My Prayer for You

 

Happy Easter Happy Passover and More!

I have been studying "Passionately Christian, Compassionately Interreligious" on beadisciple.com

these past ten weeks. 

Today, Easter Sunday for Christians, I would like to recognize the other faiths we studied. 

I shall follow this post with my mission statement and my Christian theology within the next two weeks.

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Easter is a sacred season of Christianity. At the time of Easter, there are 

religious festivals in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Judaism, to name 

a few. Jains observe the birthday of Mahavir; East Asian Buddhists observe 

the birthday of Quan Yin. There is the Passover of the Jewish Faith and 

the Sikhs recall the fifth Guru, Guru Arjan Dev, who compiled the 

Guru Granth Sahib. These are among the religious festivals celebrated 

at this time. 

The above paragraph is from:

https://sheppartoninterfaith.org.au/?p=3283

Today's short poem celebrates His Resurrection and My Salvation.

He rose from the depths of hell

for my salvation

for my sins

for my separation from our God

He rose from the depths of hell

for your salvation

for your sins

for your separation from our God

I accept His grace, His love, His longing

for mankind

Of course I ask

Will you?

Amen and Blessings to all!

Joan💗

freely given

 

freely given

overcast, sprinkles drop with

expectations on the weeds

the grass the blacktop

the budding limbs of trees

saturday’s sunshine absent 

cancelled farmer’s market

feels like a free day 

bookmobile 

in the front yard

to be washed

didn’t happen

to travel downtown

didn’t happen

to meet children

with free books

didn’t happen

we relax

     write a rhyme

             wait for sunshine 

to happen.

            

             *                *                 *                 *                  *                *                * 

(Our napowrimo prompt today was a weather phenomenon. I forgot to rhyme! I love to rhyme.

I am going to take the above poem and create a rhyme or two within it.)

04.04.2026

heddles pedals and shuttles

My poem has nothing to do with flowers in a Mason jar.

It's about weaving!

However, when I think of weaving I immediately am focused on colors and textures,

all of which are bursting from the above container.

yesterday I was a weaver

heddles pedals and shuttles

the rhythm of weaving words

I return to my loom again

and listen to the clickety clack

of heddles pedals and shuttles

the warp is complete 

a job not favored by most

but lost in the repetition

of warp is the weft

the best collective of whatever 

I choose

for my heddles pedals and shuttles

the bobbins are wound

the loom speaks its sounds 

I begin my journey of threads

in out skipping missing

the freestyle weaving I flaunt

with my heddles pedals and shuttles

the project took hours

the traveling was miles 

I brought it home yesterday

from Her Studio

where spools line the walls

and fill the drawers waiting

for heddles pedals and shuttles

joanconnor

04.3.2026

Tanka Treats

5-7-5-7-7-syllabic tanka

celebrating Dave

birthday boy turns ninety-nine

today we eat out

“The party will be next year

when I turn one hundred.”

(munch that last word to = five syllables :)

cacti obsession

my current plant collection

one happy greenhouse

where the music plays daily 

uplifting spirits and spines

joan💝 04.01.26

Yeah! for Snoopy!

Doesn't this cartoon say it all? I have had a few days this month just like Snoopy!

With a hot cup of coffee and a sleeping pet by his side, in his fuzzy bathrobe - 

it couldn't get much better now could it?

We (being Hubby and Self and Four-Paws) have been hunkered down the past week or so, meandering out only to pick up milk and a few extras and the prescription which made the trip mandatory.

We're better but it has felt so good not going and doing and busying that I am adopting this lifestyle for the foreseeable future. 

However, today I am going to wash the Casita trailer and truck, still hooked up for the camping trip we cancelled due to illness. 

Tomorrow we take the truck/trailer for the distribution bar installation that we totally paid for ($500+) and forgot that we had ordered them. I am anticipating that they will be a challenge to hook up, but learning independence is my mantra in my octogenarian decade.

Have a wonderful day and finish "doing nothing!" 😀

 

Blessing for You

In our Creative O2 class with Jill Badonsky we wrote blessings that were responses to prompts. 

It was a pleasant experience and I share below my blessing with the prompts. 

The class ends this coming Wednesday. It has been twelve weeks of sharing and mindfulness within the concept of creativity.

Blessing:

What I like about nature:

May you find God’s spirit among the rustling trees, inhaling moving air on a slightly windy day as you sit in solitude in a small quiet space.

What my creativity does for me:

May you be provided an outlet for your personal creative journey as you seek to express delight and disarray within the textures of life, the colors of emotions, the flow of experience and the finality of completion.

What two wishes do you have for the world:

May you live in this moment working with others as you would have them interact with you.

What would you like to be surrounded by:

May you be surrounded by simplicity, meaningful relationships, vibrant activity - all interrupted with doses of serenity.

What would you like to hear from somebody else:

May you know that you are created in His image and you are complete just as you are.

                                               *                       *                         *                        * 

Give your definition of creative bliss:

Creative bliss is unadulterated contentment from the creation of mud pies to styling paper doll clothes to the published book to the gallery-hung art piece to the woven textures hung over your bathroom door. It all emits satisfaction. Creativeness is the movement to blissfulness within each artist’s soul as she begins again.

Joan Connor

03.28.2026

Poetry Commitment

Below is cut/paste from the NaPoWriMo site.  I am participating this year and posting daily the prompts via cut/paste on Story Circle Network's site. They are forming a community of poets participating. Check it out:      https://www.storycircle.org/class/napowrimo-community-poetry/

Na/GloPoWriMo Is Nearly Here

Happy Ides of March, everyone (unless you’re Julius Caesar). For those of you who are not doomed Roman emperors, mid-March should hold no terrors — especially because it means that National/Global Poetry Writing Month is almost upon us. As it turns out, writing a poem every day for a month is far less intimidating than a bunch of fairweather friends armed with daggers! Learning to dance on the knife’s edge of verse is a wondrous kind of fun — and the mortality rate is refreshingly low.

All that silliness aside, we’ll be back in the three days leading up to April. In the meantime, why not spend some time exploring The Poetry Archive? This non-profit is dedicated to preserving recordings of poets reading their work, and they have nearly 2,000 recordings freely available online. 

Happy listening!

I am also posting this blog on the NaPoWriMo site. I intend to post poems that I write during April on the blog. 

In the meantime I am working on writing Tiny Haibun in a Call of the Page class with Alan and Karen.

Jeremiah 29:11

 

The above Bible verse has been placed in front of me several times in the past 24 hours.

Again this morning, it appeared on a Facebook post I was browsing.

It seems to be a cornerstone verse for the Christian Women's Job Corps where I spent a mere one hour yesterday.

Thanks, Lord, for reminding me that you are my Leader, my go-to, my Saviour, my Comrade, my Pinnacle.

Yes, you have prospered me. 

I have not been harmed.

I have hope for today, tomorrow, the rest of my aging life.

I have plans and hopes for the future.

Yes, YOU know the plans.

I am at peace with YOUR plans.

Thank-you, Jesus!

In the meantime, I need to seek YOUR face within my worship, my Bible, my devotions, my erratic prayer life and my Bible studies.

Let me conclude this early morning with a bouquet of flowers and a verse!

Flowers of God" (Excerpt)
By Jean Penner
Softly growing in the garden of life,
Are beautiful flowers from God,
Lovingly planted inside our hearts,
Lining the pathways we trod. 

Off to Spinning Class

 

See me in the photo? I am holding on for dear life. Off to spinning class I go this morning. It's a fiber festival workshop at a ranch near Bandera, Texas.  The teacher, Joy from Lubbock, said she would help me resurrect my wheel that was in the flood. Dear Hubby has cleaned it for me. I do NOT know the first things about spinning wheels. And then I thought it to be a goner in the flood but photos sent to spinners have concluded all the parts are intact.

We will see!

I look forward to this process. Why, you ask, have I taken on another element of fiber art?

Why? I ask myself the same question, but I have and will be fiddling with this wheel for the rest of my life. I like the architecture of spinning wheels. Maybe I am one of those folks who buy grand pianos for their impressive looks in the living room. I think spinning wheels are quite lovely little artifacts.

And maybe, just maybe, I will learn to spin some delightful fun yarns for my weavings.

Gotta run to become

the next spinner

of yarns!

That has a double meaning, eh?

Cactus, Succulents....why not?

                                                   

                 (The above is a delightful little book I checked out of the library. It can be purchased on Thriftbooks for $6.39.)

Maybe it's because my flowering plants haven't flourished.

Maybe it's because I like to learn new stuff.

Maybe it's because I think cacti and succulents are almost indestructible. (I am sure they are not!)

Maybe it's because no one else I know is a cactus guru.

                                                    So here I go................

I am not a cactus guru yet, but now I have to put my interest where my dollars have been recently spent.

I have purchased numerous cacti and am about to figure out exactly what I have. 

I purchased "rare tiny cacti" from Walmart and a couple larger healthy looking cacti from Lowes this past week.

The greenhouse is calling this early morning. By the time I get to it the sun will be up, if it's coming up, and I will be using the plant identifier on the phone to zero in on what I purchased. 

Focusing on cacti makes sense to me. You water less, you worry less, you take from their strengths and resilience. Of course some have spines and gloves need to be worn. You have to be careful with some folks too.

I did purchase special soil, first online, not a big bag. Now I have a large bag from Lowes. 

It's a foray into the Land of Happy Cactus! It's a foray into one more learning experience.

                                       Come with me. Let's see where this venture takes us. 

                                              Maybe I will even produce some blooms!

                                                              

The Bible and Poetry

 

I just ordered the above book from Amazon.  Wanting to know more about poetry in the Bible, the following review excerpt makes the book quite desirable:

Prose seeks to lock down ideas with logic and clarity so there is no wiggle room.  Poetry, by contrast, is all about wiggle room. 

Poetry is all about “glimpsing” something — say, the kingdom of God — without constraining it by rules and tenets, without defining it.  Poetry is about open-ended ideas and images that are there to be “explored.”

Prose tries to build a room and determine every item inside that room. 

Poetry stands out in the open — whether in a desert or a city or in a jungle — and is awash with a great deal of thoughts, emotions, sensations, some of which are to be expected but others, such as a bird suddenly flying past at eye level, are unsettling, maybe in a pleasurable way but maybe a distressing way.

https://patricktreardon.com/book-review-the-bible-and-poetry-by-michael-edwards-translated-by-stephen-e-lewis/

I am quite sure that this book will entail focusing, quiet meditation and prayer. All these are qualities of action that I seek.

                       *                   *                 *                *               *

When my husband retrieved the mail from our Hunt, TX "mail van" the other day, the post office dude said something about "no books today." I had no idea he was paying that much attention or perhaps, I do order many books! Then my husband told him of our losses, including all the books I had owned. I guess I am slowly regaining a library of joy and imagination. As Dolly Parton has created her Imagination Library for children, I too am in the process of such a creation.

https://imaginationlibrary.com/

Today's Miracles

 

The whole world is a series of miracles, but we’re so used to them that we call them everyday things.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN What a Great Quote! I agree! So many miracles occur each day as i ponder and plunder through work and play.                              today my miracles will be  the dishwasher the coffee maker the slow cooker the weaving loom's magic mechanics  the greenhouse holding its emerging little seeds   the cacti that i am trying to find just the right sunlight to nourish  the remarkable birds that i feed  the birdseed that is new to me and to the doves, the redwing blackbirds,  the goldfinches, the cardinals, the sparrows, the black-capped chickadees so many miracles and i am just beginning my day. blessings to all creation!

Colorful Thoughts

                         I keep returning to thoughts about color! 

            This is undoubtedly due to a prompt from Jill Badonsky's "Creativity is my O2" class.    

                                               https://themuseisin.com/workshops-trainings

Here's the prompt from Jill:

"Spot a Color That Refuses to be Ignored

Find a color that pops: in clothing, packaging, a reflection, a tiny detail.

• Writing: List five metaphors for that color that have nothing to do with color (e.g., “This

red is a decision I haven’t made yet”).• Art: Make a quick abstract patch of that color, then add two supporting colors that make

it feel even more itself. Title the little patch with a verb, like “Leaping” or

“Remembering.

Isn't that a wonderful prompt? I am going to weave through the prompt and see what emerges on the loom.

I will choose a color that blends with the weaving that is now on my Saori loom.

Or I could just begin a new weaving on a lap loom, but I think the Saori is calling me today. 

"toodle doo and I will report back"