Grace Waves

Friends:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me, I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you – and I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire; and if I do I trust you will lead me by the wise road….though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. —Thomas Merton

 
“I Stand at Your Gate”:  Thanks to Christine Hartmann and Bill Carmel for the new Art Exhibit at Peace.  Its inspiration was to give trafficked children courage and hope.  Give yourself the time to savor and absorb this Exhibit.  Feel free to invite friends to come and experience it with you.  Copies of Christine’s book will be made available in the future.
10 members of Peace participated in the Mock Job Fair at FCI Dublin this week.  Keep the inmates and the guards and all their families, and Chaplain Ashforth in your prayers in addition to the ongoing development of our Prison Ministry.
To the Members of Peace from the CC Food Bank:  Friends, thank you for your donation of 145 pounds of food on July 10.  Your donations equate to 116 meals which will brighten many faces.  We serve 149,000 people each month and distribute over 50,000 pounds of food every working day.  The children, seniors, and low-income hungry Thank You!  Together we can end hunger.
Congratulations to Elise and Kaleo on the publication of their new book “The Creative Art of Living, Dying and Renewal” – Your Journey through Stories, Qiqong Meditation, Journaling and Art.  Copies will be made available to the friends of Peace in the near future.
Our First Friday Films will take the month of August off.  No film this Friday evening.
For the people of the Ukraine, Syria, Israel and Gaza and for the impoverished of our world:  “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” Pres. John Kennedy.
This year our St. Francis Animal Blessing and Pet Festival will be on Sunday, October 12.  Greg, Chuck and Pam will begin inviting you to help organize in the near future.  (Does a dog have Buddha nature?  Mu.)
Gary was completely surprised by his belated birthday celebration this past Sunday and especially the gift of his brand new Blue Boa!  (Thanks, Ken!)
Keep in your prayers:  Annegret, Mark, Ali, Ari, Yael, Elias and Kelly on their wedding, friends of Peace traveling in Estonia, Berlin, Brazil , the Czech Republic, Hawaii and other part of the globe, all the suffering children and those who believe violence can cure social ills.
Bev and I thank you for your prayers for our family while we are on vacation and celebrating Elias and Kelly’s wedding in August.  (Great preachers and music will be coming your way in August!)
“God is found when He is sought and when God is no longer sought He escapes us.  God is heard only when we hope to hear Him, and if we cease to listen He ceases to speak.  His silence ceases to be vivid and becomes dead, even though we recharge it with the echo of our own emotional noise.”

Let me seek then, the gift of silence, and poverty and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer:  where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all. —Merton

Blessings,  Pr. Steve