Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Online Help There is a vast group of helpful people out there who earn their living patiently shepherding people like me through the mysteries of online shopping. Here’s to the extreme patience of these beleaguered souls who withhold a groan when they are so unfortunate to pick up their

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Healing A simple cut seems like a little thing, but it can hurt and continue to aggravate long past when it seems such a small thing should bother us. Whenever something goes amiss in the way our body functions, we have a choice. A cut, a bruise, or things

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Competence Whenever we need medical help to recover from some health difficulty, we have an opportunity to appreciate the doctors and nurses who perform their skills with such competence as they work to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it. We can consider the years a

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Snow Snow wears two faces. The sight and sound of children making snowmen, throwing snowballs, delightful laughter while lying on their backs and making snow angels. Hot chocolate, fireplaces, and marshmallow roasting. Family games while warm inside. The other face. The enormous road blockage of hundreds of car unable

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Peace Beyond Understanding As we approach the end of another turbulent year, we can see a lot in this world to distress us. The world offers us plenty to complain about, worry about, distrust, and agonize over. Weather conditions destroy. Disease harms. Accidents happen. People disappoint us, hurt us,

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement The Christmas Miracle I wonder how many recognized the miracle of Jesus that very first Christmas. From the Bible, we know that the shepherds on a nearby hillside did. They noted an unusual star and followed it to find and worship the Christ child in a manger. Some wise

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Christmas Carols Each Christmas Carol we sing has a story about its origin, about its meaning. Each time we sing our favorites, our spirits soar and our hearts rejoice in the amazing, wondrous, earth changing event of the birth of Jesus Christ. If you have been blessed with a

Mary’s Mondays Musings to Quilt Encouragement Musicians The people who performed the Handbell Consort we attended were amazingly active during the concert. At various points they traded places with one another to shake a different size bell and gently strum out distinctive sounds at just the right place in the musical piece. The sheer muscle

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Handbells Consort I had attended handbell concerts before with a small number of bells and people involved and thoroughly enjoyed them, but nothing prepared me for the concert I enjoyed recently. There were five or six tables with more than 100 bells lined up on them, ranging from quite

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement Old Love There is a special tenderness in the love of a couple, still alive and in love after decades piled upon decades. The touch of two hands, the exchange of a smile, a head resting against a shoulder all silently speak of a depth beyond the outward action.