The Well

If you are reading my blog. I used to have those who would read it all the time, but I don't go on here as much.

If you are reading, can I heartily recommend that you take The Spiritual Exercises at least once in your life. I am on Week 24 and a little more than halfway through the life of Jesus. Usually in the Exercises, your spiritual director picks vignettes of his life to contemplate, but my director left it very open. So I decided to go through all four gospels (since my church is reading through all four this year). I am a bit ahead because Easter is on the later end this year. 

I am also writing a simple, free guide for going through the Exercises, and I am writing on Week 17: The Two Standards. During my conversation with God after my daily Examen, I felt him guiding me to do a repetition of The Two Standards. A repetition is where you go back over it and pause where you experienced consolation from the Lord. Usually, you will do a repetition of a contemplation you had only …

Today has been a day of catching up on things. I woke up bright-eyed and bushy tailed at 3:40am! I thought that it was probably about 5 am, but I came out to my prayer spot and looked at the clock and thought, "OH MY!" So I climbed back in bed but my body did not want to go back to sleep.

So, I prayed through another part of the greatest story ever told. This was about Jesus being the Good Shepard, and the problems that ensued after this claim. I also watched the Book of John movie excerpt with that actor that was on Lost. I love how the You Version Bible app is tied to all those clips. I love the visual picture after the meditation. I also wrote about the Incarnation in the Spiritual Exercises guide that I am writing. What a great daily project this has been for me. I have committed to at least an hour of writing at day. I have written the Introduction and 12 1/2 weeks out of 33 or 34 weeks. I love it so far. 

Then I listened to the audiobook Why We Sleep. I really like it! T…

If you have read my book selections, you know I readGoing Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief  in December of 2016 because I had read another book earlier that year by the excellent journalist, Lawrence Wright and thought I would give it a try. OH MY! I was fascinated. That book delves into the whole history of L. Ron Hubbard. 

This story is a personal memoir by one of Scientology's more famous defectors: Leah Remini. 

Prior to reading Going Clear, I remember seeing the infamous interview between Matt Lauer and Tom Cruise many years ago and thinking that Tom Cruise was a very angry person and Scientology had done nothing to help him. 

A few months ago, I watched an A & E documentary, and they advertised another A & E show:Leah Remini: Scientology and Its Aftermath  which was then on the verge of its third season. I proceeded to binge watch the entire first and second season and would end up in a puddle of tears every single episode. 

Scientology has messed …

This book deserves that National Book Award Finalist accolade. Nothing to Envy is my book club's read for May, but with the North Korean Summit last week, I decided to read it now. I knew very little about North Korea other than news reports of a man with funny hair (Kim Jong-il) and his young son who took over and likes to do nuclear testing (Kim Jong-un). I also knew something about this regime because of the tragic story of Otto Warmbier (who was the same age as my youngest son). This book goes back to North Korea after World War II and Kim Il-sung coming into power. This is the only communist regime that has stayed in the same family. 

WOW! I heartily recommend this book. The author is a journalist and takes personal stories of North Korean defectors and weaves it together with the history of this awful regime. I could not put it down. It is written so well. 

I happened upon the National Geographic Documentary calledInside North Korea's Dynasty at the same time. It is a perf…

I put this book on my "shelf" on Goodreads on November 18, 2012! I have been exposed to the Enneagram since 2011, but I had to read the "gateway drug" books like The Road Back to You first to get into the heavier material. 
I am so glad I finally got around to reading this. I kept checking it out of the library with no hope of ever getting through its almost 400 pages. I finally ordered my own copy, and I am so glad I did. I underlined so much and wrote a lot of notes in the margin. I would say this is the most comprehensive book of any of the Enneagram books I have read so far. What finally pushed me over the edge to read it was taking a 10 Week class from Russ Hudson with a live Q & A at the end. I was so IMPRESSED by this warm and generous soul that I had to read the book. I also wanted to read it because I get daily EnneaThoughts in my email, and they are often quotes from this book.
It is so comprehensive. It is not Christian because they wrote it for all fa…

After a gloomy and rain-filled morning, the sun is setting in the west and streaming through silver clouds and my French doors to sunlight on the table in which I write this. There is a touch of God in this moment that I wanted to write about. I am at peace. Much of my life lately has been an attempt at "presence." I read The Practice of the Presence of God in my 20s, and there have been such glimpse of that glory throughout my life. But lately, I see my part more and more in the equation. He is always present, but I am more and more able to bring my presence as well. To bring all of me in that moment.  It is hard to even write about it now because it has been lasting through the freewrite. So often I could try to capture this in writing, but once the mechanics of the writing started the moment was lost, and I would have to speak of it in past tense, but the sun continues to stream through the  window, and I am continuing to bring that presence to Him as He continues to stre…