posted by Lura on June 25th, 2009 at 12:00 PM
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It has been awhile since I blogged. The days before the wedding were crazy; then of course there was the Honeymoon, which had a lot of spirituality for me. We took the train to Glenwood Springs, Colorado and spent two days there. The weather was a little iffy, but Paul and I were together—that is what was important. We rented a car and went up to the Maroon Bells. I thought it was going to snow on us, (it was snowing up on the Bells), but we were just rained on. After our time there, we drove to Moab, Utah. We spent two days there, but I would love to spend a week there. Where I really want to go is Hovenweep, which is on the boarder between Utah and Colorado. I was there a few years ago and it was incredible spiritual for me. We drove back to Glenwood and stayed at this marvelous B&B called Mitchell Creek. Our host and hostess were just so personable and welcoming. There were hundred of hummingbirds there dinning of the many feeders they had.
So now it is back to reality; cleaning house, paying bills, waiting to hear from agents about my book. I have not had much of chance to write, but hopefully in the next few days I will get back to work. I am excited about the adult book I am working on. Hope you all are too. I will also be entering the Walt Whitman Poetry Contest in September.
Until next time, keep God in your hearts and minds.
Lura
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posted by Lura on March 31st, 2009 at 7:22 PM
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I’m not necessarily very good at prayer. I don’t spend enough time doing it and I frequently find myself treating God like a cosmic Santa Clause. Recently however He has dramatically answered some prayers, and I want to reiterate just how much He loves us, and wants to take care of us. He wants us to cast all of our cares on Him and as Jesus said if He takes care of the birds and plants of the field how much more care is He going to put into our issues, problems, and joys?
As I said in the beginning, I am not that great at prayer myself. However, God is never far from my mind, and I find myself frequently having this running conversation with Him. No, He doesn’t answer me as a person would but I feel His presence and in that presence, I intuit His side of the conversation. For example, I will be driving down the road and thinking about this book I am working on—Rachel Rejoice. I will consider different directions I can take the plot and I’ll (in my mind) think this or that element is really important, and I will enquire what God thinks about it. He usually answers right away. Now nonbelievers would say I am just talking to myself, but it’s more than that. I do not have the words to describe how I know it’s God; I just know.
As for getting down on my knees every morning and every night, well I need to work on that. I know many people have been praying for Paul and I, and some of those prayers have been answered in big ways. I just want to thank those who have been praying for us, but mostly I want to say thank you to God.
Until next time, be kind and gentle with one another. We are all on this ark together and need to work in concert.
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posted by Lura on March 2nd, 2009 at 7:35 AM
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I'm engaged to be married. The wonderful man I am betrothed to deserves better than me. But we are happy together and that's what is important. We are suppose to get married on May 23rd, but money is an issue (isn't money always an issue). Plus I've been single for many years and sometimes it is stressful to think of being committed to one person for the rest of your life. Have no doubts though -- I love him very much. He is all of those things in I Corinthians 13: "Love is patient love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails...An now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." What is left to say. Love each other until we talk again.
Lura
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posted by Lura on February 28th, 2009 at 11:09 AM
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Thank you for taking the time to comment, John Galt. Of course John Galt is the main character in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Rand's philosophy has been called "objectivism". Its main tenents are as follows: “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it so”; “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too”; “Man is an end in himself”; “Give me liberty or give me death.”1www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer
My philosophy [Rand's], Objectivism, holds that:
- Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
- Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
- Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
- The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
Copyright © 1962 by Times-Mirror Co.
Pretty heady stuff. In my opinion this philosophy is totally self serving; which unfortunately humans are want to be. I think we have to struggle against this "human nature" and realize the real purpose in life is to serve other's. I think Rick Waren's book The Purpose Driven Life speaks volumes on the subject and counters Rand's egotism nicely. See you soon.
Lura
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posted by Lura on February 18th, 2009 at 11:16 AM
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But it's in many ways easier than life. We can take our experience and transform what seems like random acts to give them meaning. Yet the memories can be as painful as the moment they happened. If things could only be easy sometimes, well I guess they wouldn't mean as much to us. Till next Time.
Lura
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posted by Lura on January 19th, 2009 at 10:34 AM
Welcome to Lura J. Dungan, com.
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