Rules for self discovery

“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly
until He has hurt him deeply.”
A.W. Tozer

(self portrait found in the river rocks/ Las Vegas, New Mexico / Julie Cook / 2011)

The celebration, the worldly hype and even sadly the joy all seem
to be quickly fading…
As the notion of transition now races madly from anticipation to resolution.

Seasons clash…
It is the Spiritual versus the worldly.

For we have moved from a season of hope into a season of self reflection.
The heavy question grabs us by the neck as if a drowning man might grab
the neck of a potential hope of rescue…
can joy reside within the depths of self reflection?

Reflection.
Introspection.
and eventually….if we are fortunate…
Resolution.

Determined…or not.
Good or bad.

Isn’t that what we are supposed to do at the closing of one year as we
anticipate the beginning of another?
Reflect and then commit?

Yet what do we commit to?
What might it be…
or rather what could it be…?
or even better yet…
what should it be?

“Rules for Self Discovery:
1. What we want most;
2. What we think about most;
3. How we use our money;
4. What we do with our leisure time;
5. The company we enjoy;
6. Who and what we admire;
7. What we laugh at.”
A. W. Tozer

fleeting

It’s a moment that I’m after, a fleeting moment,
but not a frozen moment.
Andrew Wyeth

(a store window seen in Savannah, Ga / Julie Cook / 2021)

Fleeting– the opposite of lasting or enduring.

That which is brief, momentary or transient.

Much like the still images taken from a strip of film.

Frame per frame-
Sequence by sequence-
Moment by moment-
As black and white images blend to a tonal pallet of grey…
each frame is its own static story of something or someone
that has preceded the current moment of time, thus becoming
nothing more than the past…a past that becomes now motionless.

These junctures in time, these single breaths of life, may each be
caught and thus captured… and in turn,
become a single entity of both space of time
as they are now ‘saved’ for a time to be.

They simply become moments frozen in an everlasting vacuum of
continuance…allowing that which was to become
a part of that which is as well as that which will be.

Thus these physical and tangible moments, which
each come and are quickly gone, now only add to our own
individual continuum of time.

And so we ponder…

Are not these someones or somethings…
these moments and persons which are each captured in
writings, recordings or even videos and photographs…
are they not more or less paralyzed…as in immobilized…
void of all movement and action… rendered lifeless
and thus resulting in the transcending of time…because time
has indeed thus stopped.

Or has it merely been paused…resulting in the ability to resume the
moment?

Oh how we yearn to resume such moments and individuals.

Images each recorded and saved…poignantly yet painfully reminding
us of that which was is now simply no more…
and is rather just traded to that of a memory.

And so we continue to wonder…
do these captured moments of both places and persons–
places and persons who may or may not be known to those who are
now viewing or reading or hearing them,
do they not give way to segments of a larger juncture or turning point?
All of which now afford anyone and everyone to read, hear,
see and even share in what was?

As in…do not these captured moments simply allow anyone and everyone
who comes across such, to be able to partake in each individual or thing…
while interpreting them uniquely from each individual’s vantage point?
Invoking shared emotions despite the images not necessarily being our own?

A single active event or person…all of that which once was…
now gives way to the actions of anyone’s and everyone’s life as the
past becomes the present and, if we are so fortunate, the future.

It is a collective sharing of both space and time of that which once was
for some, being that of memory, now becoming the active imagination of another.
and thus fleeting no more…

“Your poor heart, in which God put appreciation for everlastingness,
will not take electronic gadgets in lieu of eternal life.
Something inside of you is too big for that, too terrible, too wonderful.
God has set everlastingness in your heart.
All the things of this world are here for but a moment and then are gone.
None can satisfy the longing for that eternal ragging in the soul of every man.”
A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John

awareness

“Essentially a soldier, the Christian is always on the lookout.
He has sharper ears and hears an undertone that others miss;
his eyes see things in a particularly candid light,
and he senses something to which others are insensible,
the streaming of a vital current through all things.
He is never submerged in life, but keeps his head and shoulders clear of it
and his eyes free to look upward.
Consequently he has a deeper sense of responsibility than others.
When this awareness and watchfulness disappear,
Christian life loses its edge; it becomes dull and ponderous.”
Fr. Romano Guardini, p. 177

(late season coneflowers / Julie Cook / 2021)

Awareness.

Merriam Webster tells us that the meaning of the word awareness is:
knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists.

And so as we now find ourselves watching the shadows lengthen while pulling
our jackets ever tighter in order to fend off the oncoming cold…
in reality, we are doing more than merely watching shadows and
warding off an ensuing chill..
we are actually entering into a season of both gratitude and of
great anticipation.

And thus I cannot help but to be reminded of this notion of awareness.

It is that almost innate ability to know and to understand something that
does indeed exist yet which is without a visual, tangible or physical
existence.

Not seen, nor touched…and yet…it is.

It is a visceral awareness of something other then…
or is that something more than?

It is something that reaches beyond the realm of here and now.
It is something that resides deep within rather than blatantly
outward.

And despite it not being something that is physically touched or held,
nonetheless, it is.

It exists because we are indeed aware.

We have a deep knowledge that it is indeed happening and active.
We yearn to see it, touch it, feel it, hold it…and yet despite
it being simply beyond our reach…we still know that it is indeed real.

It is something that lingers in both our capacity for thought
as well as within our basic sense of understanding.

And it is in that sense of awareness and understanding and knowing that our
brain actually acknowledges its existence.

We simply don’t imagine it into reality.
We don’t dream it into reality.
We don’t wish it into reality.
Because that which is, is indeed of reality.

We are aware and acknowledge the existence of this entity because we
cognizantly know that it is.

And whereas our emotions reassure us of its reality, it is our brain’s
ability to make us first aware and then secondly to assist us to acknowledge
that which is…as we may then fully proclaim the reality.

Our brain tells us what our heart already knows…
that being the simple awareness of Love…

And thus we find the transcendence of Love in both time and space.
As we become both aware of as well as  full of the knowledge of it very existence.

We become fully conscious that this entity, this awareness,
this thing known as Love…exists in all that was,
all that is and all that will be.

And thus the emotion becomes the acknowledgment and awareness of
Truth.
Our Truth.
Our Hope.
Our Home.
Our saving Grace…

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness,
and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.
I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace.
I am ashamed of my lack of desire.
O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee;
I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still.
Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed.
Begin in mercy a new work of love within me.
Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’
Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty
lowland where I have wandered so long.”
A.W.Tozer

voices

“Only after all the noise has spent itself do we begin to hear
in the silence of our hearts, the voice of God.”
A.W. Tozer

(Cades Cove / Julie Cook / 2021)

A man’s soul is as full of voices as a forest;
there are ten thousand tongues there like all the tongues of the trees:
fancies, follies, memories, madnesses, mysterious fears, and more mysterious hopes.
All sanity in life consists in coming to the conclusion that some of those
voices have authority and others do not.
G. K. Chesterton
quoted in Dale Ahlquist’s book The Complete Thinker

A few lovely thoughts

“We find rest in those we love, and we provide a
resting place for those who love us.”
St. Bernard of Clairvaux

(Glendalough / Co. Wicklow / Julie Cook 2015)

“And I saw that truly nothing happens by accident or luck,
but everything by God’s wise providence …
for matters that have been in God’s foreseeing wisdom,
since before time began, befall us suddenly,
all unawares; and so in our blindness and ignorance we say
that this is accident or luck,
but to our Lord God it is not so.”
St. Julian of Norwich

Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.
Henry Van Dyke

Faith makes all things possible…
love makes all things easy.
Dwight L. Moody

“Love,” said Meister Eckhart, “is the will to, the intention.”
By that definition,
it is possible to obey the divine command to love our neighbor.
We may not in a thousand years be able to feel a surge of emotion
toward certain “neighbors,”
but we can go before God and solemnly will to love them,
and the love will come.
By prayer and an application of the inworking power of God,
we may set our faces to will the good of our neighbor and
not his evil all the days of our lives, and that is love.
The emotion may follow,
or there may be no appreciable change in our feelings toward him,
but the intention is what matters.
We will his peace and prosperity and put ourselves at his disposal
to help him in every way possible, even to the laying down of
our lives for his sake. Love, then,
is a principle of good will and is to a large extent under our control.
That it can be fanned into a blazing fire is not denied here.
Certainly God’s love for us has a mighty charge of feeling in it,
but beneath it all is a set principle that wills our peace.
Probably the love of God for mankind was never more beautifully
stated than by the angel at the birth of Christ:
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to man on
whom his favor rests.”
A. W. Tozer
Agape

the journey of deconstruction

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside, awakes.”
C.G. Jung

“There is a spiritual loneliness, an inner loneliness,
an inner place where God brings the seeker,
where he is as lonely as if there were not another member of the Church
anywhere in the world.
Ah, when you come there, there is a darkness of mind,
and emptiness of heart, a loneliness of soul,
but it is preliminary to the daybreak.
O God, Bring us, somehow to the daybreak!”
A.W. Tozer excerpts from various sermons…How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit

So it has been brought to my attention, over the last week or so,
that perhaps some of my recent posts…
posts that I’ve offered as reposts, along with those penned as recently as this week,
seem to be skirting around a central theme…
a theme of the forlorn or even that of the melancholy.
Some have even asked “are you ok?”

Well…I think I’m ok.
And I think the posts have been timely…as perhaps it is
the times in which we are finding ourselves which is rendering
that underlying sense of the forlorn and melancholy.

But I suppose I should confess that I have been spending a great deal
of time recently thinking about loving and being loved.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about breaking and being broken.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of giving while receiving.

And I’ve fiercely been wrestling with the whole notion of Grace.

Do you know that giving Grace is one thing…while
feeling worthy of receiving such is something else entirely?
Or so I’m learning.

And so I’m faced with the nagging question of how can we freely offer others
such if we find our own selves feeling less-than when needing to
receive the same in like turn?

It is indeed a conundrum.
A conundrum of self.

And thus I have actually been finding myself looking backwards.

Not so much because I’m afraid of going forward, or that I wish to be morose…
rather I’m looking back in an attempt to better understand the now.
Or maybe I should say “my” now.

And no, I’m not talking about looking back through the lens of some sort of
historical context, a political context or a cultural context.
Heck, I’ve purposefully been distancing myself from my obsession
with all things news…avoiding the latest barrage of current events
all of which leaves me more depressed than hopeful.

I am finding that I need to declutter from the world for just a bit
in order to make some sense of the bare bones of this thing we call life…

I’m finding that an interior life issue is far greater than the Border Crisis,
a Pandemic, Dr.Fauci, President Biden, a broken chain of supply and demand,
inflation, vaccines…the list is endless….
and the list is a massive distraction and not the real issue at hand.

For the real issue is that which lies within.

And maybe that’s part of the point.
Avoid the real issue by being distracted by the world’s issues and madness.
And what good am I to myself or others if I am consumed by a world’s madness?

Introspection is a fine line when walking through one’s memories.
We must tiptoe through the effects that those memories have had on our lives
as well as the lives of those we’ve carried along the way.

We must balance such with both clarity and wisdom.
Depression, regret and sorrow are never far behind…dark specters who
nip at our heels while we embark on such a journey.

Such a journey that often becomes an endless void, much like a black hole
that pulls all energy and light into its darkness.

So we must be careful that we are not consumed.

One thing I know about God is that He is often a deconstructionist.
Meaning, He is one to break apart before rebuilding what was into
what needs to be.

I think I’m in the middle of some much needed deconstructing.
Deconstruction, like breaking, is an often hard fraught process.
It can be painful yet oh so necessary if one ever hopes to be whole.

Yet we must remember there is a difference between being broken
as in left in pieces vs being taken apart, dissembled, in order
to be rebuilt anew.

For what God opts to take apart, in order to piece back together
as only He sees best, is indeed to be made more perfect.

It is a journey…and not an easy journey…
but if you ever want to find peace and truth, it is
a journey that must be taken.

So here’s to the journey!
For the bad and then the good!

An excerpt from a post written March 4, 2016

When excavating the locked chambers of the soul…
that quest for the missing piece to wholeness…
The path is narrow, fraught with both emptiness and loneliness
And the darkness will be exacting.

It is a journey few care to traverse…
Isolation is a key requirement…
The striping away of all exterior noise and distractions…
leaves exposed the innermost secrets of one’s very being.

God is exacting.
He is a selfish God, who wants all and will not settle for any less.
He wants not that which is freely offered, willingly given…
He wants, nay demands, that which is desperately held back.

The re-union of created and Creator is inevitable.
There are those who eagerly seek the synthesis, the rejoining…
While others vehemently fear it…
The fragility will shatter…into a million fractured shards…

Out of the mire, the sucking and suffocating quicksand of death…
The spirit longs to reach upward, yearning for home…
Yet it is in the depth of death’s vast darkness that the fractured soul searches…
While the Creator waits…

Bring us home oh Lord
Strip us of that which prevents us from being with you..
Deliver us out of…
the brokenness,
the loneliness,
the emptiness,
the isolation…
of self
Bringing us to the daybreak of You…

somewhere in between..then and now

“We should take as a maxim never to be surprised at current difficulties,
no more than at a passing breeze, because with a little patience
we shall see them disappear. Time changes everything.”
St. Vincent de Paul

( Highlands, NC / Julie Cook / 2021)

There will always be ‘the then’—and following that—is “the now”…
everything in between is what we call life.

Sometimes we are given a precious gift…we are allowed to reunite with
“the then”… merging it into “the now”.

The middle, that which is known as life, simply fades out of sight.

Time, as well as life, is forgotten.
Years fade blessedly away.
And so ‘what was’ is suddenly and tenderly embraced by ‘the now’
Grabbed up and held tightly in aching arms that have been oh so
empty for far too long.

And we find ourselves exhaling slowly, whispering a grateful thank you to
a Father who knew all along that “the then” was bound to always
be a part of ‘the now”

Thank you Father…

“God never hurries.
There are no deadlines against which he must work.
Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves.”
A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine

expect the unexpected

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city,
spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”
Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life?
You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4:13-14

(the back of my dads old Philco radio/ Julie Cook / 2021)

Some of you might be old enough to remember that radios, televisions, and other pieces,
of so called old school electronics, all once required vacuum tubes in order to work.

Wikipedia offers us a small history lesson:
A vacuum tube, an electron tube, valve (British usage) or tube (North America),
is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes
to which an electric potential difference has been applied.

The type known as a thermionic tube or thermionic valve uses the phenomenon of
thermionic emission of electrons from a hot cathode and is used for a number of
fundamental electronic functions such as signal amplification and current rectification.
Non-thermionic types, such as a vacuum phototube however,
achieve electron emission through the photoelectric effect,
and are used for such purposes as the detection of light intensities.
In both types, the electrons are accelerated from the cathode to the
anode by the electric field in the tube.

The simplest vacuum tube, the diode, invented in 1904 by John Ambrose Fleming,
contains only a heated electron-emitting cathode and an anode.
Electrons can only flow in one direction through the device—from the cathode to the anode.
Adding one or more control grids within the tube allows the current between the
cathode and anode to be controlled by the voltage on the grids.

These devices became a key component of electronic circuits for the first half
of the twentieth century. They were crucial to the development of radio, television,
radar, sound recording and reproduction, long-distance telephone networks,
and analog and early digital computers.
Although some applications had used earlier technologies such as the spark gap transmitter
for radio or mechanical computers for computing,
it was the invention of the thermionic vacuum tube that made these technologies
widespread and practical, and created the discipline of electronics.

In the 1940s, the invention of semiconductor devices made it possible
to produce solid-state devices, which are smaller, more efficient, reliable,
durable, safer, and more economical than thermionic tubes.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, thermionic tubes were being replaced by the transistor.
However, the cathode-ray tube (CRT) remained the basis for television monitors
and oscilloscopes until the early 21st century.
Thermionic tubes are still used in some applications,
such as the magnetron used in microwave ovens, certain high-frequency amplifiers,
and amplifiers that audio enthusiasts prefer for their “warmer” tube sound.

As a young man hoping to tune into his favorite radio program during the early 1940’s,
The Shadow, my dad would eagerly await the week’s latest new episode…
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”

Yet if the radio suddenly blew a tube, there’d better be a replacement or there’d be no
new episode but rather, there would only be silence.

Recently rummaging through dad’s old attic, I actually found an old box
of replacement tubes.
Dad always wanted to be prepared lest he miss an episode of his favorite show.
He never felt the need to toss the tubes despite the advancements in technology.
He wanted to be prepared…old school or not.

And just like Dad, I prefer to always be prepared for the unexpected.

So imagine this move…

We only thought we had everything plotted and planned…but this house,
this new nemesis, is testing our mettle on preparedness.

A leaking roof…
a need for an electrician…
a need for a plumber,
the need for a painter…
throw in a few trees that needed to be cut from around the house…
and the list of needs has grown exponentially.

Nothing that had been anticipated.

Just today, we experienced yet another unexpected surprise.

A gentleman came out to grind the stumps from those cut trees—
the trees that were only adding insult to the house and roof,
and as he worked his grinder, he hit the main waterline.

The sun was quickly setting, the rains were moving in,
and we had big problems on our hands.

Yes, we did think to have the utility lines marked…
but…
somehow, someone forgot to mark the water line.

Ode to the unexpected.

So the one thing we do know…life is not neat nor tidy…
no matter how much we plan or wish it were.

So my advise… always expect the unexpected!

That Unexpected Last Day
Would it not be good for us to put away the vain dream of countless earthly days and face
up to the blunt fact that our days on earth may actually not be many?

For the true church, there is always the possibility that Christ may return.
Some good and serious souls hold this to be more than a possibility,
for it seems to them as it seems to this writer that
“the earth is grown old and the judgment is near,”
and the voices of the holy prophets are sounding in our ears.

And when He comes, there will not be a moment’s notice,
not an added day or hour in which to make frantic last-minute preparations.

“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation,
drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap.
For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth.
Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen,
and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:34-36).
A.W. Tozer

Home

A tit for tat, a gerbil on a wheel or just life in middle school…

The cry against the idea of moral retribution reveals several deep-lying misconceptions.
These have to do with the holiness of God, the nature of man,
the gravity of sin and the awesome wonder of the love of God as expressed in redemption.
Whoever understands these even imperfectly will take God’s side forever,
and whatever He may do they will cry with the voice out of the altar,
“Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments”
(Revelation 16:7).
Perhaps Moody’s word about this is as wise as any that has ever been uttered.
He said, “No man should preach on hell until he can do it with tears in his eyes.”
A. W. Tozer

(a final look at my old den during the NFL playoffs / Julie Cook / 2020)

Our days are numbered in this house of ours—this is the week of the BIG move.

It’s funny, when your world is changing and turned upside down, for whatever reason,
we humans tend to want to cling desperately to anything and everything that generates
a sense of routine…a sense of that which we know, a sense of the familiar
a sense of normalcy.
A routine of sorts.

Life, in most of our collective arenas, is a far cry from “normal”

So for me I’m trying to find that balance–on a personal level, spiritual
level and even on an average citizen level.

This move has been long and drawn out for all sorts of reasons.
We’re leaving a house that is in better shape than to the house where we are going.
So there will be work.

Yet it has seemed that God has opened every door along this journey—and so there is a reason.

Yet while we’ve been packing, sorting, culling, tossing…
for me to still try and cook a decent meal— manning the kitchen,
albeit with just a remaining skillet, a cooktop and oven—
just give me a plastic fork and it’s all good.

It keeps me grounded, sane and from having a meltdown from overt change.
Because change has been on overdrive since March has it not???…
and if the truth be told, the change madness has running
rampant for the past four years—thank you politicians, news media and now China.

Being able to throw out a post or two, on some sort of regular regime, also helps me.
I told you a long time ago, I blog because I’m a retired educator.
This teacher still needs to “teach”, to share, to observe…

There is a calming peace found in regime and rhythms.

Yet this Nation of ours seems to be running on the opposite end of ‘peace’,
rhythm and rhyme.

I managed to play a bit of catch up in my WP reader yesterday and caught a post written by
our friend Pastor Jim, aka slimjim, from over on The Domain For Truth.

Wicked is the Doctrine of Regeneration through Chaos

The title of his post reached out and grabbed me by the collar..

Wicked is the Doctrine of Regeneration through Chaos

Jim’s post began with these words,

In physics energy diminishes with resistance such as friction.
But it doesn’t always work that way with politics.
Instead one extreme act provoke an equal and possibly more extreme act.
Human sinful nature doesn’t want an eye for an eye; rather some is tempted to outdo the other side.
Wicked is the doctrine of regeneration by chaos and even more wicked is this doctrine put into practice.
No one side of the political and religious and socioeconomic spectrum has a monopoly of craziness.
Everyone has a “vote” of what they say and do. For example saying stolen election
lead to the opposite side saying stolen election or worst.
Saying burning the system down will lead some to burn things down.
But others might want to burn down what the other side think is important too.
One side over run police station and have occupy zone of areas that are not theirs.
So some from the other opposite side overrun the Capitol;
but what further extreme reaction will be done next by those who disagree and
are displeased with this?

I tend to have that sort of Rorschach test reaction.
You know, it’s that “quick what do you see??”
But in the case of reading a title to certain posts, I have that
‘quick, what comes to mind?’ sort of thought.

When reading Jim’s title to his post, I thought of the idiocy of a tit for tat.
You know…that childish back and forth business.
Adults might know it as the bravado of posturing.
As in an “I can do anything you can do better…I can do anything better than you…
yes I can, no you can’t…”
And on and on it goes.

Think of a gerbil on it’s spinning wheel—running around and around and going nowhere.
That is pretty much what we are witnessing.
A matter of we hate you, NO, we hate you more.

Sigh

And that’s when it dawned on me…we are living life in a perpetual state of middle school.

I will be without the internet within a day or two and not totally certain when I’ll be reconnected
in our new location…I’ll have my phone but won’t be posting from the phone as I don’t have
that much patience. I will be checking in however.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,
so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body,
whether good or bad.
2 Corinthians 5:10

ahh, the real definition of “justice”

“Justice is not something God has.
Justice is something that God is.”
A.W. Tozer

“When we attend to the needs of those in want,
we give them what is theirs, not ours.
More than performing works of mercy,
we are paying a debt of justice.”
Pope Saint Gregory the Great