popping back up for air and holding onto the life buoy…seek while you can

Not all saints have the same sort of holiness.
There are those who could never have lived with others saints.
Not all have the same path. But all arrive at God.
St. John Vianney

(commercial recreation specialists)

During this somewhat self-imposed fasting from the world, I have been forced afforded the opportunity to step back from the world’s madness while sinking into my own moving madness.

Yet whereas I may be currently focused on the latest box to sort,
the latest immediate crisis repair screaming for attention,
or the simple task of navigating new and unfamiliar terrain…
I am not totally unaware of the continuing idiocy reigning supreme in this world of ours.

A pandemic remains.
Isolation is a reality for many.
Socialism and Marxism continue to be the current ideological darlings.
Civil unrest, Antifa, and protests just won’t go away.
Impeachment is a never ending taxpayer’s nightmare demanded by politicians who
don’t seem to care for said taxpayers.
Persecution of The Church is rampant.
The media is a rabid dog.
Zero tolerance for the unborn looms large as abortion is seen as some sort of unalienable
right.
All the while a cancel culture hopes to cancel out us middle Americans.

Yesterday marked the day of remembrance for the Holocaust.
It appears that it went largely ignored by our oh so pious news outlets.

Ode to the shifting tide.

And so I wonder…why have I even bothered coming up for air?
Is it any wonder that I opt to cling to a life buoy?

I suspect it would behoove all of us to cling to that life buoy…

That we must seek Him while we can.

That we pray while we still have the opportunity—
the only life line to He who is Holy.

Prayer is, as it were, being alone with God. A soul prays only when it is turned toward God,
and for so long as it remains so. As soon as it turns away,
it stops praying. The preparation for prayer is thus the movement of turning to God
and away from all that is not God.
That is why we are so right when we define prayer as this movement.
Prayer is essentially a ‘raising up’, an elevation.
We begin to pray when we detach ourselves from created objects and raise ourselves up to the Creator.”
Dom Augustin Guillerand, p. 91
An excerpt from
The Prayer of the Presence of God

behold the Lamb….

“He, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those other His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be recognised as finally annulled. A marvellous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonour and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death’s defeat.”
― Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation

(a lamb on the cliffs of Slieve League / County Donegal / Julie Cook / 2015)

In death there exists a mind crushing silence.

For we long, nay need, to be in the presence of the living…
of those who breathe, who have movement and who are warm to one’s touch
That is the reality of our moment in present time.

It is our comfort…it is what we know and what we take for granted.

Yet to be in the presence of that same once living life which in an instant no longer breathes,
is now rigid and stiff and frighteningly cold to the touch,
is to be in the presence of overwhelming nothingness…

There is a suffocating moment of panic as the primeval reflex of run and flight wrestles
to take hold. We are choked by the need to escape.
The innate sense of racing from the black void of nothingness, desperate
to find the sensory fulness of the living…
because it is in that single moment of reality of loss that complete isolation is frighteningly found…as well as  utter
aloneness– all of which crushes and squeezes the senses of our present living…

Death is an endless void.
For in death we see what was and is now no more.
There is no light, no breeze, no warming sun,
no thoughts of tomorrow.
For tomorrow’s thoughts are of a life without.

In Death we are without and it is in that “without” that our brains labor to process…
for the very processing of the concept of loss and death is more than our reasoning can contain.
Death and its finality is a reality that we can only process slowly, even if then…as time, emotion
and physical wellbeing swirl into the forefront of survival.
Because it is Life of which we know and we hold on tightly to the knowing of the presence of that thing thus named Life.

Yet Infinte Wisdom, in compassion for man and his utter isolation found in  Death, offered a lifeline…as the concept of Hope was now to be returned.
The now endless rope of Salvation anchored permanently to Forever.

The stillness and darkened cold, along with the endless emptiness were vanquished by a thunderous ray of Light…as Life walked free leaving Death discarded in a tomb….

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning,
the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb,
but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
While they were wondering about this,
suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.
In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground,
but the men said to them,
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He is not here; he has risen!
Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee:
‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ”
Then they remembered his words. 9 When they came back from the tomb,
they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.
It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James,
and the others with them who told this to the apostles.
But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to
them like nonsense.
Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb.
Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves,
and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
Luke 24:1-12

The good ol days

“In every age “the good old days” were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them. ”
― Brooks Atkinson

(Troup County, Georgia / Julie Cook ? 2014)

Is it merely human nature to yearn for times past, memories past, experiences past?
Is the present simply too trying, too frightening, too demanding, too challenging, too real?
Is the future too far away, too uncertain, too unknown, too beyond?

It is to that which is surely known, that which was lived, not imagined which is grounding.
It is to that which was experienced and survived which is now oddly comforting.
It is to those persons who have come and gone to whom we turn our hearts.

Missing what was, struggling with what is, looking with trepidation for what will be.
Despite reluctance or resistance, we are creatures always moving forward—such is the nature of life.
We may look back, but may not travel back.
We have but today–yet struggle through it.
We look toward tomorrow hoping for that which is better.
We live in a state of constant flux and motion.
Trashing in the waters of time, fighting against continual currents of the seasons of our lives which sweep us back and forth.

Taking that which is old, dusty and broken. . . mending it and making it new. . .that is the promise, that is the hope, that is the salvation.
It is the expanse of a bridge which leads from then, to now, to what will be.
Sound, sturdy and unbreakable under the flood waters of life.
The life-line has been cast toward you.
It requires only that you reach and take hold.
That which was, remains in the rushing waters–as you cross the bridge to what will be

And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. (Rev 21:5 KJV)

Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
Isaiah 43:18-19 NRSV Catholic Edition