Give something, however small, to the one in need.
For it is not small to one who has nothing.
Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.
St. Gregory Nazianzen
(winter blooms in the deep South / New Orleans, LA /Julie Cook/2022)
“A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds.
A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship,
and he who plants kindness gathers love.”
St. Basil the Great
“A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds.
A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship,
and he who plants kindness gathers love.”
St. Basil the Great
(wild crabapples blossoms / Julie Cook / 2013)
“Now surely I do see what an immense effect such a doctrine
[of the Holy Trinity] must have upon life.
It is no mere question for theologians, but one that concerns every living soul.
Whatever is allowed by God’s power must be guided by His wisdom and
urged on by His love.
All that happens to me in life, the little worries and the great anxieties,
the crises and the daily annoyances, the sorrows and the joys,
the harms that reach me through the sins of others,
the great crimes of history, the huge and devastating wars,
the partings and loves and the whole cycle of human experience
are permitted by Power, which is itself wise and loving.
These three Persons determine my life, and, since I walk by faith,
I must surely grow very patient in my attitude toward life.
For how can I complain or criticize God’s Providence,
since it all comes under that triple influence of Power, Wisdom, and Love?
Under the guidance, then, of this mystery,
I can walk through the valley of death or the more perilous borders
of sin without loss of courage or hopefulness.
Nothing can make me afraid. How these are separate, yet one,
I do not know, nor can I reconcile in my concrete experience
the claims of each.
It is always a mystery, but a mystery in which I believe.
Whatever Power allows on earth is designed in Wisdom
and attuned by Love.”
Fr. Bede Jarrett, p. 10
An Excerpt From
Classic Catholic Meditations, p 10
There is nothing insignificant in the world.
It all depends on the point of view.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(mum / Julie Cook / 2015)
Who am I oh Lord that you should consider my worth…
That you, the God of all that was…
Of all that is…
And all that will be…
Whose hands sweep across time…
Who has masterfully scattered the stars across the heavens…
And whose own breath is captured in the rhythmic roll of each and
every crashing wave…would look upon me,
a tiny speck in the vast churning sea of life and humanity…
And call me your own
(mum /Julie Cook / 2015)
A thousand tiny petals…
Each lovingly placed by your hand and your hand alone.
Counted, numbered and perfectly aligned.
Tightly woven.
Spiraling outward.
Unfurling simultaneously.
An insignificant happening transpiring daily and unnoticed by millions…
Yet You are keenly aware of it all as nothing, absolutely nothing,
takes place on this planet without your desire and knowledge
(stamens full of pollen / Julie Cook / 2015)
Each tiny microscopic dot of pollen exists because You have deemed it so.
Every single unassuming spore, necessary to set a miraculous chain
of events into motion,
Exists only because of You.
Pollination, a miracle unto itself, yet countlessly taken for granted,
Plays out every day, over an endless expanse of time,
as yet another flower blooms.
My mind is woefully limited, unable to grasp the vastness of all that is You.
I cannot understand how or why You, the all encompassing You,
stops because of the small and insignificant me.
Yet stop You do.
You stop to
Listen
See
Touch
Care
Love
Long before my birth, You claimed me as yours–
with both the rising and setting of the sun.
The Psalmists tells me that each hair on my aging head is accounted for
And that nothing which transpires in my life escapes your knowledge.
As I often…
Question…
Wonder…
Argue…
Curse…and rail against the seemingly random and mindless fates
of life that appear unfair and unjust.
Yet each life is inextricably linked together
Each breath, each tear, each sound of joy, pain or sorrow
is woven tightly together, as the Master of the Universe
Jehovah-Jireh has declared it so . . .
As You, the Master weaver, Jehovah-Rapha has knit my heart to your own.
May the Glory of the Heavens declare your Majesty, Oh Lord. . .
May the earth, and all that is in it, sing your praise.
And may my seemingly insignificance, which is held tightly in your hand,
as I am never from your sight, be a testament to your enduring Love
Forever and always…
Amen
(Hope in a flower / Julie Cook / 2015
“Prayer is the best armor we have,
it is the key which opens the heart of God.”
St. Padre Pio
(a beautiful rose / Julie Cook / 2021)
“May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.”
Mother Teresa
Yesterday I made mention that prayer is about the only thing we all truly have..
the only real lifeline that remains…
And so as I was reading that quote about prayer by Mother Teresa, I
had to ask myself…could I pray that prayer?
Could I ask that big question…would I be willing,
like Mother Teresa, to ask that God break my heart so completely
that the world may fall in?
Am I willing to let go of self, my life, my world…
so much so that I could pray that God would break me, allowing Him
to flow into my entire being?
Am I willing to let go and let God?
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord,
plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29:11
“Do not be anxious: go straight on, forgetful of self,
letting the spirit of God act instead of your own.”
St. Julie Billiart
(magnolia /Julie Cook / 2021)
(soon to be sunflower/ Julie Cook / 2021)
“As St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to
remain children in intelligence: on the contrary.
He told us to be not only ‘as harmless as doves’,
but also ‘as wise as serpents’.
He wants a child’s heart, but a grown-up’s head.
He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate,
and teachable, as good children are;
but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job,
and in first-class fighting trim.”
C.S. Lewis, p. 77
An Excerpt From
Mere Christianity
“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form,
can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.”
Oscar Wilde
(goldfinch / Julie Cook / 2021)
(purple Iris /Julie Cook / 2021)
(daisy’s / Julie Cook / 2021)
(gardina–a southern classic / Julie Cook / 2021)
(purple aster / Julie Cook /2021)
(Sunflower…all pics taken from my daily walks or backyard / Julie Cook / 2021)
But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—
and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.
Ephesians 5:13
My entire conversion was less of a journey to a foreign place,
and more of a discovery of my long-lost home.
Jennifer Fulwiler
from her book Something other than God
(ode to a white picket fence’s blooms /Julie Cook / 2021)
“But you, ‘a chosen generation’,
weak things of the world, who have forsaken all things,
so that you may follow the Lord, go after him, and confound the strong;
go after him, you beautiful feet,
and shine in the firmament so that the heavens may declare his glory…
Shine over the whole earth, and let the day,
brightened by the sun, utter unto day speech of wisdom,
and let the night, shining with the moon,
declare to the night the word of knowledge…
Run into every place,
O you holy fires, you beautiful fires!
You are the light of the world, and you are not put under a measure.
He to whom you have held fast has been exalted, and he has exalted you.
Run forth, and make it known to all nations.”
Saint Augustine, p.318-19
An Excerpt From
The Confessions of Saint Augustine
“You are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside,
but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernel,
if one can only get at it. Love will make you show your heart some day,
and then the rough burr will fall off.”
Louisa May Alcott
(a thistle prepares to bloom / Julie Cook / 2020)
Thistles, to me, are most alluring.
To Eeyore, they are a tasty ‘smakeral’ or so Pooh would observe.
They begin, in the early spring, as a spikey mass or clump, of uninviting serrated leaves
emerging oddly from the ground.
Trust me, don’t use bare hands in an attempt to pull them up in order to rid your space
of this most unwanted visitor.
They will eventually send forth one, or even several, shoots sporting a purplish fringed bulb.
As this odd bulb unfurls its full glory, the bloom is almost regal in a crown-like
explosion of texture.
(a thistle crown / Julie Cook / 2020)
And like all earthly glories, these odd blooming weeds eventually fade, turning themselves
back to seed.
(a field of thistles gone to seed /Julie Cook / 2020)
And yet the fact that these plants are considered useless and invasive and even noxious
weeds, there is a beauty found in their blooming and a bit of
respect found in their tenacity.
Saturday I was reading Kathy’s post over on atimetoshare.me —
Kathy was offering some waxing thoughts regarding our world’s current pandemic situation.
I found one passage most enlightening…
Our current younger generation are those who will not experience the pageantry of
a real graduation – those who will not go to their Senior prom –
those who have been through the good, the bad and now the ugly –
those who will be running our country in the next few years.
These unique young people will become a generation of problem solvers,
creative thinkers, money managers, inventive and innovative thinkers all because
their world was turned upside down by a little germ.
They will be the second greatest generation, because they have experienced plenty or at least enough.
They have been on the cutting edge of technology.
They have seen their nation at its worst and at its best.
Kathy noted that this current class of seniors, be it high school or college, are presently
experiencing a great many firsts in the way of loss.
Losses of certain rights of passage.
No Spring sports.
No state championships.
No Spring breaks.
No year-end award ceremonies.
No trophies.
No classes
No proms.
No senior days.
No graduations.
No graduation trips.
Only a seemingly unending sense of loss, isolation with more questions than answers.
And yet Kathy notes that this will be the group to become our next class of problem solvers.
They will be our newest innovators and creative thinkers…in part because
such a role and responsibility has been thrust upon them.
They have been handed a mantle of burden and responsibility despite not necessarily seeing
such coming their way.
And it is perhaps not truly a burden they have wanted…but they have been handed such nonetheless.
And so in this time of surreal losses and misses, there is a generation
that will have to rise to the occasion of problem-solving.
They have the tools at their fingertips as a pandemic has now spurred them on–
be it out of frustration, resentment, or simple curiosity…
hope now rests in the beauty of a blooming generation…
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord,
plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29:11
From April 12, 2018
(yes, life is that manic…
but I want to wish each of you joy this Easter morn….
Hail thee festival day!! (one of my favorite hymns)
(this is an oldie but a goody)
“Life [had] replaced logic.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
(a soon to bloom peony / Julie Cook /2018)
The image of the bloom used in today’s post is that of a peony.
I call this peony my resurrection plant because I bought it two summers ago, in July.
It was a very expensive plant.
Yet anyone living in the deep South knows you don’t sink a lot of money into a
plant, dig a hole in the hot dry ground, plop in said expensive plant and expect it to live…
especially in July and especially in a summer experiencing a full-blown drought.
I wrote about this plant last spring and the reason as to why I call it a resurrection plant—
of which you can read from the following link…
but that is not the true gist of today’s post
https://cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/resurrections/
Today’s post is a reminder of what the Resurrection is all about…
and if you are a Chrisitan, it’s a reminder of what that exactly means to you.
The reminder rests in the fact that we’ve just celebrated Easter…
Easter being the holiest celebration, besides the birth of Christ, within the Christian Chruch…
Some would argue that it is the sole holiest celebration…but I suppose we can’t have a
resurrection of our Savior without his immaculate conception and birth…
all of which supersedes the ability of man’s small mind to grasp and process…
hence so much of the consternation in mankind since that very first miraculous morning.
After watching the latest edition of Anglican Unscripted featuring our favorite
rouge Anglican Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Gavin Ashenden, I’ve come to realize that
there are many in our fold who really don’t know what they think about
the Ressurection…
And what is even more startling, many members of the clergy don’t quite
know what to make of it either…
In a nutshell, it is the what which separates Christianity from every other religion.
How in the world can you offer anyone, let alone speak of such things as
Hope, Salvation, Grace, if you can’t find the words to say that you believe, without
a doubt, in the Ressurection of Jesus?
You can’t.
Because the Resurrection is the defining key to our faith.
It is the impetus to faith…the belief in that which is a mystery, undefinable,
and greater than oneself.
Without the Resurrection,
Christianity is nothing… nor is it any different from a myriad of other belief systems.
C.S. Lewis explained this very point in 1950
I heard a man say,
“The importance of the Resurrection is that it gives evidence of survival,
evidence that the human personality survives death.”
On that view what happened to Christ would be what had always happened to all men,
the difference being that in Christ’s ease we were privileged to see it happening.
This is certainly not what the earliest Christian writers thought.
Something perfectly new in the history of the Universe had happened.
Christ had defeated death.
The door which had always been locked had for the very first time been forced open.
This is something quite distinct from mere ghost-survival.
I don’t mean that they disbelieved in ghost-survival.
On the contrary, they believed in it so firmly that, on more than one occasion,
Christ had had to assure them that He was not a ghost.
The point is that while believing in survival they yet regarded the Resurrection
as something totally different and new.
The Resurrection narratives are not a picture of survival after death;
they record how a totally new mode of being has arisen in the universe.
Something new had appeared in the universe:
as new as the first coming of organic life.
This Man, after death, does not get divided into “ghost” and “corpse”.
A new mode of being has arisen.
That is the story.
What are we going to make of it?
The question is, I suppose,
whether any hypothesis covers the facts so well as the Christian hypothesis.
That hypothesis is that God has come down into the created universe,
down to manhood—and come up again, pulling it up with Him.
The alternative hypothesis is not legend, nor exaggeration, nor the apparitions of a ghost.
It is either lunacy or lies.
Unless one can take the second alternative (and I can’t) one turns to the Christian theory.
C.S. Lewis,
“What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?” (1950)
So if you claim to be a Chrisitan and yet find yourself unable to acknowledge the mystery
and the might behind the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you need to rethink your allegiance.
And if you are a member of the clergy and find the words and concept uncomfortable,
you need a new profession because the calling, was not for you….
“The adorable Heart of Jesus is our comfort, our way, our life.”
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
(a winter treat blooms / Savannah, GA / Julie Cook / 2019)
“The experience of the Church and the saints demonstrates a general law:
what comes from the Spirit of God brings with it joy, peace, tranquility of spirit,
gentleness, simplicity, and light.
On the other hand, what comes from the spirit of evil brings sadness, trouble, agitation,
worry, confusion, and darkness.
These marks of the good and the evil spirit are unmistakable signs in themselves.”
Fr. Jacques Philippe
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