without love

“Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.”
St. Therese of Lisieux


(the washing up on the shore /Julie Cook /2021)

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated,
I put before you the one great thing to love on earth:
The Blessed Sacrament…
There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity,
and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death.
By the divine paradox, that which ends life,
and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste)
of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships
(love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained,
or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance,
which every man’s heart desires.”

J. R. R. Tolkien, p. 119
An Excerpt From
Manual for Eucharistic Adoration

nothing in between

“To join two things together there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion.
Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be,
without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between,
just as God loves us without anything in between.”

St. Catherine of Siena


(mother’s rose bush is making another comeback, once again / Julie Cook / 2019)

The strength of the soul consists in its faculties, passions and desires,
all of which are governed by the will. Now when these faculties,
passions and desires are directed by the will toward God, and turned away from all that is not God,
then the strength of the soul is kept for God,
and thus the soul is able to love God with all its strength.”

St. John of the Cross, p. 259
An Excerpt From
Ascent of Mt. Carmel

putting words in one’s mouth…

“The word of the Eucharist makes us part of the great story of our salvation.
Our little stories are lifted up into God’s great story and there given
their unique place. The word lifts us up and makes us see that our daily,
ordinary lives are, in fact, sacred lives that play a necessary role
in the fulfillment of God’s promises.”

Henri J.M. Nouwen


(the most famous mouth—detail of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa)

God’s word….
We alter it to suit our purpose, our lives, our desires, our pursuits
our agendas, our lies…

We hear it, we read it, we change it…
then…
we claim it, we speak it and everyone believes it…

I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying,
‘I have dreamed, I have dreamed!’
How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies,
and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart,
who thinks to make my people forget my name by their dreams which they tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for Ba′al?…

Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who steal my words from one another.
Behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who use their tongues and say,
‘Says the Lord.’
Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, says the Lord,
and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness,
when I did not send them or charge them; so they do not profit this people at all,
says the Lord.

Jeremiah 23:25-28,30-32

the exchange for the lie….

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie,
and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—
who is forever praised.
Amen.

Romans 1:25

When the truth of God is turned to a lie,
his glory is obliterated.

John Calvin


(a purple passion flower found blooming deep in the Georgia woods / Julie Cook / 2017)

When I frist read today’s quote by John Calvin regarding turing God’s truth to a lie…
which therefore obliterated His glory…
I thought “YES, that’s it!”
“That’s what’s going on here”…
“That’s exactly what they’re doing…”
“They’re taking God’s word and altering it to fit the skewed and warped desires of
these current times of ours.”

“Twisting and turning everything God has uttered into some sort of carnal, wanton
and depraved acknowledgement which in turn makes these current times of wants
and desires all really ok.”

It’s been done ever so slyly with a deletion of a word here, a new interpretation or
altered context or sentence there…
and magically it’s now POOF….!!!!!
What once was a “no, not a good idea,” is now a defiant and triumphant “Yes” equating
to everything and anything now being perfectly fine and acceptable…

And in so doing… the Truth has been turned into a lie, thus obliterating and smashing
the glory of God into smithereens….

And just so we’re clear, the said “they” in all of this is pretty much our current
culture and society…
So the “they” is really pretty much us….

Yet…after reading the sentence several times over and over, I sat for a bit pondering
the statement further.

Whereas man has taken God’s words and altered, rearranged and reworded them to fit
neatly into man’s desired wants….
nothing about God has been obliterated….
Because no matter what man does or says, he cannot, will not “obliterate” God.

Nietzsche’s famous proclamation of God being dead did not render God dead…
for man cannot “kill” the Omnipotent Creator…
despite his attempt to rid God from man’s own mind, heart and life….
man does not have that power.

It’s like the angry child who stomps a foot and proclaims to be now ignoring
whomever it is who has incurred his or her wrath….
in essence attempting to render said individual, null and void, dead and gone…
the epitome out of sight and out of mind.

Yet God being outside of both space and time does not conform nor fit into man’s limited
restraints of such.
He is greater than as well as beyond limitations.
And because of that, He is incapable of being obliterated or “killed”
or even contained for that matter.

It is the clarity of observation made by Lauren Green in her newly published book
Lighthouse Faith that sums this all up in once simple sentence…
“that we live in the reality of God’s world,
not He in ours.”

So whereas man may think that he’s being overtly cleaver in his smug superiority–
creating verse and word according to himself…
the Truth which is both inside and outside of both space and time, cannot
be rendered anything other than what it is…
that simply being the Truth….

Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?”
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king.
For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.
Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.”
Pilate said to him,
“What is truth?”

John 18:37-38

with certainty I know

Hearing the word is the devout receiving of the will of God.
William Ames

DSCN1721
(the cliffs of Timoleague, Slieve League, County Donegal, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

I know you hear me.

The others aren’t so sure.

“I Keep praying because I know He hears me.”
Words repeated often to the skeptical.

Prayers asked
Prayers offered
Prayers given…

Yet no word in return.

I know you know the plight, the ordeal, the big picture.
I remind you…
everyday…
multiple times during the day…
despite knowing…you already know…

I know you know more than I do because I know you see what has been, what is and what will be.
You have the bigger picture in focus while I remain small in my vision and view.

The others aren’t so sure that I know what I’m talking about.
They hear in my voice a certain certainty in the face of great uncertainty…
with no change, no results, no “answered prayer”
yet I know
and I continue with my prayers
because I know you know…

They scoff, they walk away rolling their eyes, they grow irritated with my seemingly empty insistence.
I speak with a peculiar confidence…
that only I seem to have…
since there never seems to be the answers, the results, or the much needed miracles,
others want or need…they think that there is no need for my irrational words, hopes or invocations…

No matter…
I continue to press on,
pressing you with my prayers, my words, my tears, my urgings, my yearnings,
my hopes, my dreams, my desires, my needs…

Because I know…
Because I know you know
and because I know that what will be will be
as only you would will it….
because I know you hear….

“Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.”
1 Kings 18:37

Elusive or certain

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.
Mahatma Gandhi

DSCN1082
(sign seen somewhere along a road in County Limerick, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

I will give you hidden treasures,
riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the Lord,
the God of Israel, who summons you by name.

Isaiah 45:3