Chris Manion's Blog, page 4

Sing a New Song: Figuring out the road ahead

We’re so tired of it.

The pandemic?

Yes. “Enough already!”

We get tired of old familiar things too.

Such as “Sing a New Song,” the 1972 Dan Schutte guitar song, that God brought before me recently. I tired of that song twenty years ago for crying out loud.

I sang it in our church contemporary choir for decades. It’s based on Psalm 98. Do you know it?

Sing a new song unto the Lord

Let your song be sung from moun tains high.

Sing a new song unto the Lord

Singing Alleluia.

Dan Schutte, St. Louis Jesuits

When my Lord brought this song before my mind’s eye, my usual routine was kaput. I longed to get it back to combat my IBF (isolation brain fog). Why was He pointing me to “a new song?”

The Psalms help us find solidarity.

David wrote over 70 of the psalms. Often he was on the run and isolating himself for his personal safety from King Saul. We’ve got a few things in common with him now with our own isolation for safety.

I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
    with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

Psalm 63:5 NIV

Photo by archer10 (Dennis)

It seems one day he’s rejoicing over God’s goodness, singing, dancing and playing the flute and harp. The next day he seeks revenge.

Those who want to kill me will be destroyed;

    they will go down to the depths of the earth.

They will be given over to the sword

    and become food for jackals.

Psalm 63:9-10 NIV

He vacillates like us, too.

The psalms connect us in solidarity with our Isreali brothers and sisters. They knew our Pandemic-generated mixed emotions and wild ranges of distractions, doubts and dreads.

The act of lifting our voice to God in prayer through song does something to our spirit that most of us need in these dark days and nights of the soul. Whether you have a good voice or it may be one you think is best lip-synced, singing is God’s mysterious way of reviving our spirits.

The act of lifting your voice to God in prayer through song does something to your spirit.
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Why a new song? What’s there to celebrate?

Why can’t we find a reason to sing a new song? Are we stuck on something God wants us to address?

If we can’t find something to celebrate, we’ve may have our eyes looking in the wrong direction. My friend, Edie Melson, finds it more invigorating to look up at waterfalls that she loves to photograph. Looking down at them is scary. Looking down at our woes and fears scares us, too.

Our souls feel much better when we look to the heavens.

Many Scripture passages tell us to do just this: Isaiah 40:26; Job 35:5; Psalm123:1: John 11:41 to name a few.

I lift up my eyes to the hills– where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Psalm 121:1

Why do you think David instructed the Israelites to sing a new song? And how does this apply to us today?

David wanted his people to celebrate how God delivered them from the hands of their enemies. He wanted to create a strong memory of how God reached out to them and helped them.

If God is “making all things new,” perhaps He’s inviting us in a new direction. If so, perhaps we need to be thankful and celebrate BEFORE we get what we’re hoping for. This is what St. Paul instructs us to do to build our faith muscles.

Thanks = Trust

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

In other words, trust in the dawn when it’s still dark.

Or perhaps “making all things new” means letting go of emotions, or possessions, or selfishness, or pride that’s an obstacle between us and our relationship with God.

John Bartunek, LC, ThD, author of The Better Part, imagines a conversation Jesus could have with you:

Your soul is infinitely more precious to me than the Temple ever was. Your soul is where you dwell and I’m interested in you. I want you to live in intimate friendship with me now, and for all eternity. The sinful world and your own sins have cluttered and defaced your soul. My grace is purifying you, healing you, helping you become the person I created you to be. Trust me in times of trouble; turn to me. I love you too much to be satisfied until you are all you were meant to be.

page 247, The Better Part

What’s the new song God wants to put in your heart?

Could Jesus be using these dark days of fear and isolation to do for your soul what a scalpel in a surgeon’s hand does for your body?

Are you like me? Do you resist God? What was wrong with our old life, our old song, huh? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps He wants something more for us. Do you feel God has you on His Potter’s wheel? I feel His hands on me as the wheel spins.

Can you feel yourself being shaped anew?

What is it about the newness of a song that’s important? What new shift or creative outlet is at work within you?

When the Bible’s exhorts us to sing ‘new’ songs, God’s reminding us He is faithful, creative, and still working on us! 

We are not yet all that he created us to be. But we’re getting there.

Are you willing to let him work in your heart?

It’s not easy allowing God to work in your heart. One saying taught me why I need to embrace growth.

You’re either green and growing, or ripe and rotten.

Are you willing to grow a little?

We encounter Christ in Scripture. Let Him doctor your heart, heal your weary soul, find you a new song.

Look through some of the verses below to help you ‘sing a new song’: it is echoed by

David, who had to wait for God to rescue him and put a ‘new song in [his] mouth’ (Psalm 40:3);



God’s people, singing as a freewill offering in joy for all he has done (Psalm 144:9);and by the Elders and people of God praising the Lamb at the renewal of all things (Revelation 5:9).

I hope they inspire you to find your “new song” and respond to his grace with a willing heart.

Psalm 96:1-2

Oh sing to the Lord a new song;

sing to the Lord, all the earth!

Sing to the Lord, bless his name;

tell of his salvation from day to day.

Psalm 144:9

I will sing a new song to you, O God;

upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you

Isaiah 42:10

Sing to the Lord a new song,

his praise from the end of the earth,

you who go down to the sea, and all that fills it,

the coastlands and their inhabitants.

Psalm 98:1-3

Oh sing to the Lord a new song,

for he has done marvelous things!

His right hand and his holy arm

have worked salvation for him.

The Lord has made known his salvation;

he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.

He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness

to the house of Israel.

All the ends of the earth have seen

the salvation of our God.

Psalm 33:1-3

Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous!

Praise befits the upright.

Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre;

make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!

Sing to him a new song;

play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.

Psalm 149:1-2

Praise the Lord!

Sing to the Lord a new song,

his praise in the assembly of the godly!

Let Israel be glad in his Maker;

let the children of Zion rejoice in their King!

Psalm 40:1-3

I waited patiently for the Lord;

he inclined to me and heard my cry.

He drew me up from the pit of destruction,

out of the miry bog,

and set my feet upon a rock,

making my steps secure.

He put a new song in my mouth,

a song of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear,

and put their trust in the Lord.

 Source: https://thinkfaith.net/fisch/blog/sing-new-song

Georgina Bartlett 

Are you ready for a new beginning?

Are you on the verge of a new beginning? Where in your life are you ready for a fresh start or a recharge?

I’m ready for some reshaping on the Potter’s wheel. Are you?

Click here for more.

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Spiritual Questions add up: Sorting a sense of loss

I didn’t realize it was one of those spiritual questions at the time.

“What do you want me to do now?” Mom asked Dad and me.

She’d been in the ICU for seven weeks fighting sepsis—the body’s overreaction to an infection. It threatens damage and ultimately shutdown of multiple organ systems.

She never asked this question before.

Mom was a voracious reader, thinker and researcher in the areas of finance and medicine. She was never at a loss of things to do. So the question, “What do you want me to do?” stands out in my memory. She usually made up her own mind.

Because she was not herself, because she lacked focus or strength, she followed whatever we suggested. It was one of the last questions she ever asked me.

What do You want? Do I want that?

I find myself asking the same question these days.

“What do you want me to do?”

I ask it of myself as a creative. What do I want to write about and why?

I ask it of God as His child. I want to do you will, Lord. What is it? How can I please You today?

And you, reader. What about you? With all that’s going on with you, what would you like to see me do or write?

What stirs in your soul or spirit that you’d like to read here? If you could, sweet reader, what topic or emotion or leadership skill do you wish you could pick out of my brain and discuss?

Are there spiritual questions you’d like to ask anonymously?

We’re out of sorts and at a loss

Mom wasn’t feeling herself when she made it out of her hospital bed and home after seven weeks of laying on her back at death’s door. She asked for direction. Her mind needed a certain focus.

photography by Chris Manion c2017

Like my mom, we aren’t feeling ourselves these days, either. Even if we aren’t sick. We’re out of sorts for a variety of reasons.

Death’s door seems a lot closer to many of us. An unknown future hovers like morning fog with the pandemic.

We look for direction, something on which to focus. Or, if we have a focus, a job, we struggle to keep our thoughts aligned to it.

Our thoughts flap like hummingbird wings and dart hither and thither at caffeinated speeds.

Photo by Steve Corey

Covid19 pandemic timing coincides with a fallow field creative time I chose for this year. I should be fine, theoretically, doing my research for my historical novel, learning my writing craft, b-r-e-a-t-h-i-n-g rest into my spirit.

I don’t feel fine. I’m restless, unfocused, my willpower deflated. I tell myself it’s okay, it’s downtime for me creatively, but my type A shadow self stretches, uncomfortable from sitting too long and tries to stir up trouble in our unstable environment. I turn to the Bible over and over again.

“Be Strong,” God tells us”

Whether you’re leading yourself or a family, a company or a group, a team or a church choir, your perspective needs the big-picture. When the job feels too big and your resources too small, listen to the words the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets.

“‘Be strong, all you peope of the land, ‘ says the Lord, ‘and work; for I AM with you . . . My Spirit remains among you; do not fear!”

HAGGAI 2: 4-5

This is hard stuff we’re dealing with (pandemic, elections, recession) and our emotions feel stretched. We’ve given up some things. Lost some things. And because of that loss, we find ourselves waffling, maybe even pushing back, or rewarding ourselves with comfort food.

Could your spiritual questions be grief in disguise?

You are not alone in the disconnect, sadness, overwhelm, anger, denial, sense of loss—including loss of life’s direction—you’re feeling. I wonder if they’re part of a strange sort of grief.

We’re all asking questions, aren’t we? Our questions offer clues for our journey. They may be simple questions. And they may be spiritual questions in disguise. Write yours down or bring them to your prayer time with your Creator. They deserve exploring. And answers.

My main character in the historical novel I’m writing feels these emotions as she waits for the next shift in her life. She’s no longer married. People believe something that isn’t true about her. Grief is part of her experience I’m writing about these days.

Stay tuned as I explore grief and maybe some more about this character in the next blog post.

Reader survey

What spiritual questions do you want to ask God when you get to heaven? Is there one in particular? Click here to answer. You might see an answer in a future blog post!

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Inspiration for when we show up to make art.

When we show up to make art. That phrase of author Mirabai Starr pulled me up quick.

I show up. That’s what I tell myself. I’m dependable when asked to do something. 

Mirabai Starr holds up a different kind of truth below, something a little deeper. Something a little more tender.

It’s the beauty that calls all artists, writers, actors, sculptors, photographers, dancers and musicians. The fire in our souls. The pain we hold.

I especially appreciate the sense of birthing, of getting out of our own way, of tuning onto something beyond ourselves, of stepping into not knowing. Of loosening control.

“When we show up to make art, we need to first get still enough to hear what wants to be expressed through us, and then we need to step out of the way and let it. We must be willing to abide in a space of not knowing before we can settle into knowing. Such a space is sacred. It is liminal, and it’s numinous. It is frightening and enlivening. It demands no less than everything, and it gives back tenfold.”

Mirabai Starr

Do you know this space? I bet you do. The Mystery of creativity. Have you ever considered your muse to be Mystery Himself, the Lord of all that is?

What a sense of awe we behold when we co-create a little human with God. Why not live in that same awe about our creative work?

I wonder to myself how things might shift if I consider all my writing to be collaborative writing. Instead of bearing all the weight of a new book or blog post or proposal on the shoulders of my own efforts and ideas, how different, dare I say joyful, might be the creative experience if I imagine turning over my work to my Divine Partner and wait for feedback?

When we show up to make art

Non-creatives may not fully understand the courage it takes to show up for art and share it with the world when whatever feedback we get is done. We step back and look at our work and decide that’s our truth at that present moment. As good as we can make it. And give it birth.

For writers like me, giving birth is the moment we push the SUBMIT button. Such a little movement of our finger. Such a huge fear the world will disapprove or dislike it. And by it, I mean us. They will disapprove or dislike us.

The work of a creative is so personal. The submission of it to the public feels like a deep breath of vulnerability.

“There is a vital connection between creativity and mysticism,” continues Mirabai Starr. “To engage with the creative impulse is to agree to take a voyage into the heart of the Mystery. Creativity bypasses the discursive mind and delivers us to the source of our being. When we allow ourselves to be a conduit for creative energy, we experience direct apprehension of that energy. We become a channel for grace. To make art is to make love with the sacred.”

How does the word mysticism strike you? Do you sense a connection between creativity and mysticism? I’ve been attracted and repelled by the word for years. I think we’re starting to become friends.

Each time the word “mystic” or “mysticism” gives me the heebie-jeebies, I remind myself it means an encounter with God. Lots of us have had those.

Innocuous flicker moments of a voice speaking in our innermost center.

Whispers we’re not sure we should pay attention to.

Fall-on-your-knees experiences.

A light bulb moment.

A brief glimmer of something. We call them many things, these mystical moments. They happen at different times, often when we’ve given ourselves a chance to be still.

Fallow Time is important for creatives.

“Artistic self-expression necessitates periods of quietude in which it appears that nothing is happening. Like a tree in winter whose roots are doing important work deep inside the dark earth, the creative process needs fallow time. We have to incubate inspiration.”

Mirabai Starrn

I love that phrase “incubate inspiration.” I cherish productivity, so I struggle with fallow time even when I know I need it. It feels like skipping class, and I have to give myself permission to take it. Even then, anxiety rises when I’m not “doing” anything productive. Mirabai addresses that next.

“We need empty spaces for musing and preparing, experimenting and reflecting. Society does not value its artists, partly because of the apparent lack of productivity that comes with the creative life. This societal emphasis on goods and services is an artifact of the male drive to erect and protect, to engineer and execute, to produce and control.

Do you have a empty space for musing?

“Art begins with receptivity. Every artist, in a way, is feminine, just as every artist is a mystic. And a political creature. Making art can be a subversive act, an act of resistance against the deadening lure of consumption, an act of unbridled peacemaking disguised as a poem or a song or an abstract rendering of an aspen leaf swirling in a stream.”

Reference: Adapted from Mirabai Starr’s Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics (Sounds True: 2019), 159-160.

When we show up to make art, our Divine Collaborator is writing and painting and dancing and sculpting right beside us. All smiles. He loves the creative process, especially when we join Him in it. Especially when we don’t leave Him out of it.

Thank you, artist friend of mine, not only for reading my blog, but for creating beautiful work in your own unique way. I salute you.

Additional posts on creativity. Click here and here.

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The one thing that revitalized my writing.

One writing tip I hear over and over again is to prioritize writing every day if you can. I hadn’t done that this year but I did do one thing that revitalized my writing in 2019: I completed a whole month of writing for NaNoWriMo..

In November 2019, I took my first dive into the National Novel Writing Month. This group draws tens of thousands of writers each year to their online site which tracks your writing. The originators set the goal of writing 50,000 words for the first draft of a novel – in one month.

I’ve never written a novel before but an idea for a historical women’s fiction book came to me as I ended an online course by Margie Lawson on Deep Editing and Rhetorical Devices. I jumped in to NaNoWriMo with no intention of writing 50,000 words. My goal: see what I could do and how far I could get.

A cool word count graph on the site introduced me to tracking my daily writing. My graph grew upward diagonally for a few days, then flat for a couple. At the end of November, I had 17,000 words completed in my rough draft. But before I could go further, I realized I needed to learn more about writing fiction such as plot, character development, and POV.

With a pile of craft books in hand, I designed an at-home fiction course study for myself. I graphed it manually (I love filling in the columns as I finish a section of a book) and was on my way to learning how to write a novel.

Beginning in January, I gave myself permission for a fallow year – a year to rest a bit and learn about fiction writing. Beside occasional journaling, I wrote only for my blog and periodical articles that I feared submitting.

After resting a while, the itch to write returned.

Some authors encourage tracking your writing, so I started a daily word count with a not-too-subtle-form titled Writing Habit. Knowing how many daily words you write on average allows writers to project how long it will take to finish an essay, novella or book.

Problem: when I could defocus from pandemic fears, I studied the craft of fiction writing by reading and taking courses. I wasn’t currently writing my novel. Unsure of my antagonists and loosely playing with a plot with holes in it, I didn’t feel comfortable writing the next scene until I’d made some decisions.

When I wrote a blog post or article, I’d fill in a box with the word count. The Writing Habit Chart looked like a string bikini.

After a few months of looking at the skimpy word counts on the chart, I concluded I had not formed a writing habit. It would take years before I got my first draft done and edited at this rate. I began to wonder if it was all worth it. The pandemic didn’t help. I moped. I procrastinated. I couldn’t focus. I posted on social media as a way to avoid facing the fact my novel wasn’t going anywhere.

Does Social Media writing count?

I decided to try Instagram for a change and played with how to make images there appear attractive to the eye like art displayed in a museum. Surely finding followers on Instagram was part of my brand development, I rationalized. It tied loosely to my writing. Sure.

As I clicked on other Instagramers, I noticed some wrote long bursts of thoughts and vulnerable self-examinations. Over time, I made the connection these were microbloggers.

Discovering microblogging.

I tried microblogging one day and found it easier than my blog: no tedious SEO work, extra graphics, tags, sub-headings, et al. I became a micro-blogger as I read through writing craft books. I worked out my pandemic overwhelm with gardening when I couldn’t focus on reading.

Nothing much got logged in my Writing Habit Chart the first two months of the pandemic. I reminded myself I’d endorsed some fallow field resting time. Resting time is important for creatives. The type-A in me didn’t buy this rationale. My pandemic brain didn’t know what to think.

I seemed unable to form a new writing habit in 2020.

Enter a nudge from the Holy Spirit or my guardian angel. I never know who to give credit for muse moments and brainstorms, and I don’t spend too much time wondering.

Something didn’t set write with the way I thought of myself as a writer and the blank days on the chart.

Someone in heaven seemed bent on a solution. I looked over my recent Instagram posts and checked the word counts.

The one thing that revitalized my writing.

Huh, I thought as I entered a few numbers on the chart. I have been writing. Not big amounts. Ahem, that’s why it’s called microblogging. But filling in my Word Habit chart felt like a spring breeze to my frozen mind.

The graph quickly showed me I had believed a lie. My inner critic told me I hadn’t been writing because I tracked only the manuscript writing. I smiled in gratitude for the Holy Spirit guiding me to the truth of my writing life. I am writing, just not writing my Work in Progress (WIP) at the moment. My WIP has become, at least for this month, microblogging on Instagram.

The truth shall set you free.

John 18:32 ESV

We believe what we see. Blessed are those who believe in their writing that readers have yet to see.

An insight dawned in my joy at the shimmering chart of small word number counts. It’s more important to write first and edit second if we want an accurate measure of how many words we put together in sentences in a day. When I edited as I went, I never knew how many words spilt from my mind. I deleted so many. I couldn’t measure what didn’t live to be counted.

Seeing and measuring what you do makes it easier to see the lies we tell ourselves and know the truth about the daily habit of writing. I look forward to putting in today’s word count on my chart.

I still don’t know if I’m capturing all I’m writing each day, but I’m getting better at it. And that is worth writing about. Here’s another unexpected wonderful.

Tiny steps can still take you where you want to go; you just need to dedicate some of your time to yourself, which is a form of self-respect and love.

Drl Daju Suzanne Friedman

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Unexpected Wonderfuls: Part 2 of this Strange New Season

In this new season of uneasiness and unknowns, finding unexpected wonderfuls continued as I worked in my front yard this week.

“When are you taking your Easter eggs down?” a hand-holding senior couple asked as they walked by our two crepe myrtle trees with their dangling pastel-colored eggs.

“We keep them up the whole Easter season. We celebrate Easter for fifty days until Pentecost,” I replied.

“Oh!” They nodded, smiled and walked on.

This safe-distance-conversation reminded me some people celebrate Easter for a day. A single day. A single event. Then life moves on.

One might call that Christ-Lite spirituality.

A new season of resurrection.

The Easter season is a big deal. If your spiritual life or church fails to bring the fact that we are resurrection people to the forefront of your consciousness during this holy Easter season, then the Alleluias I sing each day are for you. Check out my Facebook Live morning devotion, First Fruits, from my backyard Monday through Friday between 7:45 a.m. Central time.

Click to join my Facebook Live.

Our lives—especially this particular pandemic season—are so much more than what appears to the visible world. Like Easter, they have layers of depths to them and interconnections to a degree none of us realize consciously. Every season does matter. Every life matters in the Body of Christ.

I added “new appreciation for Easter season” to my list of unexpected wonderfuls along with “gratitude for neighbors who stop and talk” and “Easter egg conversations.”

I struggled with my writing earlier this month. I know I wasn’t alone in this. To be gentle with my spirit, I gave myself permission to take my foot off the peddle and coast the writing mind for a while. I relaxed.

Unexpected wonderfuls like woodpeckers and children playing along the canal and owls hooting in the night became moments to appreciate and enjoy without the back-of-mind pressure to get back to being productive. One unexpected wonderful: my unusual patience at waiting for my Heavenly Blue Morning Glories to grow. They’re almost long enough to curl around nearby posts. We’ve got a ways to wait for them, like a lot of things these days.

Photo by LongitudeLatitude



Deep breaths of days gone by

I’m taking plenty of deep breaths in often unsuccessful attempts to calm my nervous tummy. But I’m also taking deep breaths of a slowed-down life, like the days gone by when life was a gurgling stream and backyard picnics melted into summers like butter on hot corn-on-the-cob.

My soul, my tired spirit needed this rest—unsought, undesired—and these deep breaths and deep rests restore my soul the way the ionosphere repairs itself these days.

Let the unexpected wonderfuls in your life open your own inner healing and deep breathing. Then we can breathe some of that healing into our fragile but beautiful world.

The point is that while we are here, Mystery asks us to set aside what disrupts our humanity and belonging for the chance to see what is good and to fix the things that have been broken by hate. As we go, let’s pray into the world what we believe is possible.

Kaitlin B. Curtice from her upcoming book, Native: Identity, Belonging and Rediscovering God,

If you’re wondering where you can go online that’s safe from negative news, politics, and marketing ploys, give your soul a break by joining one of these.

1. A lovely, lovely Facebook group called Unintended Positives from shelter-in-place 2020 click here.

2. An amazing Facebook page called A View From My Window or View from My Window. Both pages feature views from people’s window around the world. A safe respite and way to sense solidarity globally as we all stare out our windows.

Read a Christian memoir (click here for mine), escape to a grand hotel in Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow, or begin a devotional. I’m enjoying Terry Murphy’s A Place for Me in God’s Tent.

As always, thank you for reading and sharing my work. I appreciate you.

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Unexpected Wonderfuls Part 1: New ballast in quarantine.

What are unexpected wonderfuls? They are the balast for our lives these days. They are like lightning bugs to a child. Little surprises. New anchoring weights.

Balance is missing if all we do is focus on avoiding the news or dwelling on it these days. I’m a writer and my mind, like many others, retreated and refused to allow me to write for much of this first quarantine month. Unexpected? Yes. Wonderful. No.

I felt guilty not writing.

“It’s been a tough couple of weeks,” one friend wrote. “This last one has been especially rough.” Nothing wonderful in that. Nor unexpected. I wanted to reach through my phone and hug her.

Not everyone’s a hugger, but I am. I miss hugs from friends.

My neighbor spoke of her feelings at a funeral recently as we conversed from opposite sides of the road. In normal times, we hug each other after the funeral, she said. That’s what we do when there are no words. Only not this time. Not for a while. Not now.

I wanted to hug her, too.

image by larsoncoach

Everything strange provides a lesson. If nothing else, we see what we’ve long taken for granted. Sometimes, we discover unexpected wonderfuls in this strange new season.

So instead of wallowing in what I miss and can’t experience, I’m making a list of the unexpected wonderfuls I’m experiencing.

I’m making a list

checking it twice

oops! wrong season.

Getting unexpected attention

The first one: adjusting to so many people being overtly concerned about me. It’s a little strange getting so much extra attention suddenly.

Although I feel I’m still in my late forties, I crossed over. You know? The big 65. It’s a number like any other to me, but so many people attach significance to it. They even make special shopping times for me and others my age. Of course, we have to get up at 6 a.m. to go shopping at 7, the time reserved for seniors these days in my neighborhood.

Geez, I’m having almost as much difficulty accepting this senior status as staying at home and avoiding others.

I had extra forms to fill out at the doctor’s office this year (pre-virus days).

I sat somewhere I didn’t think I’d sit for another twenty years: outside a Medicare office window.

Somehow my husband and I moved into a land of the unknown: senior citizen territory. It’s not like we didn’t see it coming. We just didn’t anticipate this much fussing over us. We didn’t know it’d lead us to an unexpected wonderful.

Meeting Cheyenne

One of the unexpected wonderfuls on my list is meeting 17-year-old Cheyenne. Her grandma lives on my street. Being new to the neighborhood, I introduced myself to grandma Laurie last month on my morning walk.

Recently, a truck delivered a load of rocks for a rock river landscape feature we decided to create in our front yard. Yesterday, Laurie stopped by to say her 17-year-old granddaughter had her work hours cut and wondered if we’d like some help with our rock pile. She told us her deaf granddaughter, Cheyenne, worried that “the old people” were moving the rocks.

It took a moment to realize who her granddaughter was calling “old people” and another moment to digest it. Of course, we said yes. She knocked on our door at 8:00 the next morning.

We moved through that 4-ton pile of rocks with Cheyenne’s joyful help. She reminded me of some ASL (American sign language) signs I’d forgotten while we spoke. While helping us, she bolstered her new car fund and smiled each time we accepted her suggestions about the shape of the “river.” A joyful win-win.

Let’s see. What else? My watch battery died. My back-up watch battery is dead. I’m living without a watch and learning to check my phone for the time, when I have my phone. When I don’t, I’m enjoying the freedom of not knowing the exact time and being okay with that.

If you have a list of things you’re missing during these days of isolation due to Covid19, I invite you to join me in creating a separate list of unexpected wonderfuls. Here’s the start of mine.

A list of Unexpected Wonderfuls

Getting extra attention

Getting exclusive shopping hours

Meeting Cheyenne

Finishing the rock river. Without an aching back.

Planning and planting a new garden by a river bed.

Finding joy in the waiting of seeds to grow.

Noticing what I want can wait.

Rediscovering the importance of routine

Daily prayers with others

Sharing my garden with neighbors and family

Discovering the Marco Polo app

Embracing senior status from at least six feet

Letting go and relaxing

Finding the rhythm of the day without a watch

Drive-through Holy Communion

A new understanding of historical plagues

Discovering my favorite monastery’s live videos

Share your unexpected wonderfuls.

What joys, what unexpected wonderfuls are you discovering these days? Please share a comment below.

Our brains jump around, discombobulated with the exhaustion created by social distancing. I’ve learned taking a rest revives my body, restores my desire to write. Duh! I knew that.

We know a lot. Our brains are overworked helping us remember. Refresh yourself with a shortlist like this.

What’s on your list of unexpected wonderfuls? Have you done a random act of kindness lately? What restores your soul?

Myfriend, Dr. Donna Chacko offers more here. https://www.serenityandhealth.com/blog-post/q-and-a

Check out more reading here. And stay tuned for Part 2.

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Facing Your Fear: Creative Meets the Spiritual

Facing your fear is a part of life these days. You find yourself distracted, unable to focus. Unable to work. To write. To do much of anything.

Using an old pattern of thinking and analyzing things, you may view this pandemonium as avoidance and not facing your fear. We might call it procrastination, for example. This would be wrong in most cases.

For example, in response to the pandemic, I fell into doing housework, laundry, gardening, long-term grocery shopping, etc. Last week, I polished a silver pitcher, for crying out loud. It made me feel better. I’d tripped up my love when a few terse words came unthinking out of my mouth. I’m using it to water the plants. Somehow it feels fitting.

Facing your fear is not procrastination

This conduct is not procrastination so reject any shame that tries to attach itself. We’re doing different actions because the world changed. Whatever actions we take these days will move swirling energies our bodies need to disburse. Our actions are healthy responses to our body’s needs.

Unrelieved stress leads to disease. We move, we cook, we vacuum, we clean. Each action may not be preplanned as in the old days. But we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Photo by storebukkebruse

I heard a creative once describe how he tries to do one really scary thing each year. I mean really scary. Shaking in your boots stuff. It’s part of how he feeds his creativity.

You see, he feels he needs to experience what it’s like to be really scared – like jumping from a plane (with a parachute) – so he can remind himself no matter what he faces, he can make it through. He can face his fears and survive them.

And yes, we’re right there with him in our own homes and apartments these days.

Fear is a big pitfall in the creative life and the spiritual journey. It stops you from moving forward. If you can somehow make it through what scares you, you exercise the muscles you need to repeat facing fear again. That muscle strengthens every time you use it and although you will still quiver and shake at the next scary thing, you now know (from experience) that you can make it through whatever lies ahead.

Photo by IQRemix

You need muscle to be creative.

The creative process engages us in facing our fears and moving through them. I know if you’re not a writer, writing doesn’t look scary to you. Trust me, it is. When you put your work, your vulnerable truth, out into the world, it creates a real ache in the gut or jaw or wherever you hold your fear.

Satan uses fear as one of his great weapons to keep you away from connecting with your heavenly Father. He knows he can conjure up some image of a judgmental God in your mind or get you to believe you are never going to be worthy enough to be loved by God, or forgiven by God. As a result, if or when he succeeds, he keeps you stuck in darkness.

Verses to help you trust in God as you’re facing your fear.

So how do you get out of the darkness when you’re in it? Facing your fears helps in your spiritual journey but no one’s handing you a flashlight. No burning bush appears or speaks to you.

You strengthen your battle muscles by fighting the enemy. For instance, refusing to allow the devil to scare you. So how do you do that? Place your trust in God. Recognize fearful thoughts as not something of God. Speak God’s name out loud. Jesus, I trust in you are the key words of the Divine Mercy chaplet.

When I’m afraid, I place my trust in you.

Psalm 56:3

Do you want a quiver full of verses for your next anxiety attack? Then click here for 16 more verses on trust.

You carry the light of God as His child. That light will always overcome the darkness of fear. Write your story. Someone will surely not like it. Write it anyway. Create your art. Sing your song. Dance your dance. You’ve been given a creative flow, a creative gift some ache to have. We help each other when we use our gifts.

So talk to your Father in heaven and seek His peace. He’s aching to give it to you. Enjoy this easy win-win. He’s relieved to send it; when He does, you get what your heart longs for. And the world gets inspired by your new creation.

Above all, know that I’m praying for you. Please do the same for me.

God’s Patient Pursuit of My Soul, my award-winning memoir, may offer you additional insights and spiritual tools. Click here to read what others say about it.

What are you doing that’s helping you in facing your fears these days?

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Doing Lent Together: Private and Personal Journeys of Faith

Doing Lent together? Do you have a sense of this? Most of us go through Lent in a private way. Perhaps that’s not the best way.

If you’ll join me in our Lenten journey together, I must tell you I’ve already failed my Lenten practice and it’s only the first week.

I gave up chocolate. I rationalized I could have it on Sundays. A few years ago, someone introduced me to the “free Sundays” concept to Lenten fasting and penitence. I thought it sounded like a terrible idea. Then I gave up my judgmental attitude of I’m-holier-than-thou since I never “used” Sunday like that.

What do you think of taking Sunday “off” from whatever your Lenten practice is?

Lent 2020, Week 1

Lent started strong. Until the Friday after Ash Wednesday. Day three. My husband and I visited my daughter’s family in Georgia for the first birthday of her youngest son. As we headed to bed, Tess whispered in my ear, “There’s a little something for you, mostly you—(meaning her father wouldn’t like it much)—on your bed.”

Last time we visited, she left three chocolate Necco Wafers packages for me. Yum! Instant flashback to my childhood; only then, we couldn’t get just chocolate. I had to eat my way through a variety pack avoiding the white “hot” ones and hoping to get more than two chocolate ones.

This time, it was an entire bag of Dove milk chocolates wrapped in pink foil, left over from Valentine’s Day. I’d already consumed a bag back home that I purchased at 50% off the day after Valentine’s Day. There are days when they are impossible to resist, hence my offering them up for Lent.

Oh how we rationalize

They were a love gift, I rationalized. I didn’t purchase them. My daughter did, so I had no control ofver them being there on my bedside table. She bought them to make me happy. The irrational side of my brain swatted the tiny voice of conscience that told me I could stash them in my suitcase and save them for Easter. The evil little minion Satan assigned to me for chocolate duty this Lent suggested it would be good to show her my gratitude by eating a few.

In my commitment to abstinence from chocolate, I offered my husband one.

By Sunday, the bag was empty. Tiny pink folded foil squares clumped on the table like plaque in a heart vein.

On Monday, I went back to being good. By Tuesday, I’d bought chocolate covered ice cream bars and by midnight, had eaten two. The little evil minion helped me rationalize that I’d already broken the chocolate barrier, so it was no big deal. Besides, there’s hardly any chocolate on them.

Why I gave up abstaining

This is why I gave up abstaining from things years ago. I’m not very good at it. Perhaps facing my failure is part of the abstinence practice, restoring my humility in the face of my weakness. Perhaps not.

Photo by Leszek.Leszczynski

 Immediately, I reconsidered switching my Lenten   practice to actively doing something else instead of   giving something up. The giving up part seemed to allow Satan to put a honing beacon on me.

The Holy Spirit gave me a little pat on the head, the way a parent does when an infant stumbles while trying to learn to walk. I see you, He seemed to nod with a beam of love. Try again.

Lent 2020, Week 2

So I’m trying again. And I’m glad you’re with me doing Lent together.

There is power in community. My spirit relaxes after confessing my failure to you, sensing I am not alone in falling down. Perhaps we’ve lost the meaning of Lent because we’ve made it so private, or because it’s become “a personal renewal project.”

Could it be that journeying in community helps us understand the universality of the fallen nature of man? Already I feel the releasing of harsh judgment of myself in your company.

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.

Flannery O’Connor

Doing Lent together helps us find commonality and empathy for one another. I’m so used to being strong and holding myself as an exampe of positive living.  Admitting my failures and confessing sins are lessons in humility. Good lessons. Healthy lessons. Lessons that bring us closer to God.

“The Lenten practices of most Christians are private and personal,” writes Father Bryan Massingale, a professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University in New York.  “We often don’t sense we are doing Lent together” (“Recover Lent,” The Examined Life, U.S. Catholic March 2020, page 10).

“Getting old isn’t for sissies,” Betty White famously said. I can attest to that as I approach the second half of my sixth decade, although I’ve got nothing to complain about.

Getting through Lent isn’t for sissies.

Getting through Lent isn’t for sissies either.

If you like what you’re getting out of life and your spiritual walk, then keep doing what you’re doing. If you don’t, then something has to change. 

Change is challenging. We can do it. Together.

My friend Dr. Chacko wrote a post worth reading on change and the spiritual journey. Let’s get up from our self-pity,

shame,

guilt,

lack of energy,

sickbed,

low sense of worth,

narcissism,

acedia,

lack of commitment,

unworthiness,

and doubt.

Let us thank God for exactly where we are at the moment. Trust He’s using everything for our good.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

We can do this Lent. Together.

Photo by lorenkerns

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God is Patient as He Pursues Your Soul

It seemed improbable—growing a deep relationship with God who is patient while building a successful business. The business was a home-based one. As it grew, it required more and more of my time.

I hired an assistant. My two children helped with minor office tasks. I signed up for a Bible study and my mother wondered where I found the time.

God Draws Us Close

All the while, God seemed to draw me closer to Him. I felt longings in my heart only He could assuage. I like the word assuage. It sounds a little like swaying, and when I pray, I picture myself in God’s arms being swayed the way we had to jiggle our daughter to sleep, walking in the hallway, bouncing her in our arms. She wanted to be jiggled. And God, it seems, wanted to sway with me.

I resisted of course. Why should I do things His way when I could see so clearly that my way worked just fine? Yeah, right. That longing wasn’t going away and neither was my temper. When the 5:00 p.m. hour began crazing my children into hungry behaviors as I whipped through the house collecting materials for my presentation that evening. The makeup bag went in the car with me to be applied at stops. I was a sweating, frustrated, out-of-control mom/business woman and God was wooing me.

From Diapers to Prison

In God’s Patient Pursuit of My Soul, I pull back the curtain on the inner struggles of building a relationship with God among the everyday moments of diapers and family and the not-so-everyday moments of prison ministry and contemplative meditation. I used to think my business and my walk with Jesus were two separate paths.

As I wrote the story of God’s pursuit, the fact that it was His story of winning my heart and not my story slipped into my consciousness like the dream state before waking when you know the alarm or the baby will beg for your attention any second. I had to rewrite a bunch of times to get it right.

If your thinking allows you to compartmentalize various parts of your life or relationships, if your thoughts include two separate paths for your family/work and the other for God, click here to read what others say about God’s Patient Pursuit of My Soul.

God is Patient

Just as He does in everything, God stayed near and coaxed me closer, gifting me with what I needed. He kept me close to learn His purpose for my life. He dropped crumbs as we walked together

In the hours and days before my peak moment in my career—the summit experience, the camera flashes, the cheering and adulation—I wanted to go hide somewhere. How did I change so? I worked so hard and long to reach this point.

Then one day He stood in my way like the angel before Balaam’s mule.

How in the world do we learn to find God in the midst of the chaos and speed with which our lives spin? Is it possible to live a contemplative life and grow a monstrously successful team of stay-at-home moms and businesswomen?

The lessons from the Master continue as He patiently pursues me. May the stories from my life shine a beam of light on your path as you walk with the same Master who works with you. Learning how He works in others’ lives triggers light in our darkness the way a motion sensor clicks on a light near an entranceway.

Discover God’s Patience

what He did when I forgot my prayers one day;

what is centering prayer and how to have a prayer life with little ones;

ghosts in the chapel;

a foreshadowing of death;

and the lesson I learned about pride and being late.

Writing this book

It took me over a decade to write this book, one of the most difficult things I’ve accomplished in my life. It could be better. We could all be better, but here we are doing the best we can. May grace touch your soul through the pages of God’s Patient Pursuit of My Soul and His peace permeate your heart.

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Learning how to write believable characters.

A successful story revolves around believable characters. Plot is important, but it’s the characters we think about and miss when we finish a good book.

After writing non-fiction for decades, my wild side took over last month and I accepted an inner dare from my muse to try writing fiction. I joined the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) community and used the month of November to get my feet wet in the art of novel writing.

When I got to a transition point in the plot, I realized I didn’t know enough about my main character and hardly anything at all about the man she was about to marry. So I stopped writing and began studying and thinking and imagining. I needed to answer the question, “Who are you?” for each of my characters.

Who are my characters?

“You can never know enough about your characters.” —W. Somerset Maugham

Photo by The British Library

I realized I couldn’t create believable characters on the run, so to speak. That means I’m probably not a “pantser” (those who write by the seat of their pants). So I created the characters with a slow cook method. Writing and cooking do not appear to be related cousins, but in my mind they come from the same lineage. I’ve marinated my characters for several weeks. I’m sure writers the world over have done this for centuries, but the process is new to me and wonder-making. They’re going to be delicious!

Making believable characters

Beside the interview process I’ve researched in several books and online sources, I found the following link for using the Enneagram something I’ve been thinking would be helpful to me as I create more depth in several characters.

They’re calling, my Italian soon-to-be believable characters. Gotta go fill in the blanks of their lives. Happy writing to all my writer friends. Arrivederci!

Photo by pedrosimoes7

Check out my award-winning memoir.

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