Anita Lustrea

Melinda Schmidt is back with me on the podcast.  It’s been a while! Lots has happened in 2024 and we started the year talking about thriving and surviving. There’s been more of the survive vibe going on. This week we are back to encourage all of us on the thriving path and what that might look like for the last half of this year.

We talked about soul care, creativity, and how to move out of despondency.  Here are the links to what ignited out conversation. Feel free to email us with your feedback!

[email protected]

Soul Care article

Consie Sindet and creativity

Getting Out of Despondency

The post Melinda Schmidt – episode 384 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

If you enjoy the beautiful guitar music, you can learn more about Steve Wick and how to purchase his music on his website.

The post Lectio Divina 115 Matthew 15:29-37 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.  7.26.24 

1. President Joe Biden did America right by pulling out of the presidential race. It was a courageous move by a good man, a man of character and a true patriot. He has served America and the world well. 

Now, the Democrats will have to figure out how to come together quickly without short circuiting the give and take that ‘democracy’ demands. That’s beginning to get sorted out. There will be a bit of scuffling but I don’t think it will  be a polarizing fist fight. They know that too much is at stake. 

When push comes to shove, Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee. Who will be the VP? She’s got a lot of choices. It’s a deep and talented bench. When she chooses one they’ll have to move fast, capitalizing on a reinvigorated base and some very good momentum.

It helps that they won’t be defending Project 25 (the playbook of MAGA). Instead, they’ll  be warning voters about it. As well they should. It’s toxic stuff.

2. “Christian nationalism is impoverished as it seeks a kingdom without a cross. It pursues a victory without mercy. It acclaims God’s love of power rather than the power of God’s love. 

We must remember that Jesus refused those who wanted to ‘make him king’ by force just as much as he refused to become king by calling upon ‘twelve legions of angels’. Jesus needs no army, arms or armored cavalry to bring about the kingdom of God. 

As such, we should resist Christian nationalism as giving a Christian facade to nakedly political, ethnocentric and 

impious ventures.” ~ N.T. Wright, Anglican Theologian

Trust me. N.T. Wright deserves to be taken seriously.  

3. America Is A Gun

“England is a cup of tea. 

France, a wheel of ripened brie.

Greece, a short, squat olive tree

America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand.

Argentina, Maradona’s hand.

Germany, an oompah band.

America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.

Hungary, a goulash stew.

Australia, a kangaroo.

America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.

Scotland is a highland fling.

Oh better to be anything than 

America is a gun.” ~ Brian Biltson, British Poet

It’s not always easy seeing what others see. Biltson very cleverly reminds us that we have a problem we are unwilling to address. Until we do, people will continue to  die unnecessarily and civilized people all over the globe will shake their heads in bewilderment.

4. “In our time, when not only the language but the reference points of the Christian faith have been appropriated by and have come to connote right-wing visions of the world, it is important  for us to remember  that there has never been a conservative prophet. 

Prophets have never been called to conserve social orders that have stratified inequities of power and privilege and wealth: prophets have always been called to change them so all can have access to the fullest fruits of life.” ~ Obey Hendricks, Jr., PhD, Columbia University

Can I get an Amen?

5. “To the limit of my own faith vision, I have sought to describe God‘s good news that Jesus proclaimed. It is, however, important for me to say that reimagining the life God gives does not mean that I have attained it. I constantly seek to catch up to the words I write. There’s always a painful gap between the radiant …life that I see in Jesus and my own life … But I am  slowly learning not to despair … God always meets us where we are…” ~ Trevor Hudson, Seeking God

This is also my confession. I know that painful gap. I, too, struggle to catch up to the words I write. And then God shows up and loves me anyway. 

6. “The 3rd commandment, Do not take the Lord’s name in vain, isn’t about using curse words . It is about (among other things) appropriating God’s sacred Presence for one’s own gain and schemes. This would be the case, for example, if a political party were to claim God is with them and/or their leader and with no one else. Hypothetically speaking.” ~ Pete Enns

7. The first time I went to the Mall of  America in MN  I was overwhelmed by its size and I was grateful that at every intersection there was a map and on the map …was a pointer saying  – “You are here’. That was a game changer. 

I know how to get lost. Knowing where I was helped me to get my bearings so I could get to where I needed to be. 

Where are you? 

How do you get from there to where you need to be? 

That’s the sacred journey.

8. “Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is knowing the difference between right and almost right.” – Charles Spurgeon

What a fascinating insight. 

9. “Quit your worship charades.

Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings—meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more! Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!

You’ve worn me out!

I’ll be looking the other way.

Go home and wash up.

Clean up your act.

Whew, this is what a prophetic voice sounds like. Thus saith the Lord. This hits home, calling us to account. Let those who have ears, hear. 

10. Almost all developed nations have universal health care for all their citizens. 

The USA, the richest nation, is the notable outlier. The desire to figure this out isn’t in our DNA I guess. Without that desire nothing can happen and special interest groups work hard to squelch that desire. Why? It’s profit over people for them

When I talk with folks about our biggest national problems, the cost of health care is always near, if not at the very top of their list. 

When I chat with Canadian friends and others who have universal health care, they’ll admit that it’s not perfect (what is) but they’ll admit to feeling quite OK, knowing there’s a medical safety net that works and gives them a sense of security. 

I am grateful for Social Security and worry when politicians wonder aloud if it’s worth the expense. They should be thinking of expanding it to everyone.

The post Mike’s Rumblings 07-26-24 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

If you enjoy the beautiful guitar music, you can learn more about Steve Wick and how to purchase his music on his website.

The post Lectio Divina 114 Matthew 15:21-28 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 113 Matthew 15:10-20 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. 7.12.24.

1. “In Matthew 9 Jesus told Matthew to “Follow me.” 

And then we hear that Matthew “got up and followed him.” The verb used here in the Greek is the same verb used to describe the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead: Matthew rose. 

Conversion means a transition into a higher life, arising from a preoccupation with the goods of the world and a reorientation to the things of God… The  call of Jesus is meant to get into your mind, and then past your mind into your body, and then through your body into your life, into your most practical decisions. …” Bishop Robert Barron

Have you had a conversion experience lately? Actually, I have  had many in my life. I’ve needed many.  And I’m sure I’ll need many more. It’s never been one and done for me. 

2. “See the super patriot. Hear him preach how he loves his country.  Hear him preach how he hates liberals. 

And moderates. 

And intellectuals. 

And activists. 

And pacifists. 

And minority groups. 

And aliens. 

And unions. 

And teenagers.

And the very rich. 

And the very poor.

And people with foreign sounding names. 

Now you know what a super-patriot is. He’s someone who loves his country while hating 93% of the people who live in it.” ~ Mad Magazine circa 1960

Ha, the prophet Alfred E. Neuman still speaks. By the way, if this (super-patriotism) describes you, help is available. Just like Matthew (Rumble #1) you can choose to cut against the grain and recover your life. 

Or not. 

I think it’s a no-brainer. But that’s me. 

3. “The prosperity gospel and christian nationalism offer to us everything Satan offered to Christ when he tempted the Savior in the wilderness.” ~ author unknown

By the way, I’m deliberately using lower case letters from now on whenever I refer to christian nationalism. It doesn’t deserve an upper case mention. For that matter, neither does the prosperity gospel.

4. When a politician’s message is low on facts and heavy with doom and gloom, my cringe level rises and my trust level takes a nosedive. Fear mongering is what lazy politicians do. Trusting those politicians is what lazy citizens do.

5. “The price of privilege is the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly. And the least that a person in the dominant caste can do is not make the pain any worse.” ~ Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origin of Our  Discontents 

She’s right, but the privileged/dominant caste likes the status quo. Rock the boat and that status could be jeopardized. It becomes a battle royale between self preservation and moral duty. 

And the winner is …?

P.S. Wilkerson is a brilliant writer. I highly recommend her books Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns.

6. The Netflix documentary, “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial” described Hitler as being “a fundamentally lazy person. He did not like to work at something he didn’t  find interesting. He would  sleep in late. He would have a kind of leisurely lunch, then maybe he would receive government ministers or military commanders and hear some reports and then give some orders… 

Hitler had a very unusual leadership style. He was not someone who gave orders all the time. Instead, he seems to have rather consciously developed a technique where his subordinate people and subordinate agencies would have to compete for his favor. It was their task to work towards the Fuhrer…everything in the whole governmental machine was desperately trying to figure out what he wanted.”

One of my initial reactions was “Whoa, one of our presidential candidates (you can figure out which one) pretty much has the same habits and approaches to governance as Hitler.”

Yep, this is all too familiar territory. It gives me the willies just thinking about it. 

7. What drum is God asking you to bang on these days?  

Are you saying yes or no?

8. And the child said: “When I was hungry you put up posters of the Ten Commandments in my classroom and then voted against subsidizing lunches at school.”

Pretty whacked out isn’t it? 

Putting a religious poster up is not my idea of being a credible witness. Feeding hungry kids is very credible. 

“Whatever you did for the least of these, you did unto me.” ~  Jesus

9. “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

I read this for the first time in 1967. It grabbed me then and it grabs me now.  Imagine it – “harnessing for God the energies of love.”

10. “The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” ~ Frederick Buechner

Where is that for you? Not sure?  That’s OK. Keep  searching and stay available.  And when you finally know where the world’s hunger and your gladness meet, go for it. Swing for the fences. 

The post Mike’s Rumblings 07-12-24 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 112 Matthew 14:28-36 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

1. Independence Day was tough this year. Ever since the debate and then the unimaginable rulings by the Supreme Court, I find myself a bit lost and deeply worried about the state of our union. 

I feel as if I’m in a boat, adrift during a horrible storm. The country I knew and loved is feeling like a stranger.

So the debate was pretty much a disaster. 

Biden was off his game. Way off. It was a dismal performance. He looked dazed and confused. However, the next day he spoke clearly and cogently at a rally in NC, admitting his debate performance was sub par and that he’s learned over time that ‘when you get knocked down, you get back up.” I suspect that will be a campaign slogan. 

Trump lied during the debate. Bigly, he lied. Over and over and over again he brazenly ignored the truth and refused to answer uncomfortable questions. It’s what he does. It’s what he’s been doing all his life. The next day he too was back on the campaign stump peddling disinformation. He proved and keeps proving once again that he is an integrity avoidant man. 

So, where does that lead us? Octavia E. Butler wisely shows us a way forward. 

“Choose your leaders 

with wisdom and forethought.

To be led by a coward 

is to be controlled 

by all that the coward fears.

To be led by a fool 

is to be led 

by the opportunists 

who control the fool.

To be led by a thief 

is to offer up 

your most precious treasures 

to be stolen.

To be led by a liar 

is to ask 

to be told lies.

To be led by a tyrant 

is to sell yourself 

and those you love 

into slavery.” 

I’ll use her words as my compass heading. Maybe you should too unless of course, you find cowards, fools, thieves, tyrants and liars to be acceptable leaders.

If the debate was a disaster, what happened at the Supreme Court was an epic fail. In effect, the conservative justices declared that a President is above the law, immune from prosecution. They effectively handed  him/her a forever ‘get out of jail free card’.

In a blistering dissent Justice Sonia Sotomayer wrote:  “The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably …In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.” Ouch.

Wannabe kings and tyrants are licking their chops. And guess what?  Such a person is on the ballot in November. 

All this gives me the shivers. I can see, feel, and taste the raging storm surrounding me. I know I need to find a safe harbor. I need God and the faith that sustains me. 

I have to remind myself that I am first and foremost a citizen in the Kingdom of God. In that Kingdom, the way of Jesus is not the way of the proud, the narcissist, or the liar. The way of Jesus is the way of humility and honesty. It is the way of those who admit to others that they fail and have weaknesses and  those who, when knocked down, dare to stand up again. 

The way of Jesus is certainly not the way of christian nationalists, who are led by people who deliberately distort, politicize, and weaponize the Gospel. They appear obsessed with making sure The Handmaid’s Tale becomes tomorrow’s  reality. If you choose to be on that team, so be it, but don’t be surprised if others begin to distance themselves from you.

Friends, we’re in the middle of a big storm and the boat we’re on is taking on water. What do we do? Let’s go back to square one, praying for God to show up and for us to show up for Him.

This week God showed up for me in the words of  Bishop Robert Barron. He’s responding to the story of the calming of the sea in Matthew 8.

“Friends, in this wonderful story  …we witness some of the spiritual dynamics of fear and trust. The disciples stand symbolically for all of us journeying through life within the narrow confines of the fearful ego.

When they confront the storm and the mighty waves, they are immediately filled with terror. Similarly, when the trials and anxieties of life confront the ego, the first reaction is fear, since there is no power beyond itself upon which it can rely. In the midst of this terrible storm, this inner and outer tension, Jesus symbolizes that divine energy that remains unaffected by the fear-storms generated by the grasping ego. 

Continuing to read the story at a spiritual level, we see that it is none other than this divine power that successfully calms the waves: he “rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm.” This beautiful narrative seems to suggest that if we but awaken to the presence of God within us, if we learn to live and to see at a deeper level, if we live in basic trust rather than fear, then we can withstand even the most frightening storms.”

“… if we learn to trust, rather than fear, then we can withstand even the most frightening storms.” That’s a big ‘if’. I’m choosing to trust cuz fear has never worked well for me. We live in turbulent times and the weather outside is frightful. But in the  unshakable, unbreakable Kingdom of God there is always hope,  comfort and the resolve to stand against great evil.

That’s all I got for this week. It’s the best I could do. 

Blessings

The post Mike’s Friday Rumblings 07-05-24 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 111 Matthew 14:6-14 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 06-28-24 appeared first on Anita Lustrea.