Well, Blessed New Beginnings to all! Thanks so much to those of you who’ve stopped in to visit and check out this new cyberspot…and for your encouraging words.A sincere word of encouragement or appreciation really does mean so much…to everyone! There’s not a soul who doesn’t need it.

I read once that people are 10 times more likely to give voice/word to the negative than to the positive things we think. How perfectly dreadful, if this is so! I’ve caught myself truly appreciating someone or something done but then getting distracted out of actually SAYING it! Haven’t you? And who can read our minds? We must put words to the Good we see! I’ve likened it to writing an old-fashioned snail-mail letter and putting a stamp on it, but never actually getting around to mailing it. These days of course we have the easy-peasy internet, and our messages are probably less likely to loiter in our drafts folder or outbox than they were in the old days that necessitated paper, envelope and stamp. But the point remains: We need to encourage each other in the stuff that counts, in the Real of Life and Love. That is actually the big idea behind this little website. It is my hope and prayer that I might be able to be of some encouragement to YOU, and for you to feel welcome to share as well.

Not that there’s anything special about this everyday lady, or that I have any corner on the revelation market. But now and then I do get the awesome privilege of seeing with a little more of God’s Light than at other times. And when this happens, I always try to write it down. So this makes me a writer: one who writes. Nothing grandiose. Just simple. If you write, you’re a writer too. Keep it up!

One of the ways I keep it up is in the writing of “morning pages”, an idea/habit I gleaned/adopted from Julia Cameron, via her books. I’m not sure how many years I’ve been doing this, but I could check as there are books and books of these morning pages, all dated and stacked on a shelf in my Tree House Room studio, which connects to our house by a little footbridge up into the tops of banana and papaya trees.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be adding some new things into the section called “My Works.” (Maybe it should be called “My Play”, as some of it is definitely playful, and creating is, for me, a joy, so it’s hard to think of it as “work”! Yet there is a discipline to staying consistent. And there is another discipline of the pruning, slashing and burning, known as editing. One must be ruthless at times in this. And I find a kind of divine grace in being ruthless with myself where my writing is concerned. But the truth is that I should be more so in other areas of my life! I don’t mean heartless, just totally honest with myself and willing to do what must be done, whether it feels good or not. It’s all too easy to blink away the little selfie things in life that simply do not serve. I am much less likely to do this blinking in my writing than in my living, as I’m a stickler when it comes to words. I really want them to say what I mean. But am I as diligent with the way I live and love? Actually, no. To be truthful, I’m not. But…I hope to be improving. “God is definitely “still workin on me” and I have every faith that He will continue to do it on into eternity. So here’s a New Year’s Toast to all the Good Work that God will be doing in us together, you and me, in this coming year! Here-Here and Now!

Sincerely His,

CLOVER

This is Christmas Eve! Waking up this morning I went to my usual time of reading, prayer, and picked up my pen to do my morning writing. For some reason, I feel led to share with you my morning writing of today, if you’re interested in reading it:

“This day commemorates the day before life would change for “whosoever” of mankind would come to believe and receive new, true Life from the One who is the Creator of all life. It’s easy to see how people allegorize this event and the lifetime, death and resurrection that ensued. I don’t blame folks for assuming it is a sort of parable in itself…for classifying it as a religious myth to go alongside all the other stories with philosophical or moral intent. I don’t blame them at all. And, yes, stories do have power. Words have power!

But one has only to experience first-hand the reality of Christ to know that there is nothing mythical about Him. In true Reality, He is the most eternally and consistently Real being there is! He is the One who lived, lives, and shall live completely with God’s zoe Life – the Real Stuff.

When we experience His presence, His love, His mercies and grace, nothing looks like, “Kansas anymore, Toto.” He “ruins us for the ordinary.” And only the powerful evidence of this Real Life, activated by His Holy Spirit, can convince anyone else who questions it of His Truth. Yet He enables this to happen – often wordlessly! And that is one of His most endearing features…one of many! We think we have to talk, talk, talk…to talk people into opening up to Him, when all in a moment His Love can open one’s senses to percieve Him. All in a moment, His Truth can come home to the heart. All in a moment, a pinch of faith can bring healing to the body and soul. All in a moment, His Spirit can overshadow us and we, like Mary, can conceive this Life of Love, power and grace… to give birth to it through the many simple choices and deeds of our daily lives.

Words are useful to establish an historical knowledge base. God’s Word, via scripture and prophecy, (speaking the deep truths of God, via His Holy Spirit) contains His Life which is able to steer us away from the “sins that so easily beset us,” and lead us into more deeply abiding in His presence. His Love causes us to never want to leave this presence, to remain, to maintain this intimacy with Him which connects us with all other life, from people and animals to all of nature in its splendor, as being His beautiful creations.

Must I convince you of this Life, this Nativity and its reality? And is it sufficient to nominally go along with the nice little Baby Jesus and wise-men story enough to sing along with the carols once a year? Well, I think that can maybe spark a flame up in the searching heart and keep it flickering for a bit…with the wind of His Spirit blowing on it. But God loves us so much that He wants to do much bigger things in our lives than that! God loves to do big things! This is God’s joy! And it is His heart’s delight to be included in every aspect of our lives, breathing His Life into it all…creating little everyday miracles in the ordinary lives of everyday people like you and me. This is what was made possible on the day we celebrate as Christ Mass.

You might ask, “How did that make this intimate relationship with God, that you talk about, possible? Where’s the connection?

The answers are all in the Scriptures and even in the words of the true Christmas carols. “Long lay the world in sin and error pining…” Why was the world, and why is it today, “in sin and error, pining?” Because the revelation of God’s true Life had been veiled by self-centeredness and deception. The Truth was always here, but folks couldn’t see it until Christ appeared, specifically manifesting it in the lives of everyday people.

Until He came on the scene, man had to make do with substitutions, with representations, “types and shadows,” pointing toward the Real.

But with Jesus, the original Reality of Eden’s innocence re-entered the world…with the purity of God’s whole intention. And this intention was lived out by Jesus 100%…not just “to show us an example of how it should be done,” but to give us the chance to actually do it, by receiving His Life for our own! This was the whole point: to give people back the Life forsaken in Eden…to re-establish the power and Love of God’s LIfe in us and through us…to replace our substitutional self-centric living with His vibrant and infinite Real Life! To rescue us from our very selves. And who among us does not need this Rescuer? This is the Real Reason for this Season. “And this is Love: that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes on Him should not perish (at the hands of deception,) but have (Real) Life both here and eternally…because His Real Life is infinite and eternal…never running out and continuing forever. (John3:16)

I pray that this Holiday will come to include for you the Life of Christ more fully than ever before…that the holiness of the holi day will find room in your heart to grow eternally!

Take some time this Christmastide to go a space apart.
And with the hands of prayer prepare the place that is your heart.

With God’s greatest love,

Clover