"EVERY ONE BENEFITS FROM HAVING A QUILT!"

I have a good friend who has been a quilter for many years.

After sharing my reasons for this blog about Patchwork Quilt Spirituality,
I asked her to think about it and then share her thoughts.
Here is some of what she wrote:

"Every one benefits from having a quilt...

They are better than a miracle drug because
   they soothe & comfort your soul just by being.

They offer you a refuge,
   brighten your surroundings
      and send a feeling of encompassing love.

Once it is hand quilted --
   it has the ability to lift spirits,
      heal hurts and surround a person with the feeling of a warm hug.
         (HUGS CAN CURE ALMOST ANYTHING!)"

[adapted from a personal letter from Ruth Walker, January 2016.]

By the way, yesterday, January 21st, was "National Hug Day!"
as reported in the Care 2 Healthy Living website.
According to the article, reported by Diana Vilbert:

   "Hugging gives us the warm-and-fuzzies."

The article goes on to claim that hugging stimulates the neurotransmitter oxytocin --
which promotes feelings of trust and contentment,
and helps to lower blood pressure and heart rate.

Didn't Jesus say something about a "Comforter"?

MORE CLIPPINGS TO PONDER

"What matters in life
      is not
          what happens to you...

but what you remember
     and how you remember it."
 
               --Gabriel Garcia Marquez

                 +  +  +  +  +

"We do not see things as they are;
          We see things as we are."

                              -- TALMUD

                  +  +  +  +  +

"There are no facts, only interpretations."

                                     -- Friedrich Nietzche

                  +  +  +  +  +

"Life isn't about
                           finding yourself --

Life is about
                      creating yourself."

                                   -- George Bernard Shaw

                  +  +  +  +  +

"Meaning
                 is not found...
 It is given."
                         -- copied

PATIENCE FOR THE JOURNEY

"Look at the stone cutter 
hammering away at his rock,
perhaps a hundred times 
without as much as a crack showing in it.

Yet at the hundred-and-first blow
it will split in two,
and I knew it was not the last blow that did it,
but all that had gone before."
                                                  --Jacob A. Riis

                             + + + + + + +

"Tell me the weight of a snowflake,"
a coal mouse asked a wild dove.
"Nothing more than nothing," was the answer.
"In that case I must tell you a marvelous story,"
the coal mouse said.
"I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk,
when it began to snow...
Since I didn't have anything better to do,
I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch.
Their number was exactly 3,741,952.
When the next snowflake dropped onto the branch --
nothing more than nothing, as you say--
the branch broke off..."

The dove, since Noah's time an authority on the matter,
thought about the story for a while and finally said to herself:
"Perhaps there is only one person's voice lacking
for peace to come about in the world."
                                                                --copied

                                + + + + + + +

"ABOVE ALL, TRUST IN THE SLOW WORK OF GOD."
                                                       -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

[Ty: "Lord, I believe; Help my unbelief!"]
                                                                       

70 TRIPS AROUND THE SUN!

I was born on Friday, January 10, 1947.

On one of my birthdays, I received a card that said:

         'a birthday is

     the start of another
      
       365-day journey

     around the sun.

       enjoy the ride."

I recently realized that in turning 69,
I am now beginning my 70th trip around the sun!
(That is a big number!!)

Over my previous trips, I have accumulated many clippings --
which I consider part of my patchwork quilt spirituality.
As I begin this next trip around the sun,
I want too share some of the better ones in the coming days.
Here are a few for today:

LISTEN to the song that resonates within you,
and discover where the sacred and the everyday intersect.
                                                                                  --copied

When there is no wind, row.
                                      --Japanese Proverb

Hope is not pretending
     that troubles don't exist...
             It is the trust
    that they will not last forever,
         that hurts will be healed
and difficulties overcome...
             It is faith
that a source of strength
    and renewal  lies within
to lead us through the dark
           to the sunshine...
                              --copied

[to be continued]