Kitty Crenshaw's Blog, page 32

April 16

Humility is the way of Love. The descending way of humility is the movement toward the true self’s realization. If we will choose the descending way of humility, we will find our way to freedom. ~Betty

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April 13

As you give yourself more and more to God, more and more He gives Himself to you. It is reciprocal, and it is so sweet. ~Betty

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Healing the Whole Person

Betty Skinner, the inspiration for the book The Hidden Life Awakened, talks about the importance of nurturing a healthy body, a serene mind, and a powerful spirit.

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Heal the Whole Person

Betty Skinner, the inspiration for the book The Hidden Life Awakened, discusses the importance of healing the whole person—on a healthy body, a serene mind, and a powerful spirit.

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April 9

Take His hand now, even as I am offering you mine, and in the warmth of such an all-compelling love, let us follow Him together. ~ Betty

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On Retreat: April 2018

Our prayer is that “On Retreat” will help you break from habituated patterns of mind and frantic activity, make more space for God, and step into a new way of seeing, believing, and abiding.  Each retreat will focus on a healthy body, a serene mind, and a powerful spirit. Your devoted guide will be modern day Christian mystic, Betty Skinner.

Affirming the Hope Hidden Within You,

~Cathy and Kitty

Hope
A Healthy Body

Hydrate: Drink a little water with lemon or green tea to begin.

Move: Do a few simple stretching exercises to energize your body.

Rest: Silently integrate the inner peace of your stretching practice for a few minutes.

A Serene Mind

Begin this portion of your time with God by sitting with a warm cup of coffee or tea or water in a comfortable chair in a quiet place. Light a candle as a symbol of God’s presence with you and listen for His voice in silence for ten minutes.

Opening Prayer

Let Betty’s lovely Centering Prayer help quiet and refocus your mind.  Read it on page 53 of our book The Hidden Life Awakened, or listen to Betty read it.

A Reflection from Betty

“When I met hope, in my fifty-fifth year, on the southward side of a high mountain in North Carolina, it was unmistakable. ‘Now abideth faith, hope and love.’ Hope, for many years of my spiritual journey, was overshadowed by faith and love. Love’s relentless wooing had won me with its unspeakable beauty, mystery, and grace. Faith became the ‘yes’ within me on which I slowly began to stake my whole life, while hope remained invisible and elusive. Faith and love built my self-confidence until I broke inside, then faith began to fade and love dimmed. It was in my despair that I met hope. It had been resting in the shadows between faith and love. It was in the suffering, wounded, and broken places of my life that hope began to come out of the shadows and bring me to wholeness. It was in the emptiness and stillness between faith and love, in the hollow of a heart carved out by despair, that hope took hold.

“What I realized on that unforgettable day was that hope had always lingered in the shadows of my darkest times. What awakened within me was that precisely when faith crumbles and love dims, hope begins. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. Rather, hope, in its purist form, is perfect freedom perfected as we choose to accept in Love whatever God brings as good. For those who deliberately choose to act only for the glory of God and the good of others, to eliminate all selfish motives from their lives and their work, hope becomes the golden cord in the landscape of their quest. It is the certainty that something makes sense, is worth the cost, regardless of how it might turn out. Hope is a sense of what might yet be. Hope is precisely what I had when I had nothing. It strains ahead, seeking a way behind, through, and beyond every obstacle. Hope does not try to determine how God’s way will be shown but remains open to new and astonishing manifestations of God’s presence at work in the circumstances of life. The more difficult the circumstances, the deeper the hope.”  The Hidden Life Awakened

A Powerful Spirit

Spend a little time now, letting the Living Word speak to your heart.

Divine Reading

Psalm 62

Rest Quietly with God

Use your imagination to visualize Jesus sitting there with you or in any other setting.

Reflective Writing

Journal whatever thought arises without filtering or censoring just as a child would. This is the indwelling Spirit speaking truth to you. Trust this for now.

 

 

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Can You Drink the Cup?

Henri Nouwen was a Dutch priest, professor, and world-renowned author of thirty nine books that have sold over eight million copies. In Can You Drink the Cup he focuses on the question Jesus asked his friends, James and John, in response to their mother asking Him to give them places of honor in His kingdom. (Matthew 20:21-23)

 “You don’t know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”

Nouwen writes this,

“When the moment to drink that cup came for Jesus, He said: ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death.’  His agony was so intense that His sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood. James and John were there with Him but fast asleep, unable to stay awake with Him in His sorrow. In His immense loneliness, Jesus fell on His face and cried out: ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass by Me.’ Jesus didn’t throw the cup away in despair. No, He kept it in His hands, willing to drink it to the dregs.

“We need to remind each other that the cup of sorrow is also the cup of joy, that precisely what causes us sadness can become the fertile ground for gladness…we have to hold the cup in our hands and look carefully to see the joys hidden in our sorrows.

“We have to live our life, not someone else’s. We have to hold our own cup. We have to dare to say: ‘This is my life, the life that is given to me, and it is this life that I have to live as well as I can.”

Nouwen’s book was a powerful catalyst in Betty Walthour Skinner’s journey to deep acceptance and finally to joy. These are her words from the book, The Hidden Life Awakened:

“It is to Christ, the Lover of our wounded heart, we address our flaming yes. The yes of our hearts is our full response to the faithfulness at the heart of all things. In saying this yes, we release all our conditions and fears into the arms of Love. If we will look upon this painful season not as the hand of an enemy trying to crush us, but endeavor to see it as the hand of a loving God who is closer to us than our breath, leading us down to the ground of our being, our fearsome journey will finally open onto a great, wide plateau of love—a safe place—that abiding place within God.

“I had to learn to trust the darkness of new birth and the darkness of death’s desolation. I didn’t always see it, but new life was being birthed; it was underneath the darkness and the pain.

“This process can be severe but it is also merciful because it brings us finally to a place of deep love and acceptance. Our pain and our cross can and will speak to the wounded hearts of others in God’s time and in His way. This is fertile suffering. Transformation happens if we are willing to walk the way of the cross.”

~Betty   

 

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April 2

Nothing ever stays the same in our lives. Again and again we are called to let go in order to find a new way. ~Betty

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An Easter Letter from Betty

Dear Ones,

Following the death of Jesus, His disciples were utterly discouraged and filled with questions, doubts, unbelief and apprehensions. They were having difficulty grasping the full and eternal significance of Christ’s resurrection, most especially a bodily resurrection.

Lovingly, gently, and gradually Jesus began to manifest Himself to them in the forty days following His resurrection by appearing six times. They needed to hear Him, to see Him, to touch Him, to talk with Him. Their entire being had to be immersed in the Truth of His Risen Reality. Through their senses, reason, imagination and memory, Jesus led each one of them to an inner awakening of the divine Life and transcendent potential within.

Of the six appearances, the one that filled my meditative time was Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene.  She was the closest woman to Jesus of all who followed Him. She was an ex-prostitute out of whom Jesus had cast seven demons. She was saved from being stoned by Him. She witnessed His suffering and death at Golgotha, and she was the first to meet the risen Christ.

Mary had glimpsed a bit of Paradise, a new beginning.  She had experienced forgiveness, compassion and love from Jesus. Then He was crucified and buried, leaving Mary in utter despair. She went to the tomb desperately needing to know that His death was not the end. She was so caught up in the distractions of her loss, of her grief and pain, of her inner turmoil and conflict, that she did not know Jesus when she saw Him standing by the tomb. Not until she heard Him utter her name did she turn and recognize Him. Jesus’ speaking her name crystalized all her longings, satisfied all the desires of her heart, and lifted her to a new and more profound vision of peace and joy, of completeness and wholeness and holiness, and hope of a new beginning. In this brief, eternal moment, in the Presence of the risen Lord, Mary knew deep within that Jesus loved her and that He would never, ever be lost to her again.

I pray that this beautiful story might fill and possess your hearts, for Mary’s story is our story, too.

~Betty

 

 

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A Good Friday Meditation

Then He said to them, “My soul is consumed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”      

Matthew 26:38

Sweet Love, my dearest Treasure,

I feel the movement in Your prayer,

the intensity of Gethsemane,

the pain of Calvary, Your passion,

the agony You suffered there.

Drops of sweat, a flood of tears

have touched my hair,

have washed the wrinkles of my days,

have set my heart ablaze.

 

~BWS

                           

 

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