Anticipation

booked my flight today!

(SDI Dublin)

awesomeness

It's been a spell since I've had any weird Sequim, WA Police Blotter news...but yesterday's Gazette provided this nugget:

July 22, 10:47 a.m. - The caller reported someone was trying to sell him a bottle of "awesome"....

Did I mention we've been experiencing triple digit temps this week? Perhaps that would explain this odd incident. I keep thinking about what I would say to someone if they knocked on my door in an attempt to sell me bottled awesomeness but I can't think of a good response - except for shutting the door. And since I finally hung St. Benedict's "All are to be welcomed as Christ" plaque on my front porch it just wouldn't be right to close the door on all that potential awesomeness, now would it?

photo: I googled "bottle of awesome" and discovered a comic created by Andy Belanger (Andy B.) which is about an unpopular 9th grade boy who finds the bottle of awesome and upon drinking it becomes - AWESOME....

sacred illness

A sacred illness is one that educates us

and alters us from the inside out,
provides experiences and therefore knowledge
that we could not possibly achieve in any other way,
and aligns us with a life path that is, ultimately,
of benefit to ourselves and those around us.
-- Deena Metzger

The photo of a California desert can be a place of beauty, solace and peace.
But it can also fit the image of illness - dry, barren, rough, colorless, cruel -
and the pink bloom is that fragile hope - that possibility of new life -
that healing we so long for.

May all who suffer in mind, spirit, and body this day
experience a sense of respite through the gifts of God's beauty & grace.

misery

"The central purpose
of each life
should be
to dilute
the misery
in the world."

- Karl Menninger

Well, well, well...that's a whole lot of things to be miserable about! Maybe we could lower it to an even 11, 000?

Reader's Choice

I could not decide on a title for this drawing, depicting today's
Gospel reading from John 6, so I'm letting you choose:

1) Where's Waldo?
2) Jesus Feeds His Peeps
3) The Original Woodstock Festival
4) Which way to the Porta Potties?
5) make up your own

dishing it out

"Whatever attitudes we habitually use toward ourselves, we will use on others, and whatever attitudes we habitually use toward others, we will use on ourselves. The situation is comparable to serving food to ourselves and to other people from the same bowl. Everyone ends up eating the same thing - we must examine carefully what we are dishing out."
- B. H. Gunaratana

photo courtesy of Ayo Ijidakinro

Hope vs. Mope

a big HT to EK