Kitty Crenshaw's Blog, page 37

December 18, 2017

The fight is not against yourself or your circumstances but against your negative thinking. ~Betty

Advent: Week Three

Come, O My Immanuel, Come.

I give You title to my life.

O SPIRIT

Place Your unpredictable breath

Upon my face.

Win me with the wooing of Your grace.

Come, O My Immanuel, Come.

Carve my heart into the Infant’s crib.

Wipe it with the scent of straw,

Swaddling cloth and myrrh.

O TRUTH

Inhabit it with Life

Since Life must out of life begin.

Come, O My Immanuel, Come.

Heavenly hosts’ angelic choir,

Love song of the shepherd’s way.

O HOPE

King, Key, Cornerstone

For shepherds, for wise men and for me.

Come, O My Immanuel, Come.

Bright, distant star,

O FLAME

Flickering like the candles

Of the Advent wreath.

What had been night

Reels with unending eucharists of light.

Come, O My Immanuel, Come.

Free my earthbound creature’s wings

To veer still higher in the coming year

O LOVE

Such passion, I consent,

Lift me wholly into God.

~BWS

December 11, 2017

Suffering has so much to teach us. It is not a punishment but the divine route to complete rest in God.

Advent: Week Two

Where is one life

      that would see

      then choose

      the gift of Love

      through the ordinary,

      the simple

      coming of a child:

                  Jesus Christ as Savior

Where are two humble shepherds

      watching through the long, dark night,

      silently, quietly waiting,

      preparing their hearts

      to receive

      the coming of angels,

      the manifestation of Glory:

                  Jesus Christ as Lord.

Where are the remnant three,

      three wise men

      who would come

      present their hearts as gifts

      in sacrifice,

      and worship Him:

                  Jesus Christ as King.

Is it I, Lord?

I hear You calling me to Life.

I will choose the quiet waiting.

I will stay the long, dark night.

I will be amongst the remnant.

I will give my heart to You.

I shall manifest Your Glory.

I shall be Your Christmas Story.

                  BWS

Finding the Still Point

Betty Skinner, the inspiration for The Hidden Life Awakened, discusses finding the still point in the midst of chaos: "The chaos around us never changes, what changes is that we begin to view the world and ourselves differently."

December 4, 2017

Writings that inspire and are lasting are not written for the multitudes. They are written from one Light to one life in the Spirit of Love. ~Betty Skinner

Advent: Week One

“Watch for this.

A virgin shall conceive and bear a Son.

And shall call His Name Immanuel.”

Isaiah 7:14

Immanuel, God With Us, is the heart of God in Christ, filled to overflowing with the desire to love us, aflame with a fire to warm us, to give us a home, a sense of belonging, a refuge in which we feel safe. Immanuel, God With Us, is a voice that announces a whole new way of being, of loving, of living in community—a new Kingdom.

In this Advent season, let us determine to respond to this gentle, quiet invitation by preparing our hearts to receive more and more of the life, light and love contained in the Gift of Immanuel. Let us await this Gift of love in prayer, with watchful attentiveness and beautiful Scripture, liturgy and song.

Let us intensify our desire to see, to wait, to offer all; to seek Him in our deepest center.

Thus, the divine plan, the Christmas Gift, the transformation of our human nature into the likeness of the One Who is given may be fulfilled, and we will be enabled to live our ordinary lives with extraordinary love.

Knee Bent and Full of Wonder,

~Betty

On Retreat: December 2017

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

Solitude and Silence
A Healthy Body

Hydrate—Drink a little warm water with lemon.

Move—Do a few stretching exercises to energize your body.

Rest—Take a moment to absorb the inner peace of your stretching practice.

A Serene Mind

Begin this portion of your time with God by sitting with a cup of coffee or tea in a comfortable chair in a quiet place. Light a candle as a symbol of God’s presence with you. Have your Bible close.

Opening Prayer

Let Betty’s lovely Centering Prayer quiet and refocus your mind.

Center me down Lord,

to the innermost of my innermost,

until all of me kneels before You.

Then, in this night as I sleep in Your presence,

In the morning as I awake in Your presence,

silently, reverently, waitfully,

bring me to Your table

That I might

see with Your eyes

hear with Your ears

and love with Your heart.

~Betty Skinner

A Reflection from Betty

“If we are going to hear the inner voice of Love speaking to us in these very soft and gentle ways, it is imperative that we take time to be alone in a quiet place and embrace the silence. Silence teaches us to listen. We have lost patience with solitude and silence, the home of the Word, thus leaving the depths of life untouched. The voice of Love is speaking to us all the time, but the noise of the world, with its loud distractions and false voices, is very, very difficult to turn off. Christ is the Incarnate Word. His words are the language of God. They touch the heart and nourish the soul. It is in the beauty of the incarnate Christ that we behold the perfection of God’s boldest plan. Our task on the journey inward is to learn to listen for this Voice, immerse ourselves in its love, wrap ourselves up in the silence, and open our hearts to the Spirit of God.

“Silence is God’s language, and it gently draws us to our depth. We are drawn into the Word that gives life and power to all of our spoken words. Silence changes our understanding of Scripture, because our illusions and false voices are no longer clouding it. Truth comes alive in us, and we begin to discern with clarity, purity, and depth how God is interpreting Scripture to us. Silence guards and nourishes the truth within our hearts. If we immediately go out and speak about such holy things, we may lose their transforming power, because we haven’t allowed time for the Spirit to press them into our hearts. Our words dilute their strength.

“This transforming silence involves a deliberate choice to withdraw into solitude…Solitude can be a painful place at first, because we haven’t yet learned to turn our minds off and listen for the Beloved in silence. Our minds constantly tell us there are things to be done, people will think we are wasting time, or that we are doing a poor job of having a quiet time. We haven’t yet come to a sense of the sweet and holy oneness of friendship with God. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline at first, but if we will continue to come and endeavor to be silent, to be still and to listen, it gets easier and easier. The more we come to the silence, the more we hear, and the more we hear, the more we come to the silence.”

Silence is God’s language, and it gently draws us to our depth.
Further Reflection

As you return again and again to your quiet place to rest with God, the distractions will begin to diminish and your mind will become freer of its fears, enlarging your heart, making more and more room for His Spirit to fill you. This is a love offering. As you give yourself more and more to Him, more and more He gives Himself to you. It is reciprocal, and it is so sweet.

A Powerful Spirit

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

Divine Reading

Explore the Bible and wander around in it so the Spirit might speak to you. Start by opening your Bible to Psalm 65 (The Message Bible) and read very slowly, stopping on any phrase that touches you, and then read from Jesus: Mark 6:31-32.

Rest Quietly with God

Listen to the soothing music and Betty’s voice as you move toward quiet reflection.

Reflective Writing

Journal every thought that arises without filtering or censoring for now. Trust that this is the indwelling Spirit speaking truth to you.

Gift from the Sea

Betty was in her mid-thirties, struggling to keep her head above water, when she found an unlikely friend who gave her a little hope that things could be different. Popular author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, became a mentor of sorts to her through her best-selling book, Gift from the Sea. It touched a deep cord with many women by giving voice to their feelings in a time when men were in charge not only of the family but of all the cultural, economic, political, and religious systems.

Lindbergh, married to a strong, famous, highly ambitious man, urged women to develop and live from their own unique center rather than being constantly drawn into and drained by the energy of their husbands. She encouraged women to take time to care of themselves, to simplify their external lives, and spend some time each day being still, quiet, and inwardly attentive to their own feelings and longings, and God’s presence with them. She spoke of a solitude that could be therapeutic and life giving rather than fearsome and debilitating. Betty was amazed to read that she had the courage to leave her family and take a weeklong retreat just to be alone and walk on the beach. Lindbergh described the feeling of being soothed by the rhythm of the waves and the freedom of quietly contemplating all that God was teaching her through the sights, smells, and sounds of the sea.

These words deeply resonated with Betty and were awakening something within her while affirming her love for the sea and all of God’s creation. On one of her own beach walks, she found a moon shell like one Lindbergh used in her book to illustrate the need for focus and singleness of heart in the search for Truth. In the midst of the chaos in the world of her reality, Betty would gaze at that moon shell sitting on her desk and be reminded of her own need for singleness of purpose and total commitment to persevere into the heart of Love.

At times I struggle with what seems to be heavy chains!

They bind me.

For too often I lose sight of love.

I know it is God that is calling me at these times

to take another step into Love’s bondage.

Yet as I follow Him as best I can,

in full commitment, I find the struggle ends.

The chains are lifted.

~Betty Skinner

“In an odd way, Lindbergh’s ideas made me more insecure because here was something I longed for desperately but didn’t think I could ever attain. Claim a week to myself? I needed it desperately but was far too fearful to do it. Finally, I got up the courage to tell Bryant I wanted to rent a small place at the beach for a week. He said it was fine on the condition that I took all the kids, so I did. It was a disaster. I was sitting there with my nose in a book, totally disconnected from my four children, who were crying because they were having no fun at all crammed in this little house with no one to play with and nothing to do. They needed me to be crabbing and swimming and building sand castles with them, but I was totally detached, sitting there in my chair thinking about God, with my head in the clouds, reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Florence Nightingale!”

In Gift from the Sea, Lindbergh expressed the reality of Betty’s day-to-day life, and the emotions Betty was feeling:

“Women’s life today is tending more and more toward the state William James described so well in the German work, “Zerrissenheit—torn-to-pieces-hood.” She cannot live perpetually in “Zerrissenheit.” She will be shattered into a thousand pieces. On the contrary, she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself. It need not be an enormous project or a great work. But it should be something of one’s own. Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day—like writing a poem, or saying a prayer. What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive.”

Lindbergh’s words also inspired her and reminded her of her own need to turn inward, to spend time with herself:

“Moon shell, who named you? Some intuitive woman I like to thing. I shall give you another name—Island shell. I cannot live forever on my island. But I can take you back to my desk in Connecticut. You will sit there and fasten your single eye upon me. You will make me think, with your smooth circles winding inward to the tiny core, of the island I lived on for a few weeks. You will say to me “solitude.” You will remind me that I must try to be alone for part of each year, even a week or a few days; and for part of each day, even for an hour or a few minutes in order to keep my core, my center, my island-quality. You will remind me that unless I keep the island-quality intact somewhere within me, I will have little to give my husband, my children, my friends or the world at large. You will remind me that woman must be still as the axis of a wheel in the midst of her activities; that she must be the pioneer in achieving this stillness, not only for her own salvation, but for the salvation of family life, of society, perhaps even of our civilization.”

 

November 27, 2017

In God’s goodness and time, a tremendous paradox will be revealed to us—that what we now perceive as suffering and death is in Reality a hidden time of awakening and rebirth. ~Betty Skinner