Refugees......

Refugees....

Welcome the alien and stranger among you.....

I have been awake since the early hours with a heavy heart at Australia's current response to refugees... it is inhumane, lacking in compassion and dignity and down right wrong....

How can I respond.  I have already written to the Prime Minister... I follow the Centre for Asylum Seekers Facebook page and keep up with the information...

However, I've been thinking this morning that I need to turn off my 'like' to that page - and to other feeds that come from people opposing our extreme right wing government - because the knowledge of these issues cause me such grief and anxiety...

I know the knowledge can lead me to pray and call out to God, which I was and have been doing this morning - but other times I feel like I have enough anxiety and grief to carry in my own life and those of my friends that world issues seem too hard..

To find a way to be informed and compassionate - without carrying the load?????

It is so hard for me to do...

Oh that there will be a rising up from ordinary Australians to cry out for compassion for these people fleeing war and terror and torture, in no small way caused by wars we have been involved in or started....

My spirit groans within me....

Write!

I read yesterday: 

Now is the time to start a journal..........

And I remembered..... I used to do that.

 So much has happened... now I live in my two rooms under the stairs - light, my things, privacy, mostly.....  radio, TV, painting, and me.

I don't do much painting.......... not much at all.... I would like to do more.....

My little sister has breast cancer.
It is Stage 3 - her PET scan showed some markers in her liver.
She is scheduled for probably a year and a half of chemotherapy.
Surgery after the first 6 months and radiotherapy following that.

She has to work - she has 6 of her 7 kids at home - the youngest is 8 - her husband is unwell, and can't do very much.

My heart aches...
It gives me a pain deep in my chest and belly...
If I could only DO SOMETHING!!!!!

I remain unwell - some days my anxiety is 9 out of 10 - that is very hard...
Some days - my depression strikes and I walk my depression walk, slow and measured.  Barely having the energy to put one foot in front of the other and stay upright - let alone have a coherent conversation with anyone.  

Those days are very long. 

My mum has cancer too - it is gradually closing over her oesophagus.  
She can still swallow...
She can still walk...  slowly, carefully - with her frame and her limping crooked leg.
She still remembers things and people - even if often all she can talk about is the time.
She is in care...
When she can't swallow anymore, she will die... 
She turns 87 in 2 weeks...
She says she is content and ready...

That will do for today...

Lentan Fast

Lent is almost upon us....

Lent is almost upon me ---- week after this week, I believe...

Have an opportunity to go to an Ash Wednesday service and be anointed with ashes...

I'll do that!

Have been sitting here, looking at my prayer candle and prayer picture and wondering what my Lentan Fast could be this year. 

I didn't have one last year.... I fasted a feast of gratitude the year before...

In my new world...
     my new home... place to live... as nowhere is home...
     my new news that my  mother's cancer has returned in her throat and she doesn't want any treatment...
    my changes in availability of best friends...
    my foray into developing new friends....
   
In my anxiety....

In my need for exercise and a good diet - yet total lack of motivation... where did last year's motivation go???????  I wonder?????

What will be my Lentan Fast???

I don't know.... maybe I need to sit with that question for a while -