The Vibrant Channeled Creator

I can
empower myself

I can
learn my body

I can heal my body

I can
reshape my body

awaken my soul
feed the hungry
nuture the innocent

levitate
wear long robes

Jesus robes
Jesus shoes

Spirit miracles

all rights
JP

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2023
“To proclaim, in fact, it is not enough to bear witness to the good; it is necessary to know how to endure evil. Let’s not forget this: it is very important to proclaim the Gospel; it is not enough to bear witness to the good, but it is necessary to know how to endure evil. A Christian does good, but also endures evil. Both go together; life is like that. Even today, in many places, inculturating the Gospel and evangelising cultures requires constancy and patience, not being afraid of conflict, not losing heart. I am thinking of a country where Christians are persecuted because they are Christians, and they can’t practice their faith easily and in peace.”
Pope Francis

“Christianity with claws.”

There is a disconnection between love and compassion, that leads to hatred. Let love be uncritical, genuine! Summon a loving response. Encounter God’s peace.I am a creature made in God’s image. We bless those who persecute us. When humiliation and anger grab us, and lock up our hearts, we need to access heavenly love, light, the mirror of God.The world is marked by division. We need to join. Let love be genuine!

It’s the birthday of American humorist and newspaperman Eugene Field (1850), born in St. Louis, Missouri. Field claimed two birthdays, September 2 and September 3, telling friends if they forgot him on the first date, they could remember him on the second. Field is best known for his humorous, often sardonic poetry for children, like “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” and “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat.”

Field’s mother died when he was six and his father sent him and his brother to Amherst, Massachusetts, to be raised by a cousin. Field was an exuberant, prankish boy who enjoyed whimsy. He had five chickens in Amherst and named them Winniken, Minniken, Finniken, Boog, and Poog. Fields had no patience for school and spent his youth in and out of boarding schools. He attended four colleges, studying acting and the law, without any success. His father died, leaving Field a small inheritance, which he spent every penny of during six months in Europe.

By 1875, he was back in Missouri, writing for the Saint Joseph Gazette. He became enamored with a 14-year-old girl. When the girl’s father said she was too young to marry, Field replied, “She’ll grow out of it.” They married when she was 16, instead, and had eight children. For the rest of his life, whatever money he earned, he directed it be sent to his wife, because he knew he would spend it frivolously.

Field wrote for newspapers in Kansas City and Denver before settling down in Chicago and writing a humorous column called “Sharps and Flats” for the Chicago Daily News, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. “Sharps and Flats” ran in the morning edition and featured Field’s cutting quips and observations about Chicago, which he called “Porkopolis,” because of its rampant materialism. He enjoyed comparing Chicago to Boston, once writing, “While Chicago is humping herself in the interests of literature, arts, and the sciences, vain old Boston is frivoling away her precious time in an attempted renaissance of the cod fisheries.”

Field enjoyed teasing children, often making faces at them when adults turned their backs. The whimsical, somewhat mean-spirited humor in his book The Tribune Primer (1881) — which suggested that children pat wasps, eat wormy apples, and put mud in a baby’s ears — became sweeter and more nostalgic, as he aged. In “Wynken, Blynken and Nod,” a bedtime story, three children sail and fish among the stars from a boat that is a wooden shoe. The little fishermen symbolize a sleepy child’s blinking eyes and nodding head. The poem became an immensely popular fixture in the cultural lexicon. In the 1960s and ’70s, musicians like Cass Elliott, Donovan, and The Doobie Brothers all sang versions of the song, and in an early version of Lou Reed’s song “Satellite of Love,” the names “Harry, Mark, and John” are sung as “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.”

The three smokestacks at the Lansing Board of Water & Light in Lansing, Michigan, are known locally as “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.”

The popular video game Pac-Man (1980) features four ghosts to be avoided. Their names, “Blinky,” “Inky,” “Pinky,” and “Clyde,” are homage to Field’s poem.

Field’s poetry became a staple of school primers throughout the 20th century. More than 30 elementary schools in the Midwest and Southwest are named for him. About reading, he said: “All good and true book-lovers practice the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed […] No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.”

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2023
“Of course, following Jesus involves asceticism, involves sacrifices; after all, if every good thing requires these things, how much more the decisive reality of life! However, those who witness to Christ show the beauty of the goal rather than the toil of the journey. We may have happened to tell someone about a beautiful trip we took: for example, we would have spoken about the beauty of the places, what we saw and experienced, not about the time to get there and the queues at the airport, no! So, any announcement worthy of the Redeemer must communicate liberation.”

Pope Francis

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2023
“Let us not be discouraged if at times the summit of the Christian life seems too high and the path too steep. Let us look to Jesus, always; let us look to Jesus who walks beside us, who accepts our frailties, shares our efforts and rests his firm and gentle arm on our weak shoulders. With Him close at hand, let us also reach out to one another and renew our trust: with Jesus, what seems impossible on our own is no longer so, with Jesus we can go forth!”

Where I Come From
by Sally Fisher

We didn’t say fireflies

but lightning bugs.

We didn’t say carousel

but merry-go-round.

Not seesaw,

teeter-totter

not lollipop,

sucker

.We didn’t say pasta, but

spaghetti, macaroni, noodles:

the three kinds.

We didn’t get angry:

we got mad.

And we never felt depressed

dismayed, disappointed

disheartened, discouraged

disillusioned or anything,even unhappy:

just sad.

“Where I Come From” by Sally Fisher from Good Question. © Bright Hill Press, 2015. Reprinted with permission. 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2023
“The Lord asks the disciples the decisive question: “But who do you – you! – say that I am?” Who am I for you, now? Jesus does not want to be a key figure from past history; He wants to be an important person for you today, for me today; not a distant prophet: Jesus wants to be the God who is close to us!”

Pope Francis

I can smell the desert on his hair

Hear the whisper in his breath.

Catch the surprise in his tenderness.

Feel healed from fractures

How extraordinary!

There’s a change in the air. As the seasons move from summer to fall, winter to spring, the year tumbles forward, and nothing stays the same. 
Many children will soon return to school, start university, or begin the next phase of their lives. 
Some of us will have to adapt to new ways of living, perhaps a change in circumstances, a new job, house move, relationship or shift in priorities. 
Occasionally, I think back to this time last year; it is only with time and distance that I can gauge the true magnitude of change and how it has affected me and my loved ones.
Most of all, I have learned that life goes on, and eventually, things improve. 
 
Whatever is heading your way, be it through choice or necessity, know that Ravenous Butterflies is by your side to offer comfort and courage. 
Through thick and thin, we’re in this together.
 
Big love,
Lisa XXX

from Ravenous Butterflies 8/29/23

MONDAY, AUGUST 28, 2023
“Tell each other and listen to each other, with sincerity and openness of heart, not remaining inflexible in your own convictions, but moving with the heart, as Saint Augustine suggests: ‘It is one thing to move with the body, another thing to move with the heart: he migrates with the body who changes his place by a motion of the body; he migrates with the heart who changes his affection by a motion of the heart.’ And with the heart in motion, dynamic and open, that welcomes the paths that the Holy Spirit shows.” Pope Francis

The Tarot Card of the Day is the 6 of swords
You are trying to decrease your stress or fatigue in a situation when the 6 of Swords appears. This card shows a pair in a boat, hunched over as if one does in grief or sadness, and on a trip or journey of some sort. They also have help, which could be physical help or support in the material world, or even spiritual help. This card is often symbolic of leaving an unhealthy situation, and the unhealthy part may be unhealthy thoughts, or you may just be feeling defeated and tired of going through the same motions and emotions over and over again.
In love, the 6 of Swords suggests you are moving past a relationship to a healthier place in the love affair, but is often symbolic you are doing so alone. You may be feeling at the end of your rope in a specific situation, and are trying to move past that to a brighter future. As such, the 6 of Swords can be somewhat of a grieving card, but you are feeling stronger and better in the experience by simply making the decision to move on. You may be uncertain of what is ahead, but you know it is not as uncomfortable as what is behind you now.

It’s the birthday of philosopher Georg Hegel , born in Stuttgart (1770). He started out as a theologian, particularly interested in how Christianity is a religion based on opposites: sin and salvation, earth and heaven, finite and infinite. He believed that Jesus had emphasized love as the chief virtue because love can bring about the marriage of opposites. Hegel eventually went beyond theology and began to argue that the subject of philosophy is reality, and he hoped to describe how and why human beings create communities and governments, make war, destroy each other’s societies, and then build themselves up to do it all over again.
He came up with the concept of dialectic, the idea that all human progress is driven by the conflict between opposites, that each political movement is imperfect and so gives rise to a counter movement that takes control — and that is also imperfect — and gives rise to yet another counter movement, and so on to infinity. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx argued that the most important dialectic of history was between worker and master, rich and poor, and their ideas led to the birth of communism.

On writing poetry, he says: “Language is the element of definition, the defining and descriptive incantation. It puts the coin between our teeth. It whistles the boat up. It shows us the city of light across the water. Without language there is no poetry, without poetry there’s just talk. Talk is cheap and proves nothing. Poetry is dear and difficult to come by. But it poles us across the river and puts music in our ears.”

Charles Wright Poetry Almanac

My two children: Quenby at 46 and Owen at 44 years of age. On the eve of Owen’s 44th Birthday, August 27, 1977! Such talent, promise and loyalty to God and family. Photo by Emily.