picture perfect

As I was driving home from Chattanooga and Grandfield OK today I looked over in a field and on a collapsed tree with about 15 branches shooting up into the air probably about 10-15 feet from the ground at the end of them...and there on the end of each branch were Cattle Egret. Flame white--- it looked like the flames on many candles. It was an awesome sight. Ii didn't have a camera this time, though I usually travel with one.

But what a sight, those birds on each branch. Was I the only one to see them as I drove from Lawton to Duncan? Was I the only one in awe of such a beautiful sight? I don't know. But what I do know is that picture is etched in my mind. Black cattle were clusterd not far away. All in all it was picture perfect.

So, in my brain on a frame that is hard to understand is this image...perhaps these words conjure up an image for you. But even better. Go out there and look at the world around you, whereever you are, and see the images of your world, etched in your mind.

Memorial Day...remember all those whose pictures we have to carry for them.

god abide
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2005

Movie

I have now watched Hotel Rwanda twice. It is wonderful, troubling, and challenging movie. This movie moves me in ways that wake me. Let us keep awake friends in Christ, there is much to see.
What is it God has need of our prayer in intervention? What right have we to be privliged and entitled? None. Not when there are people, even neighbors, hungry, hurting, lost, ill, in need of our prayer, our hands our hearts.

We have work to do. To bring God's love to those who don't know. Don't know that they are known already by God and loved.

How brave are we? How filled with courage? How ready to stand for others?

Today you may have the opportunity to find out. Remember.

God abides

Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2005

lost chances

There was a young boy who died Friday night in a traffic accident in rural Oklahoma. i don't know the details of the accident or of his life. I know he was 17 and died the day after his hard fought high school graduation. There is nothing but tragedy in all of this. nothing...
The angels weep and the boy goes home. His life had never been easy..but now he was in the arms of God. This I believe.
But even though I never met him, nor will ever meet him, I miss him.
I miss the spirit of all those children who don't get to live to be adults. Who seek responsibility and who seek to have opportunity....and it is lost. Whether it be from action that can be changed, or wheter it is something that willnever change, death, we have those who are lost to the opportunites of life to be there.
Know that God's love is wrestling with an angel for a blessing.
Me...i'm gonna pray for al the children with lost chances, by happenstance, human chaos aroundthem, or justbecause.
God abide with this family adn all who mourn. ALL who mourn.

Bobbie Giltz Mcgarey
@2005

changes

Wow this week really flew by. Here it is Friday afternoon. I think back on individual things that went on and know it was for the good but ...wow, Friday.
Years ago there was on the NPR station, a report each friday morning with a Baseball commentator Red Barber. He spoke with a gentle southern drawn and commented each week on happenings in the field of sport. I remember almost waiting for his commentary because he had a gentle way of addressing other situations in the world at the same time. One week all I remembered was it being friday, and friday again...seemingly the next day. Always a surprise how the week would move by.

Thee are so many things to do these days for the good of the kingdom, so many prayers to be raised, and just so much time to sigh and say.... I'll enjoy now this cup of chai.

We are a country where we live our lives in a hurry. We rush around trying to accomplish something important, and now and again, with God's help we do, but we sometimes then miss the whole of the life we've been given. The minutes and seconds and days and sometimes even years are hard to account for...
let's look together at each day and ask...where was God present in my day today...
and thanks be to God.

and perhaps at the start of the day say... I will be present to God today...

God abide with you
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2005

Dr. Bobbie G. McGarey

questions

I have had time to read a little more lately, for relaxation and found online the book "1984" by George Orwell online and I could read it there. My copy long gone. I remember reading it in high school and it really being creepy. Perhaps it is the genarator of my sometime paranoids about 'big brother'. Anyway I wonder if people have read it recently?

We all have things we think we know and then find out they aren't true. We have things that surprise us because we have figured it all out and then find out surprise...it's different. Years ago I listened with my cousin to the soundtrack to the movie Carousel. I remember making up a story about how the songs were sung and why ..I made up my own whole 'story about how and why.... 'You'll never walk alone..'. was sung... Then,, then, then, I saw the movie..What? I asked this can't be this is sad, this is tragic, It was all wrong... well wrong as far as my story line was crafted.

So don't we need then to live into a story that is true. One that has the fullest truth to it... you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free... What truth? One's truth about the bible...it says this... or it says that... for sure. Well what I think that there is a real truth...God loves you...and everything else in the Bible is trying to let us know how that looks.. how does it look in a world where God loves everyone? How does it look when we accept that love? How would that change the world? It would because there would always be sharing of food and everyone could eat, because healing would come, because all people would be 'we' not 'they'. This is the Kin-dom of God.

questions, to be true.... and be true...would that we all were true...

God abides
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2005
Rev.Dr.Bobbie

not me, not mine

Hello,
Don't you know there are times when we want it to be ..not me, not mine. We watched the weather patterns tonight on the screen and we felt it odd that the times when the picture of the storm comes up on the screen and then there isn't a flashing county we are in...well it becomes a trouble. But if it is our county..well great we can see what is coming.
Our front door is open and we hear only distant thunder and it is a gentle rain outside. The kind you want.. But there are places O not so far from here where the rain comes with hail and high winds. But well that's not me...
We hear stories on the news of people who are abused by others and we say...well not by me. Or places where someone tears up someones y text.... but not by me. And we hear of people still living in boxes on the beach after the tsunami came through in December...but not me.
But sisters and brothers, it is us. We all go together and we all hurt and celebrate together, we all thrive or are hungry together... bcauxe god created the world.... and that is the same world for us all.
So it is me...it is ours...

God abide

Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2005
Dr. Bobbie G. McGarey

Expectations

Don Quixote is a fictional character who would joust at windmills to try and to do what is right for his beloved. Sometimes in life we work hard for what is right and we attempt to determine what should be done next. WE do surveys, we ask questions, we look at what others do, we take our best guess. ... And then we try so hard to live up to the expectations of others.
There is an old Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown says to the principal ..there's no greater burden than a great potential. Don't you know we all have great potential. We all have the huge potential to be who God created us to be. Age is no factor or excuse. Each one at the point where we are have the potential every day to live up to who we are to be.
We don't joust with windmills thinking them the enemy. I think the enemy today is fear. It is fear that we do not have to power to change the world. But Jesus would say...oh yes you do. Don't you remember Jesus saying....you have the power to do these things and even more. Don't you remember that you are to "go and do likewise' ...
So we have these expectations to live up to the potential God gives us.
Go to it... today and every day...

And you can
Because and only because...
God abides

Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2005

saved by a dog

There is an article in the international news about a girl baby abandoned by her parents in Kenya and a dog found her and rescued her and now people all over the world want to help her and adopt her. The dog is rewarded, and people feel good that this child was saved.
But daily all over the world children .are not being saved. They are abandoned by famine, war, AIDS, and because they are girls in many cases. We, here in the Western world, can look at this terrible thing and say oh my they should do something about it. http://www.unicef.org/ Check it out...
And then we feel like we can't do anything or make a difference, but we can... http://www.okdhs.org/fostercare/get_involved.htm That's just from my state. I'm sure each state has this kind of program and children waiting... According to one figure 126,000 children are waiting for adoption.
I have a house with rooms where nobody lives. How can this be the way it is supposed to be?
What will bring your heart satisfaction? There is work to be done. And it's good work for the kingdom...the KIndom of God where we all recognize in another person ourselves. "they" is no longer a term we learn...WE are all we are in the world.

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red,brown,yellow,black,white they are precious in his sight Jesus loves the little children of the world... Everything is beautiful...

Do something Beautiful for God today.

Thanks be to God.
God abide
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2005

Home

We just got back from Chicago where I graduated and got a Doctor of Ministry degree. I am relieved and happy about it. The pagentry of the graduation was great fun. I said good-bye to the other three members of the Four Winds. Who knows if we'll meet again? I hope so but understand it will take some intentional work for that to happen.

We had a good trip. We listed to the Cd of Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix. amazingly it only took us half way through the book as we traveled... another trip? ha ha ...God only knows.

So, home to work on those things that are in the mill, to throw away a lot of papers accumulated during the Dmin courses and getting things in order. I want to learn to Spin in whatever spare time I have...

So, just rambling but wishing you a good week and will be back online and writing some...
Have some wonderful images...
A tent covered statue ..the Bean...
A beautiful lake whose colors change in such wonderful ways...
meeting family all the time...
saying good bye...
Signs along the way...
ok well have a good evening.

God abides
bobbie
rev. dr bobbie giltz mcgarey
@2005

Changes

As you work on things and accomplish things, things change. Perhaps its merely a change of your attitude. Perhaps it isn't a real change.
A paradigm shift is really a change. That is where the story you have of the world, personal, work, the real world, changes. It is like a new lens that you see through. All of a sudden things become clear. Suddenly all things make sense. Now to be honest a paradigm shift will not necessairily make things make sense. It might however make things real.
An example is one's understanding of Santa Claus. I remember our children when they were young asking me to tell them the 'truth' was there really a Santa Claus? I said 'Well I think so"... because I do believe there is a spirit of Giving that lives in all of us.
But a shift can come when you see a news report and really listen....there are people dying in Dufar. There are thousands in refugee centers. There are millions of orphan children whose parents died of AIDS. And the shift may come when we go to buy ...something just because...and realize that given through the right people you could acutally help the widow, the refugee, the Aids orphan. And here's the clue. This is true. A little you can do can help a lot those people in need.
So, it seems that we need to see changes as our become more alert to the needs of the world.

Bless you, and your new lens. Find out where you can help and get out there and do this.
God abide
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2005

Home again

We were on the road last week to AZ and now home. I actually love to drive, which is good because I have to drive a lot. We went West on I-40. From Amarillo to Flagstaff.
The scenery between here and there is so different, you are going along on high plain where you can see the 360 horizon to a desert, mountain, mesa area... all so beautiful in their own way. There are several spots on the journey when you can see for miles and miles the road stretched out ahead of you and you KNOW you have to get from here to there....and you can see exactly how that is going to happen. Sigh.
And the interesting part to me is that even though you know it in the long view you don't know what you see along the way. You can't know about that formation of rocks, or that raven that swoops over the road, or the odd little wild flowers that hug the ground so as not to get blown over in the wind.
It's like life it seems. We know we have from here...to there... to be here. What we don't know along the way are the details. We don't know the joys, the sorrows, the double over laughter times, or the tears that don't stop, "the times to dance and the time to refrain from dancing." Ecclesiastes
So let it be. Let yourself be present to the time. Be conscious of each day's challenges and each day's gifts to you. Recieve the good that comes and pass on good to others. B R E A T H E
Life goes so quickly. Our children grow so fast from tiny infants needing everything to teenagers who know everything to young adults who enjoy everything to...
May you know this week a time each day...that makes you in your own way...want to dance!

God abide
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2005