so thin a line

“Solitude has soft, silky hands,
but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow.
Solitude is the ally of sorry as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.”
Kahlil Gibran

(Julie Cook / 2015)

There is a thin line.

It is so thin a line that it is not visible to the human eye.

It is so thin a line that even the web of a spider appears heavy
and large in comparison.

And dare I say that such a line is not even visible by means of the
strongest electron microscope.

It is a line that cannot be detected by sound waves or any sort
of visible imagery.

No doctor, scientist, engineer or even artist has ever seen such a line…
because this line is impossible to see…

And yet there are those who know far too well that this line exists.

There are but a few hardy souls who, for both better and worse, know
that this line is very much active in our daily existence.

For those who know that this line exists…
also understand that this line is not visible to the eye but rather
visible to one thing and one thing only.

And thus knowing that this line exists…as in not through
a visual ability but one that is rather more visceral than not,
those who know, know that this is a line that can only be felt.

For this is a line that is only experienced within the human heart.

The line exists somewhere between love and sorrow…
Sweet and bittersweet….
Gain and loss….
For it is composed of both complete joy and utter despair.

One side of this line is marked by love while the other side is marked
by sorrow…
with nary a space or gap in between.

Man has long since accepted the fact that to love does indeed,
more often than not, guarantee sorrow.
The degree of that sorrow is only dependent upon each particular individual.

But what is known is that to have loved and to have ever lost that love,
that is indeed the line of which we speak.

The cognizant mind knows that to love means that there is indeed a real
possibility of hurt, loss and pain, but it is not until that love is removed…
that anyone can fully understand the endless depth of such a loss
and such a love.

For it is in that loss and separation that one can finally grasp the full
spectrum and depth of that very love.

So the question we must ask…are we willing to suffer in order to love?
Or maybe that question should be…are we willing to love, knowing that
we very well may suffer.

I for one think the answer is a resounding yes.

So here is to the thin line of love.

But because of his great love for us,
God, who is rich in mercy,
made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—
it is by grace you have been saved.
Ephesians 2:4-5

tangible vs intangible

“God, of your goodness, give me yourself;
you are enough for me, and anything less that I could ask for would
not do you full honor.
And if I ask anything that is less,
I shall always lack something, but in you alone I have everything’.”
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world
which offers fewer and fewer supports.
Kenneth Branagh

(an Anglican rosary / Julie Cook / 2021)

One of the greatest conundrums for Christians…
and perhaps that for our Jewish brethren as well,
is that of the tangible vs the intangible.

Merriam-Webster tells us that tangible is defined as:
able to be touched or felt

The opposite of that, intangible, is defined as:
an asset (such as goodwill) that is not corporeal
:an abstract quality or attribute

So it seems as if our conundrum exists between that which can be touched,
felt, held, vs that which is abstract and perhaps more intellectual…
as in something that is not to be touched or held.
Something far and beyond…
as in Omnipotent and of a different realm from our own.

I think we’d all agree that an Omnipotent God tends to exist in the realm
of the intangible.
As in above as well as beyond that of mere mortals.

And as a said mere mortal, that being one who likes to touch, feel
and know that what I cherish is indeed “real”…
the notion of the abstract and intellectual is not easy.
In fact it can downright frustrating.

Personally, I am one who wants, nay needs, to be able to touch, hold and feel.
And in turn I need to be touched, held and felt by others.
That’s how I know something is indeed real and in turn others
know that I am equally real.
That one on one physical connection is so utterly necessary.
It is soothing, comforting and for the lack of a better word, sound.

Yet our faith defiantly implores us to trust.
Trust in the unseen.
Trust in that which is not to be touched, felt or held.
Trust in that which does not readily physically embrace us.
Trust in that which is beyond our grasp and beyond our worldly vision.

Somedays that is not a problem.
Our intellect can make sense of such and we have a bit of transcendence.
Our thoughts can delve beyond both space and time.

Other days, it seems to be a mere impossibility.
A day goes bad.
We feel under the weather.
We feel alone.
We are hurting.

And it is in those moments we need the tangible.
We need to touch and be touched.
To hold and be held.

It is the only link in knowing that we exist and that we matter.

That is why there is many a night I fall asleep holding my
Anglican rosary in my hands.

I have both Catholic and Anglican rosaries–however being raised
in the Anglican communion, I am more comfortable using that type of prayer rope.

Holding such “a prayer rope”, helps me to feel as if I have something that I
can hold in my hand that allows me to feel as if I am holding God’s hand.

The other night had been tough…and so as I readied for bed,
I reached for my rosary.

I knew I was desperately in need of “the tangible”

I eventually turned off the table lamp and laid on my back while
staring upward through the inky black night.
I held on tightly to the rosary.
Reciting an ancient set of prayers for each bead. The beads moved one by one, passing through my tired hand.
This tiny ritual of mine was more of a matter of my imploring, or more like begging, God to please come quickly be by my side.

I imagined that as I prayed holding those beads, I was actually holding the Father’s hand.
Just as a young child, I had reached out my hand to take His hand in mine.

Oddly, when I had finally drifted off to sleep, turning over, I actually loosened
my hold of the rosary.

It was during that brief fitful interim of sleep that I had had an awful dream.
A troubling dream.
One that had me waking short of breath and with actual tears in my eyes.
I felt a sense of rising panic.

My bad dreams have always been terribly vivid.

Immediately I found myself feeling in the covers  for my rosary.

Finding it, I clutched it to my chest. Still feeling shaken, I knew I was holding it so tightly that the beads might just pop off.  But I also knew that in my despair,  I had actually reached out my hand for God’s hand just as He in turn offered
me His hand.
We stayed that way, holding hands, for the remainder of the night.

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love.
Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
1 John 4:16

how does anyone know?

“What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe.
It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

(ripening persimons on the tree / Julie Cook / 2017)

Ripe: fully grown and developed: mature ripe fruit
:having mature knowledge, understanding, or judgment

Unripe: not fully matured
2. not fully prepared or developed; not ready

How do we know when something is ripe?
Color?
Touch?
Taste?
All of the above?

Ripe equates with that which is good.
That which is pleasing.
That which is inviting.

Ripe is as good as it gets….

Unripe is bitter, hard, immature, not ready…
unripe is unproductive.

If you profess to being a Christian,
how does the anyone know whether or not you are ripe and ready?

One basket had very good figs, like those that ripen early; the other basket had very bad figs, so bad they could not be eaten.

Then the Lord asked me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?”

“Figs,” I answered.
“The good ones are very good, but the bad ones are so bad they cannot be eaten.”

Then the word of the Lord came to me:
“This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says:
‘Like these good figs, I regard as good the exiles from Judah,
whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians.
My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land.
I will build them up and not tear them down;
I will plant them and not uproot them.
I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people,
and I will be their God,
for they will return to me with all their heart.
Jeremiah 24:2-7

Gone home….

(a table in my son’s home—his tribute to his grandfather)

Dad passed away last night—it was 11:42 when I was called.
We’d spent the day with him and my son was with him last around 9:30 PM
His earthly journey complete…his pain and suffering no more.
As I drove back over for the second time that day, just past midnight,
I was swept over by a sense of calm knowing Dad was finally
with Mother.

I had written the following post after sitting with him yesterday.
I think it still important to share…
But just know that death has once again been overcome by
Life!

Edward Dale Nichols
March 10, 1928—March 19, 2017

Thank you all for your love, prayers and support….

it’s never like the movies

“The truth is that you can never be sure if you have decided on the right thing until
the party is over,
and by then it is too late to go back and change your mind,
which is why the world is filled with people doing terrible things”
Lemony Snicket

Hollywood loves to pat itself on the back for its ability to create
iconic and memorable snippets of life…
With some of the most captivating moments being those dramatic scenes of both death and dying.

A quick little Google search of iconic death scenes and you get anything from Alien
to Bambi, while my generation most likely thinks Love Story…
with it’s now immortalized tag line,
“love is never having to say your sorry….”

But anyone who has ever been involved in any sort of real life relationship knows that that
particular little Hollywood dribble is just a bunch of crap…
but of course, I digress….

No matter what overtly dramatized film moment you may happen to recall when thinking
classic death / dying scene…
be it an endearing tearjerker like in Titanic or a graphically
gory melee of any epic war picture,
nothing quite compares to the real life drama found in the balance between
true living and dying

Take the above image of the coffee filter filled with fresh dark roasted coffee beans…

Your brain registers that you’re looking at a coffee filter filled with coffee beans…
and because of what you know about coffee beans,
you’re pretty safe assuming that there is a strong aroma associated with the beans…
However you can’t actually smell them.

Captured images just don’t processes a smell-o-rama capability.

You see the beans….
you know they have a very strong enticing smell…
but….
because they’re sitting on a screen, you only experience them with just one sense…
that of sight.

Now Hollywood works hard on a viewer’s senses of both sight and sound in order to
coax out a physical reaction…they’ll happily surmise that they’ve been succeessful if
they think that they’ve made a viewer “feel”…
be it a physical reaction from laughing to crying to even nausea….

Yet for all their special effects, they lack the sense of smell.
And the truth be told, they lack reality.

Because whereas art tries to imitate life, it will always fall short.

Now you know with your eyes and brain that the two images here of,
first the coffee beans and now a fresh bouquet of flowers,
each have a distinct aroma or smell….
but…
you can’t actually smell them by looking at them on your screen.

You can’t touch them or hear them or smell them.

You’re just working off your previous associations…

Nothing can prepare you for reality…but reality.
The nitty gritty touch, taste, hearing, seeing, smell, feel of raw reality.

Dad’s room is now filled with coffee filters filled with coffee beans.
Not because he ever greatly appreciated coffee…
but because the Hospice nurse told us it would help with the smell.

The overwhelming smell of decay because oddly the body will fall apart quite frankly
before we’re exactly finished using it.
As in the body will begin to simply erode, decay and die while we’re still hanging on…
with the end result not being a pretty picture.

Dying is so much worse then what we see in the movies.

For there is much more to it then a Hollywood script…
For it has graphic sights as well as unpleasant sounds and sickening scents…
things that never should be imitated because the reality it simply too overwhelming.

Yet in all of this….
what I know to be true is that our bodies are merely borrowed earthly vessels in which
our souls reside before we are freed from them in order to go home as it were.

Yes I believe this.

It is nearly impossible to watch and be a part of…this eroding, this wasting…
what with the sounds, sights and smells….
because our human brains and emotions are so limited…

This body is all we have known….it is what we have seen age over the years.
It is has come to represent what and who we love, who we cherish, who we hold on to,
who we cling to…who we associate our very beings with….

It is the tangible while our God is not tangible.
It only makes sense that we anguish over its demise.

And yet, in the graphic sights, sounds and smells there remains something far greater
then the decay of age or disease..

For there once was a body that had been so grossly damaged, so horrifically abused as
it had died a slow and agonizing death.
Later it was to be washed and cleaned…
anointed with sweet oils, aloes and spices before being
wrapped in freshly woven flaxen linens.

Yet following three days, more spices were brought to be added to the tomb—
a tomb that was by now assumed to be filled with the overwhelming
stench of human decay and rot…

However, that was not the case….

For within that dark enclosure—a seismic shift of time occurred…
where once life had simply slipped away and become death….
here in this dark enclosure, death had become life…

And so now we wait amongst the coffee beans…for death, to become, life….

“No tabloid will ever print the startling news that the mummified body of
Jesus of Nazareth has been discovered in old Jerusalem.
Christians have no carefully embalmed body enclosed in a glass case to worship.
Thank God, we have an empty tomb. The glorious fact that the empty tomb
proclaims to us is that life for us does not stop when death comes.
Death is not a wall, but a door.”
Peter Marshall

More than

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
― Augustine of Hippo

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts,
there can be no more hurt, only more love.
Mother Teresa

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The harder the conflict,
the more glorious the triumph.”
Thomas Paine

(remnants of Cong Abbey , County Mayo, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

It whispers across a cool morning breeze…

Do you hear it?

It’s the sound of a thousand and one voices drifting endlessly across the ages.
It’s the mournful cry of a dove at dawn.
It’s the melodic symphony of an unseen orchestra of crickets on a warm summer’s night.

It rides along the ocean’s waves…

Do you see it?

It’s the wonderment you feel as you gaze upon the night sky awash in a million twinkling lights.
It’s the brilliance of color bathed endlessly across a skylit canvas as the sun offers a joyful good morning.
It’s the overwhelming eruption and dazzling display of a myriad of blooming wildflowers in a quiet hidden meadow…

It’s a familiar scent wafting upwards from somewhere unexpectedly…

Do you smell it?

It’s the fresh scent of grass from a newly mowed lawn
It’s the heavy smell of rain riding in on the winds before a storm.
It’s a long lost memory catching you off guard as you suddenly capture a whiff of your grandmother’s home

It races from touch to touch…

Do you feel it?

It’s caught up in the soothing memories from a now distant childhood.
It’s the sudden chill you feel as the sun dips out of sight on a cool fall’s night.
It’s the welcoming comfort found in an offered smile.

It’s much more than ancient history or the crumbling bits of mortar and stone now abandoned and long forgotten…

(crumbling remains hidden away deep within Kevin’s Monastery, Glendalough National Park, County Wicklow, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

It’s really more like the bits of sand found in your shoe after a walk along the beach…small and tiny, yet largely distracting,
rather uncomfortable and most difficult to ignore

The curious and the tourist alike each pick their way through the labyrinth of time long past, as they wander about pondering and musing what it all meant and wondering where it all went.

Yet you know don’t you….?

You know it never went anywhere.

It’s been here all along.

Buried deep within your heart.

But it was never meant to stay buried or forgotten.

Never meant to be for tourists or the curious to gawk and pick.

It was never meant to crumble nor decay

For it is living and breathing and yearns to be shared

It’s the gnawing ache felt in each beating heart.

It’s that nagging feeling of being out of sorts as your spirit seems lost in the fray.

It’s in the melancholy and sorrow that shadows a seemingly empty day

It’s the longing for home when you’re already there.

A Spirit most holy yet hidden, longs to hide no more.

A Spirit Loving yet concealed, longs to be revealed.

A Spirit Mighty and Great, longs to be proclaimed

You know It don’t you….?

Because It knows you….

For the love of wood

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.
Oscar Wilde

(fresh strawberries on a walnut trivet / Julie Cook / 2015)

(a walnut trivet topped with a couple of fried squash / Julie Cook / 2015)

When I first started this little blog of mine, or as my husband lovingly (cough cough) references as that “blob”, I was truly wet behind the ears not having a clue as to what I was doing.
I’d never “blogged” before nor was I any sort of computer guru, “thecie” or wizened journalist.
I was just a newly retired teacher who still had some “teach” left in me.

I started posting some pictures I’d taken, some words I’d written, some recipes I’d cooked and little by little I had some folks stopping in for a “visit”— eventually some of the visitors decided they liked what they saw, or read, or both, and wanted to hang around a while. . .

One of those early visitors happened to be a man named Michael.
Michael, who is also retired, lives in the neighboring state of South Carolina. Michael loves to cook, garden and enjoys living on “the mountain” as he lovingly refers to his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
It seems that Michael has channeled those retired energies into his wood shop—as in he makes things.
All sorts of beautiful wooden things.

As a former art teacher, I greatly appreciate the gift of talent when I see it.
Michael has the gift—the gift of “eye” and talent in that he can see in a piece of lumber something beautiful.

His creations are not sculptures or decorative pieces of art but rather functional and utilitarian natural pieces of wonder.

Perusing his blog, where he shares his talent, I was amazed by what I saw. And lucky for me, for us, he sells these pieces of functional beauty.

https://michaelswoodcraft.wordpress.com

A couple of Christmases back, I wrote a post about Michael’s work–espousing the difference between what makes art art verses the functionality of utilitarian objects—as well as how we may have the rare opportunity of finding both in one object.

https://cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/functional-or-decorative-or-both/

Over the past couple of years, I have been blessed to call Michael my friend.
I am also fortunate in that I have several of Michael’s cutting boards gracing my kitchen, a beautiful hand turned step stool, an ice-cream paddle and a handful of hand cut honey wands—I have given Michael’s pieces as both Christmas and wedding gifts.

There is just something very special about the tactile quality, coupled by the visual beauty, of a piece of wood that through both the vision and talent of a human being can take on a life of its own.
Michael is that gifted.

I want to share a few shots of an absolutely beautiful piece of burl wood that Michael has cut, sanded, finished and crafted into a cutting board like no other. Sadly a computer image cannot do justice to the tactile relationship we have with wood. To feel its weight, the smooth sanded core coupled by the rough bark exterior. . .to see the rich warm colors brought out by the lightly oiled surface is certainly best experienced in person. . . however these few pictures will simply have to do—not unless you too decide to wander on over to Michael’s blog where you might want to just try this all out first hand with your own board, birdhouse, honey wand, ice cream paddle or chopping block. . .

Thank you Michael!

(16 x 10 at widest burl cutting board / Julie Cook / 2015)

Along with the cutting board, I received yesterday two walnut trivets / coasters which will match my soon to be table chargers—of which I can’t wait for them to arrive as they will accent my kitchen so beautifully

Hidden treasure

The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
Johannes Kepler

(hidden little green shield bug nestled among the baby meyer lemons / Julie Cook / 2014)

Go forth with eyes wide open.
With a mind clear and wanting,
Seeking always,
Expecting nothing less than fascinating.
With a heart deep and cavernous,
Anticipate the extraordinary.
Touch gently
Feel softly
Step lightly, yet determined
Breathe in deeply
Smell joyously
Examine meticulously
hidden treasures are waiting. . .