Gatsby Daily

27/07/2025

Touch the heart …

💖

16/07/2025

Your Trauma is Valid
Message me if you’d like to explore trauma-informed spiritual direction or be part of a healing circle.
Let’s walk this with gentleness—and grace.

14/07/2025

Because the wound was real—and so is the healing.

💌 Reach out if you’d like to explore trauma-informed spiritual direction or attend one of our upcoming healing retreats.
No pressure. No fixing. Just presence. And grace.

13/07/2025

Trauma-informed care is important because it changes how we see people, how we respond to pain, and how healing happens—in relationships, communities, and spiritual spaces.

Reach out if you’d like to talk about spiritual direction, join a circle, or attend one of our trauma-informed programs.

11/07/2025

You were never too much. You were always worthy of love.
Let’s come home to that truth again.

📩 Message me to talk about spiritual direction or upcoming projects.

09/07/2025

15/05/2025

🎶 Force of Love was far too strong
Saw it in their eyes
They tried...
And they tried
They tried
But they couldn’t play it off
Love is contagious… 🎵

There is a kind of Love that doesn’t simply comfort—it compels. Not a fleeting emotion, but a Divine Force that moves the heart, awakens the soul, and disrupts even the strongest attempts to resist. This is the Love that catches fire in the eyes, stirs tears in silence, and presses the human spirit forward—even when it’s afraid, helpless, hopeless...

St. Ignatius of Loyola believed this was the very nature of Love -- a dynamic force that moves one to act. In his Spiritual Exercises, he writes:

“Love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words.”
[SE 230]

Love—when it’s real—cannot be contained. It becomes visible. It becomes lived. It becomes contagious.

In the song, they “tried and tried” to resist the pull, to keep up appearances, to “play it off.” But Love melts away the masks. In time, it overflows. It radiates from the eyes, from presence, from Being. It shakes loose all our defenses and turns us toward something greater than ourselves.

This is the same force that drove saints and heroes—men and women who left behind comfort, power, even their own plans, because they were seized by a Love far stronger than fear -- far stronger than their own ambition. Ignatius himself, once a vain soldier seeking glory, was undone by the Love of Christ. That Love lit a fire in him so fierce that he wrote:

“It is not hard to obey when we love the one whom we obey.”

And from that Love came a life of service, sacrifice, and world-changing expression of Love.

So yes, Love is contagious—when it’s alright, when it is rightly ordered, when it flows from the Source of all Love -- God.

And so, I pray and ponder:
In what areas of my life am I still “playing it off” or resisting the deeper call of Love?
Who has loved me in such a way that it awakened something deep within—and how am I being invited to become that kind of Love for someone else?
What might it look like to finally let Love take over?
Because once it does— there’s no turning back.

LOVE IS CONTAGIOUS
05.15.2025

Taja Sevelle · Love Is Contagious · Song · 2014

04/05/2025

After the resurrection, Jesus doesn’t confront Peter with his failure. He doesn’t ask:
“Peter, do you admire me?”
“Do you now believe in my mission?”
“Will you stand by my teaching next time?”

Instead, He asks the most important and most vulnerable question of all: “Do you love Me?”

And He asks it three times—a mirror to Peter’s three denials. Love is the foundation. As the song goes, 🎶"Love lifts us up where we belong."🎵�

Not admiration.�
Not performance.�
Not even an agreement.��

Love is what restores.
�Love is what recommissions.�
Love is what feeds His sheep.��

Jesus meets Peter in his shame and confusion, and Love reclaims him through mercy.�He does the same for you.

Who in your life is Jesus asking you to “feed” or care for as an expression of your love for Him?

Is there a place where you’ve been performing faith without letting Jesus love and restore you?

30/03/2025

In Jesus’s death we see right into the heart of God.

17/12/2024

I stood beneath the midnight sky,
where the cross rose silent and still,
its form cutting the clouds,
and the moon,
cradled in a halo of light,
a night like no other—
a birth, a manger, a quiet beginning.

The sky, then, too,
must have shimmered with wonder,
angels threading songs through the dark,
their voices turning silence into praise.

Here I am,
beneath this same sky,
beneath this cross,
thinking of Love —
the child who became the Lamb,
the Lamb who would bear this weight.

I thought of Mary,
her trembling hands,
her Fiat.
Of Joseph,
steady beside her,
holding
as tightly on her hand.
Did they see the shadows of this cross
etched in that holy night,
or just the Light,
spilling from a lowly stable?

The moon tonight is a mirror —
soft and tender,
its Light not its own,
but reflected from a Greater Fire.
And I wonder,
is that not the story of us all?
To hold His Light,
even faintly,
and offer it back to the world?

The cross looms large,
but tonight,
it does not speak of sorrow.
Tonight, it feels like a doorway,
a bridge between the heavens and earth,
where angels once descended,
where God chose to dwell among us.

And I stand here,
beneath it all,
beneath this moonlit cross,
thinking of the manger,
thinking of the child,
and how He chose
to hold the world,
even then,
in His tiny hands.

Tonight, I let myself be held,
in the quiet mystery of it all,
beneath the midnight cross,
beneath the same sky
that sings of His birth.
Emmanuel — God with us...

CRADLED BY THE CROSS
JGatsby
12.17.2024
331am D2: Misa de Gallo
📍Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish

06/12/2024

Dear God, dear stars
Dear trees, dear sky
Dear peoples, dear everything
Dear God
God is inside me and everyone else
That was, forever will be
I came into this world with God
And when I finally looked inside
I found it
Just as close as my breath is to me
Risin' (risin', risin') like the sun
Is the hold that sets us free
Your heartbeat make my heart beat
When we share love like a blade of corn
Like a honey bee
Like a waterfall
All a part of me
Like the color purple
Where do it come from?
Now my eyes are open
Look what God has done
It take a grain of love (grain of love)
To make a mighty tree (to make a mighty, mighty tree)
You take the smallest love (smallest love)
And make a harmony (harmony)
Like a drop of water (like a drop of water)
You keep the river high (He can make the river high)
There are miracles (there are miracles)
For you and I (for you and I)
Like a blade of corn (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Like a honey bee (ooh)
Like a waterfall (hey)
All a part of me
Like the color purple (like the color purple)
Where do it come from? (Tell, where does it come from?)
Now my eyes are open (my eyes are open)
Look what God has done
I don't think us feel old at all
I think this is the youngest us every felt, ohh
Amen ('men)

Oscar®, Golden Globe® and Grammy® winner Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) has dazzled the world with her matchless talent. This fall, she makes her long-awaited ...

21/07/2024

When you say goodbye to a parent, you are suddenly living in a whole new world.
You are no longer ‘the child’ and regardless of how long you have officially been ‘grown up’ for, you realise you actually never were until this moment. The shock of this adjustment will shake your very core.

When you have finally said goodbye to both your parents, assuming you were lucky enough to have had two. You are an orphan on this earth and that never, ever gets easier to take no matter how old and grey you are yourself and no matter how many children of your own you have.

You see, a part of your body is physically connected to the people that made it and also a part of your soul. When they no longer live, it is as if you are missing something practical that you need – like a finger or an arm. Because really, you are. You are missing your parent and that is something far more necessary than any limb. And yet the connection is so strong it carries on somehow, no-one knows how exactly. But they are there. In some way, shape or form they are still guiding you if you listen closely enough. You can hear the words they would choose to say to you. You can feel the warmth of their approval, their smile when a goal is achieved, their all-consuming love filling the air around you when a baby is born they haven’t met.
If you watch your children very closely you will see that they too have a connection with your parents long after they are gone. They will say things that resonate with you because it brings so many memories of the parent you are missing. They will carry on traits, thoughts and sometimes they will even see them in their dreams. This is not something we can explain.

Love is a very mystical and wondrous entity.
It is far better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all and grief, grief is the price of that love. The deeper the love the stronger the grief.
When you say goodbye to a parent, do not forget to connect with that little girl who still lives inside you somewhere. Take very good care of her, for she, she will be alone and scared.

When you say goodbye to your parents, you lose an identity, a place in the world. When the people who put you on this earth are no longer here, it changes everything. Look after yourself the way they looked after you and listen out for them when you need it the most.

They never really leave. ❤️🙏🏼

- Donna Ashworth -