up, down or through

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth
and be an atheist,
but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say
there is no God.”
Abraham Lincoln

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.
Helen Keller

I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.
Charlotte Bronte

(view looking up a hollow tree that has a small hole on the way up / Julie Cook /2017)

(looking down the opening to a different hollow tree / Julie Cook / 2017)

(looking through a third hollow tree / Julie Cook / 2017)

God looks down…
We look up…
He sees through…

Some writers use the word charity to describe not only Christian love
between human beings, but also God’s love for man and man’s love for God….
On the whole,
God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him.
Nobody can always have devout feelings:
and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about.
Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will.
If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment,
‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.’
He will give us feelings of love if He pleases.
We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right.
But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference;
and, therefore,
it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins,
at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; Harper Collins: 2001) 132-133.

the law

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation:
they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour…
If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”
― Charlotte Brontë

“It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a bible-reading people.
The principles of the bible are the groundwork of human freedom.”
― Horace Greeley

(Santa Rosa Beach, Fl / Julie Cook / 2016)

Oh, how I love your law, O Lord
It is my meditation all day long.
How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth.
The law of your mouth is better to me
than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
You word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path.
Your decrees are my heritage forever;
they are the joy of my heart.
Your statutes have been my song,
wherever I make my home.
My lips will pour forth praise,
because you teach me your statutes.
My tongue will sing of your promise,
for all your commandments are right

(Psalm 119: 97-115, paraphrased
taken from The Divine Hours
Prayers for summertime
Phyllis Tickle)

Have we all but lost the way of the psalmist…
the one who sings with reckless joy regarding a love so pleasant and sweet…
steeped in the law of God?

Have we allowed our fallen brokeness,
that which stirs within us the spirit of rebellion,
to replace our abiding pleasure in God’s law with
repugnance for any and all holy command?

Rarely is a song now sung…
Seldom does a heart beam and rejoice…
Hardly ever are the virtues proclaimed…
in the holy writ of the Law…

Rather…
there is revelry…
there is abandonment
and there is hedonism in the restless sea of self…
as the flag of all things free is hoisted high above the madness.

It was to be a blanket of care and safety….
A rule of life…
A safety net catching those who stumble and fall…

To listen,
to abide,
to follow….
would have, could have, been so simple.

Life could have been so sweet…

Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.
The one who loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
John 14:21

Gentle, soft and sweet

“Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!”
― Charlotte Brontë

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.
Soren Kierkegaard

“You might say, ‘Can’t we have a more human Christianity, without the cross, without Jesus, without stripping ourselves?’ In this way we’d become pastry-shop Christians, like a pretty cake and nice sweet things. Pretty, but not true Christians.”
Pope Francis

(the tender sweet flowers emerging from what was overtly pruned brown barren sticks / Julie Cook / 2014)

In this often brash, over the top, garish and loud life of ours, it is ever important to still seek the gentle, the soft and the sweet of life. Sometimes it as if we forget that there is anything other than the glaring din of heaviness which wraps itself around us like a thick woolen blanket–itchy and scratchy and nearly suffocating.

That which is tender and gentle often seems bound to be crushed by life’s heavy boot.
That which is soft fearfully may soon grow coarse and worn by life’s rough ride.
That which is sweet is in jeopardy of being drowned out by life’s harsh constant whir.
Transforming our bright eyes and light step to a lifeless glaze and mindless trudge through a joyless journey.

Yet. . .
Take courage you who grow weary of life’s heaviness.
That which speaks to your soul must be sought.
Serenity is not found in bravado.
Peace is not found in chaos.
Ode to the tender and gentle souls who move mountains

Be mindful that in the sweet soft gentleness lies the depth of strength and tenacity.
For it was a mere boy who slew a giant and grew to be a king.
For it was a 5 foot little nun who tended to the sick and dying only to become a saint.
For it was a pacifist hindu who turned an entire world upside down.
For it was a newborn infant who made kings quake with fear.

Gentle, soft and sweet reach inward, lifting upward.
Soothing and comforting sweeps toward the hardened heart.
Bending the will until it succumbs to Grace.

Keep looking upward

“I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.”
Charlotte Bronte

(the hope of a bright blue Georgia morning sky / Julie Cook / 2014)

Despite this being the beginning of a new calendar year, we are actually in mid stride of a season which consists of long shadows, short days, frigid air, and barren lands.

Winter.

Christmas and Chanukah have each, with their magic and light, come and gone.

The joy and thrill of that first snow is all but a forgotten titillating memory. . .as I think the entire Country is now, not only over the idea of snow, but bordering on vengeful, wrathful, loathsome.

Our upbeat steps now slow and deliberate bordering on a dutiful trudge.

Our shoulders slump under the weary weight of the added wool, polly-fiber-fill and down loft, of sweaters, jackets, coats, scarves, gloves and mittens.

The relentless snow, cold, wind, rain, sleet, fog has all but sucked the life out of the now nearly broken victims otherwise known as those of us of the Northern Hemisphere.

Yet just when we think we can’t face one more bleak, dreary, grey, dangerously frozen day, something amazing transpires.

The sun shines. A bird sings a song of a Spring to be. A lone honey bee is quickly spotted darting past a lone flowering weed. A tree frog is heard humming in a thawing glen.

Change is in the air.

Suddenly the clouds part as we find ourselves glancing heavenward wondering what is the now odd color staring down at us from the typical grey sky.
It is blue.
The beautifully bright crisp clear blue of all that is fresh and new.

Take courage, you weary cold sojourners of this endless drudge known as Winter. . .for over the next several weeks, as this seemingly longer than usual Winter begins to thankfully wane, be encouraged by looking upward, resting in the knowledge that behind the endless grey cold clouds lies a beautiful deep blue sky ready to offer hope to a frozen world in search of a warming thaw.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord– plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV).