude?

Prayerfully, may you share this crumb of broken bread with others. ~Betty

 

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November 12

Accept in love and trust whatever happens, however it happens, whenever it happens. ~Betty

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