Kitty Crenshaw's Blog, page 34
March 4, 2018
March 5
It takes enormous courage and discipline to make the choice to trust God. ~Betty
March 3, 2018
Creation Patiently Waiting
“Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.” The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Jesus, my Beloved, it’s spring again.
I am Your prisoner, captured in its sweet song,
in its warmth and fragrance,
in all the Beauty new life brings.
Waves of infinite tenderness
wash over me and all of Creation.
Your Divine Look has penetrated my heart.
You only do I see.
It is my soul itself I offer Thee.
Betty W. Skinner
There is in spring a deep sense that all of creation is waiting, preparing to receive the changing of season. Creation patiently waiting. Creation listening with desire and expectation. Creation sensing its need and preparing to receive. Creation allowing for growth, allowing for change. We, like creation, need to allow space for the changes that come with each season of our life. We need to achieve creation’s balance and equilibrium within our soul.
All created things are marked with the signature of the Creator. To immerse oneself in creation is to enrich and enlarge one’s vision of the world. It is to see matter as the scaffolding of the Spirit and everything and everyone as created and loved by God. To come to know the God beyond us as well as the God within us is to view all of His creation as a sacrament. If we desire to grow into the person God created us to become, then the starting point is not striving after another world, but an ever deepening and maturing awareness of the true nature of this world. Our work as believers is not to separate the seen from the unseen, but to begin to reconcile the two; to hold together in our hearts concepts of the God beyond and the God within; to develop a keen sense of creation embracing and speaking to us; to endeavor to live moment by moment in the Divine Presence.
A broadened understanding of the sacramental nature of the world, as well as the sacrament of each moment lived in it, opens us to a visible place where God can be seen, known and loved through all He has made and where all things and all people can be known and loved in Him.
From Betty as quoted in The Hidden Life Awakened:
“I loved the stormy days. I would sit for hours in the shelter of a little sand dune and watch the power of the ocean. When the surf is rough, it kicks up a lot of foam that glides noiselessly over the sand, moving with the flow of the wind and the water as if it were on ice. It spoke to me of emptiness. The foam didn’t care which way the wind blew it—so light, claiming nothing. I watched the sea oats bend with the breeze and they too spoke to me of going with the flow of life—so free, no resistance. They were very top-heavy, yet no matter how strong the wind was or how much turbulence, they bent but never broke; they followed the flow of the wind. You see, I hadn’t been going with the flow of life, and I broke. Now I was learning to bend. Everything was speaking to me about God’s movement in creation and how I should live my life. It took a long time, but I was beginning to understand that I didn’t have to try to change or control my circumstances. God would supply my needs and sustain me in them because He loves me.”
The post Creation Patiently Waiting appeared first on The Hidden Life Awakened.
March 1, 2018
On Retreat: March 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
Trusting the Darkness
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.
Opening Prayer
Let Betty’s lovely Centering Prayer help quiet and refocus your mind. Read it from the book, page 53, or listen to Betty read it. It is the last video on this page of the website. https://www.thehiddenlifeawakened.com/inspiration-videos/
A Reflection from Betty
“We need to shift our focus and accept that this season of darkness is truly a time of preparation, a stilling. Acceptance of this ‘not-knowing’ brings forth a complete transformation of self if we will trust it. Its purpose is purification and purgation and leads ultimately to freedom—freedom to finally be who God created us to be, to love and live in God, and to be filled with God. If we will allow the darkness and the silence, God will allow the seeds of our false self to die enough for Him to send up a little sprout of new life. It takes a long time for a tree to grow to its fullness, but as it emerges from the darkness, it offers shelter and beauty to the world.
The way of trust lies through Gethsemane and Holy Saturday. We move from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, omitting Holy Saturday—the tomb. Every phase of our Lord’s life and every aspect of His death speaks to us, if we will open to it. Divine obedience was lived out at the Last Supper, accepted at Gethsemane, accomplished on the cross, and perfected alone in the darkness of the tomb. Our assent to time in the darkness of tomb is so often the missing link in our lives. The wilderness of our suffering is not just a place of darkness and temptation. It is the place of our transformation through which the false self must move. It is the place of conversion where the emotional pain of a lifetime, stored in the unconscious, is revealed and then gradually let go of. This is not a time of separateness, although it may feel that way; it is a time that links us to the Eternal. It is in walking through the darkness that we learn to discern the voice of the Beloved and receive the grace of interior resurrection and the capacity for divine union. All things grow in darkness and silence. There are hidden depths that only the Spirit can reach. It is a hidden life.”
For Further Reflection
You might want to watch this three-minute video. Betty will talk a little about Transformation not Restoration.
A Powerful Spirit
Spend a little time now, letting the Living Word speak to your heart.
Divine Reading
Psalm 18
Colossians 3:1-4
Rest Quietly with God
Use your imagination to visualize Jesus sitting there with you or in any other setting.
Reflective Writing
Journal every thought that arises without censoring as a child would. This is the indwelling Spirit speaking truth to you. Trust this for now.
Just One Thing
Are you holding on to any resentment about a difficult situation you are living with? Quieting any self judgement, acknowledge that this is where your growth needs to happen.
February 27, 2018
Awake to Wellness Women’s Retreat
Join Us in Atlanta.
We are thrilled to announce that we will be in Atlanta Friday, March 23, and Saturday, March 24, to facilitate a wonderful women’s retreat based on our book, The Hidden Life Awakened.
The Awake to Wellness Women’s Retreat is sponsored by The Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip and Northside United Methodist Church, and will benefit the wonderful Ignatian Spirituality Project, a non-profit that provides a place for spiritual retreats and counseling for homeless women.
Our wonderful friend, Sue Allen, Director of Women’s Ministries at Northside Church, has taught our book to her women’s groups several times over the years. She has seen it touch so many lives in such deep ways that she felt led to share it with a wider audience of women. She and the women at St. Philip got together to create this powerful offering.
The following provides more information about the event. We hope you’ll join us.
~Kitty and Cathy
February 25, 2018
February 26, 2018
Fear keeps us disconnected from the Source from which true love and freedom flows. ~Betty
February 22, 2018
February 23, 2018
Our spiritual journey is a love affair. It is a leaning into God, listening longingly for His heartbeat. ~Betty
February 20, 2018
Show Me The Way
“Show me Your way, O Lord!”
The Psalmist’s cry echoes through every generation and the heart of every seeker of the Truth Who is at the heart of all things.
Show Me The Way is an anthology of some of the works of Henri J. M. Nouwen, celebrated author and spiritual master. This beautiful forty-day Lenten meditation will accompany and encourage all who are seeking Jesus and struggling on the narrow path to the cross with Him.
Betty read and reread most of Nouwen’s more than thirty books during her years of struggle and with his help, persevered to the foot of the cross and through it into newness of life. Show Me The Way was eventually so marked up and falling apart that she held it together with a rubberband, and it became affectionately known as one of her “Rubberband Books.” Prayerfully may Nouwen’s words and hers be an exhortation and encouragement to you this Lenten season.
From Show Me The Way:
“Jesus presents to us the great mystery of the descending way. It is the way of suffering, but also the way to healing. It is the way of humiliation, but also the way to the resurrection. It is the way of tears, but of tears that turn into tears of joy. It is the way of hiddenness, but also the way that leads to the light that will shine for all.
“The descending way is a way that is concealed in each person’s heart. But because it is so seldom walked on, it’s often overgrown with weeds. Slowly but surely we have to clear the weeds, open the way, and set out unafraid.”
From Betty, as shared in the book The Hidden Life Awakened:
“Many, many people come to the altar, but few find their way to the foot of the cross. Only John the beloved and the three Marys were there when our Lord was crucified—fear had scattered the rest. Jesus leads us to the foot of the cross, and then we are drawn into the cross. There we die to all that is false and become one with Him. It is when we pass through the cross that our hearts are softened by a profound compassion that embraces the whole world. We have finally passed through ourselves and transcended the things of the world that would keep us in bondage.
“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.”
February 18, 2018
February 19, 2018
Clinging to our personal opinions keeps us from seeing who God really is. ~Betty
February 15, 2018
February 16, 2018
As we drop our illusions and move into love, things don’t affect us personally anymore, so we don’t have to defend ourselves, define other people, or deny reality anymore. Now we are free. ~Betty
February 13, 2018
An Ash Wednesday Letter from Betty
Dear Ones,
The Lenten season has begun. Here in the solitude and silence I ponder the great Paschal mystery and pray that God will quicken us for Easter in ways befitting our own uniqueness. In my listening there seems to be a love that longs to give some of what I am receiving back to you, that together we might gratefully return a love gift to the Holy One. I am reminded of three truths:
In Christ the struggle transforms us.
In Christ the fire purifies us.
In Christ the pain teaches us compassion.
Lent is a time when we as believers enter into an extended retreat with Jesus. It is an invitation to participate with Jesus in His time of prayer, solitude, silence, and privation in the wilderness. It is a call to an ever deepening conversion experience, a call to repentance, and a call to choose change.
May we come in humility and gratitude to accept His invitation and offer not a candy bar or a glass of wine, but our hearts, ourselves. Such a sacrificial offering creates an openness and emptiness within our hearts where God can give Himself, through Christ, back to us. It is in this giving and receiving of Love that we are immersed in the flow of divine relationship and begin to experience the freedom to live our lives in the Spirit of Love. So to live in the Spirit, in Holy Communion, is to live in the flow of divine relationship with all that it has to offer us. And what it offers is the Paschal mystery of Life out of death, Love out of pain, ecstasy out of agony, the Word out of silence, Light out of darkness and power out of poverty.
What a supremely precious gift this Love is. It is a gift that continues to transcend—spirit touching spirit. We are all held unconditionally in it and experience, moment by moment, that such a Love cannot be said; it can only be felt with the heart.
Beholding the Beloved, trusting in His mercy,
~Betty
