Stories Collected While Living in France
When the star passed by my open window,
the light poured in opening my eyes,
illuminating the darkness.
Everything became crystal clear,
and remains a soothing grace.
Where do you receive communion with love and holiness?
Where does your soul cry amen?
When the light of the sun peeks out from an opening between dark clouds, and it produces a spot light on the ocean’s surface, causing it to look like a stage. It seems as though a wonderful production is about to play.
Where do I receive communion with love and holiness…hmm that’s a good question. Inside the hug of my husband I think.
Communion comes in those moments when the soul recognizes its own truth. Sending you peace & love, xx, JP/deb
I rushed out the door this morning, asking my teenage son “the twenty questions”, as he calls them.
“Do you have your homework? Did you brush your teeth? Gym clothes? Lunch? …” Hurry, hurry, rush rush rush,
The wind kicks up a little and a gentle chilly breeze wafts the scent of spring to my doorstep. It’s a postcard sent by the hardy little patch of violets that thrive near the bottom step.
It reads:
Dear Genevieve,
Having fun, wish you were here.
Please stop by for a moment, in the glorious present. Come to see see us, to smell our sweetness, to remember your mother as she led you to your first patch of violets as a toddler, to remind your son of that same day in his life with you, to marvel at our deep lenten purple, to feel gratitude for the nature that surrounds you. We generously offer you a tiny blossom to show your son and tuck into his algebra book as a momento of this day.
Love. Always.
Charmed, I stop.
Stepping outside of our morning rush and sitting on that bottom stair, soaking up a moment of springtime together, my son and I marvel at the beauty in these, the tiniest of flowers. The whole forest that is awake and chirping with the happiness of being alive. Soon, we are too.
Communion.
I want to give you the You Cheer Me Up Award.
Yours is one of the few blogs I keep on bookmark, and the first blog I wanted to give this award to because… you cheer me up!
I posted the code to display the award in the url above, but you don’t have to use it. Thank you for be-ing you.
~willow in utah~
Communion comes when you least expect it, in the most ordinary and extraordinary of places. The important part is recognizing it and allowing your soul to sigh with peace.
Dear Corey,
Asking myself your question in this week of the Passion, it felt like my mother whispered this answer to me from afar: “at the foot of the cross” because I have to confess that that would be more her response than mine…. When my father was no longer to be found, there were countless scraps of paper with the lord’s prayer in his deteriorating handwriting among his things, so I think his answer would be the same.
I have to say that where I recieve communion with love and holiness and where I cry amen is where ever I find the priviledge of witnessing that kind of faith in anything… in providence, in people, in things, in the transcendence of the everyday, in beauty, in art, in simple everyday things we forget to attend. Such faithfulness is so rare now that sometimes it seems utterly gone from this world. Then you suddenly stumble upon it, and it makes a cry catch in your throat. Like your photographs, like the reverence for things of another time or for time itself, like Annie Dillard’s “dawn fast over the mountains split” and like your father’s prayers….
Your current struggles are in the thoughts and prayers of so many because that communion and amen often happens right HERE… and we are grateful for it.
Continued Prayers and Warm Regards,
Ciretta
Ciretta
I have watched your picture, I have read your post and have carried on with your readers’ early comments ….
Words of poetry, images of peaceful and blissful moments …
They sounded magical… They made me feel very small, I could not help shrieking and shrieking … with little (nothing?) to say.
First, I feel a kind of communion – which I would qualify as “plénitude” (rather than “holiness”) when I have a swim by myself early in the morning or late in the evening in the smoothness of the river or of sea…
Secondly, a new roundabout was made in the neighbourhood and a beautiful sculpture (of a family) has been settled in the middle.
Whenever I drive round it, I get a special feeling of love and “communion”… as it keeps standing in all weathers, in all traffic… and I can feel my family by me straight away…
“Plénitude” again…
When I watched “The Passion of the Christ” and I felt both very small and then great at the same time. He did that for me and then He did that for ME! It takes the breath away.
Love to you, Corey.
When I look into the eyes of those I love and share moments of life with joy love and peace…………
God blesses us a million times a day in a multitude of ways.
Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
Mother Teresa
Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given.
Mother Teresa
INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIFE
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R’s:
Respect for self
Respect for others and
Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
I call the light and high aspects of my being spirit and the dark and heavy aspects soul.
Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys.
Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there.
The rivers flow like warm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul.
Spirit is a land of high white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers.
Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances.
There is soul music, soul food, and soul love…
People need to climb the mountain not simple because it is there
But because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.
-Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dali Lama quote
At the foot of the cross when I remember His agony and suffering for me. My soul cries “amen” to His victory over death and the certainty it brings us.
corey, i feel that you are growing spiritually. times of sadness takes us beyond where we have been. an awakening to thoughts that we have not experienced.giving an inner peace. may GOD continue to comfort you and your family. may you continue to bless me with your meaningful blog. connie
I find communion in writing, especially fiction. It brings peace and joy to my soul. And sometimes in random moments when I see something that seems magical, a gift.
Peace…Love…Blessings to you today, Corey.
I’m not so good with words so I’ll let this flash say it for me. I hope you will have a minute to watch it.
http://www.e-water.net/viewflash.php?flash=sorrows_en
Corey, you know that you and your family remain in my heart.
The ocean and the forests.
Sometimes in church, but I have to be in the right frame of mind to accept it and unfortunately, I don’t always lay down my cares and worries, but hold them close, which tends to block anything else from entering.
Always, when I see shafts of early morning sunlight coming down to the ground through trees – somewhere I read a description of this as “when the glory comes down.”
In Paris. At home, walking on the beach.
Sometimes on my early morning walks Corey!
Peace and love be with you.
Rosemary
When I stop… and breath and listen to my heart… when I allow myself to find beauty in whatever is before me… XO
In the first sprigs of spring waking our earth. I think our awesome God did so much for me…He loves me so much. I look at the cross and just leave my cares there and find my heart comes to peace.
Praying for you Corey.
love and blessings
There have been so many amazing answers to your question left here. For me it happens when I open my heart to His heart and listen, really listen in the being and His voice finds my heart – that is when I know communion. That is when I receive His love and the moment is always holy. Sometimes it’s when I’m outside enjoying His creation, sometimes in the minute I awake, other times when I am purposely seeking Him. I cry Amen when I hear and acknowledge His will – So be it!
mmmm… at art museums… reading poetry… laughing with friends… reading a passage that knocks my socks off. And walking my dog.
I don’t comment here often but I do stop in here every single day and I’m thinking of you and your family.
Have not posted in awhile, but been coming as I could to check up on you and all. My heart goes out to you in all of this…it takes me back to what happened to my mom. Hospitals are not family friendly. Just want you to know you in my thoughts and I am asking the FATHER to comfort you in this time too…sometimes it is as hard to watch as it is to be the one suffering.
Elizabeth
With the words of wiser heads than mine.
My favourites at the moment can be found in a Mary Oliver poem ‘Wild Geese’
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on. . . .
I love the notion of communing by just being something I find VERY hard to do . . .
I find it when I stop and recognize the little everyday miracles that are around me, but that I am usually too busy to appreciate.
~elaine~
When my heart is truly and fully open to the many blessings that have been poured out on my life.
In the frozen crystallized flakes on my window. In the perfection of a fern leaf. In the trembling hand of a hospice patient who no longer has a voice but whose words are spoken with her eyes….
My continual love and prayers are with you Corey, and may Peace be with you and your family. May God bless you and comfort you.
Warmest Wishes,
CAMILLA.X
Beautifully written post, Corey. Poetic. I was looking out my window this evening as the moon was so bright, as though brighter than usual. I imagined what the night sky must have looked like two to three hundred years ago here, before electricity and modern life put a blanket over the stars. It must have been beautiful beyond words.
Where does my soul cry amen? Laying half asleep with my husband at the cottage, during a warm summer evening, when the crickets are humming and the loons are calling to one another. A good piece of music and/or a dance does that for me, too.
In the whisper of the wind on my cheek, in the silence of night bathed in moonlight sitting under a million stars, in church, in sadness and sorrow, in joy and jubilation, in my heart, these are my places of communion.
Literally, Christ Church. Everyday I try hard to consider how the other person feels; that is a communion, too.
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