Plethora Ministries: 2007

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

The Grace Of Autumn

The Grace Of Autumn

As we reflect on the season of autumn, we are reminded that to everything there is a season. Our lives are a myriad of seasons. Our lives are like seasons that are imbued with warm rays of sun, seasons that are imbued with gentle breezes that cool and refresh, seasons that are imbued with the bursting forth of new blossoms as each day progresses and seasons that are imbued with strong winds that shake our very foundations.

Oftentimes, our lives move from winter, to spring, to summer, then to fall or in any quadrangle-like variations. However, there are other times we experience four seasons within one season. Simply stated, it is possible that one can experience summer, winter, spring, and fall within a month, within a week, and even within a day.

Our lives are dynamic seasons; lives that are so dynamic that at times we are not cognizant of the potency of the change because we are the change that we desire to see.
Oftentimes, it is not until we have experienced the aftermath of a season that we are able to retrospectively discern its impact upon our lives. As we journey through the blessed stillness of Fall, we are reminded to embrace the gift of its stillness, we are reminded to embrace the gift of the metaphor of falling leaves, and we are reminded to embrace the blessed gift of change and its potential in our lives for our greater good and the greater good of our brothers and sisters. Amen.

Blessings,
K. Mason

2007 ©

K. Mason(c) 2005
For your convenience, all of the links to Plethora Ministries sites are listed below. All you are required to do is "click" and be blessed! Please pass this on family members, friends, co-workers, and other travelers on their journey to spiritual integration and wholeness.BlessingsPlethora Ministries

Plethora Ministries

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Plethora MinistriesPlease spread the word to others you know and if they are interested in receiving the WORD Of Reflection Devotion weekly , please have them send an email to plethoraministries@yahoo.com and state in the subject line: "Request for WORD." Please feel free to write Plethora Ministries with your comments:
K.Mason (c) 2005

Friday, October 19, 2007

AUTUMN REFLECTION

Autumn Reflection

Autumn is a time for deep reflection, introspection, thanksgiving, stillness, and harvest.
As the leaves have begun to display their mellow and rich hues of amber, orange, red, and sienna, they seem to suggest to each of us that the innocence of the season of spring and the boldness of the season of summer have acquiesced themselves to mellowness and kindly wisdom of the ages.

As we reflect upon our journey about the earlier part of the year, we do so in the spirit of anticipation and relief, in the spirit of challenge and triumph, in the spirit of joy and sorrow, in the spirit of weariness and rest, in the spirit of inertia and change, in the spirit of incredible gains and necessary losses, in the spirit of astonishment and enlightenment, in the spirit of planting and harvest, in the spirit of struggle and surrender, in the spirit of transformation and transcendence, and with the reflective awareness of our finiteness and infiniteness all being informed by gentle, yet rich wisdom.

God, we render to unto you thanksgiving for the lives of those whom we are given responsibility to co-journey in service, healing, affirmation, empowerment, truth, and transformation!

We thank you for the lives of resilient children, courageous parents, guardians, and caretakers who come to us with a banner of trust with an intrinsic understanding that we serve them in love with no judgment and that we serve them celebrating their strengths with the belief that eyes have not seen, neither have ears heard of their unchartered and unlimited possibilities.

God, during this season of harvest, we thank you for an overflowing cornucopia of compassion and persistence, empathy and skill-sets, tenacity and vision, gentleness and care, mission and creativity, and the wisdom and presence of gifted and talented staff persons who work in a plethora of capacities from receptionists to direct care staff, from dietary staff to outreach staff, from environmental services staff to finance staff, from housekeeping staff to administration, from administrative support staff to management, from teachers to nurses, and from administrative assistants to doctors. We thank you for those who are named as well as the unnamed. We are blessed by each other’s gifts and offering in service. We thank you that we are our brothers and sisters keepers and delight is such a charge. We thank you for the opportunity to serve and to be transformed by having served.

We release, like fallen and ripened leaves into the Autumn winds, weights and burdens, misperceptions and deflated hopes, fears and doubts, worries and anxieties, hurts and wounds, and limitations and insufficiencies…shedding the aforementioned for a bountiful harvest of grace, patience, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, joy, kindness, rejuvenation, and a love that holds us in its grasp forever.

God, we thank you for relationships, spiritual union, table fellowship, food and libation, community, and the opportunity to gather in a spirit of gratitude, thanksgiving, strength, camaraderie, celebration, and power. We render unto you these petitions, we pray. Yes, this is true, Let it be so, So be it, May it be so, Amen. Peace

K. Mason 10-08-07 ©

For your convenience, all of the links to Plethora Ministries sites are listed below. All you are required to do is "click" and be blessed! Please pass this on family members, friends, co-workers, and other travelers on their journey to spiritual integration and wholeness.

Blessings
Plethora Ministries
Plethora Ministries Click here for Web log Page [contains additional reflections not sent via mail and pictures]Comments may be entered in any entry of your choice
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Plethora Ministries
Please spread the word to others you know and if they are interested in receiving the WORD Of Reflection Devotion weekly , please have them send an email to plethoraministries@yahoo.com and state in the subject line: "Request for WORD." Please feel free to write Plethora Ministries with your comments:

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Afternoon Refreshment

Afternoon RefreshmentMay you be sustained by the grace of GODMay your be calmed by the presence of GODMay you be encouraged by your faith in GODMay you be comforted by the peace of GODMay you be enveloped by the love of GOD

Click here for Web log Page [contains additional reflections not sent via mail and pictures]Comments may be entered in any entry of your choice
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K.Mason

Monday, April 23, 2007

DO NOT GIVE UP

Do Not Give Up

The journey can become weary sometimes. When we are witness bearers to the pervasive suffering of men, women, and children, the journey can take the wind from beneath our sails.

It is at such times that we are invited to take hold of each other for encouragement and respite to replenish our souls and regenerate our hearts.

It does not matter whether you are tall or short or whether you are rich or poor. It does not matter if you are Black, White, Red, or Yellow. It does not matter whether you are famous or unknown. However, what does matter is that we are spiritual beings on a human journey and human beings on a spiritual journey to the Celestial City of The Lord God!

On our journey may we cling fast to Hope, Faith, Compassion, Mercy, Empathy, and the greatest of these, which is "The Love of God," that will never, ever let us go! For it is His love that regenerates and heals and that liberates us to wholeness and spiritual integration and into the Celestial City whose maker is GOD!

Remain Encouraged!
GOD has the Universe in HIS Hands!

Blessings
K. Mason

ISAIAH 55: 11
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

K. Mason
(c) 2005 For your convenience, all of the links to Plethora Ministries sites are listed below. All you are required to do is "click" and be blessed! Please pass this on family members, friends, co-workers, and other travelers on their journey to spiritual integration and wholeness.

Blessings
Plethora Ministries
Plethora Ministries Click here for Web log Page [contains additional reflections not sent via mail and pictures]Comments may be entered in any entry of your choice
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/i/t/i/itiswell.htm

K.Mason

THE ETERNAL FLAME

THE ETERNAL FLAME

When hope appears to go awry and faith waivers, always remember that your consecrated and majestic incandescent (spirit) illuminates from within you; i.e.,
GOD, whose spirit dwells within you!

To this effect, light and goodness can never/ever be vanquished, because hope and despair, faith and doubt, light and darkness, and good and evil are intimately interwoven.

Be of Good Cheer as good always conquers evil.
Worry about what no man and/or woman can do to thee because
" He who keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps."
God is eternal!
"He who has begun a good you in you shall complete it."

TRUST GOD

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

HOLY WEEK MEDITATION 2007

AFTEROON REFLECTION

In the midst of our complex, compulsive, convulsive world men and women raise their voices to render utterance and interpretation to a world that is fraught with paradox and tempered by grace in the most astonishing of places. As seekers of truth, passion, meaning, and bliss we announce with incredible boldness and great
anticipation that were are waiting to seek what good thing can emerge from the bowels of our Nazareths, what wisdom can be garnered from loosing ourselves in oblivion, and what connections can be made from finding there in the midst of our greatest darkness our own light. The journey to wholeness invites and teaches us
that unless strength is tempered with the presence of weakness and weakness tempered with the presence of strength and both tempered with the presence of love, that we deny our own wholeness and that of the wholeness in others.

As we continue our journey, the holy pilgrimage, the trip to the bountiful, the quest to the celestial city of GOD, cultivation of the harvest in our fathers’ vineyard and our mothers’ garden are critical places of refuge where we must sometimes take respite to become more intimately acquainted with the healer who specializes in the binding and dressing of wounds with the balm of compassion and mercy, with the heroine to travail in birth as she renders new life from her primordial womb of wisdom, with the psalmist to play his lyre to soothe our weariness, brokenness, isolation, invisibility, insecurity, and ineptness into the banks of sleep against the backdrop of a blue satin night sky, with the artist to paint colors of ecstasy and passion, grandeur and splendor and in doing so paints beauty upon the palette of our psyche releasing frozen hopes, deferred dreams, and abandoned anticipations, with the sage who proclaims the LOGOS that chants psalms that speak of the “Wisdom of the Ages.”

We realize that time is a gift by which we encounter the Presence of the Divine through both the Kiros and the Chronos. This presence into which we are ushered some call GOD, some Jesus, some Allah, some Buddah, some Branman, some Shiva, some the Great Spirit, and others Higher Power. We come before your Divine,
Inescapable, and Eternal Presence God to invoke your blessing upon us and in us and with us as you and your will gets articulated, actuated, and activated in our lives. As we struggle to discern faith’s response to suffering, pain, injustice, brokenness, and hopelessness, remind us that hope accompanies faith and grace abides within.
As we gather to celebrate what it means to be made WHOLE, enable us to garner strength for the journey and wisdom for enlightenment. Enable us to be beckons of hope in brokenness, light in darkness, comfort in distress, quiet when there are tears, patience when there is struggle, and openness when there is fear as garner strength
and gain spiritual insight about GOD, self, and others.

As each of us progresses on our journey to the Celestial City of GOD, may the loving and gracious hand of GOD comfort you.

ISAIAH 55: 11
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

K. Mason

Click here for Web log Page

[contains additional reflections not sent via mail and pictures]

Comments may be entered in any entry of your choice
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/i/t/i/itiswell.htm

Click here for "IT IS WELL" Musical Midi

plethoraministries@yahoo.com
Plethora Ministries
Please spread the word to others you know and if they are interested in receiving the WORD Of Reflection Devotion weekly, please have them send an email to plethoraministries@yahoo.com and state in the subject line: "Request for WORD." Please feel free to write Plethora Ministries with your comments:

K.Mason

Monday, March 26, 2007

WHEN VALLEYS ARE EXALTED

Plethora Ministries

WORD WEEK 03-25-07

WHEN VALLEYS BECOME EXALTED

ISAIAH 40:4-5, 29-31 KJV

4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: 5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. 29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. 30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: 31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

WHEN VALLEYS BECOME EXALTED

Disruptions, disappointments, betrayals, exclusions, deferred advancements, inappropriate dislodge of power, sickness, class bias, racial bias, gender bias, depression, destruction, disintegration of the dignity and the worth of human lives, prisons who capitalize on the births of African American males not yet born by projecting their life-paths by the age of three, wars that claim the lives of many who serve forever transforming the lives of their family members, famine, disease, brokenness, hopelessness, poverty, and the waste of the sanctity of innocent lives in the world as a consequence of war, greed, experimentation, and economics are a fraction of the plethora of valleys in which the beloved of GOD reside. Valleys, a place where the triumph of hope over experience stacks the odds of success, survival, prosperity, victorious living, self-empowerment, self-efficacy, solidarity, and community unity against the beloved of GOD! Pandemic unemployment, the United States work force crisis, disintegration in social and work ethics, drug-addicted babies who die as a consequence of having in utero exposure to drugs, children in Africa and India who die by the dozens as a consequences of malnutrition, revenue spent on the development of penal systems, and revenue retracted from budgets for recreation; music; humanities; liberal arts curriculums all of which are presently defunct in the public school system as they are not deemed a significant enough investment, but are on the brink merges. Blatant racism tempered by little regard and/or awareness of the seriousness and implication of deep-cutting infractions against the humanness of other human beings who have contributed to the prosperity of this nation, flagrant political mudslinging, and the celebration and sensationalism of superficial matters, like those who make the best-dressed list in the entertainment spotlight are types of valleys in which those who are admired and those who aspire to be admired define self-worth, recognition, validation, and acceptance.

Geographically expressed, a VALLEY is a low area of land surrounded by higher areas such as a hill(s) and/or mountains. VALLEYS are like that of a depression in the surface of a mountain.

As we reflect upon the Biblical Scripture above, one of the common themes to which we bear witness is the presence and the reality of valleys. We encounter glimpses of VALLEYS when we become witness bearers to the lament of Hagar, The Egyptian Woman Servant, who cries beneath a tree when she feared the death of her son and Abraham's son, Ishmael, subsequent to being banished by Sarah. We become witness bearers to those who are placed in depressions (VALLEYS) when we travail with Joseph whose brothers sought his demise by placing him in a well and leaving him for dead!. Lastly, we encounter desolation and the "dark night of the soul" when we are witness bearers to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ who asks The FATHER about the psychology and dynamic of forsakenness as he lay nailed and dying.

While VALLEYS are present throughout the world and cover the globe without regard to status, ethnicity, or bloodline, they become a place where suffering is so great that the BELOVED OF GOD have become immune to and/or anesthetized by their immensity and profundity! Moreover, the passion of living abundantly and joyously appears to have been abducted by the sobering reality that hearts of too many of GOD'S people are becoming apathetic because VALLEYS have become places where GOD'S PEOPLE have come to believe that they are destined to reside! Consequently, far too many of the LORD'S people have given up, given out, and have given in because they believe that their tears nor their desolate state in the VALLEY do not touch the heart of a loving and gracious GOD! In essence, climbing out of the VALLEY appears to require too much work and does not appear to avert one's present suffering. Consequently, GOD'S BELOVED are born there, live there, and die there; not because they are destined too, but because they falsely believe that they are destined to! Help us GOD!

In essence, VALLEYS are not only places where one THE BELOVED physically reside, but VALLEYS are places where THE BELOVED emotionally and psychologically reside as well! VALLEYS are the places in our lives the cause far too many gifted, talented, and spiritually-grounded persons to abandon the necessity of hope, the quest of of dreaming, and the perseverance to bring those dreams into fruition because the fear of the height, the breadth, scope, and the depth of the mountains that are before us appear insurmountable! VALLEYS are those places when the persons we love die! VALLEYS are the places where hearts have been broken! VALLEYS are the places where betrayal is flagrant and commonplace! VALLEYS are the places where suicide reigns because the beauty of life has become scared by ugliness and despair and the quick way out appears to be the only way out! VALLEYS are the places where kindness and gratitude are virtues of a by-gone era! VALLEYS are the places where feel-good drugs are considered common-place and cool because reality appears like the fantasy and fantasy like reality! VALLEYS are the places where me, myself, and I are the only persons about whom "love thy neighbor" dare to become intimate! VALLEYS are the places where persons are placed on psychological and emotional probation, not so much because the convicted has not made atonement for his/her ways, but because far too many of THE BELOVED are sitting in the seat of JUDGE, PROSECUTOR and JUROR! VALLEYS!

While VALLEYS in and of themselves can extinguish life, VALLEYS are also places where man's DESTINY meets GOD'S DIVINITY! In other words, VALLEYS are the places that the power, breath, depth, scope, and infiniteness of GOD'S omnipotence becomes manifested! Simply stated, VALLEYS can become places where one comes to the reality of the power of and the necessity of the intervention of GOD! African -Americans in servitude and slavery endured their harsh realities because many were born lived, and died in the VALLEY, but died with an awareness that their off-spring who be exalted from the VALLEY via the power of GOD!!

The "Word OF GOD" reminds us that GOD gives power to the weary and faint in the VALLEY! GOD promises to exalt every low place [VALLEY] and lower every high place [mountains] that are oppressive to those ensnared by VALLEY experiences. In the VALLEY where there are crooked and rough paths, GOD promises to straighten and smooth the path of the journey of HIS BELOVED! Consequently, when we are in the VALLEY, the good news is that GOD is in the VALLEY with us as well and it is by the gracious presence of The Holy Spirit that HE enables us to absorb the shock of a deepening spirituality that can only be yielded via VALLEY encounters! We are witness bearers via the Prophets in the Old Testament who remind us that our strength, fortitude, vision, hope, song, and petitions are often conveyed to the LORD not only by words, but via our moans and groans and tears which the HOLY SPIRIT maketh intercession from the VALLEY! The petitions of the BELOVED OF GOD provokes the gentle hand of GOD to carry the Beloved Wounded over mountains, through valleys, and across oceans. In VALLEYS of distress, lean on GOD! In VALLEYS of brokenness, rely on GOD, In VALLEYS of numbness cling to GOD! In VALLEYS of confusion, trust GOD! In VALLEYS of grief, be comforted by GOD! In VALLEYS of despair, place your hope in GOD! In VALLEYS of disappointments, tell GOD! In VALLEYS of war, pray to GOD! In VALLEYS of stagnation, surrender to GOD! In VALLEYS of brokenness, give "it" over to GOD! In VALLEYS of loneliness, be comforted by GOD! In VALLEYS of transition, love GOD! Subsequently, as each event/narrative unfolds, we become witness bearers to the transformative power of VALLEYS as we are reminded the life happens and that VALLEYS then become Oh' Blessed VALLEY OF GOD! When we encounter Jesus in our suffering and when everything familiar to us appears to be communicated via our VALLEY experiences, Jesus touches us in a way that causes our suffering and brokenness to become our comfort and strength. Throughout the sacred text; i.e., from the book Genesis to the book of Revelation, we as the Beloved Community of GOD are petitioned to embrace the spiritual necessity that the Divine Journey will summons the necessity of the VALLEY in our lives.

When we abandon the parameters of human reason alone and "tap" the consciousness of GOD, our lives become transformed in our realization that our lives are really not our own, but gifts birthed by the unfathomable love of GOD! The Holy Spirit causes something to happen to us, with us, and in us as we know that victory and triumph can only come from divine intervention which on many occasions has been activated by the VALLEY! As each of us progresses on our journey to the Celestial City of GOD, may the loving and gracious hand of GOD comfort you in response to your VALLEYS. May the words that only your tears can render expression grant you peace and release.

[contains additional reflections not sent via mail and pictures]Comments may be entered in any entry of your choicehttp://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/i/t/i/itiswell.htm

K.Mason