Good-bye my dear old friend…

Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.
Saint Thomas Aquinas

Animals are such agreeable friends –
they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
George Eliot

(Peaches in her beautiful prime / Julie Cook/ 2017)

How do you pick a day, a time or even the place for the death of another?
The death of someone you love dearly?

How can you be the master of another’s right to live or die?

Or perhaps more simply, how can one be given the tremendous responsibility
to glibly turn the hand with a thumbs up or a thumbs down?

…just like those various Roman emperors,
those long ago bloodthirsty leaders who were burdened, or perhaps gifted,
with such decisions— never seemingly having any internal
moral turmoil…none like I have had…

How in the world can one balance both mind and heart in
such everlasting ending sorts of decisions?

Oh there are those out there who seem to give such thoughts no never mind…
Those who have little if any regard for the living or the sanctity of
their, or anyone elses for that matter, life.

The phrase moral responsibility has been tossed at me like a
dead weight over the past several weeks.
As in…. it is my moral obligation to do the “right thing” by my
cat…my pet, my tender responsibility.

That being Peaches, the older of my current two cats.

She is/was 15 years old…
diagnosed with aggressive and advanced bone cancer in her jaw
just a few short weeks ago….

I’ve had a cat in my life ever since I was 6 years old.

Oh there was the occasional bird, fish, mouse, along with several dogs
over the years, but cats have been the constant.

So I did a little counting….
during the course of 57 years… that being from age 6 to 63, I have had a total
of 7 cats.
7 cats spread out over 57 years.

Some of them were more cat-like, while two of them were more dog-like.
(Yes even a vet once told me one of my cats was more dog-like than cat-like…
meaning they had a deeply bonding personality…not aloof and independent like
most typical cats.)

Peaches, who was more cat-like, came into my life in 2007.
She came as a lonely, lost and starving 8 month old kitten.

Our son had just graduated high school and had left for college when Peaches showed
up—it was as if on cue she came into my life when there was a drastic void.
She readily filled that void.
She was tenacious, street wise and determined to live.
And yet faithfully, throughout both the good and bad, Peaches stood by my side.

So fast forward to a recent divorce, upheaval and obvious loss…
all multiplied by a major move—
and suddenly, and oh so sadly, it came time for her to leave her post…leaving me.

So having overseen me resettled, I suppose she believed her job was complete.

It’s just that I wasn’t ready to make that decision for her, for me, or…for us…
not yet…
but whoever said life would be fair…

And so I thank you Peaches, my dear tenacious friend,
Mommy will always love you!!!

(sporting her “Mimi” hat)

(holding on to Percy’s tail, her surrogate child)

(Wednesday at the Vet’s when we said our good-byes)

“The Lord manifests Himself to those who stop for some time in
peace and humility of heart.
If you look in murky and turbulent waters,
you cannot see the reflection of your face.
If you want to see the face of Christ,
stop and collect your thoughts in silence,
and close the door of your soul to the noise of external things.”
St. Anthony of Padua

A bond…some things blessedly stay the same…for now

“Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize
that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”
Eckhart Tolle

“Man can no longer live for himself alone.
We must realize that all life is valuable and that we are united to all life.
From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship with the universe.”
Albert Schweitzer

(the Mayor and Peaches / Julie Cook / 2021)

Three years…
two cats…
one baby girl…
(and of course one baby boy…however the cats only gravitate to the Mayor…
the Sheriff is not known for his gentleness…something about being two fisted with
a ball bat and golf club all of which makes the cats very nervous)

The cats tend to avoid this one…

God has created me to do Him some definite service.
He has commited some work to me which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission.
I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.
I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.
St. John Henry Newman

hail to the chief, chieftain or is it chieftess???

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I long to accomplish a great and noble task,
but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
Helen Keller

(a visit from the Mayor / Julie Cook / 2018)

And you thought I was going to write about President Bush again didn’t you??
Eh???

Well, whereas I am sharing about a visit from a commander and chief…
this particular commander and chief is more like a chieftess…
or whatever the female equivalent would be for chief.

Here we see the Mayor delightfully happy to be visiting with her constituents here
in the satellite Woobooville office. She happily surprised her “people”…
that being Polly Possum, Moe the Moose, lambie pie the sheep along with Percy and Peaches,
the real live cats who oddly disappear whenever the Mayor makes a visit.

And one might notice that the Mayor is having a slight hair issue with a strand of bangs that
nearly reaches to her chin. Her aides are constantly having to bush the hair from her face
lest she have a bit of a fit while rubbing her eyes red.

So with that being said…the Mayor had her first visit to a salon…note, that is not a saloon…
little politicians must make certain things very clear…but we digress…
It was time to have a bit of a trim.

And I might just add that a for a 10 month old, a trim may not be the most even or
neatest of trims…

And thus I am sorry to report that one of her chief aides is very disappointed with the
new little dutch-girl-pageboy look…
that aide being her dad…
And so it begins…that slow progression of growing up
that seems to tugs at the daddy’s heart most of all…

the very apprehensive before image

The after dutch little girl look

don’t talk to me about Global Warming

The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches.
E.E. Cummings

No, the above image is not of me, but it is how I’m feeling right about now.

From the caption, you can read that this was a selfie taken by a young lady who lives
in what is considered to be one of the coldest cities in the world and just so happens
to be located in Siberia, Russia…

Instead, this is my picture…

We foolishly put up things like this in the South thinking the Weather or Mother Nature
will never take us seriously.
Well….. it/she has…
and it/she did
and crazily it has once again snowed and iced…

Twice in one Winter here in the deep South is unheard of!!!
And technically the first snow was at the tail end of Fall with this latest mess being the first “official” Winter snow.
A foot of snow in the late Fall is so unnatural and so unheard of way down here in
the land of all things cotton and peaches, only to have another snow event taking place just
a month later, well, we’ve actually begun to make certain that the animals aren’t pairing off
in numbers of two!

School, Businesses, and Governmental agencies all being, or will be, shut down yesterday,  today and some even tomorrow.

Adding insult to injury we woke to 11 degrees Farenheight, with a well into to the
negatives, windchill— making venturing forth into the snow and ice an even more
dangerous and now most unpleasant experience.

So my little sign, when I feel up to dashing outside, is coming down as I think I’ll put up
a “Welcome Spring” sign and we’ll just see if Miss Mother Nature is actually paying attention
or just delightfully messing with us instead!
My money is on she’s messing with us!!

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55: 9-11

whose will?

“It seems to me that the spiritual answer is to be found in neither optimism nor
pessimism about the future, but in complete trust in God.
Fr Benedict Groeschel

(Percy sporting a “mimi” hat / Julie Cook / 2017)

And just incase you’re confused…the question is not who’s Will…?
As in who is Will…?
But rather…whose will…?
As in mine yours, ours or His…..

The past couple of days, weeks and even months I feel as if most of my posts
have had one central theme in common…the simple matter of will.

As in the constant tug of war we play with both ourselves as well as everyone else…
with the ultimate tug and pull and war being with God himself.

When I was a little girl my grandmother Mimi would crochet and knit up a storm.
Sewing, knitting, needlepoint…you name it, she did it.
Yet none of that ever appealed to me…it was not ever to be my forte.
I just didn’t enjoy it and I especially loathed trying to learn it.

I don’t know if it was a patience thing or rather that I just opted for
other creative outlets.
Today a reattached button is about the extent of my sewing endeavors.

My grandmother however was profuse with Mother following in hot pursuit.
Afghans, throws, bell pulls, pillows, samplers, seat cushions, stool covers…
all of which now oddly adorn my home.
But the specialty, or rather the pièce de résistance being always, the “mimi hat.
A crocheted toboggan like thing looking oddly like a flapper’s cap.

Everyone got a mimi hat.

Colors were limited to brown, beige, rust, cream, antique gold….
You’d put the hat on your head and immediately your hair was now a flat static
fly away mess. Wildly and weirdly standing on ends atop your head so you
had no other choice but to keep the hat pulled down tight on your head…
while looking a bit odd wearing the thing in the house especially in the summer.

Mother would make us put on and wear the blasted things when we went to visit
or if Mimi would come to visit us.
Not that Mimi would expect it, but Mother knew it would make my grandmother happy
seeing us “enjoying” her handiwork.

I hated them.

My choice in wearing the hat was that I could either fight and refuse or
I could suck it up, acquiesce and please…
I opted for the later because I did not want to make my life miserable while
making everyone else’s lives miserable.
Nothing like a 7 year old demanding no to a parent demanding yes.

The same held true when I was made to wear a dress every time we visited our other grandmother, Nany. Since Nany bought the bulk of our clothes, Mother knew that
if she wanted to keep her mother-n-law happy, she’d better be putting her kids
in those nice new clothes. Never mind that I was happiest in jeans or shorts.

Which goes back to mother having a choice…
She could either give-in to our whining and let us look like sloppy bumpkins
while drawing the ire of the woman who had bought us all sorts of nice clothes
or she could get us gussied up and uncomfortable while drawing the praise of this
matriarch.
She too chose the latter.

I learned early on that sometimes its best to give a little while giving in a little
rather then reveling in being self centered with a life short lived
in a sea of selfishness.

Yet our society appears to have forgotten about biting the proverbial bullet…
Living in a nation that is now in a constant state of in-fighting over the notion
of our own individuals wills, is proving both counter productive and most
oppressively destructive.

It says a lot about us as a society that we are constantly demanding our own
will to be done.
As we’ve moved from the consideration of others to simply damning others.

Fr Benedict reminds us of the importance of a will other than our own…
“‘Your will be done.’
This conviction should be the ultimate intention of all your prayers–
along with finding our peace in the acceptance of that will.
Certainly, to pray like this is a gift of the Holy Spirit.”

“It is out of two things, acceptance and obedience to God,
that we receive the great gift of peace.”

If we persist in this hellbent quest of ours, demanding our own will rather than
seeking out and yielding to His will,
we will be damning not only others but ourselves in the process….

When we went down last month to West Palm Beach for my aunt’s funeral,
As we sorted through my aunt’s belonging determining what should stay
or be tossed, I found a box full of mimi hats.
Funny how these some odd 50 years later, seeing those hats brought a warm smile
to my face and a most warming sensation to my heart.
I was immediately transported to a happier time.

How different that could have all been had I refused so long ago to have ever
worn one of those hats preferring to be self-centered and selfish.

Seeing them all these many years later may have actually brought back some very
difficult memories rather than the happy ones I felt suddenly seeing them again
all these many years later.

I opted to bring two of them home.
I won’t be wearing them, but I’ll be happy knowing that I now have them…
I just think the cats are probably now thinking what I use to think….
that these are really stupid looking hats….

(oooo lala)

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:2

demanding

“He didn’t ask “Where will you spend eternity?”
as religious the-end-is-near picketers did but rather,
“With what, in this modern democracy,
will you meet the demands of your soul?”
Saul Bellow

(the ripening little peaches / Julie Cook / 2017)

God’s love is a demanding love…
this much we know….

And unfortunately we, as in you and me and all of us, are not very good with “demanding.”
We don’t listen nor we do we do what we’ve often been told to do…
this since the dawn of time.

An example you ask…?
Well we just have to look to the Israelites…

Folks just don’t wander around in a desert for 40 years because they’re
doing everything they’d been told to do…
wandering while looking and hoping to find one’s way usually means a wrong
turn was taken somewhere along the way and the recalculating voice has yet to reset….

For it just seems that in our heart of hearts we, me, you…simply aren’t up to the
demands of answering the call of this demanding Love.
We simply don’t, or perhaps it’s more apt to say we can’t, do “demanding” very well.
There’s just something about that rebellious nature of ours….

And since we’ve basically spent the history of time stumbling about lost to ourselves
while totally avoiding demanding Love…of which means we’ve not been very good at
offering said love outward….
well, it all sounds really quite hopeless actually….

And yet…

Yeshua, the Son of the Omnipotent Creator…
the very Creator of this very demanding Love,
came to this earth in order to live the very example of the oh so demanding Love…
demonstrating that it is hard, that it can be painful and that it is extremely costly but…
it can be done and when it is done…it is actually the gift of everlasting Love….

And he did all of this for you and for me and for all of us who are lost in our
rebellious ways….

While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man—–
though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die.
But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood,
much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,
much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received our reconciliation.
Romans 5:6-11

Hopeful anticipation

Our thoughts determine our whole life.
If our thoughts are destructive, we will have no peace.
If they are quiet, meek, and simple, our life will be the same,
and we will have peace within us.
It will radiate from us and influence all beings around us.”
Elder Thaddeus

(two cousins, Peaches and Alice, anxiously wait for a handout / Julie Cook / 2017)

My son had warned me about this.
We were to “babysit” our granddog for about 9 days while her parents were out of town.
He had told me that Alice would seek out the “weak” one.

Huh?

The begging.
Her biggest fault is that she is a beggar.

Alice, an 85 pound black lab mix, is a smart and mindful dog…but
she is a tad lazy and a big baby who loves food…hers, ours and everyones.

My son told me that when it’d come time for us to sit down for supper, Alice would
be right there in the mix, hovering near the one she felt she could coax into
offering a few free morsels…breaking down the resolve of the one most likely
to offer a free handout….in other words…the weak one.

Tag!
My husband was it….
the obvious weak one…or perhaps the sucker for those wanting big brown
eyes is more like it….

And not only did Alice zero in on my husband’s weakness, but cousin Peaches
was not to miss out on any free snacks.

Needless to say, trying to eat supper while four eyes were intently and relentlessly staring
us down….
and to compound the matter….two of those four eyes also had a drooling mouth attached,
was just a tad bit unnerving.

The laser focused attention, the palatable anxiousness, the anticipation of hopefulness…
filled the entire room with a buoyant sense of both yearning and waiting.

How absolutely amazing would it be if we had that same sense of longing, desire,
hopefulness and focus as we anxiously anticipated the presence of God….

And here’s the kicker to that notion…
God doesn’t merely toss us a morsel or a piece of unwanted or discarded leftover…
He offers each one of us His entire being…
as He is ours for the asking…
For with God,
there is absolutely no begging required…..

But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman,
born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law,
so that we might receive adoption as sons.
And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,
crying, “Abba! Father!”
So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.
Galatians 4:4-7

plenteous redemption

‘Copiosa apud Eum Redemptio’
With Him is plenteous redemption

(emerging peaches / Julie Cook / 2017)

Holiness is the source.
In Christ the absolute holiness of God is united hypostatically with the holiness of man.
God’s holiness (as the love of good and the hatred of evil), but first and foremost
as the love of good in everything, even the one who is evil (per accidens [contingently]).
All good (the entire sum of values) outside God has its prototype in God Himself.
God loves one in another – in this consists His Holiness.
This holiness is the basis for redemption –
also understood as the ‘re-evalutation’ of everything:
God restores the value of everything in man,
who is personally united with Him.
He is Christ – Redemptor [Redeemer]: the holiness of man consists
in receiving this good, which God loves –
in this manner Christ becomes the model of holiness.
In Him that holiness is in a way identical to redemption ( Redemptio).
In us it has to depend on, first, conversion to God, and second,
re-evaluation of everything in accordance with the value that everything has in God,
and which Christ the Lord has shown to us.
Novermber 2, 1962
excerpt from the private diaries of Bishop Karol Wojtyla
In God’s Hands / Pope John Paul II

And so it is, in Christ the Redeemer, that man has found his redemption.

Redemption so poignantly expressed each Spring as seen in the blooms, blossoms and
growth of the newness of life….

Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.
Psalm 130:7-8

no regrets

“Out of love,
No regrets–
Though the goodness
Be wasted forever.

Out of love,
No regrets–
Though the return
Be never.”
Langston Hughes

(a new forming peach / Julie Cook / 2017)

Our society has a flippant little expression…
“leave nothing behind and have no regrets”
Meaning…
whatever you do,
go forward,
don’t look back
and for heaven’s sake, whatever you do, do not ever apologize…

It’s the “glad I did it” sort of mindset with a heavy dose of
“And I’d do it all over again if I had the chance…”
Despite the “it” having been foolhardy, selfish, ill advised or downright wrong…
As the ego boldly claims to have “no regrets”
As an air of bravado now masks any second guessing….

While on the other side of this no regret issue,
sits the one who has come to the end of a life lived…
As he now prepares to meet his maker,
he looks back while taking stock of the ups and downs of living….

He looks back determining that despite the highs and the lows,the good and the bad,
he can actually let go, as he readies to go home, with no regrets….

Is that not how we all hope it will be…
That when the time comes for us to depart this life,
we’ll be able to look back with that same sense of peaceful lack of regrets…

Yet unfortunately, we all aren’t granted that luxury of time for reflection,
that time of taking stock.

For one minute we’re here and then the next, we’re not.
No chance to spend time reflecting, pondering or sorting.

Yet for the one who has chosen to follow the Christ…
time no longer matters because…
there are no more regrets….
all having been replaced by forgiveness coupled with Grace…

But there is no point dwelling on the past excessively.
My mother used to warm us against that; she’s say
“Doting on what’s gone is wasting precious time.”
It’s stealing time really, from the present and from the future.
If you believe in the mission of Jesus Christ,
then you’re bound to try to let go of your past,
in the sense that you are entitled to his forgiveness.
To keep regretting what was is to deny God’s grace.
Dorothy Day

Just Peachy

One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite–
that particular peach is but a detail.
Pablo Picasso

(a close up of a South Carolina peach / Julie Cook / 2015 )

Oh how our time is now quickly passing. . .
Gone too soon will be your tender touch,
your tickely fuzz upon my lips
and your lush sweetness dribbling down my chin. . .

(peach pit / Julie Cook / 2015)

(a close up of a South Carolina peach / Julie Cook / 2015 )