when man reaches up towards Heaven…

“Spira, spera.”
(breathe, hope)
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

The day we met,
Frozen I held my breath
Right from the start
I knew that I’d found a home for my heart…

I have loved you
For a thousand years
I’ll love you for a thousand more…
(Lyrics from Christina Perri A Thousand Years)

(Pieta by Niccola Coustou / Notre Dame Cathedral / Paris, France / Julie Cook / 2019)

Notre Dame—Our Lady of Paris

850 years of–

Christianity
faith
religion
spirituality
mysticism
relics

history
ingenuity
construction
architecture
labor
sacrifice

art
sculpture
poetry
prose
music
colored glass

revolution
desecration
coronations
funerals
burials
weddings

bishops
nuns
confessions
monastics
saints
sinners

humanity
bloodshed
loss
wars
peace
victories

humankind
survival
life
death
breath
hope…

Yet for now, there are too many emotions to express regarding this collective sense
of sorrow, grief and loss.

Our frail and feeble earthly attempts to reach upward to God will each eventually perish
while fading to both ash and dust…

and yet…

Our Heavenly Father’s reach, downward to us his children, will remain for eternity…

(detail of Virgin and Child by Antoine Vassé / Norte Dame Cathedral / Paris, France/ Julie Cook / 2019)

(detail of the iron work on the main entrance doorway / Norte Dame Cathedral / Paris, France / Julie Cook / 2019)

(detail of the central portal (central enterance) of Notre Dame Cathedral / The Last Judgment, constructed in 1220/
Julie Cook / 2019)

(vaulted ceiling of Notre Dame Cathedral / Paris, France/ Julie Cook / 2019)

(South Rose Window / 1260 / Notre Dame Cathedral / Paris, France / Julie Cook 2019)

(South exterior of Notre Dame Cathedral / Paris, France / Julie Cook / 2011)

(detail of flying buttresses and gargoyles / Notre Dame Cathedral / Paris, France / Julie Cook / 2011)

(detail of bell tower / Notre Dame Cathedral / Paris, France/ Julie Cook / 2011)

(south view of Notre Dame Cathedral / Paris, France / Julie Cook / 2011)

(Notre Dame Cathedral / Paris, France / 2011)

(Wesrtern facade of the bell tower entrance Notre Dame Cathedral /Paris, France / Julie Cook / 2011)

“He therefore turned to mankind only with regret.
His cathedral was enough for him.
It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least
did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tranquillity and benevolence.
The other statues, those of monsters and demons, had no hatred for him –
he resembled them too closely for that.
It was rather the rest of mankind that they jeered at.
The saints were his friends and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and
kept watch over him.
He would sometimes spend whole hours crouched before one of the statues
in solitary conversation with it.
If anyone came upon him then he would run away like a lover surprised during a serenade.”
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

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.

lost between the lines

(leaded bullseye glass, Cobh, Co Cork, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

My glasses broke.
In more places than one….
They are unrepairable and I am in desperate need of being able to see…clearly.

I did however finally manage to find time for an appointment,
which has come none too soon as
I have considered resorting to adding some super glue and or a little duct tape…
My husband, the jeweler who fixes all types of glasses all the time,
has flatly observed that mine are beyond his help…

In about a week I should have a new pair…
A new pair that will not be hanging on by a prayer.
A pair that will free me from tilting my head and listing dangerously too far to the right…
Plus I’m hoping that everything will be much more clear and focused….

If seeing clearly was only so simple for this world of ours…

If this misguided, skewed, and oh so lost world in which we live…
could simply slap on a pair of super corrected glasses…
then maybe, just maybe, things would come into focus…
And that which has become grey, fuzzy and blurred beyond recognition, would be readily and easily discerned.

Instead we are living in a world, a society and a culture that is confused…
As it knows not as to whether it is coming or going…
for we use to know…
right from wrong…
good from bad…
boys from girls…
girls from boys…
light from dark…
up from down…
too much from too little
respect from disrespect
moderate from extreme
kindness from hate
Hope from despair
Truth from lies
God’s word from no word…

for in this blurry, fuzzy, lack of clarity world…
the word of God has been lost between the lines….

“‘But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors—their unfaithfulness and their hostility toward me, 41 which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, 42 I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.
Leviticus 26:40-42