There was a lot of ministry in Quaker meeting this Sunday about areas of massive disaster… areas of war… areas in deep suffering.

When I hear of the suffering in Haiti, in Iraq, in Chile, in Poland… I feel a desperate desire, I mother’s desire to make it all well, to make it better. I physically crave to touch those in pain, to sooth the soul, to hold and hum away the hurt. I think I could leave… I could just get on a plane and go there… I could serve those in such great need, recovering from such destruction, devastation, loss… I think of the connections and commitments I have here. What trail of destruction would I leave behind by walking out the door, going to the airport, getting on a plane and being gone for months, years… I can go and sooth the child who has lost a mom by orphaning my own children, support a parent who has lost a spouse by denying my husband his own partner, I could work to rebuild by leaving a hole in my own company. Yes, there are ways and those who co go, who do balance, who do give so much to put the world back in the place for those who have been rocked to their very core. And it is a choice… I could go. I choose today to stay… and still I am left with the physical longing to do… something.

I sit in the silence of Quaker meeting and wander through my choices. I could and do send money… the great American way of doing… feels like handing a Scooby-Doo band-aid to a Haitian who has just lost everything… everything, every person, every item, everything.

I could simply pray.

The simplicity of it at first makes my scoff. Prayer… I could just sit here on this bench, not move, not give, not anything… and pray. That’s not doing anything my mind battles with itself.

Love. Send love. Love is always the answer, not matter the question. Find it inside, connect to it and send it out on a prayer.

I connect to the Great Connection. The force of Love that connects us all and I know, know in every cell of my being that a prayer is the most powerful thing I could do. I pray for those in suffering and in sorrow. I pray for those who are leaving home and country and loved ones to go and render aid. I pray that they will all find the strength they need to keep moving forward. I pray that they will all feel some sense of peace, if only for a moment. I pray they will feel a mother’s love, the touch of the Great Mother Spirit, watching over them. I send love out on the wire… and I know it will make a difference. It will help to make it all better.

(Thanx! for the pic: http://www.flickr.com/photos/revdave/459210631/)

We attended Quaker meeting this Easter morning and surrounded by the silence, the breeze through the open window, and the sound of the birds outside… I was moved by the Spirit to share the following Ministry…

I have a degree in Chemistry, very close to a minor in Physics, and in those heady days of studying the infinitely small ways the world works it would have been easy with all the formulas, rules, and equations to write God out of existence.

I did have a friend ask me well then, why did I still believe in God?

I choose to believe in God because it makes my life better.

I choose to believe in God because it makes my life sweeter.

I choose to believe in God because it make my life richer, deeper, fuller…

At the end of the day believing in God brings me peace.

There are pieces of the bible I hold very dear. Scriptures that support me, guide me, comfort me.

There are hymns from my childhood I still hum when I clean or cook, sing to my children when they are sick.

And there are pieces of the bible that don’t really resonate with me… pieces I hold a little looser.

I am choosing today as an opportunity to look within and find what Light have I stuffed away in a dark place. What gift have I covered up.

I am choosing today as an opportunity to resurrect that gift that God would ask me to bring forth into the world.

What gift have you hidden away? What gift is hidden in the dark? What gift have you been called to resurrect?

(Thanx for the pic! http://www.flickr.com/photos/fmc550uz/3056713650/sizes/m/)

• Whittier: First-Day Thoughts

  

  This is where I will be spending Easter Morning

  FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS

  In calm and cool and silence, once again
  I find my old accustomed place among
  My brethren, here, perchance, no human tongue
  Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung,
  Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung

  Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane!
  There, syllabled by silence, let me hear
  The still small voice which reached the prophets ear;
  Read in my heart a still diviner law
  Than Israel’s leader on his tables saw!
  here let me strive with each besetting sin,
  Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain
  the sore disquiet of a restless brain;
  And, as the path of duty is made plain,
  May grace be given that I may walk therein,
  Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain,
  With backward glanced and reluctant tread,
  Making a merit of his coward dread,
  But, Cheerful, in the light around me thrown,
  Walking as one to pleasant service led;
  Doing God’s will as if it were my own,
  Yet trusting not in mine, but in His strength alone!

  tags: poetry, inspiration, Quaker, First, Day, silent, meeting, whittier

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

I love Oats! I think they are one of God’s greatest gift to man, woman and child-kind alike… and in honor of one of my favorite oatmeal companies (I liked them before I got written into the Quaker Book of Friends) Quaker Oats giving $50,000 to end hunger in the US, I am sharing some of my fav oat recipes.

This week’s menu included meatloaf and you may think Oatmeal? Meatloaf? Yep, replace the breadcrumbs with oatmeal and you increase the nutritional value of your meatloaf… something this mom is ALWAYS trying to do.

So, here’s the recipe…

1. Preheat over to 350 degrees
2. Mix in a large bowl (the best is really just with your hands):
   1. 2 lbs of good quality ground beef *
   2. 1 1/2 cups chopped onion
   3. 1 cup old fashioned oatmeal
   4. 1 cup ketchup
   5. 1 cup chopped cilantro (you can use parsley)
   6. 3 large eggs, slightly beaten
   7. 2 tsp non-salt garlic herb blend (like Mrs. Dash)
   8. 1 tsp salt
3. Form mixture into a loaf, about the size of a loaf pan, on a cookie sheet
4. Glaze the loaf with ketchup
5. Cover the loaf cross-ways with 8-10 slices of bacon. Tuck the ends of the bacon underneath.
6. Cook for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes , until internal temperature reads 160 degrees.

Enjoy! … and go create your day over at Quaker Oats so they can donate some more!

*Costco is one of the few places that check their ground beef at the store for E-Coli.

I am a Quaker and I love me some oatmeal! I also love to envision a world where no one goes hungry. So, I LOVE that Quaker Oats is mixing fun and giving with their Create Your Day Campaign. Big, HUGE thanx to Rachel over at A Southern Fairytale for shining a light on it…

Quaker has created an application that allows you to Create Your Day.   Go to their website and create the perfect breakfast for you, for a friend, your child’s teacher, your husband.. whomever you’d like.   Using their application, answer a few questions and it creates a fun card with the ideal oatmeal to get them revved and ready for whatever lies ahead of them that day.  It then allows you to share it via email or facebook.  For every dish that you create (4 per day) through March 31, 2010… they will donate $1 up to $25,000 whoops… $25,o0o has already been donated!!! So they’ve upped the ante to $50,000.

Let’s make Quaker eat that $50,000 and up it to $75,000.

Please help me in this.  No child, no family, no person in this country should go hungry.

The App is super cute and fun… I could play around with it all day… @thisisnotapril says I am like a cat… which is so totally a compliment in our neck of the woods.

So here is my super cute Create Your Day story…

(How did they know peaches and cream is my favorite oatmeal? It’s like oatmeal magic!)

Anyway… whether you are as entertained by this as I am or not… go check out the oatmeal magic… create your day… and help Quaker Oats do a little towards ending hunger.

Go on now… go… now>>> oooo… and then tell me what kind of oatmeal did you get… I wanna know – and then go tell Rachel cause she’s got some cool stuff to give away!