Healing is not recovery - it's more that that!

Recovery is not about finding what we had before but thought we had lost, but discovering that what gives me life today. A physical illnes can leave soemone DISabled, it is so with a mental and emotional illness too, but, what they both do, is bring us to a place of a changed life. What I now am is other-ABLED, able to do that which I could or would not do before - take another way. I have also learned that NOT ALL CHANGE IS BAD or negative. It's just the culture of selfishness that pampers to the self "What I want I can have, and money must be thrown at it until it is acheived!" Being with my friends has taught me to give myself what I need to heal and not take it from others. They have their own journey. We do it side by side, not in each others pockets! Thankyou to all who have been with me on the journey.

Opportunities for change come in many guises. Illness is one of them. Having no control is really living by faith, and that even has to be allowed to have it's own space and experience. Whatever 2013 holds, I will change for the better, and what has been will not hold me prisoner by manipulating my feelings by memory, but faced as a reality of an evolving life. Onwards and Upwards to the hope Christ has called me to.

From Father Stephen who summs up the life of being Orthodox in a nutshell...
The Orthodox “experience” if I can use such a phrase, is the confirmation in the heart of the truth we have received as we grow in grace and in purity of heart. But the truth of the faith must be confirmed in such a living manner or it simply becomes an historical item and the Church would be a collection of antiquarians and not the living temple of God. For my knowledge of God is also my life in God. Life, light, truth, knowledge - all of these have something of a synomymous character.

O Lord, Save Thy people and bless thine inheritance...

Rememeber me O Lord, in Thy Kingdom...

Can't see the wood for the trees!
Looking along the path which has led me to this day, I was prompted by a dear friend, Phyllis, and the gift of the writing book she gave at Christmas, to articulate some observations of The Path so far. So here is a small offering.

I heard a voice say “Today, if you hear Him, do not harden your hearts…”
Lord, Have Mercy…


Jesus says “I will build my church”

As we read the lives of the Orthodox Saints, The Holy Spirit and our prayer to Christ prepares us and we become sharers of something of their grace and experience of Christ and, as with all Christ’s does through His people, this experience helps us to find our path in, and to, Christ too.

It’s a homecoming!
To God, and to our “self”.

As I was once taught – “From glory to GLORY”!

The Church gives us Bishops, Priests and Deacons: Holy Monks and Nuns, Friends and Mothers-in-Christ, men and women who stand on The Path, and send up flares to help light our way back to God and to our true “self.”
They ask God what He wants to give them… then do just that and only that.

In the Liturgy The Church prays for the church,
and prayer is continually offered …
Priest: For our Archbishop (Name), our Bishop (Name), the honourable presbyters, the deaconate in Christ, all the clergy and the people, let us pray to the Lord.
People: Lord, have mercy.


Speaking with the Priest can help us only when we help ourselves to the help offered.
Applying the ointment, or taking/swallowing/ingesting the word of treatment offered by our Spiritual Father, is how we accept the grace of healing for our broken-ness…
given by The Father, through Christ, in The Holy Spirit, offered within His Church fulfilled in the Holy Mysteries.
“I will take the cup of Salvation, and call upon The Name of The Lord!”

If I have put on Christ, His way should not be alien to me.
Therefore should the same garment fit all?

Holy God; Holy Mighty; Holy Immortal… Have Mercy on us.

The Masters Face.
Inspired by Phyllis Blockley.



I have a likeness of My Lord, upon a cloth, kept so secretly.
Which He made by rising from the dead.
The Light, from All Eternity
shone in the darkness;
And the darkness comprehended it not.


The sign of death that causes the life of all?
A weapon invincible,
and The Weapon of Peace.
The Cross,
meant for shame, came to be
a sign of Victory for me.


I see, in lives of humility,
this sign, carried, for love of me.
So, I depict on wood
all the good,
which attracts life, to LIFE;
through death.
Life fulfilled.
Life fulfilling itself.


The Image created Itself.
And broke It's Self, to heal all things.
The Image envisaged no greater love,
because LOVE
knows no other than Itself.


"Let there be Light"
There was,
and is,
and ever shall be,
in those who live for eternity,
who look for the life that created "all this"
and gives itself. Continually.

The greatest gift of ALL.

"Grief is the price we pay for the love we give"
So says David Teems in one of his songs from his "In The Mourning" cd, which was born out of grief for the victims of The World Trade Center collapse, and his own Fathers' death.
Through Isaiah, God says "I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places; That you may know that I am the LORD, Who calls you by your name..."
Dunlop and Mum have departed this life, and both taken some more of my heart with them.
But I know the heart can be renewed by faith, and God gives faith.I accept.
In the psalms it says "Unless The Lord builds the house, the labourers labour in vain"
So I will remain in this place, digging and seeking until the treasure that is to be found in this dark place is found.
The treasure is love, and love never fails.
For God IS love.

It has been many months since I spoke in this place and The Lord has been merciful in the plan He has for our life.

Love is th only Universal language.

A smile is the best form of trade one can give.

God bless all who are hurting today, either for others or in themselves.

Farewell for now. X X X