reporting in

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Mark Twain

“If you are suffering from a bad man’s injustice,
forgive him—lest there be two bad men.”
St. Augustine

(a healing view in NC/ Julie Cook / 2022)

I know there are a great number of questions regarding the sudden and now
lengthy absence of this blogger.

Some of you know the answers, some of you do not.

However for the sake of all involved…for this particular day,
I’ll simply stick with Mark Twain…
I am not dead.

I will say however that it has often felt like a thousand deaths over these
past many months.

In a nutshell life, my life, has turned upside down and
I will simply leave it at that.

What I would like for us all to remember however is that being turned upside down
is truly not an uncommon occurrence in the fabric of our humanness.
Most all of us, at some point or other, will experience a life that
often flips and flops.

Yet what we all need to remember is that the flipping and flopping isn’t the true nor
real story found in the turmoil…
The actual true grit of the matter is found in how we manage
through all the flipping and flopping.

I’ll just say that my family’s dynamics have changed.
No details are necessary…just the knowledge of flux and change is sufficient.

There has been both sorrow and anger.
Upheaval and tumult.
Pain and suffering.
Frustration and maybe…just maybe I can feel a bit of resolve.

So within all of the flipping and flopping, I have moved to a new state.
I am mending as I pick up my scattered pieces.

When one is attempting to put one’s life back together…routine becomes important.
And so I look forward to resuming my time spent here…a once cherished routine.
I want to be here with you—my blogging family and friends.

So with all that being said, it’s time we get reacquainted.
Please know I have missed you all.

“My God, you know infinitely better than I how little I love you.
I would not love you at all except for your grace.
It is your grace that has opened the eyes of my mind and enabled them to see your glory.
It is your grace that has touched my heart and brought upon it the influence of what is so wonderfully beautiful and fair…
O my God, whatever is nearer to me than you, things of this earth,
and things more naturally pleasing to me,
will be sure to interrupt the sight of you, unless your grace interferes.
Keep my eyes, my ears, my heart from any such miserable tyranny.
Break my bonds—raise my heart. Keep my whole being fixed on you.
Let me never lose sight of you; and, while I gaze on you,
let my love of you grow more and more everyday.”
St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, p. 44-45

Loving Grace flips you upside right

Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement,
and death will be part of your journey,
but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors.
No evil can resist grace forever.
Brennan Mannin

(my favorite place on earth—the old Methodist Church in Cades Cove/
The Great Smokey Mts National Park / Julie Cook / 2021)

Have you ever felt that switch flip?

You know the one…

The switch which flips you from upside down to right side up?

As in all of a sudden, there is some sort of vast difference
between now and then.

Something new is now residing in your soul while the old has been
blessedly removed.
As an unseen presence now lifts you ever upward.

One day you’re one way…and then suddenly, the very next day,
you’re something else entirely.

You’re simply not the same person today as you were yesterday.
And thank God you’re not.

It is that odd juxtaposition of a before and an after sort of flip of the switch.

A profound difference begins to resonate within your inner core.
As in…there was first angst and emptiness…and then next there
grew a blessed peace and a sense of being sweetly content.

A huge difference happening all within a single 1 minute.

Marvelously, actually miraculously, you feel a peace that had been
nonexistent just one minute prior.
This new comforting sense of peace that, had been so elusive for such a long time–
longer than you could recall, now wraps you in a soothing embrace.

And so now you actually find yourself finally being able to exhale.
Being able to exhale the heaviness of forever,
while then breathing in a fresh new air of life.

The body goes weak.
The soul has been broken.
And now…we are the better for it…
as I think we call that loving Grace…

Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul,
the golden link which binds us to duty and truth,
the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life,
and is prophetic of eternal good.
Petrarch

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom
to distinguish the one from the other.
Reinhold Niebuhr