learning lessons to practice lessons

The Lord wills that his disciples possess a tremendous power:
that his lowly servants accomplish in his name all that
he did when he was on earth.
St. Ambrose

(a pair of red shoulder hawks hanging out in the pine tops / Julie Cook / 2021)

“Some people who think themselves naturally gifted don’t want
to touch either philosophy or logic.
They don’t even want to learn natural science.
They demand bare faith alone—-
as if they wanted to harvest grapes right away without
putting any work into the vine.
We must prune, dig, trellis, and do all the other work.
I think you’ll agree the pruning knife, the pickaxe,
and the farmer’s tools are necessary for growing grapevines,
so that they will produce edible fruit.
And as in farming, so in medicine:
the one who has learned something is the one who has practiced
the various lessons, so that he can cultivate or heal.
And here, too, I say you’re truly educated if you bring everything
to bear on the truth.
Taking what’s useful from geometry, music, grammar, and
philosophy itself, you guard the Faith from assault.”
St. Clement of Alexandria, p. 13
An Excerpt From
A Year with the Church Fathers

My heart shall become your heart (a re-post)

****I read a marvelous post yesterday over on Mel Wild’s site, In My Father’s House.
Here’s a link to the post:
https://melwild.wordpress.com/2021/06/29/compassion-more-than-all-our-doing/

Mel spoke about compassion—the compassion of Christ…
In his post, Mel examined the latest episode of The Chosen…the same episode
I had also discussed earlier in the week regarding Mary’s falling backwards…

As the storyline played out, we saw how Mary felt that Jesus would
never give her a second chance, not after she turned away from Him and that initial healing.
How could He?
He’d healed her once and here she’d turned away from that healing
and fell back into her old familiar and damaging ways.

But in that encounter between Savior and sinner, we see a deep
and unending compassion.

That touched a deep chord with me.

Falling and failing, over and over…
and yet we are only met, time and time again, with three simple words.
“I forgive you”

Here is a post I offered back in 2014.
7 years have passed…much has happened in my life
and in the life of our country in those past 7 years.

Yet the same need and desire remains….

“Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time,
so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work.
I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!!
I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman,
but to KILL IT! No half measures will do.
I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there;
rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me,
the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams.
Turn them ALL over to me,
give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self—in my image.
Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself.
My will, shall become your will.
My heart, shall become your heart.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

(Orchid / Julie Cook / 2014)

Oh that this strong request of yours could only be answered with a swift response of “yes.”
That I could and would whole heartedly shout at the top of my lungs
YES!!
YES!
I will give you myself.
All of myself.
I shall hold nothing back.
I am yours.
Yes, take all of me.

Yet, this demand of yours, this most intimate demand from the purest essence of Love,
is meet by my hesitation, my doubts, my frozen in time inability to immediately scream “yes.”
I hesitate.
Why?
I stumble over the words.
I hold back.

You reassure me.
You make me a promise
You have proven the promise.
And yet, I balk.
The “I” must be broken
Why can’t I let go?
Why won’t the “I” let go?
Am I afraid of being broken?
Being broken by you would be so much better than remaining whole as the captive of “I”
Still I find the words unable to slip from my mouth.

You sense my hesitation.
You see my reluctance.
You take my hand.
Suddenly, within that single touch, there is a cosmic explosion which shakes the very foundation of my world.
At the very moment you touch me, there is something so overpowering, something so beautiful which takes places.
I have never felt this before.
A connection
A oneness
It’s as if the brokeness, which I never fully comprehended, is immediately made whole.

And just as quickly as our hands meet, I pull away.
I look away.
It’s all too much.
I can’t.
If you honestly knew, knew everything, you’d walk away
You should walk away.
Others are better than I.
Others have not done the things I have done.
The things I am ashamed for you to discover.
You really don’t want me.
You really don’t know me
You really don’t know. . .

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not,
for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you,
I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.
Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you.
(Isaiah 43:1-28)

The love song plays out,
You reveal everything I’ve hidden.
I am ashamed and want to turn away.
Yet you continue watching.
There is only acceptance in your eyes.
Pieces of a broken heart lay scattered on the floor.
You pick up the pieces, putting them back together,
handing me the final piece.

Again, You extend your hand.
You whisper my name.
“My heart shall become your heart” you whisper ever so gently–
“You will be mine and I will be yours” for all of eternity
Love lies bare and open between us.
“Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful!
(Song of Solomon 4:1)
I hear those words flowing from your heart.
A heart that has broken for me.
“Yes”
“Yes”
The word now slowly falling from my mouth.
Take me as I am and make me yours.
All that was is suddenly no more.
I will give you my heart…
I want nothing more than for my heart to now become your heart…
as the last piece of the puzzle is finally put back in place.

Deja vu not intended and this is going to be a long rehab

“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”
Marcel Proust

(Percy, on the morning following his having found us when he was thrown from a moving car as a tiny kitten—
his injuries were severe but 8 years later, he’s been loved to both life and health…
yet a remnant and a torn tendon has brought the most traumatic surgery to date)

I thought I’d be all techy and try to put together a post to use yesterday on the evening prior,
via my phone.
I found the little quotes I wanted to use and picked out a picture…
then I hit the button to save the post.

Yesterday morning, I pulled out my phone, went into my drafts and hit publish.
But what was published was not what I had put together but rather as a previous post from a week
or so prior.

Huh?

So I’m just going with the idea of Divine Intervention…meaning
Someone greater than I thought a repeating was in order and repeat we did.

For you see, on Monday, I had taken my Percy over to a surgical vet’s practice north of Atlanta
for a joint fusion to help repair a near unrepairable injury.

I dropped him off and headed to stay the night with the Mayor and the new Sheriff,
who also had to go back to visit the doctor for his ongoing issues.
So needless to say, I didn’t have the proper time to write a decent post, hence the quickie from
my phone…that actually didn’t work.

If we can just get these two little boys on the track to good health, it’ll be a wonder!

Percy’s surgery was successful…
however, it’s not so much the surgery that I now worry about being successful
but rather this business of recouping and rehab time.

12 weeks he’ll need to be confined to a cage!!!
But oddly it seems Percy started out his life in a cage…healing from abuse
when someone threw him out the window of a moving car.
Dante would say there is a certain ring in hell for such folks but I digress.

So yes, deja vu in all sorts of ways.

But now let’s add in an “e” collar or what is known as an Elizabethan collar or more infamously, the cone of shame.
Add a splint as big boxing glove on his back leg and life is now a giant misery for all involved.

How he’s going to manage to get into the litter box is yet to be seen but I somehow don’t see any of this
going well.

He can’t stand on the giant splint.
He can’t eat with the cone.
I remove the cone and hold a bowl up to his mouth.
Spoon feeding didn’t work so well as more fell than hit his mouth.
And drinking water has been a no for now.

He is currently in the foyer just off the den so he can be near us.

He flops and flays, falling into the litter box.
I’ve had to fetch him out of the litter box twice.
But since he’s yet to “use” the litter box, we’re ok.

He gets meds twice a day.
That part is proving the easiest thus far.

We will make the pilgrimage back in two weeks for the sutures to be removed and
hopefully a cone removal and smaller splint…but that is if he doesn’t break his neck
flaying in the meantime, starve to death or make a terrible mess all over himself…

Living with an open wound, exposed bone coupled with the bleeding and oozing while having to
rebandage every other day, oddly is now a bit more appealing to this current slight fortune
of a surgery in order to bring, literally closure to a nearly year-long battle.

The new Sheriff is on doses of maintenance antibiotics to keep any and all UTIs at bay—
a regime that will last for months.
Balancing his digestion and guts throughout all of this will be a delicate balance.
His surgery will be in about 5 more months.

One day for a day…is now the motto of this family!!!!

“Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint
them with oil in the name of the Lord.
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well;
the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.”
James 5:14-15

swimming elephants

“In the divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps;
shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim.”
― John Owen

Okay, so I love elephants…
and we already know I love sheep…so what a great picture…
and what an even better quote, right?

For there are indeed shallows and there are deeps..

And currently I’m in the deeps…

This commuting business 7 days a week now, is well, taking it’s toll,
just as is the vigil of watching someone you love…slowly die…

So I’m going to keep this short and sweet as it is now late and I am very tired…

Twice this week, throughout my travels, I have seen the same words in two very different places.
And I’ve lived long enough to know that if you see something repeatedly,
there just may be a reason.

“Earth hath no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal”

What a blessed reminder…that there is nothing here that cannot be overcome…
nothing here that can be suffered or endured that Heaven cannot outwit, outrun or
overcome….

Thank God!!!

“and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades
will not overcome it.
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be
bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
Matthew 16:18-19

God does not change

“The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards
the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself hath ordained.”
President George Washington
April 30, 1789
First Inaugural Address

When we are no longer able to change a situation,
we are challenged to change ourselves.
Viktor Frankl

(painting by Rembrandt Peale 1830)

As human beings,
we are conditioned to understand that…
to live is to change.

We have discovered most often through the angst of struggle,
that if change is inevitable,
then may we be the masters of such change…

May we control it,
issue it,
and stop it…
as only we see fit…

For we have both resisted as well as orchestrated change.

Yet in the arrogance of control,
we have seen, time and time again,
that the stonewall to change,
the one thing America cannot, nor can ever force change upon,
is the Creator of all that is.

So in her growing egotistical frustration, this nation
has chosen to forgo the need for a Creator…
vying, rather, to be her own creator…

And the actions of her folly will be her undoing….

If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face,
and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin
and heal their land
2 Chronicles 7:14