I received this from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and if you’re a bird lover, you’ll want to subscribe to their newsletter. Cornell offers many wonderful videos about birds including live cams of nesting birds. I’ll feature their best one after we expose the secret lives of your favorite backyard birds! Continue reading “The secret lives of backyard birds”
Kayaking is such a great way to sneak up on birds! Here’s a couple I was able to capture in a picture. The setting is Mill Pond in Westborough, MA. This place never disappoints!
Click to Tweet & Share: Close encounters of the Bird kind http://wp.me/p2D9hg-ag
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This was the best summer I’ve had in many a year and a lot of it was because I started walking during my lunch hour.
I work in Wellesley, MA in the center of town where there are a treasure trove of walking trails (which I’ll share with you in a future post).
The walking plus frequent kayak trips have reconnected me with nature in way I haven’t experienced since I was a child. When I can find the words to share how this connection has fed me, I will share it with you.
I’ve started re-reading The Outermost House, a poetic classic of nature writing of one man’s year spent on the outer Cape. The author, Henry Beston, knows how to express connections with the natural world. I think once I immerse myself in his poetic words, I will find my own.
In the meantime, I’ll share with pictures.
On Labor Day, my husband Rich and I drove up to the northern Massachusetts town of Ashburnham where the family camp of my brother-in-law is located. The two cottages were built by relatives back around 1920 on 5 wooded acres overlooking Lake Winnekeg. The air was crisp and cool, the area bathed in sunlight and the sky a deep blue. Needless to say it was very hard to leave this paradise, but it was the appropriate way to bid summer a fond adieu.
Here’s my photographic memoir of the day.
How was your summer? What memories can you share?
Click to Tweet & Share: Bidding a fond adieu to summer in a local paradise http://wp.me/p2D9hg-aL
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Susan Bailey, Author, Speaker, Musician on Facebook and Twitter
The Holy Rover is one of my favorite spiritual blogs; in part, it inspired this blog with regards to spiritual writings. Blogger Lori Erickson presents spirituality in a way that makes me hunger for more. I will be featuring teases from some of her posts with links back to the full post, and I hope you will enjoy them as I do.
On a recent trip to upstate New York, my family and I visited the Abbey of the Genesee, a Trappist monastery overlooking the green, rolling countryside south of Rochester. In its gift store, loaves of bread made by the monks were prominently displayed. “Monks selling bread?” my son asked. “Why do they do that?”
One answer, of course, is that monks, like everybody else, need to make a living. Religious houses often operate businesses, from cheese making and dog training to raising chickens. In my home state of Iowa, Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey sells delicious caramel candies while New Melleray Abbey makes finely crafted wooden caskets.
These enterprises do much more than bring in income, however: they are also a way to craft souls …
Click here to read the entire post.
Click to Tweet & Share: To work is to pray … guest post from the Holy Rover http://wp.me/p2D9hg-a8
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Susan Bailey, Author, Speaker, Musician on Facebook and Twitter
Read my other blog, Louisa May Alcott is My Passion
Here are some great links and tweets I found this past week:
From the Post Bulletin @PB_News
Moonlight kayaking – I want to do this! – Post Bulletin http://www.postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1507175
From Patheos.com @Patheos
I am so blessed to have two outstanding spiritual friends – Spiritual Direction vs. Spiritual Friend http://shar.es/7V9RA
From the Seattle Times @seattletimes
Here’s the producer of the Henri 2 video, winner of the first internet Cat video award: Garfield High grad wins Internet Cat Video Film Festival http://tinyurl.com/9jjgycd
From the Kenilworth Weekly
Kayaking Katie backs move to end paralympics exclusion rule – http://tinyurl.com/8nwkfym
From the NewsandSentinal.com
“It’s just a gas to build a beautiful boat that looks like a piece of furniture and then float away.” http://tinyurl.com/9cahrkq
Click to Tweet & Share: Tweets of the Week: moonlight kayaking; meet maker of Henri 2, Spiritual direction & more http://wp.me/p2D9hg-ap
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I again wish to feature the homily that Fr. Edwin Gomez gave last Sunday based upon these readings from scripture: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Ephesians 5:21-32, John 6:60-69
In our modern culture we have so many options that many times we can’t choose one over the other.
We can have 500 hundred channels of cable TV and still have nothing to watch on the television.
We treat life like sampling a Chinese pu pu platter: we want to be able to try everything.
College students many times have 2, 3 or 4 majors … different degrees so they can have a lot of job options.
Too many choices! And we want to have it all.
The fact is that spiritually and honestly for the best things in our lives we do need to make choices that exclude other things.
Joshua in our first reading tells the people that they could choose to worship the God of their ancestors, the God that they were used to, or they could choose to worship the God of this new land, the God that will be unfamiliar to them. Joshua leads the people to choose to serve the Lord, the one God of Israel. They made their choice.
The same thing happens with Jesus in our Gospel, This is the 5th week in a row that we hear “I am the bread of life”.
What they said was, “This is too hard. This teaching is too hard; we cannot accept it!”
Jesus made it clear a choice had to be made: “Choose to believe that I am the Son of God that came down from heaven. And the way that you believe in me is that you will eat my body and drink my blood.”
The healing, the teachings were nice, the reaching out was nice and inspired them, but now he has gone too far.
What is sad about this scripture is that some of his disciples turned away and no longer follow him. They went back to their former lives.
Choices!I wonder what in our day will make us choose like that. What could Jesus say to us that will make us say, “This is getting too hard, I do not know if I can do it!”
I have and I do. There are a few things that I can think of that cause me to say, “This is hard, who can accept it?”
He forgives us and unlike humans, he forgets. God holds no bitterness, no resentments, and no anger against you.
He does not see the negative or the broken in us, only the positive and the possibility of healing and fullness of life.
He will not give up on us, ever. There is nothing we can do to make him love us any more than he does. And there is nothing we can do to make him stop loving us. He will pursue our hearts, for decades if he has to, until he gets us to fall in love with him and let him in.
I think what the gospel is inviting us to say is what Peter says, what Peter representing all the apostles said to Jesus:
“We are convinced that you are the holy one of God.” Notice that Peter does not say, “Okay! I got it, I understand it all, and I am right on board with you.” I am sure Peter and the disciples were as freaked out as everyone else.
There are things that we do not believe, things that we do not completely understand. Maybe there are things we do not agree with. We say, “This is a hard saying,” but where else will we go?
We had to make a choice by coming here. There are a lot of things that we could be doing but we made a choice to come here.
The choices we make now will affect us later on. We will need to let go of things in order to get what is really important. To me the choice is to be present as much as I can in my life. To see the beauty in everything, to find God in everything, even in our struggles, shortcomings and sins, and to remain open and aware that nobody has all the answers.
For me it is about letting go of all my junk, letting go of my prejudice, my control, my securities and the false belief that I have to know it all and have all the answers.
So, maybe we do struggle, I know I struggle. Sometimes I do not get it. And yet to whom shall we go?
Click to Tweet & Share: “Lord, to whom shall we go?” What happens when the teachings of Jesus are too hard to accept? http://wp.me/p2D9hg-9L
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Susan Bailey, Author, Speaker, Musician on Facebook and Twitter
Read my other blog, Louisa May Alcott is My Passion
The Golden Kitty goes to … “Henri 2, Paw de Deux!” Except perhaps for the first Simon’s Cat video, this one definitely deserves the prize. I’ve posted both with a place where you can vote: which is your favorite?
Click to Tweet & Share: “Henri 2” wins Cat Internet Film Fest but should “Simon’s Cat'” have won – what do you think? Watch & take our poll http://wp.me/p2D9hg-9E
Would you like to learn along with Susan how to live your life
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Kitty Clubbers! One of you (Rose Marie W, thanks!) sent me the perfect picture of the Sisters Spooky and Venus:
I couldn’t resist. I had to post this video, one of my favorite songs, one my best friend and I used to sing together. From “White Christmas” I present Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen singing “Sisters.” Imagine Spooky and Venus in their places. 🙂
Click to Tweet & Share: Spooky and Venus rival Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen in “White Christmas” singing “Sisters” 🙂 #sevenkittens http://wp.me/p2D9hg-9i
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Susan Bailey, Author, Speaker, Musician on Facebook and Twitter
Read my other blog, Louisa May Alcott is My Passion
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In an effort to invite as many as I can to visit Be as One, I maintain an account on Twitter (and you can follow my tweets in the side bar – there’s a link where you can follow me). I’m following several interesting people and organizations and thought that on a regular basis, I would share interesting tweets and links with you.
Here are this week’s Tweets of the Week:
from Kenn Kaufman @KennKaufman
Roger Tory Peterson artwork going up for auction soon. The background story
and from Wild Birds Unlimited @WildBirdsUnlmtd
Funny bald Blue Jay – Wordless Wednesday – Don’t Speak with your Mouth Full
Click to Tweet & Share: Tweets of the Week: kayaks, scenery, cats, weather, birds … take your pick! http://wp.me/p2D9hg-92
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Susan Bailey, Author, Speaker, Musician on Facebook and Twitter
Read my other blog, Louisa May Alcott is My Passion
What feelings come up when you read the following two words:
Are your feelings positive or negative?
Are these words to be avoided at all costs or embraced?
Do these words hinder your freedom or enhance it?
In a later post I will deal with obedience, one of the most freeing words in the entire English language.
Today I will deal with detachment because I finally found out what it means.
Detachment can strike fear into the hearts of those pursuing an authentic spiritual life. It means walking away and letting go.
Will I have to watch less TV, skip that beer or ice cream, put aside dreams of a tropical winter get-away in order to instead travel to snowbound Buffalo to visit elderly parents?
Will I have to give up something, or someone I dearly love?
Detachment in part means sacrifice and both words have a negative connotation in this age of you-can-have-it-all.
And there’s more to sacrifice than giving up time, money and material items. There are feelings inside of us that need to be sacrificed too.
Thud. Another word that stirs up a negative connotations.
In this age of exposing ourselves on Facebook and Twitter, self-control has fallen by the wayside.
When we feel bad, we show it. Why hide it? We not only show it, we indulge in it. We feel entitled to wallow in it. Hell, we feel like crap so why not just let it take over?
At some point you long to escape. Escape, as you know, comes about in many unhealthy, even deadly forms. Just ask Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Anna Nicole Smith.
Oh that’s right. We can’t.
And I only just learned this in the last few days.
On Saturday we said goodbye to our 26 year-old son. He is moving from his place near our home in central MA to Brooklyn, NY to explore new options in his life. It’s only four hours away but it might as well be on the other side of this planet to this mother’s heart.
Heck, I was the main cheerleader. And I was bound and determined not to lose it in front of him.
So just before the big goodbye, I stole away to the bathroom in his house and begged God to help me put a lid on my emotions.
With that first of many Hail Mary’s I recalled that the Mother of Jesus had to endure such a goodbye too. She would understand and she would listen to me.
I then rifled through my pocketbook and found my rosary ring. I put it in my pocket and fingered it, continuing to pray.
We exchanged warm hugs and a few tears flowed but I held it together.
I realized at that moment that asking God to intervene, He stepped in between my son and myself, providing that little bit of detachment that allowed me to keep a lid on my emotions.
Later on in the privacy of my kitchen, I had my cry.
Detachment saved me from embarrassment, not only for myself, but for my son and everyone else that was there when we exchanged goodbyes.
The pain of saying goodbye is not unlike grief and it can become a black hole, sucking you in and smothering the life out of you.
The natural inclination is to go towards that black hole.
I work up this morning filled with pain over the goodbye. But I washed up, went to Sunday mass, did the food shopping and spent the day with my husband.
I clung to God and made a deliberate effort to tell that black hole I wasn’t going to be sucked in.
A lot of the time I just wanted to lay down on my bed and go to sleep.
The lesson of yesterday’s goodbye and the taste of freedom from that small bit of detachment gave me the impetus to keep pursuing it.
Using self-control, I deliberately turned away from pain of the past and fixed my gaze upon the future.
Little things like a medium Dunkin’ Donuts mocha ice coffee helped in the cause.
He wants to set us free. I feel like I have discovered a most precious secret.
And so I bid my son a bittersweet farewell, knowing it’s for the best and wishing him many blessings in his journey.
I have already found mine.
Click to Tweet & Share: Saying goodbye to our son hurt but taught me something new: turning to God, I learned to walk away & not lose it. http://wp.me/p2D9hg-8s
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Susan Bailey, Author, Speaker, Musician on Facebook and Twitter
Read my other blog, Louisa May Alcott is My Passion
Be as One 