Reflections by Cary Brown

02/14/2018

Lent starts today. I am choosing personally to focus on the cross in all its aspects this year. I will be using photographs of crosses that I find as I journey through my day and then sitting with them and letting God tell me about the cross. I invite you to journey with me and to see how often a cross appears in your day!
This small simple cross in Furrow Hall in the Early United Methodist Church in Early, Iowa (where I work part time) strikes me every time I walk into that room. The simplicity of it makes me think of how often we try to put flowers all around it and dress it up – and it still remains simply the cross. The starkness of the reality of just what the cross it – hard, painful, torture at times – leads me to think about how often we try to avoid the cross. We don’t want to think about the pain and suffering Jesus suffered for us. We don’t want to face the pain and suffering of our own crosses. We do a lot of things to try to avoid the cross. And yet, that’s where God is.
Help me today, Lord, to see you in the crosses I carry every day, most of them so small in comparison to the cross you carried for me. You were aware of each one of us, of me, as you carried that cross and died upon it. Help me to be aware of You as I carry my cross. You’ve been here. You know what it’s like. You know what I need. You know how to speak to my heart in the midst of it. Help me to listen.
For reflection/journaling:
What crosses do I carry?
Do I try to avoid them or do I embrace them? How?
What is God trying to tell me through those crosses?

06/30/2017

See how the Lord blesses those who fear him.
Psalm 128

In all the many translations that Scripture goes through from the original, sometimes it gets a little off. To me, the use of the word ‘fear’ here is a little off. I think the word ‘awe’ would be so much richer.

God is a loving God, he does not want us to live in fear of him. What parent wants their child to fear them all the time? How can you deepen a loving relationship with someone you fear? I tend to hold back a lot of what I would like to say or do or be when I am with people I fear. That’s not what God wants for us or from us.

To be in awe of someone brings with it respect and dignity. It also brings an openness to the other.

See how the Lord blesses those who are in awe of him.

When you are in awe of God, you look at all the things he does, all the things he creates, all the things around you with different eyes.

A tree is no longer just that thing growing in my yard that gives shade and dumps its leaves. It’s a magnificent example of God’s love. Look at all the shades of green in those leaves. Look at all the different shapes of the leaves and the intricate complex webbing of limbs and branches and twigs to get the leaves to where they can receive the sunlight so they can do the whole process of photosynthesis and make food for the tree to grow and flourish. And to think the root system under a tree is almost as big as the canopy! Those roots reach for water and other nutrients to feed the rest of the tree and to grab securely in the ground so the wind won’t blow it over in normal circumstances. And that tree is home to birds and bugs – creatures God has created. What a miracle in each tree! If it weren’t for the tree using the carbon in the air to make food, our whole air supply would be different and would drastically affect our ability to breathe.
What a blessing a tree is!

When we look at the ordinary things in our lives through the lens of being in awe of God, we see the blessings he gives us. He doesn’t bless us because we are in awe of him. Our being in awe of God allows us to see the blessings already there.

Put on your ‘AWE’ glasses today and see the blessings that surround you!

03/28/2017

March 27, 2017

Thus says the LORD:
Lo, I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
The things of the past shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness
in what I create;
For I create Jerusalem to be a joy
and its people to be a delight;

Full reading – Isaiah 65:17-21

We are in the hard part of Lent – we are sometimes getting tired of our penance of choice. It’s getting harder to keep that promise. And we may be getting cranky. The weather here in Iowa isn’t helping either with very little sunshine!

In today’s scripture God reminds us that, in the midst of our Lenten practice, God is creating something new within us. He is changing us. He reminds us that God is joy and that’s what he wants to share with us! The Good News is that God loves us, just as we are – and that can’t bring anything but joy!

What are you doing with the joy God is bringing to you and your life? Do you see it? Do you accept it? Or are you focusing instead of what you don’t have or what is wrong?

“For I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight….”

08/31/2015

08/25/2015

08/04/2015

St. John Vianney, heroic patron of priests, pray for us!
"The soul hungers for God, and nothing but God can satiate it. Therefore He came to dwell on earth and assumed a Body in order that this Body might become the Food of our souls,"
- St. John Vianney

08/02/2015

Delivering his weekly Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, Pope Francis said that while everyone feels shame before going to Confession, this grace helps us to be open to God’s forgiveness.

07/30/2015

God's love changes us!

07/29/2015

In his introduction to his translation, Ira Progoff writes: "The ultimate goal of the work of The Cloud of Unknowing is union with God, not as God is thought of or imagined to be, but as God is in [God's] nature. . . . [This] refers to an experience in which man seems to be transcending himself, but…

07/28/2015

…Most of us know when we’re at a crossroad in life, when old answers have gone dry, when our souls have gone dry here, when nothing but another choice is possible. Then come the struggle and the dickering, the pain and the fear over which of the many directions we could take, over which we ought to take.

Indeed, the big decisions in life are hardly ever clear—except for one. And that one is piercingly clear: life is a series of dilemmas, of options, of conundrums, of possibilities taken and not taken. Negotiating these moments well is the essence of the life well lived.

As a result, we know now that this search for the whole self is no longer resolved through an educational process alone or even the choice of a good career. This search for the whole self is a process of making spiritual choices between the good and the better, the holy and the mundane, the essence of life and the cosmetic. We have built change into our futures, our educational options, our lives. We have come to understand that no life is set in stone anymore. On the contrary, life is a slow-won evolution of the self that taps every level of our lives and touches all its great questions.

Choice is the holy-making stuff of life. There is no such thing as the inconsequential. Everything we do affects something and someone. Choice, therefore, is a spiritual skill of great import.
—from Following the Path: The Search for a Life of Passion, Purpose, and Joy by Joan Chittister

07/23/2015

Read more about St. Padre Pio. http://buff.ly/1g521aP