Living with Grace and Spirit…#118

Living with Grace and Spirit…

Believing in the existence of God creates an everyday fight between the mind and spirit. Believing that God has set down in life’s book a predestine path to walk is a struggle between faith and doubt.

The disbelief in God leaps out of the undergrowth of insecurity and becomes a poison racing through the veins of trust, and the pathway through life becomes a thicket of mistrust and betrayal.

Get off that path and trust in what you believe in, whatever your beliefs enjoy your life; enjoy the world we live in because Heaven may be the air we breathe and the joys of our lives in this life.

Stop being a victim of someone else’s convictions; create your own joy, measure
your blessings, and do not let others define who you are, you can believe in your own spirituality without proof. Look at the unexpected objects placed in your path as lessons, resist learning and you may miss life and the delights it offers.

 

©2019.elizabethannjohnonmurphree

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A Day to be Thankful…

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you wonderful people all over the world.  I am thankful that you chose to follow me as I write for “The Last Chapter”, and I am honored to be in the company of so many that are great and talented.  Enjoy your day.  E.

In the Darkness of Night…#117

“To my father and all of our Chickasaw family who walked before him on the Trail of Tears”.

In the Darkness of Night…

I hear the cries of my grandmothers and

grandfathers, I feel their fear; I walk with

them in my dreams on the Trail of Tears.

Their feet bloody as they walked the rutted

trail, every scar on their backs is another

story to tell.

 
They planted crops gave blessing and took

from the land only what they would need, a

word they did not know… greed. Strangers

with pale skin came from the east where

living off the land was unknown; my people

taught them how to live, when no longer

needed the white stranger’s drove them

from their ancestral homes.

 
The Grandfathers and their families stood

tall, their backs they refused to bend so the

white strangers herded them like cattle to

a far off land… to die in the hot barren sand.

My people believed the land belonged to no

one, given to all by the “Great Mystery”; still

they died with broken souls never knowing

that their story in time covered the blood-

splattered pages of history.

 
My people watched as women gave birth

and warriors carried the dead, the children

went to sleep hungry with the ground as their

bed. The day came when these great people

corralled on dry barren land, given musty

water and bug-infested corn meal to eat,

in a place with no hope, to the white man

they were bound; a killing field where the

blood of my family spilled upon the ground.

 
I hear you my grandmothers and grandfathers,

your cries do not go unheard in the darkness

of night; for in my dreams I walk with you,

I feel your fear; I wake each morning with the

taste of your tears.

 

©2019.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree

 
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Infinite Hope…#116

I live in a senior housing complex, although the bodies are aging and most minds are unclear I watch as those around me live their last days with an attitude that the young does not have for the wisdom of these people comes with years of experience in living. It is the holidays that are filled with sadness when memories come flooding back; they send many to places that they visited long ago. I embrace living with the varied personalities and ages. I chose to live in harmony with those much like me, yet I see many who have given up on life, I find it a tragedy. For those I wrote this poem.

 

Infinite Hope…

What does one do in these bad times, my mind that of an old woman, I clear my soul each day. It is in old age that we try to be kind, in younger days we walk through life without worry and blind. Youth to old age, life passionate and wild, yet within time the elderly returns to the days of a child. I do not ask from my bed of death to be free, I do ask that my God let me die in dignity.

I ask that death allow me to find the freedom that my life denied; that I am strong when my family is at my side. Spare me of the whisperings of a crowded room, that there be a ceremonious air and not one that is gloom. I have lived without glory or fame; no one will remember my name. No one knows when I am bound for death, only God knows when I will take my last breath.

While the world around me in silence lies, move me outside so I can see sunshine once more before I die. Let it bathe me in the wonder that I was born, across my face its beauty spread, like the sun I ask only for your smiles of love when I am dead. I pray for no sickroom, no mortal strife, no turmoil for a little breath, let it be a natural passing, no struggling with death.

Let me go composed, fearless, mind clear, willing to let my spirit go somewhere else to wait for everyone that to me is so dear.

 

 

©2019.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree

 

 

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My Thoughts for Today…#115

 

My Thoughts for Today…

 
Every day I schedule one hour to visit my followers, read their blogs and I always get a storehouse of information. All the while, as I am doing this, I contemplate what I might post for the day. Today my thoughts are random and I will do my best to pull them together for my followers. I have a great appreciation for the depths of my follower’s wisdom and what they have to offer. The words, the artwork and the insight on an enormous amount of information, the sharing of their lives.

 
Today, my thoughts touch upon the duration of each person’s life, they face many experiences, they go beyond the day-to-day activities, and they face struggles and difficulties. In this season of gifts and giving many feel connected to all beings, nature, and possibly reach to the heavens, to the stars, and give thought to what defines them as a person. In the winter of my life, I have tried to use every moment as an opportunity to know my innermost self. Even at this advanced stage I take every opportunity to expand my knowledge, to become something more, it is not easy and the progress is slow, but trying to become more today than I was yesterday is the goal.

 
I try to take time each day to quiet my mind, to listen to my Soul, these journeys within realigns my inner self and hopefully putting me on the right path that I must follow. My battle to show compassion and loving kindness is at times hard, as I have lived a life filled with pain and heartache since my own birth. It is during these times that I must go deep within myself to go beyond my own pain. To reach out to those whose life may be equally or more complicated than my own. I realize that anger hiding behind a smile is not compassion or loving kindness.

 
Therefore, I leave you with this…Imagine a world where people resolve their conflicts with loving kindness and compassion. This is the path that I want to walk and these are the lessons I want to keep learning even if it is the winter of my life.

 

©2019.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree
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Honeysuckle Memories…#114

 

Honeysuckle Memories…

Deep within my memories I sometimes walk to a place where my life began, I take an emotional journey, from time to time. Memories with or without images of those days are like a thunderstorms distance echo, you cannot see it; you know that at one time it was there.

A furrowed road, wild honeysuckle; a crumbled chimney beneath the kudzu vines, the remnant memories of that life and dim images never change.
It was the cotton fields surrounding the old weathered shack that stole my daddy’s wandering soul.

In the warm red dirt life sprung from the blood and sweat that nurtured the white gold called cotton, it broke spirits, and hardened souls. In memory, the image from the past holds but one old leathered face, my daddy’s.

Life goes by quickly, places and people vanish without a trace, time and progress erases the landscape of our lives, memories are made of gold. In the shadows of the mind is a time of how life use to be; and with only a thought I can recall those sweet honeysuckle memories.
©2019.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree

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Hidden Emotions…#113

Hidden Emotions…

 

Conception, birth and then the process

of growing older, dying is in the future

as the lifecycle travels quickly and then

the final chapter written. There are no

exceptions, only an age and date separates

all living beings.
Strength lies in the middle growing, developing

a sense of self…we bloom or we lay in waste

with the fading of seasonal growth. Life is not

totally built around your dreams, but of what

impression you leave behind during your journey.
Weep for the past and drink in the thirst of the

years that may come, be strong of heart and

foresee with the eyes of a visionary. You may at

times feel that you were never young, life being

prison of weary pain, remember this you are not

what you feel.

 

Deep within there is a remembrance and emotion

hidden in the heart, quiet. You may be a ghost of

what you once were…but you are still a living being

and the world applauds the reason for your birth.

 

©2019.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree

 

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Reflections on Guilt

Mental Health Issues – Reflecting on guilt…new post by C.R. Murphree

Going Home…#112

Going Home…

Morning, glorious morning, the sunbeams seeps brightly through the windowpane like frost from winters frozen ground. I rise, face the Eastern sky that is where the warmth of the day can be found. I open the window the breeze bathes me with the scent of lilacs that grow lavishly in the spring. While somewhere in the distance, plum dusk lingers as the last moments of night clings.

A robin searches for worms beneath my crabapple tree, I sip from my favorite cup, a hot peach flavored tea. It is time to dress, comb my snow-white hair and take the well-worn path down the hillside toward the sea. At water’s edge, I pause to remember God, to hear his wondrous call, I will dedicate this moment to the Great Mystery of it all. I pray for patience in enjoying these golden years, to hold my head high and face life without fear.

I return home and I hear children playing in the fields far away, I remember the joy of the imaginary castles in the sky that I use to build. I stop to think, have I sat here all day, reliving my own childhood in that special way? I slowly rise from the old oak rocker, did I remember to eat, is it time to go inside, to wash the dried sand from my feet.

It is then that I return to my thoughts as evening shadows come into sight. It is time for me to climb beneath my mother’s old quilts, my eyes will close and I will flow among the starless time called sleep, my God has a promise to keep. I float across a space upon the softness of a sparkling wind, along the way I see family and friends. I know that my soul from its earthly body has gone; where silver sands and emerald seas will forever be a part of me…this is everlasting love, at last I am home.

©2019.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree
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When will Earths lights go out…#111

 

When will Earths lights go out…

The earth turns in her floating world, tired by the changing of time, seasons, inhabited by those who bring wraith to her. As humans, we look for a way where things will turn out in a magnificent way, glittering wind, and wells of possibility on how things will unfold. Yet, as humans, we keep interfering with her growth, her peace, her beauty. She weeps, tears fall, trickling, sprawling into the depths of hopelessness.

 
As humans, we stand still doing nothing to save her, if we have made the wrong choices it is the children who must pay, so why do we care. There is no gain for the earth of today, caring is left in the past, the yesterdays of our own childhood. We show no wisdom, and the great “Sayers” who say nothing, sit and let her be destroyed.

 
There is no victory, we will not leave her as we found her, slow dank waters will form swamps as the rivers dry up, in the woods the cedars’ will soon be like winter bones. She will stand for many eternities, then she will die and her light will go out.

 
©2019.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree