Category: Spiritual

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Carmelina – An Angel in Disguise?

From my years in Nashville, TN USA I remember the unique “Bag Lady” she was often called as a seemingly homeless beggar living on the streets of downtown Nashville and always carrying one or more bags full of who knows what? I’m sorry I never got to know her or her story.

I was reminded of her when I first saw Carmelina in downtown Atenas, walking the streets barefoot in what appears to be a very simple and maybe dirty old dress  and sometimes carrying a plastic bag. I have often wondered about who she is, how needy, if anyone cares for her, etc. And I’ve always wanted to photograph her but too embarrassed to ask and not wanting to offend her.

Well, I just found this beautiful photo of her on a local Atenas Facebook Page in Spanish  (photo by Patricia Salazar) with lots of comments about Carmelina, mostly as an inspiration to people here for years. Check it out and if you don’t read Spanish, right click and then click “translate to English” to see about 80 different comments about Carmelina, one of the most unique persons in Atenas who in her poverty is always helping someone else, attending most services at the Catholic Church, attending all funerals with a little gift for the family, and many other acts of kindness. . .   Christlike?

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 

 ~Matthew 5:3

¡Pura Vida!

¡En Atenas, la mejor pueblo en Costa Rica!

🙂

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Describing My 2014 Journey Here

This week’s death of Nature Poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019), and article about her in Washington Post, plus reviewing her poems led me to her “Journey” which in some ways describes what I was unable to describe in my 2014 “Decision Process” I called it then, of getting away from the depressing world of conservative Middle Tennessee, the clouds of a failed marriage and subsequent loss of family, branches and stones in my path of a vocational “calling”  manipulated by power-hungry “rulers” ending unceremoniously first in 1999 and finally by 2002 in unplanned early retirement. In a daze . . .

I’ve always tried to “make lemonade out of lemons” and I turned my retirement into an adventure of nature travel and photography as much as I could afford, including visits to all 54 state parks in Tennessee with a book about that, A Walk in the Woods, along with many other nature/travel books and my growing nature photo gallery. But I was still looking for something else.

Moving from the vibrant life of rowhouse living in downtown Nashville to a suburban “Independent Living Retirement Home” was still not what I was looking for.

It was to commune closer with nature, to travel in natural exotic places that my limited income could not afford, then suddenly it hit me, why not move to one of the nature places in which I love to travel and just live there?

With only 2 family members left and no grandchildren, it was easier for me than some people to make such a life-changing move! And now I see it described in a new way in this poem by Mary Oliver:

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice–

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do–

determined to save

the only life you could save.

~Mary Oliver

¡Retired in Costa Rica!

¡Pura Vida!

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Good Samaritan Serendipity!

 

“It’s a small world!” phenomenon only happens occasionally and when it does it always brings a big smile to my face.  🙂  It happened today, January 1, 2019, with a message through the contact form on this site from an address I did not recognize.  I will keep their names private but briefly share the fun serendipity story of that email greeting:

The email starts with the couple (an educator & a musician from Canada but now in the states) saying they were looking at a travel book reviewing all the countries of the world and when they came to The Gambia, they were reminded of me since I’m the only person they had ever met from there, though a long time ago, and remembered the Gambia photos on my condo wall.

My downtown Nashville Row House for first 10 years of retirement.

THE  STORY

It was around the first of January 2003 (16 years ago) when after returning from The Gambia I finally moved from the Residence Inn Nashville West End to my new row house in Hope Gardens/Germantown across from the Farmer’s Market and Bicentennial Mall State Park (Header photo above). I think I used my new Tacoma pickup to move my stuff from the hotel to my new row house. As happens sometimes, a box fell out of the truck along West End Avenue and this charming couple from western Canada, in town as Vanderbilt students, saw the box and stopped, picking it up and diligently tracing it to me at my new address! Wow! There are still a few “Good Samaritans” left in the world!   🙂  Thank you!

When they brought the box to me I gave them an invitation to my already planned open house later in January and they came! And still remember it and all my Gambia photos on the walls.

Thus the connection when they read about Gambia in the book. They found me and my website in an internet search and decided to write their very kind and thoughtful New Year’s greeting through the contact form on my website. Small world & fun memories!     🙂

Thanks friends! For remembering AND writing!   Good Samaritans in my life!


“We instinctively tend to limit for whom we exert ourselves. We do it for people like us, and for people whom we like. Jesus will have none of that. By depicting a Samaritan helping a Jew, Jesus could not have found a more forceful way to say that anyone at all in need – regardless of race, politics, class, and religion – is your neighbour. Not everyone is your brother or sister in faith, but everyone is your neighbour, and you must love your neighbour.” 


― Timothy Keller, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just

¡Pura Vida!

 

Bicentennial Mall Carillons across the street from my Row House – Nice music!

 

How blessed I am to have lived is so many beautiful places!  AND to have had so many neat experiences like this! THANK YOU GOD! 

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Morning Birds

First a Turkey Vulture soared overhead like a messenger from God, then 3 simple birds landed in 3 different trees and I felt close to God during breakfast today – even without colorful, rare or gorgeous birds – just plain birds smiling at me as I smiled back!

Birds in My Garden at Breakfast Today

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My heart is like a singing bird.

~Christina Rossetti

And tomorrow morning, Saturday, I leave for Palo Verde National Park. See yesterday’s post for more information.

¡Pura Vida!

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New Kindle Today & Two Book Reports

That’s my new Kindle Fire HD 8 above beside a real book I’m also reading. It is my second Kindle ever and 1 inch taller which does make the print a little larger and easier to read, but there are some things I don’t like as well as on my old 5-year-old Kindle. First, the cover is simply not as good and does not stand up on my dining table as well as the old one. Inside it is more complicated and confusing to use electronically for this old man – beginning to show my age? But I will get used to it and love it eventually.  🙂

The Strange Juxtaposition of Two Books I’m Reading

DIGITAL ON KINDLE: The Seven Storey Mountain  

Written in 1948, this is the autobiography of a spiritual mentor whose writings I like and who is of the same generation of my parents, Thomas Merton. He describes his “coming of age” as an adult and discovering who he really is from first the adventures of life and then the spiritual dimension of life and at 68% through the book (Kindle tells you that)  he is still struggling with what his vocation will be but even more so with his relationship with God. Been there, done that!  🙂

REAL PAPER BOOK FROM FRIEND: The Gringos Hawk   (not available digitally)

I’m only about a fourth of the way through this hardback book which is also an adult coming of age autobiography of a young man of my generation this time, published in 2001. Not as spiritual as Merton’s, yet more adventurous as American Jon Marañon ends up in southern Costa Rica on the Pacific Coast (where I love traveling) and as a 23 year old buys a tract of land on the coast at a bargain price. Then the problems and adventures begin dealing with government regulations, local farmers, and even a “witch” along with illnesses, injuries, etc. And that is as far as I am in the story now. But it is the kind of thing I too might have done in the 1960’s if I had not been, like Thomas Merton, highly motivated by what I considered a “calling” from God. Young men struggling with who they are!

I will report back when I have finished both bios and how I am relating to them then. It is funny how I identify with both guys of two different generations and two different worlds and somehow ended up reading both stories at the same time.    🙂

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Remembering Eugene Peterson

Christianity Today has 3 good articles about one of the few great Christians of my generation, Eugene Peterson, who recently died:

Ministry Lessons

Eugene Peterson Competed His Long Obedience

Eugene Peterson: A Monk Out of Habit

I guess his translation of the Bible called The Message is the biggest influence he had on me and my life, by far my favorite version of the Bible, but his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction ranks pretty high up there also. My spiritual focus for many years now has been on the spirit of God working inside me and in the lives of all followers of Jesus. It is where we find hope for this pathetically sinful world. Thus the title of my “spiritual page” on this site  “His Spirit.”

This Presbyterian minister reminds me in some ways of my favorite Catholic Monk, Thomas Merton, whose autobiography I am currently reading, The Seven Storey Mountain. They are real people allowing “His Spirit” to control their lives as they relate to virtually everyone as Christ would. In some ways it reminds me of my youth ministry days and the simple WWJD phenomenon (What Would Jesus Do?), only much deeper and almost mystical as we are led by His Spirit!

I worked my entire adult working life for Southern Baptists, the largest of the Evangelicals talked about so much today and experienced the spiritual decline of a church, denomination and the broader “Evangelicals” as they became political with a focus on power, money, and the control of other people rather than allowing “His Spirit” to work through them as the voices of Jesus. They seemed to have chosen a self-seeking Republican Party instead and their self-centered leaders. It saddens me because in earlier days I experienced His Spirit working through Southern Baptists. Now they give us Donald Trump and racist Republican leaders. It is one of the reasons I moved my retirement to Costa Rica to avoid such poison that now seems to affect a whole nation if not the whole world. Scary! We need more Eugene Peterson’s!