Here is the prompt from Deb over at Revgals

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“I am an enthusiastic newspaper reader. Lately, however, world events have made it hard to read and process the pain in the world around me. Perhaps you have struggled with this, too.
So, with the events of the violence and tragedy from the Boston Marathon fresh in our memories, I thought it would be good for us to focus on where as RevGalBlogPals, we find healing, peace and strengthening. As a chaplain, there are days where I never seem to catch my breath, and invariably, those are the days that I need it the most! So with all this in mind, share with us these healing things.”

1. A piece of music

2. A place

I love beaches. Preferably warm and sunny beaches. But cold and blustery ones work too. First choice of beach would be at my family’s lake cabin on Loon Lake, which is north of Spokane, Washington. Second choice would be a warm beach where cabana boys bring me fruity drinks with umbrellas.

3. A favorite food (they call it “comfort food” for a reason)

Macaroni and Cheese. Real macaroni and cheese, not the box stuff. Preferably with sausage crumbled into it and with gorgonzola as one of the many cheeses.
4. A recreational pastime (that you watch or participate in)

This one makes me a little wistful. But running on the trails near my house was a very calming and centering thing for me to do. As you may have already read, I’m having knee surgery Tuesday to repair my meniscus, but the surgeon told me my running days are likely behind me. Hoping hiking the trails will have similar therapeutic effect for my soul. But am already missing running.

5. A poem, Scripture passage or other literature that speaks to comfort you.

From Letters to a Young Poet by Rainier Maria Rilke:

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is,to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Robert Alter’s translation of Psalm 139. Here are a few verses:

For You created my innermost parts,
wove me in my mother’s womb.
I acclaim You, for awesomely I am set apart,
wondrous are Your acts,
and my being deeply knows it.
My frame was not hidden from You,
when I was made in a secret place,
knitted in the utmost depths.
My unformed shape Your eyes did see,
and in Your book all was written down.
The days were fashioned,
not one of them did lack.

Morning Poem by Mary Oliver (from Dream Work)

This poem ends with these lines:

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted —

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

BONUS: People, animals, friends, family – share a picture of one or many of these who warm your heart.

And I’ll leave you with this from Momastery. This video from her post is well worth the seven minutes of your day. https://vimeo.com/62200554