Flocknote

Jan

12

CWL VIRTUAL MEETING ON ZOOM

From the comfort of your own home, and perhaps in your old housecoat still, please join us for our January CWL Meeting and a wee bit of socialization also. The meeting will be Tuesday, January 12 at 1 p.m.

Are you going?

Yes

No

Maybe

going.

not going.

might be going.

Anne Wolkenstein is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Anne Wolkenstein's Personal Meeting Room

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/7525591183?pwd=UVVRK3JxdzBLTVlEUVJqRVpudVozQT09

Meeting ID: 752 559 1183
Passcode: 5RZXpR

The civil rights leader John Lewis (1940–2020) has been an inspiration to many of us this year. How did this saintly public man avoid deeper recognition for so long? His words read like a prayer for contemplative action:

Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth, and follow its dictates. Know that the truth always leads to love and the perpetuation of peace. Its products are never bitterness and strife. Clothe yourself in the work of love, in the revolutionary work of nonviolent resistance against evil. Anchor the eternity of love in your own soul and embed this planet with goodness. Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don’t be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself. [1]

How was everyone’s Christmas dinner. It was only Gerry and I and this uninvited guest.

My dad started a tradition that when someone was away for Christmas due to work, they would be in the photo.....as a paper plate. This continued over the decades, and sometimes the plate represented someone that had passed on. Here is a picture of my brother in Vancouver continuing this family tradition in 2020.
I often would comment that the table gets smaller and smaller as we age, but our children will expand the table again.......❤️

Let’s talk about solitude, and interior silence. Here is a beautiful message written in

"An excellent method of preserving interior silence is to keep exterior silence. . . even in the world, each one of us can make his own solitude, a boundary beyond which nothing can force its way unperceived. It is not noise in itself that is the difficulty, but noise that is pointless; it is not every conversation, but useless conversations; not all kinds of occupation, but aimless occupations. In point of fact, everything that does not serve some good purpose is harmful. It is foolish, nay, more, it is a betrayal to devote to a useless objective powers that can be given to what is essential. There are two ways of separating ourselves from almighty God, quite different from one another but both disastrous, although for different reasons: mortal sin and voluntary distractions—mortal sin, which objectively breaks off our union with God, and voluntary distractions, which subjectively interrupt or hinder our union from being as close as it ought to be. We should speak only when it is preferable not to keep silence. The Gospel does not say merely that we shall have to give an account of every evil word, but of every idle thought."

— St. Alphonsus Liguori, p. 44.