Tag: prayer

Longing

by rkcdlitt

The treetops glow in light so bright,

        their peeks bleeding pink to gold.

Yet morning’s stroll on lakeside path,

        Sun playfully peeking through the void,     

 a promise of daylight hidden by early mist,

        never hiding God’s love, so bold!!

 

Life is this morning walk of wonder. . .

        with colors of positive fortune surround,

hindered only by mortality’s reminders

        of long ago, life-altering bodily wounds

lifted forever in the circle of love and caring  

        with the Angels of God always around!!

Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.

 

If you are inspired, read my latest book. Kindle eBook $3.99

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Self-help Psych

by rkcdlitt

Self-help Psych

 

I have to admit that there are times when life has totally destroyed me, when my friends and family have surrounded me with love and support and have treated me with gentleness and kindness and love. . . and had offered me so many ways to find a path out of the tragedy, out of the loneliness, the trouble I was temporarily in. And their suggestions and their kindness, although very difficult for me to follow, because in the end, it is something that I must do myself. Their attention is only temporary, for they must at some point return to their lives. It is up to me to fight the battle alone. I understand this and they understand this.

When you hit bottom, and all of your friends help you, you’re given such good ideas to come out of this blue phone you’re in. And all of your lovely neighbors, friends and relatives. Just love you and give you this support for which you are very grateful. You laugh with them. You cry with them. But one by one, they go back to their lives. And then you were alone again.

Speaking of your personal tragedy, eventually. And you’re in your own  black pit again. But. . . there is small light that you see before you. So, you begin to do something. I call it meditation. Others call it prayer. And in my meditation, I turned to the one that I always forget is with me, and that is God. God and his living angels that protect me through all of the tougher times of my life. And I realized that my life isn’t over. The one thing in my life that will never change. There’s something that my friends gave to me. That I didn’t lose. Because it was with me all the time. Because God was with me all the time. And that is love. It’s the gift I always give to people.

So how can I be sad because of my personal tragedy? It was not a miracle; it was only material. And that is not permanent. But love is. I got so wrapped up in being rich. But I forgot about the important thing. I forgot about the fact that I was to love. The person on the corner begging for a nickel. So, the next time I went to cash to check at the bank. I got twenty $5.00 bills. And stuck them in the. Sunglass holder in my car to hand out to that brother or sister on them corner. My personal tragedy is that I got too wrapped up I self. And just something that did not involve sharing. What God gives everybody. Remember when our brother Jesus? Asked us to do. And that is to love God. And love one another. What betters self-help Psych is it there? To get us out of personal tragedies.

To quote Maya Angelou, “I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”

 

Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.

If you are inspired, read my latest book. Kindle eBook $3.99

 

How It All Started

by rkcdlitt

I spent an overly amount of time contemplating today. I centered on a certain Sunday in February 1954 when I was delivering morning newspapers in East Orange, New Jersey. I t had snowed on Friday and Saturday, the roads were plowed but snow-covered, my new fat-wheeled Schwinn bike held three news bags filled with Sunday morning Newark News papers and I was struggling along 20th street about 7:30 AM, not really paying attention to what was on the street, did not hear a car coming up behind me, heard a very loud beep, I swerved to the right, slammed right into the rear end of a parked car, went head over heels and landed on the trunk of the car face first.

I woke up on the sofa in the house of a family who owned the car I ran into. The driver of the car I swerved from picked me up, carried me to the front door, rang the bell, and into the house. As luck would have it, the father of the family was a doctor. Diagnosis: two chipped front teeth, one broken nose, and a mild concussion (a forgotten and the first of many concussions in my life).

What I realize now but did not then (at the age of ten) was that my seemingly good luck was not luck at all. It was one of God’s protective, loving angels sent to wrap His love around me as a comforting blanket that would guide me through life.

 

Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.

 

Knowledge

by rkcdlitt

Most of us are born into life of love. We are fortunate enough to be given a basic education both in a public or a parochial school that provides us with the ability to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, and divide at least simple numbers (p.s. in my case!). And, if we are lucky, our parents forced us into a Sunday school class that fed us with a basic knowledge of the Bible.

So, here we go, we have our degrees, we have been assured that God is on our side, and we are on our way to achieve our personal happiness. After one or two steps, we trip and fall flat on our faces and return home bloodied by the wars of society and ask what we did wrong. Our parents and pasters repeat the same lines. And we fail again, again, again, and again.

Finally, a good Samaritan picks you up, or you discover the truth yourself, and realizes that what made you successful in college was continual studying; and, what may make you successful in life might also be continual studying; but continual studying in what?

Start with yourself and your relationship with God; the God within you. The God who made you! The God who loves You! Turn that same thought to others and their relationship with God. learn how it is the same. Learn how the hunger for knowledge increases every day. Learn how the byproduct is success in life, happiness, and business.

Learn how the search for the knowledge of love of God and man brings happiness and success in life. 

Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.

If you are inspired, read my latest book. Kindle eBook $3.99

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Presence

by rkcdlitt

To tell you the truth, there are mornings when I awaken and have no feeling whatsoever of the aura of God surrounding me. Her presence just is nowhere to be found. There is an emptiness inside and a nothingness around me on days this occurs; I feel adrift.

 

I am surrounded by those I love, but I feel alone!

 

Then I remember the words of philosopher Jacques Maritain, “If there’s a place where Christ isn’t present, you go there. Christ will be present this way.” 

 

And I know I will be safe.

 

My meditation strong, I once again feel God surrounding me, feel God within me and within those I love, reminding me that God loves us all.

 

I no longer fear my advancing age; Yahweh Tsuri: God is my rock!

 ©Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.

If you are inspired, read my latest book. Kindle eBook $3.99

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Yahweh Tsuri

by rkcdlitt

“Yahweh Tsuri-The Lord Is My Rock!” is one of the ancient Hebrew names of God. I recently wrote a reflection on whether I was worthy enough to refer to God as “ABBA,” the name Jesus used for God. I am not strong enough, or pure enough in my own mind, to call God Abba, but from my earliest religious Sunday school education, I am sure, no, I know that God, you are my way, my truth, and my life. No one has the power to change that. My relationship with my Father is too strong.

I know that life throws us many problems to face; I have stumbled over many, and with the help of a strong family, a super-loving wife, and my faith in a loving God, I have been able to surpass these problems and journey on the path to spiritual enlightenment.

I’m a practical person, so I do not believe in a return to Eden, but I do believe in a path to return to earth, God’s creation, to some semblance of rightful peace. Yet I fear that humankind is too enamored by its toys of warfare! I feel that I am blessed to believe that I can luxuriate on the final lines of Maya Angelou’s Poem, “On the Pulse of Morning”:

                              “The Rock cries out to us today,   

                                You may stand upon me,   

                                But do not hide your face.”

 ©Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.

If you are inspired, read my latest book. Kindle eBook $3.99

 

 

 

Musings

by rkcdlitt

I have been contemplating my navel a great deal lately, which is a futile attempt at hypocrisy since the last time a had a naval was 1985 after a nearly fatal auto accident and major surgery on my abdomen.

 

Anyway. I’ve been seriously contemplating life. Because at the ripe young age. Of 82. I sometimes wonder how I’m still here. But God does have something for me to do. Maybe it’s just writing this blog. Where I attempt to pull that past love and kindness together, Peace and charity through my words. to those who read my blog three or four times a week I publish. Today my musings settle on medieval doctors, you remember the ones with the masks and the large horns that stick out about a foot and 1/2 from their faces, practicing voodoo medicine. I’m seeing one today because I’ve had migraine headaches for about two 2 1/2 years. I feel pressure on my brain. You know, sleeping, lying down, sitting in chair, standing, walking, exercising, reading, writing. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 1/4 days a year. And all they do is say, here, take this pill. All from their horned masks. Voodoo. . .boo!

 

There is no Jesus walking around here and able to place his hands on my head to cure me. But. . . there is a God. . . and he does reach down every day. . . to comfort me and tell me that everything’s going to be fine. Because like you and all sons and daughters, I am one of His beloveds, and the path I walk on is sacred, as I do His bidding on Earth. In my daily meditations I receive a message to meet people with agape love, recognizing the face of God is in every person that I meet. 

Friends, I am a great skeptic. I am of great faith. I believe in God, and I believe that She believes in me. I believe there was a man, a prophet, a healer named Jesus. When he gathered his disciples, he merely said, “Follow me!” He never said to believe in him, but always to believe in His Father. I understand this to mean that his miracles were performed by God, not by man. 

Therefore, As I walk the streets of Virginia, I meet God with a smile and a blessing every time I say hello to someone new. 

Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.

If you are inspired, read my latest book. Kindle eBook $3.99

 

 

 

Offerings, not Weapons

by rkcdlitt

Violence rules our world. If we don’t like something, we burn it down; if we don’t like someone, we shoot him. See? Problem solved in one easy step. Suspicious boat heading to our shores, shoot it out of the waters; politician we don’t like, kill him; high school kid playing a prank on my lawn, shoot him dead. It’s OK, our guns rule the world; ask our President.

Isaiah 24

They shall beat their swords into plowshares

Our politicians agree, because they dare not make any laws against the gun money being passed around the halls of Congress. (Sshh! we’re not supposed to know or talk about that.) We just visit the families of all the children and kneel and pray with them when their children are killed in the mass shootings at their schools or their church schools. This shows we really truly care!

I truly believe that mankind is not a feebleminded as we appear. Sometime in the distant future we will come to our senses   snap judgements, not hate make offerings more important than weapons, where lovingly  kindness is our first response to hardships and not violence.

 ©Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.

If you are inspired, read my latest book. Kindle eBook $3.99

 

 

 

Harvey ‘Big Daddy’ Pollitt

by rkcdlitt

 

Harvey ‘Big Daddy’ Pollitt is the father of the two grown boys in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Gooper, the older son, is the play-by-the-rules son and kisses up to Bid Daddy because he wants to inherit the farm when Big Daddy dies. Brick, the younger son, drunk and drifting through life, couldn’t care less. He is the favorite son.

In a very good dramatic scene, Brick and Big Daddy confront each other in the basement of Brick’s house, where Brick stores all his childhood toys and football honors. Big Daddy cannot understand why Brick is throwing away his life with alcohol, and Brick cannot understand why Big Daddy will not have the operations or take the medicine to ease his pain. Big Daddy says, wincing with pain, “It’ll kill the senses too! You… you got pain – at least you know you’re alive.”

With the pain, you know you’re alive. He’s wrong, you know! Forty years ago, I was involved in a near death auto accident. Since then, I have lived a very successful and prudent life. I have no complaints except that I have experienced pain every day since that dreadful day, and I will tell you that when you got pain, you know that parts of your body are dead.

BUT, with a strong faith, I have been able to overcome all of this and realize that my eternal body is pure and belongs to God. God does not allow that body to feel pain, so I comfortable with that fact and blessed every day of my life.

So, Big Daddy, pain don’t tell me nothing about being alive, only God does.

 

©Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.

If you are inspired, read my latest book. Kindle eBook $3.99

 

 

Abba, Do We Have the Right

by rkcdlitt

If I read the Bible correctly, and accept the mythology as written, exactly, about, 2000 years ago, in the aught twenties, a vagabond man named Jesus wandered around the lands east of Jerusalem causing an awful lot of problems for the religious leaders of the times. He healed the sick and the lame, raised at least two from death, and forgave many from their sins. We call Him the Son of God; and He called God, Abba. And my question is: do we as sinners have the right to call God, Abba, as Jesus did? Jesus being the official Son of God, or Son of Man as He called himself.

I was raised in the mystic faith of Christian Science where we all we created as people who could heal as Jesus did, therefore, I deduced that we were all children of God, so I being a son of God could legitimately call God, Abba. When I moved to Virginia, my wife and I joined an Episcopal church, and I very quickly learned how much of a sinner I was to assume being an equal of Jesus. I was not allowed to take this liberty. I was not pure enough.

Being completely lost, I began a life-long study of Jesus and Christianity and have been turned around several times, led down blind allies, turned around, started over, questioned Jesus, questioned myself, never truly questioned God. My faith remained with me. There are two truths we can pull from history. Jesus preached and told many stories and parables promising that we are all children of God.

At the Council of Nicaea, to end all the bickering and arguing, Constantine finally called an end to it and demanded it be as it stood st that time; all agreed. And the structure of the church they created was similar to that of the military Constantine led. The exception being in names, instead of Lieutenants, Captains, and Majors led by the General, the church would be led by priests, bishops, cardinals, and the Pope. Just as strict a hierarchy.

I call God, Abba, because I believe I am a child of

God: because for the past dozen years, even though I have an undeniable strong Christian history, I have called myself a man of faith, faith in God, faith in Jesus. Faith in Abba! 

©Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.

If you are inspired, read my latest book. Kindle eBook $3.99

 

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