Chris Manion's Blog, page 7

Read a great book? Leave a Review. Here’s a 35 word example.

Have you read a great book? Did you read any book reviews before buying it? You can bless the author by leaving a few words on Amazon in the ‘Review’ section.

Many readers do not realize the importance of reviews to the authors they read.

When you close the cover of a book with a smile, share your smile with a brief sentence of two.
When you find yourself thinking about characters or scenes from a book for days after finishing a book, the author deserves to hear from you. So do those of us who share similar interests and likes.

Start Small, like 35 words
I think most of us don’t have much confidence in choosing words good enough to post for a review.  You are good enough. Your thoughts are yours.  They can be a gift if you are willing to share.


One or two simple sentences about what you liked or didn’t like about the book truly helps both the author (Amazon promotes books with significant reviews) and readers considering their next read. The best reviews give the reader a reason to read the book. It gives them the confidence to spend their time on something you enjoyed, or, it saves them from wasting their time on something they can tell from your words that they may not enjoy.


In the end, like movie reviews, each book review is simply one person’s opinion. Share yours generously. Let the rest of us decide if we agree with you.

Write a book review. You’re an Expert
You’re one book ahead of the rest of us who haven’t read it. So squelch any misgivings you may have about writing a few sentences. Remind yourself you have completed something. You’ve finished reading one author’s work. What was it like for you?

 

Here’s a 35-word example:

5 Stars. “Chris shares from her heart. It’s personal, insightful, challenging and thought-provoking. You will be changed as you read it if you let God into your life the way Chris has. A wonderful spiritual boost.”  www.tinyurl.com/GodisPatient

Click here for more.

 

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Seeking God’s Face: Lessons in Looking but Not Seeing

Seeking God’s face reminds me of finding the hidden image within pictures like this tiger. Some see the hidden image easily, others work hard at it before spying it. Some never see it and give up.

I’ve looked at enough of these hidden face images over the years to know that to find what’s hidden, I have to stop looking for it and almost de-focus my eyes from whatever the dominant image is. Only then does the hidden image become clear to me. When I strain to see it, the hidden image remains undetected.

“The hidden face is nothing compared to that gorgeous tiger,” one of my friends told me.

I think that’s part of the challenge of this particular image. The tiger is gorgeous. That’s all I wanted to see. Perhaps therein lies the lesson: we have to be willing to take our eyes from what we enjoy looking at, where we find pleasure and beauty, in order to be able to see others right before our eyes.

In order to serve our neighbors and love them as Jesus taught us (see Matthew 22:39) we must first “see” them. We must be seeking God’s face among one another. This simple hidden image exercise is a lesson in how the poor, the immigrants, the abused, the elderly, the handicapped, the sick, and the homeless remain invisible in society. We glance away, we skip the news stories about them, we ignore the bruises or the person in the wheelchair. We choose not to look under the viaducts or bushes to see the homeless or buy them a fast food meal.

We look but we don’t see. God remains unseen by us, too. We don’t want to take our eyes off the things of this earth long enough to see Him in His creation and in one another. Although Jesus said “I am with your always,” we constantly complain that we can’t see Him. “How do we know He’s there?” we ask. Are we really looking?

When I listen to the gospel readings at Mass, I often think, How like the Jews in Jesus’ time we often behave. Jesus stood before them daily, worked countless miracles before their eyes, gave them endless descriptions of His Father and heaven, but they wanted to see the tiger – in their case, an image of Messiah they imagined in their minds who looked and acted nothing like Jesus – and therefore, couldn’t see beyond Jesus’ skin, beyond His earthly mother and foster father.

They couldn’t see Him for who He is.

My Mother and Tigers

My mother loved tigers. She had several pictures of them by her desk and on her fridge. We’d go to Out of Africa Wildlife Park near her home in Arizona so she could sit and watch their mesmerizing faces and powerful paws pad along the side of their fenced habitat.

When I first looked for the image of the hidden face in this tiger image, I didn’t want to pull my eyes very far away from the tiger’s face. I searched for something small in the fur above his eyes. As my eyes searched, the knowledge that my mother loved this creature triggered emotions. Memories flipped across my mind’s eye.

 

We look but we don’t see sometimes because we’re thinking of other things. Electronic images and sounds work like the tiger to distract us from being present in the now of this moment, from seeing someone who perhaps needs our help and doesn’t know how to ask for it.

Sounds and digital images also work to block us from noticing the Presence of God in this moment.

In every moment.

The love of the One who made us pads powerfully beside us as Advocate, brother, and our daily bread.

Seeking God’s Face is an Active Way of Praying.

When You said, “Seek My face,” My heart said to You, “Your face, LORD, I will seek.”  Psalm 27:8 NKJV

Once you see the face in the image of the tiger, it’s hard to keep your eyes off it.

I’ve concluded it’s the same when the Holy Spirit bestows His grace upon us when we are seeking God’s face. It’s hard to keep our eyes off God when He opens our eyes to see Him hidden everywhere.

So I’ve learned that as scary as it feels, God wants us to open our heart to Him. When we do, the transformation we read about in the gospels takes place. Suddenly, it’s easy to see Him everywhere.

His image is no longer hidden from our eyes.

 

I love those who love me,

And those who seek me diligently will find me.

Proverbs 8:17-19 NKJV

 

Click here for all scriptural promises to those who seek God. Click here to schedule Chris as your next speaker.

Promises to Those Who Seek God

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A Tree and a Shoot Remind Us: Hope is not Lost

Trees are my friends. At the age of sixteen, I hugged my first tree on a lonely night when I didn’t feel loved. Boy-loved. I walked out to the backyard and needed some comfort from someone. The tree seemed willing.

If you love trees and don’t know why exactly, I found an answer today that may give some insight for you. You see, God has used trees to teach us some of our most important lessons.

The first tree we come upon in the Bible is the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. We all know how that story went. Author Tosca Lee wrote an evocative, sensual description of that scene in Havah: The Story of Eve. I highly recommend her book.

What’s a tree got to do with it?
First of all, to paraphrase Tina Turner, what’s a tree got to do with it? While I like trees and all, what’s that got to do with hope?
I found hope in, of all places, a chant from a Good Friday service.


“For when Adam first offended,
Eating that forbidden fruit,
not all hopes of glory ended


With the serpent at the root:


Broken nature would be mended


By a second tree and shoot.”


 


When you feel low and out-of-sorts, your brain  doesn’t work too well.  As a result, you forget some things.  it’s important to remember that Jesus outwitted the tempter. The devil’s the one trying to convince you that you’re all alone. One word from you will break that lie:
Jesus.

Your Feelings of Rejection

When we hear the words above and below from the chant of Good Friday’s Catholic prayer service, they speak to us in our rejection. We all know the feeling.  Your  feeling.





Your head drops as your  heart aches in that down-and-out dark time. You feel down because the world rejects you. The devil wants you to forget the closeness of Jesus in that moment. How He came to earth to experience rejection, to surrender when He held all the power in the world to stop those who wanted Him dead. To have His best friend deny Him and another betray Him. We know how that feels.

The Jesus Prayer


Pray the Jesus Prayer.  Read more about this twelve-word prayer here.  You will find unbridled spiritual power in this Scripture-based prayer.


Your Purpose: Hope

Did Jesus trade places with any one of the soldiers assailing Him? Did He put one of them on the whipping post or cross instead of Him? No.

That did not fulfill His purpose. That would not show obedience to His Father. Jesus did not use His power because that would not teach us The Way. Maybe we might have wanted to do something like that if we were in His place, or at least thought it. But not Him.

I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. John 14:6

“So he came, the long-expected,
Not in glory, not to reign;
Only born to be rejected,
Choosing hunger, toil and pain,
Till the scaffold was erected
And the Pashal Lamb was slain.”




So while it may feel counter-intuitive, always claim your joy. 

First of is, claiming your joy will confuse your enemies. I love that.
Jesus placed His joy in you at the price of His death. An eternal gift. Open it.
Your Gift: Joy

 Jesus shared what He knew with us “…so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” John 15:11 NAB


 Always thank your trees. And Jesus. And hope.



For other posts to encourage you, click here and here.
Thank you for spending a few moments with me. May you rest in the fullness of God’s peace.

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A Four-Letter Word Helps Me Focus This Year

For the last five years or so, I’ve chosen a word for the year. It focuses me; gives pathways to my thoughts and intentions. I like it! The year I retired, my word was JOY.

 

This year, I tried a program that generates a word for you. The word I received didn’t resonate with me after sitting on it for a day, so I clicked for a new word, and then another, Dense me, I finally prayed about what word God

wanted me to keep before my heart and mind. Quite frankly, prayer clearly held better prospects. Doesn’t it always? Duh!

 

How slow I am to learn the ways of God.

Open is my new word for 2018. After completing my first book last year and the gazillion things you need

to learn as a new author, I was ready to listen with an open mind and an open heart to what God wanted of me next. Open Mind, Open Heart, by the way, is one of my favorite books by Thomas Keating.

New Word = New Focus

When you’re pregnant, you suddenly notice other pregnant women. When you have a key focus word held before your mind, your awareness is drawn to references to that word in all kinds of places. I noticed it first in scripture.

I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. Revelation 3:8 NIV

I like open doors. My mind sees them as symbols of new beginnings. Invitations to enter a new space or an old space in a new way.

… for a wide door for effective service has opened to me, and there are many adversaries. 1 Corinthians 16:9

There will be adversaries

Yes, there are adversaries of which we must be aware. When we open ourselves to the Lord’s service, the evil one gets irritable. He makes plans to dissuade or interrupt you. Opening our hearts in pure prayer and praise blinds him and makes him unable to act.

Then God made her eyes open, and she saw a water-spring, and she got water in the skin and gave the boy a drink. Gen. 21:19

If I am to be intentionally OPEN this year, I expect both obstructions from evil and grace from God. Jesus has so few who give Him their open hearts (according to Gabrielle Bossis in He and I which I reference often in my memoir, God’s Patient Pursuit of My Soul (click here to read more about it) and Elizabeth Kindelmann in her spiritual diary The Flame of Love).

Then the Lord made Balaam’s eyes open, and he saw the angel of the Lord in the way with his sword in his hand: and he went down on his face to the earth. Numbers 22:31

The Lord made Balaam’s and Hagar’s eyes open in a way only He can do. IMy soul delights to sit in centering prayer, a receptive form of contemplative praying, and wait upon the Lord in an attentive open soul stance.

 

Pray. Then write.

 

O Pen! This word holds a lovely exclamation for my favorite writing instrument. O Lord, what would you have me write this year?

Written in response to the word prompt – intentional – from my Five Minute Friday community. Check out what others had to say about intentional. Write something there yourself or share in the comments below what you like about being intentional.

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How Does Being Different Feel?

Today’s word prompt: Different

I don’t know when being different from others awakened in my consciousness, but certainly, a little before high school, I understood my way of acting and thinking did not conform to others’ actions or thoughts. It didn’t bother me much because I knew no other way to be. When I tried to act like others, I failed. I felt uncomfortable, almost like lying, not being true to my self.

Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, resonated with me early in life (and with millions of others). It starts, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” and ends with “I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

Why am I different? Photo by h.koppdelaney

Jesus took that road. I think He has too few of us who offer Him loyalty or friendship because He is different, too. He does and says what others find hard to take. He is unconventional. He seeks no accolades or power. He gives people choices to leave Him. He’s odd in a holy kind of way. He speaks of things we cannot see and indirectly in parables. He issues hard-to-understand edicts.

When we find someone different, prejudice often forms. What an excellent exercise to give ourselves: to find something in common with the different ones; to seek to understand how their heart speaks.

[Every week, a single word is proposed for a five-minute blog post by Kate Motaung here at Five Minute Friday]

Click here to read more about God’s Patience Pursuit of My Soul or here for another Five minute Friday blogposts.

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Near – Five Minute Friday challenge

Near

The warmth of the fire when I sit close

The baby’s smell when I kiss his head

The feel of God’s kiss when He brushes wind against my cheek

The rush of hope as a goal comes within sight

Near as our breath, He is

Hovering over us like a protective new parent

Guardian angel unfelt but present

The communion of saints so very close

The smell of yeast bread moments before the timer

The salty air in nostrils on beach walks

The presence of deceased loved ones on special days

Relationships grown cold in need of nurturing

Five Minutes Friday is a blog that encourages Christian writers to spend five minutes each Friday writing on the word or theme of the day. http://fiveminutefriday.com/community/

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Thirst lessons from the Samaritan Woman

We all thirst for God, whether we know it or not. The Samaritan woman at the well is a story that intrigues me. I can relate to her loneliness, her defensiveness about some of the poor choices she made, her avoidance of others.

She was less than open to Jesus when He talked to her. She even tried to change the subject, but He redirected her attention to the “gift of God,” to the “living water” she longed for. Perhaps she purposely misunderstood what He was saying. The truth is often hard to face. But who can avoid it when God Himself tells you He’s talking to you, offering Himself to you?

I know this moment. Do you?

All her defenses crumbled when Jesus told her He was the Messiah. The vulnerability of her sin suddenly broke upon her. She was moved deeply that God was actively pursuing her. She believed. The change caused her to focus on Jesus rather than herself. She became an immediate witness for Jesus.

God’s Patient Pursuit of My Soul poured out of me because of a similar transforming incident that caused me to want to witness to Jesus, too. I couldn’t help myself. Still c

 

an’t. The living water presses like a fountain upward from within me. She must have felt something similar, for she no longer hid her shame but ran to tell everyone she could that this man Jesus knew all about her. Through this many came to believe.

Water ripples converge into one another like our thirst converges into God

How often we choose to argue the fine points of doctrine rather than surrender ourselves to Christ and love others as He did. That’s a tall order. To love like that. Like the Samaritan woman, we try to change the subject. We perhaps purposefully think we are not capable of loving like Christ did, so why even try? We thirst and yet avoid the very source that will quench our thirst: Jesus.

We don’t let Him in. We hold Him at a distance thinking it must be a mirage. He can’t really be pursuing me. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. I’m a lost cause. And until I let him in–until you let Him in–I cannot love like He does.

 

 

Oh, the joy of love when we do let down our defenses. Jesus gives us unconditional love and acceptance. It’s hard to believe, I know. He’s pursuing you. You feel it. You push it away. And then He shows up again (He never really left) and offers you a sip of water for your thirst.

The Bible is full of stories like ours. Whatever you’re thirsting for, wherever you’re seeking, can be found in Christ. It’s a terrible thing to thirst. Jesus knows this well. “I thirst,” he said from the cross.  He thirsts for you and me. Will you quench His thirst today?

 

Read the story of my thirst for a relationship to assuage my loneliness–or what I thought was loneliness–how God pursued me throughout my life and when I chose to surrender. Click here. I hope it will encourage you.

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On Time: Delusional Thinking

I’m so delusional about time. I always think I can squeeze in more than is humanly possible in any day. I have a long list of things I want to read each day on top of all my To Do’s. I never get to all of them.

In ten minutes, I have to get ready to leave for Mass. I read one of Sarah Kay’s poems while my eggs cook. She’s so delicious, I allow myself only one poem a day. I cheated today and read two.

My strawberries and cream, eggs and toast wait on the table. My coffee is already half gone.

It takes me half an hour to get ready before I can walk out the door. That’s in forty minutes. So I have ten minutes for breakfast. It’s all about math if I want to get there on time, which is at least five minutes early I’m told, especially by military families. Too bad my math word problems in grade school never had an example like this. Much more practical than counting apples and oranges.

I grab two books as I sit down. Plus my Bible study workbook. This is the delusional part. I know I don’t have time for three books. In ten minutes? I can see you shaking your heard right along with me. I have no explanation. By bringing it to light, I’m hoping to dry out this moldy, delusional thinking.

Richard Rohr’s awesome book, The Divine Dance*, has been calling to me for two weeks now. I delude myself into thinking I can read a tiny bit of it now. I like the thought of the possibility and carry it from room to room each day. Maybe I have time to read the next women’s story in Women of the Bible: The Life and Times of Every Woman in the Bible. That’s book two sitting here joining me for breakfast.

Eight minutes. I eat while scanning the first section of the paper. Not true. That’s what I want to do. Instead, I write this which is not on the agenda of two-books-and-one-Bible-study-workbook-breakfast.

Five minutes. Gonna have to wait til lunch to read about the next woman in the Bible. I didn’t count on writing. My answers are good enough in the Bible study workbook. Dishes are in the sink. I’m off!

*Sister Pascaline Coff recently told me The Divine Dance is the best book she has ever read. She’s a million years old and an international figure in the world of interreligious dialogue, and an author herself.  Read more about her in my book. Here’s a fuller biography on her. If you like stories of unknown women in Catholic history, click here for Sister Mary Luke Tobin and what she did among the world’s cardinals.

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10 Ways to Battle Discouragement and Get Back on Track

When discouragement strikes, we don’t always find our way out from under its darkness right away.  Here are ten quick lifts that work for me.

Flowers help dispel discouragement

1. Recognize discouragement for what it is: a fiery dart from Satan. Use your shield of faith to protect yourself. As a child of God, you have authority over the powers of darkness. Stop to pray and bind the spirit of discouragement. Use Jesus’ words if none come to mind:  “‘Get behind me,  Satan.’ In

the name of Jesus Christ, be gone from here.”  He encouraged his apostles and us with these words:  “…take courage–I have conquered the world.” John 16:33

2. Write down specific scripture verses you can access whenever you need them to  encourage you.  I keep some in my phone Notes and on my computer desktop. Need some help? Start here.

3. Form a prayer team, people who are willing to pray for you and your work. Let them know your prayer needs, but also tell them about your victories. Be an encourager to them as well.

4. Create a poster with a verse that especially speaks to you. One of my favorites: I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Share your favorite in the comments below.

God doesn’t want our discouragement. Satan does.

5. Email/call a friend for a word of encouragement or prayer. Go to your mobile phone contacts. Choose one who always has an uplifting effect on you. Click Edit and under “Organization” or in the Notes section, add the word *Encourager* (or any other word you’ll think of for help when you’re discouraged). That will allow you to type a search for Encourager in your phone at your low times when your brain doesn’t work too well (or evil forces distract you from thinking of who could help you). Pick up your phone and type your word (e.g. Encourage, Pick Me Up, etc.)  quickly when you feel low and can’t think of who to call.

6. Listen to uplifting music and let your heart imagine  you surrounded by God’s glory, with His arms open wide to you, beckoning you to come to Him.

7. Watch uplifting images of kindness and compassion like these. 

8. Learn how to  encourage yourself.

9. Step away. Go for a walk, a bike ride, find a tree to hug or some flowers to hold. Let the beauty of nature with which God surrounds you, speak to your soul and soothe it.

10. Read something inspiring. Norman Vincent Peale greatly encouraged me in the many stories of apparent failures in The Power of Positive Thinking. Or this.

Inspired by: The Motivational Editor

 

 

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The Rich Do This One Habit. Nothing to do with Money.

Photo by Erica Schoonmaker

The rich have an amazing and admirable habit that does not involve money, according to Ken Rutkowski’s Facebook page.

They read. A lot.

Do you know what the majority of them read?Non-fiction. The rich read to learn.  They rarely read for entertainment. They know they’ll never live long enough to learn from all the mistakes they can possibly make. So they learn from others, by reading biographies to learn others’ life stories and lessons. They read history books. They read self-help books. They read about topics that intrigue them. In short, they value learning.

I read so I can learn from other people’s mistakes. Click here to read more about what others have learned from my spiritual reading. Or here God’s Patient Pursuit of My Soul.

Photo by faungg’s photos

Wealthy People’s Habits

https://goo.gl/hp3aG0

Interviewing 233 wealthy individuals (177 of whom were self-made millionaires) with at least $160,000 in annual gross income and $3.2 million in net assets.

According to my research on the wealthy:

* 85% read two or more books a month for education and learning purposes

* 63% listened to educational audio books during their commute to work

* 88% read 30 minutes or more each day for purposes of education and learning

* 58% read biographies of famous successful people

* 51% read history books

* 55% read self-help books

* Only 11% of the rich read for entertainment purposes. Billionaires like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg devote many hours a day to reading for the purpose of learning.

In short, the rich deserve to be rich because they put in the work that success requires. And part of that work is reading to learn. If you only read for entertainment, you are one of the 99%. If you read to learn, you are doing what the top 1% do.  Click here to read about God answering prayers,  miracles, or work.

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