not dead…

“Mark Twain was undecided whether to be more amused or annoyed when a
Journal representative informed him today of the report in New York that
he was dying in poverty in London …
The great humorist, while not perhaps very robust,
is in the best of health. He said:
‘I can understand perfectly how the report of my illness got about,
I have even heard on good authority that I was dead. James Ross Clemens,
a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London,
but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness.
The report of my death was an exaggeration.’

the correct Twain quote concerning the rumors of his death / Metalfloss.com


(a growing mountain of boxes)

It’s been a long seven days…a week of exhaustion, confusion and frustration…
but not for reasons that many might be experiencing in this nation of ours…
I’m simply attempting to survive a major move.

And since I was coming up for a breath of air…I thought it would
be nice of me to let those of you who were interested, and those
of you who were merely curious, that I am still very much alive.

I may be on the other side of the state now, but I have managed
to get internet and even a television as of yesterday.
But life without a television this past week has been a blessing!
HA!

Lots to share, show and tell…but that will have to wait for now…
still very much busy with the tasks of unpacking, sorting and placing…

So stay tuned…
I’ll be back!

When I die, will they remember not
What I did, but what I haven’t done.
It’s not the end, that I fear with each breathe.
It’s life that scares me to death…

Lyrics Rise Against

when man becomes God

“Communism begins where atheism begins.”
“Communism abolishes eternal truths,
it abolishes all religion all morality”

Karl Marx


(a thistle blooming in a meadow / Julie Cook / 2017)

Since his expulsion from his once beautiful and safe garden home,
man has vied to become his own creator, his own director, his own God….
Thinking, no actually more like proclaiming,
that he knows best and simply… that he IS the best…

In yesterday’s post, we read a quote by Sister Lucia—the Carmelite nun who as a child in
1917 along with her two cousins, experienced several Divine encounters with the Virgin Mary.

Over the course of several months, Mary actually shared several prophecies with the children.
With one such prophecy being about the final confrontation between Good and Evil—
or more precisely between Christ and Satan…

“The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and
the family.
Don’t be afraid, because anyone who operates for the sanctity of marriage and the family will
always be contended and opposed in every way,
because this is the decisive issue.
However, Our Lady has already crushed its head.”

(the quote is taken from a letter written by Sister Lucia to Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna)

The holy sanctity of both marriage and family, it appears,
is to be a lynchpin in that dramatic collision…

And are we not seeing that same “lynchpin” proving to be a divisive issue in our own current times?

I’ve recently started reading a new book, I was more than a little intrigued when
first, from out of the blue, I found that quote by Sister Lucia then later, when reading,
I was broadsided by what appears to be another piece of the puzzle
presented earlier by Sister Lucia….
two vastly different encounters yet now oddly apparently connected.

And as I’ve said before, I don’t believe in happenstance or coincidence.

The book, I initially concluded, was going to be a typically political and historical
book based on two leading world figures..

A Pope and A President
by Paul Kenogor

The book is based on the relationship between Ronald Reagan and John Paull II and
“the extraordinary untold story of the 20th century”

A story I pretty much assumed would center on the work and contribution of both men
in the dismantling of the Soviet Union—the toppling of communism as it were.

I’ve read several previous books showcasing the relationships between Reagan, Thatcher,
Gorbachev and John Paul…each of whom were instrumental in the tearing down of
that infamous wall….

But this book has an unusual beginning, not what I expected…
It begins in Fatima, Portugal 1917…
and intermixes with the death of the Romanov family and the Russian Revolution.

There’s much I feel I already want to share but I’m not even to page 50….
For to digest the book properly, it is a bit of a slow go as I read and re-read certain
passages.

While reading last night I was struck by an incident that had taken place involving the
newly formed Communist Congress spearheaded by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and others,
involving the Russian Orthodox Church.

“The Russian Orthodox Church’s long-standing prohibition against divorce was lifted,
leading to an explosion in divorce rates and havoc upon the Russian family.
Lenin made good on his June 1913 promise to secure and “unconditional annulment of all
laws against abortions.
By 1920, abortion was legal and free of charge to Russian women.
The number of abortions skyrocketed to levels still unmatched in human history.”

I no longer find it coincidental that with man attempting to become God, the first thing
he wants to dismantle is marriage…that sacred union as mandated by God.
Because if you are now you’re own god, then why listen to the One claiming to be the same?

And so too the man god, it appears, finds it most natural to throw caution to the wind
while tossing the proverbial baby right out with the bath water…
….cause that’ll work, right?!?

And so we see that man has decided that he has a better idea of how living should work.

Of which has a direct impact on the family unit—
that bond that God deemed to be a Holy unit…
and naturally the man god decided that that too is also utter rubbish….

Thus with the dissolving of what God originally intended marriage to be,
we instead have the erosion of that very sacred union between man and woman…
with a direct resulting decay of, in turn, the essence of humanity….

But obviously that whole notion of a decreed sacred union along with the subsequent family unit
is no longer of importance to the now ruling man god….

Throughout the course of mankind, when man has attempted to usurp control from the
Divine Creator, the consequences have proven to be disastrous…
so why should today’s time be any different.

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,
and they will become one flesh.

Genesis 2:24

be not discouraged

“In order to resist fear and discouragement,
it is necessary that through prayer–
through a personal experience of God re-encountered, recognized and loved in prayer–
we taste and see how good the Lord is (Psalm 34).”

Jacques Philippe

dscn4636
(even in late fall, seeds set forth / Julie Cook / 2016)

When we are discouraged by the apparently slow progress of all our honest efforts,
by the failure of this or that person, and by the ever new reappearance of enemy powers
and their apparent victories, then we should know: the time shall be fulfilled.
Because of the noise and activity of the struggle and the work, we often do not hear
the hidden gentle soul and movement of the life that is coming into being.
But here and there, at hours that are blessed, God lets us feel how he is everywhere
at work and how his cause is growing and moving forward.
The time is being fulfilled and the light shall shine, perhaps just when it seems
that the darkness is impenetrable.

Eberhard Arnold
When The Time Was Fulfilled
Plough Publishing House