Anita Lustrea

Melinda joins me again on the podcast as we continue our series on how to Survive and Thrive in 2024. This episode is all about friendship and how our friends are a significant source for our thriving! We talk about various categories of friends from acquaintances to small “f” friends and capital “F” Friends. And some suggestions on how to deepen your friendship pool. If you’re feeling low on friends, or need reminding of the quality friends that you have, I think this conversation is for you.

The post Melinda Schmidt – episode 387 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.

This is an audio version of Mike Murphy‘s Friday rumblings. This is a regular post on Facebook that I’ve turned into a podcast. I decided Mike’s words needed a wider audience. You may agree or disagree with what he says, but there is certainly much food for thought contained here. You can friend Mike on Facebook for the printed version or read it below.

The post Mike’s Rumblings 08-23-24 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.

This is a weekly release of the spiritual practice Lectio Divina. I hope you’ll listen and ponder the scripture passage offered and let me know your thoughts. My email address is [email protected]. Also, feel free to share this podcast on your social media or tell a friend about it. 

If you’d like to support this podcast you can do so through a gift to PayPal using the email address [email protected], or Venmo Anita-Murphy-20

The post Lectio Divina Matthew 16:21-27 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.

Melinda joins me again on the podcast as we continue our mini series about surviving and thriving in 2024. Today we focus on an interesting article about Getting Out of Despondency. Check out the podcast if you want to know if you are despondent as well as learning some action steps to move you out of despondency.

Here’s a link to the article we reference.

Consie Sindet is an artist offering simple ways into the creative process.

The post Melinda Schmidt – episode 386 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.

This is an audio version of Mike Murphy‘s Friday rumblings. This is a regular post on Facebook that I’ve turned into a podcast. I decided Mike’s words needed a wider audience. You may agree or disagree with what he says, but there is certainly much food for thought contained here. You can friend Mike on Facebook for the printed version or read it below

Rumblings 8.16.24

1. “Most young adults I know aren’t looking for a religion that answers all their questions, but rather a community of faith in which they feel safe to ask them.” ~ Rachel Held Evans

It’s not just young adults. It’s people in all age groups (including the ancient ones like me) who want to be respected and taken seriously even when they wonder aloud about something that their religious culture doesn’t want to talk about. 

2. Rev. William Sloane Coffin once said that “there are three kinds of patriots – two bad, one good. 

The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. 

Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with all the world.”

By that definition, I’d  like to consider myself a good patriot. I’m in a persistent and consistent lover’s quarrel with this country of ours. My fists are clenched at times and then the next thing I know my hands open wide enough to welcome all that is so good and beautiful.

To live as an uncritical lover or a loveless critic is a waste of a life. I want no part of it.

3. “… our two political parties are increasingly animated by two starkly different visions of the nation’s past and future: Is America a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians, or is America a pluralistic democracy where all stand on equal footing before the law? Most Americans embrace the latter but a desperate, defensive, mostly white Christian minority clings to the former.” ~ Robert P. Jones, “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy”

4. Ulysses S. Grant said: “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”

Well, he was pretty much on target. In short order, stupidity, blind ambition, white supremacy, and ignorance squelched patriotism and intelligence and found a dastardly travel companion named ‘Jim Crow’. That unleashed  a torrent of laws, primarily in the Confederate states, intended to batter, bruise, marginalize and intimidate Black America and keep them in their place. 

For decades after the Civil War and well into the 20th century,  Jim Crow Laws and their offspring made it clear that there was a way to continue the ‘war between the states’ while all the while pretending it was over. 

That war is still being fought and it shows up in all kinds of sordid ways. Many of the actions taken by states recently impact African Americans adversely. All the gerrymandering, the voting restrictions, reproductive rights legislation, and the banishment of books, have all attacked people of color in disproportionate ways. 

There’s still “miles to travel before we sleep.” 

5. “Everyone of us needs half an hour of prayer each day, except when we are busy – then we need an hour.” ~ Francis de Sales

For those of you who are truly busy, I recommend these free apps. 

– Pray as You Go

– Hallow

– Lectio 365 

Each helps connect busy people to God, through prayer.

6. I know people who work in the dark places in this world of ours. They’ve responded to a deep call of God, living simply and faithfully, without fanfare, amidst the poor and oppressed. They are a visible expression of light and hope and in return they are deeply blessed by those they love and serve.

I think all of us have a meaningful call of God beckoning us. It leads us most often not into arenas where there is great applause but rather great need. If  we respond to that call with a ‘yes’, we’ll need to pray for the courage to take the next step. That response, that prayer, that step, just might define the rest of our lives and be the very thing that gives others hope.  

7. My faith in ‘organized religion’ fluctuates. My faith in the true God they’re trying to codify and institutionalize stays pretty consistently high. 

8. I’ve learned, over time, that  I need to find ways to love those who inhabit a radically different moral universe than the one I favor. In their universe, absurdity trumps virtue  and truth is considered to be absurd. So, finding common ground is tricky. Scripture tells me  if “I seek, I will find.” In other words, keep trying.

9. Ya, he (you know who) said this. 

“The crowd I drew on January 6 was bigger than those who gathered in 1963 to hear the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his famous I Have a Dream speech.”

It’s a lie. 

Here’s the truth. 

The bi-partisan House January 6 Committee pegged his crowd at 53,000 people, about one-fifth of the 250,000  estimated to be at King’s famous address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The NAACP posted photos from both days and said of the crowd comparison: “Not only is his claim completely false, but here’s what is more important: “MLK’s speech was about democracy. His was about tearing it down.”

10. Life’s most critical journey is away from the facades and props that enable us to pretend we are what we’re really not and then to embark on a pilgrimage to discover who we really are. 

The post Mike’s Rumblings 08-16-24 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.

This is a weekly release of the spiritual practice Lectio Divina. I hope you’ll listen and ponder the scripture passage offered and let me know your thoughts. My email address is [email protected]. Also, feel free to share this podcast on your social media or tell a friend about it. 

If you’d like to support this podcast you can do so through a gift to PayPal using the email address [email protected], or Venmo Anita-Murphy-20

The post Lectio Divina Matthew 16:13-20 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.

Melinda Schmidt is back with me as we talk about surviving and thriving in a chaotic 2024. Mark Nepo said, “When we heal ourselves, we heal the world. For the body is only as healthy as its individual cells, the world is only as healthy as its individual souls.” (From The Book of Awakening:Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have)

Today’s topic is about the spiritual practice of Lectio Divina. It’s a favorite of mine and it’s helped me on my healing journey. You can find my weekly release of a Lectio practice on this podcast each Wednesday.

Book mentioned by Jim Wilder: The Other Half of Church

The post Melinda Schmidt – episode 385 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.

This is an audio version of Mike Murphy‘s Friday rumblings. This is a regular post on Facebook that I’ve turned into a podcast. I decided Mike’s words needed a wider audience. You may agree or disagree with what he says, but there is certainly much food for thought contained here. You can friend Mike on Facebook for the printed version or read it below.

Rumblings. 8.9.24 

1. “Jesus did not call his followers to defend Christianity; he called them to defend the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, and the hurting. 

Stop being offended. Get to feeding, healing and peacemaking.” ~ Carl Rodriguez

There are those in the Christian world who seemingly can’t wait to be offended yet one more time, even if it’s much to do, about next to nothing. I think they’re addicted to being ticked off.

If that’s your addiction, please take a good, hard look at your life. And then start getting your facts straight. Don’t post rumors. Learn to apologize and delete. Quit being an embarrassment to yourself and your family. Talk to God about what’s going on in your head and heart. Ask Him to heal you. 

2. “Snowflake? Yes, I’ve heard this term, I think sociopaths use it to discredit the notion of empathy.” ~ John Cleese, Actor  

3. The MAGA standard bearer exhausts me. His entire way of being exhausts me. 

There is a joyful buoyancy to Kamala’s speech and manner.

I’ll go with joyful buoyancy over exhaustion all day, every day.  

4. “It’s not the task of the church to “Make America Great Again.” The contemporary task of the church is to make Christianity countercultural again. And once we untether Jesus from the interests of the state, we begin to see just how countercultural and radical Jesus’ ideas actually are. 

Enemies? Love them. 

Violence? Renounce it. 

Money? Share it. 

Foreigners? Welcome them. 

Sinners? Forgive them. 

These are the kind of radical ideas that will always be opposed by the principalities and powers, but which the followers of Jesus are called to embrace, announce, and enact. And the degree to which the church is faithful to Jesus and his radical ideas is the degree to which the church embodies a faith that is truly countercultural.” ~ Brian Zahnd, Postcards from Babylon

Most people of faith work hard to fit into their church culture which often doesn’t encourage free styling.  So, one goes along to get along. 

But that’s not what Jesus taught and lived out. He infuriated the Jewish religious leaders and made Rome nervous and uncomfortable.   

Most of us like meek and mild Jesus. Walk on the wild side Jesus, not so much.   

5. “My Spiritual Director said to me many years ago, “Your longing for God is your bus ticket home.” ~ Trevor Hudson

Who or what are you longing for?

6. “We’re producing more energy than ever before in this nation. We have the strongest economy in the world, …more people went to work this morning in America than at any other time in our nation’s history. So I’ve got a message for Donald Trump with all his negativity and whining: Stop trash talking America. This is the greatest country on earth, and it’s time that we all start acting like it.” ~ Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania Governor 

I’m a Shapiro fan. He was my choice to be Kamala’s running mate but Tim Walz from MN got the nod. And I’m quite OK with that. With vigor, humor, great clarity and sincere resolve he knocked it out of the park in Philly this week.

Sal Gentile of Late Night summed it up: “Vice President Harris had a very deep bench from which to choose a running mate, but her choice of Walz seems to have been widely popular. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who are usually on opposite sides of the party, both praised the choice, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to post: “Dems in disconcerting levels of array.”

Living as I do in Florida, I swear I am hearing the sounds of weeping and gnashing of teeth coming from the direction of Mara Lago. That crew has  been out maneuvered and cornered. Going forward, expect the absolute worst from them. Don’t expect a message of joyful buoyancy. 

Let the games begin. 

7. Me: Do you think I’m made in the image and likeness of God?

Anita: Technically yes, but right now you’re more like an unfinished sculpture, a little rough around the edges.      

Me: So, you’re saying “I have flaws?

Anita: Everyone does. 

Me: Do I have many?

Anita: Not a lot.  

Me:  How many?

Anita: 57

Me: Seriously?

Anita: I’m sorry. I misspoke. 58. I forgot about ‘argumentative’. 

8.  “… Three nights later, our home was bombed. Strangely enough, I accepted the word of the bombing calmly.  My experience with God had given me a new strength and trust.  I knew now that God is able to give us the interior resources to face the storms and problems of life.  

Let this be our ringing cry…that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and he is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.  This is our hope for becoming better people.  This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.” ~ M.L. King Jr.

Hmmm. “… God … is able to make a way out of no way, transforming dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.” That’ll preach. 

9. The saddest words in the Bible are in the book of Mark. It’s Pilate sending Jesus to his death because he wanted to “satisfy the crowd”. 

I get it. 

I know what that’s all about. 

Bet you do too. 

How many times did trying to ‘satisfy the crowd’ backfire on us? Too many times is my hunch. Way too many.

10. “Just let Jesus live His life through you.” ~ Bob Mitchell, Young Life 

That pretty much sums up what I believe my journey of faith needs to be about. I’ve still got some work left to do. But I’m making baby-step progress. And you?

The post Mike’s Rumblings 08-09-24 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.

This is a weekly release of the spiritual practice Lectio Divina. I hope you’ll listen and ponder the scripture passage offered and let me know your thoughts. My email address is [email protected]. Also, feel free to share this podcast on your social media or tell a friend about it. 

If you’d like to support this podcast you can do so through a gift to PayPal using the email address [email protected], or Venmo Anita-Murphy-20

The post Lectio Divina 116 Matthew 16:5-12 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.

This is an audio version of Mike Murphy‘s Friday rumblings. This is a regular post on Facebook that I’ve turned into a podcast. I decided Mike’s words needed a wider audience. You may agree or disagree with what he says, but there is certainly much food for thought contained here. You can friend Mike on Facebook for the printed version or read it below.

The post Mike’s Rumblings 08-02-24 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.