Holy Hope, I see before me the path of Jesus.
It trails into my future, while it’s clarity fades as it leaves this present moment.
I am like Bartimeus along this way.
I call out for my Savior.
At my plea angels hurry to my side with the balm to heal my blindness.
I see the Christ with me, before me, beside me, beneath me as hallowed ground, above me as Sun’s light and warmth.
In Hope I never walk alone.
Companions of my life, hand in hand,
Faith and Love abide with me.
My life follows in His steps to that place prepared for me.
Here on this Earth, I, too, know the Cross.
And in this Day, I, too, experience the Paradise of His Presence.Joann Nelander
Archive for August, 2010
Holy Hope
Posted in My Journal with tags cross, Faith, Holy Hope, love, My Journal, paradise, presence, Way on August 30, 2010 by JoannaNow You are Six. (via The Wonderwheel)
Posted in My Journal with tags Being Six, childhood, Mother Love, My Journal, parenting on August 29, 2010 by JoannaI’d like another chance at being six but hopefully old age won’t be it. Here’s a mom’s view of the wonder of six and most of all her Lyle.
via The Wonderwheel
The Great Unwashed – “Just Downright Mean”
Posted in American, Michelle Obama, My Journal, Obama, Political with tags American, bias, bigotry, great unwashed, Krauthammer, liberal, Michelle Obama, My Journal, Obama, Political on August 29, 2010 by JoannaCharles Krauthammer reacts to Liberal reaction to national dissatisfaction with heavy handed big government and poor governance. He writes:
Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the “bitter” people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging “to guns or religion or” — this part is less remembered — “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”
That’s a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.
– Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.
– Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.
– Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.
– Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.
Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,”
Krauthammer sums up:
It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms). Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” — blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims — a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it succinctly, “just downright mean”
The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.
“I Came to Carmel to Save Souls and to Pray for Priests.” (via Carmelite Sisters’s Blog)
Posted in My Journal with tags carmelite, Litany of the Saints, My Journal, ordination, Prayer, priests, St. Therese on August 29, 2010 by JoannaI posted this some time ago, but the Holy Spirit gives it the breath of eternity and Pentecost.
All You Have Given Me
Posted in My Journal, Spiritual with tags Catholic Church, Catholicism, christianity, cross, Denominations, Eucharist, My Journal, paradise, Poverty, Religion and Spirituality, Sacraments, Spiritual on August 24, 2010 by JoannaI love You, Lord. You embrace me in our communion of Eucharist. I believe in Your love for the sinner. I am that sinner. You come to me. I am empty and poor, yet You make my poverty Your paradise. Here I bring to You all You have given me.
Behold Your streaming waters tumbling over my rocky ground. Your light penetrates my depths; the caverns of my heart yield their darkness to You, O Holy Sun! Sit here beside me in silence, as praise becomes an uncontainable river within me. Flow from my humble abode to water Your thirsting world without. Delight, O Lord, at the crashing thunder as majestic waves rise before You in a crescendo of thanksgiving, finally pounding down upon the shore of my unworthiness. They ebb and flow and gather strength as I remember Your Mercies. All You have given me, I give now with gratitude.
Eagles dance in the air above our heads, grasping as claws hold fast, spinning in wedded bliss; their flight a symbol of our holy love.
Joann Nelander
If All the World
Posted in My Journal with tags My Journal, petition, plea, Prayer, tears on August 24, 2010 by JoannaIf all the world turn away from Christ, I pray I will still be there at His feet washing them with my tears, drying them with my hair.
My Heart Your Paradise
Posted in My Journal with tags Communion, eagles, embrace, Eucharist, love, mercies, My Journal, remember, sinner, symbol, wedded on August 24, 2010 by JoannaMay my heart be Your paradise on earth, empty of self, save for You, Who are the wellspring of my very being, the great I Am Who Am. Cloth me in Your Heart and dream Holy dreams that create Your life in me. I am empty awaiting the waters of life to inundate my poor, longing soul. Speak peace Beloved. I gaze into Your Soul in its anguished Gethsemane. All ages await your healing Death on the Cross the Father laid upon your bosom in a bath of blood and tears. Fill Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow as with Mary”s “Fiat” her womb became Your world.
Life, precious ointment of Love, consume the death You find in me.
Sour To Sweet (via Franciscan Flowers)
Posted in My Journal with tags My Journal on August 9, 2010 by JoannaWe’re all bound to suffer. Why waste it?









