“God writes his name on the soul of every man.”
Venerable Fulton Sheen
(Cades Cove / Julie Cook / 2015)
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises
to the contemplation of truth;
and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word,
to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God,
men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
Pope St. John Paul II
“Cheerfulness prepares a glorious mind for all the noblest acts.”
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
(the only sign of color this fall / Julie Cook / 2019)
“The true reason for which God bestows so many graces upon the humble is this,
that the humble are faithful to these graces and make good use of them.
They receive them from God and use them in a manner pleasing to God,
giving all the glory to Him, without reserving any for themselves…
It is certainly true that he who is humble is also faithful to God,
because the humble man is also just in giving to all their due, and above all,
in rendering to God the things that are God’s; that is,
in giving Him the glory for all the good that he is,
all the good that he has and for all the good that he does;
as the Venerable Bede says: ‘Whatever good we see in ourselves,
let us ascribe it to God and not to ourselves.’
To give thanks to God for all the blessings we have received and are
continually receiving is an excellent means of exercising humility,
because by thanksgiving we learn to acknowledge the Supreme Giver of
every good.
And for this reason it is necessary for us always to be humble before God.
St. Paul exhorts us to render thanks for all things and at all times:
‘In all things give thanks.’ (1 Thess. 5:18).
‘Giving thanks always for all things.’ (Eph. 5:20).
But that our thanksgiving may be an act of humility it must not only come
from the lips but from the heart, with a firm conviction that all good comes
to us through the infinite mercy of God.”
Rev. Cajetan da Bergamo, p. 87-8
An Excerpt From
Humility Of Heart
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the
contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—–
in a word, to know himself—–so that, by knowing and loving God,
men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
Pope St. John Paul II
(Bust of Pope John Paul II located in Église de Saint Germain des Prés / Julie Cook / 2018)
(Marker in the floor of St Peter’s Rome / The Vatican, Rome, Italy / Julie Cook / 2018)
“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness;
He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you;
He is the beauty to which you are so attracted;
it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle
for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life;
it is He who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices,
the choices that others try to stifle.”
Pope St John Paul II
“If you wish to strengthen your confidence in God still more,
often recall the loving way in which He has acted toward you,
and how mercifully He has tried to bring you out of your sinful life,
to break your attachment to the things of earth and draw you to His love.”
St. Alphonsus Liguori
(the first tiger swallowtail takes flight at the blueberry bushes / Julie Cook / 2018)
Somedays I get it better than other days.
There are those days I totally get it.
I understand it.
I can see it.
I can live it.
I can claim it.
And I readily share it…
For there is a conviction.
A confidence.
Plus I even have a bit of a swagger as I wear it smoothly and easily.
It is mine and I rest in it.
And I feel good about it.
But then there are the other days…
The days, which for unknown reasons, things are not nearly as clear.
I totally miss it.
I totally, and very obviously, don’t get it.
I don’t demonstrate it.
I don’t mirror it.
I don’t live it…
while doing it a great disservice.
And that disservice is very much acknowledged by my inner self…
As sometimes I can even feel a bit of ill intent.
A defiance.
Add a bit of delight and satisfaction to that defiance.
And the wickedness rises.
This is when I actually realize how very much I am off track.
I have wandered, for whatever disjointed reason, away.
And this is when I am pulled back to a cross and an empty tomb…
“God will forgive you if you ask him to.
Though your sins be numerous as the grains of sand on the shore,
God’s merciful forgiveness is far greater than your sins.
Do not be afraid.
Trust in his love.
Repent of your sins without delay and return to the house of the Father.
He is waiting for you.”
Patrick Madrid, p.15
An Excerpt From
A Year with the Bible
“Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught
falsehoods in school.
And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a
lunatic and fool”
Plato
“Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend
Under thy own life’s key: be cheque’d for silence,
But never tax’d for speech.”
William Shakespeare
(bad day for a little fish / Rosemary Beach, Fl / Julie Cook / 2017)
I can’t recall exactly where I read it, just the other night…
that we are living in a time when force trumps that of reason.
Meaning that whereas we were once a people of reason and rational thought…
we have now morphed into a people who have decided that force will be the
De Facto rather than De Jure.
Brut force now triumphing over our ability to intellectually reason…
As brut force has become the preferred plat du jour.
And it was reading that little observation that I was hit square between the eyes.
As in…that’s what this has all been about…hasn’t it!?
This madness we’ve been witnessing all these many months…
these protests, demonstrations and attacks against our own countrymen…
It’s all about the loss of reason and the gain of force.
No longer are the masses allowing rational thought to lead us in our governance,
living and thinking but rather they are exhibiting a dangerous proclivity
for the power of sheer brut force…
Brut force in order to yield their desired end result.
For this new growing angry mass has lost all patience for proper procedure,
due process and even free thought as they demonstrate that they have no taste for
the civil, the sequential or the rational…
preferring to use brawn and force against those who they find to be counter
in both thought and belief…
It’s no longer a matter of presentation, persuasion, and civil discourse …
instead it is a matter of beating one senseless, bullying one to yielding
and forcing one into submission…
Then…
NSDAP supporters are fighting on the street against KPD supporters, scene from ‘Horst Wessel’, directed by Franz Wenzler, Germany 1933.
And Now…..
(NBC news)
The pendulum continues to swing…in a most dangerous direction…
But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy,
always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason
for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,
1 Peter 3:15
“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human
history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—
the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God
which will make him happy.”
C.S. Lewis
(a lone pigeon surveys the surf / Rosemary Beach, FL / Julie Cook / 2017)
”Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind.
In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking.
It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen,
for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way,
this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought.
But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true?
It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself
will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking,
of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism,
and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else.
Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought:
so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”
C.S. Lewis
In determining relationships we must begin somewhere.
There must be somewhere a fixed center against which everything else is measured,
where the law of relativity does not enter and we can say “IS” and make no allowances.
Such a center is God. When God would make His Name known to mankind He could find
no better word than “I AM.”
When He speaks in the first person He says,
“I AM”; when we speak of Him we say, “He is”;
when we speak to Him we say, “Thou art.”
Everyone and everything else measures from that fixed point.
“I am that I am,” says God,
“I change not.”
As the sailor locates his position on the sea by “shooting” the sun,
so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God.
We are right when and only when we stand in a right position relative to God,
and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position.
A. W. Towzer
“The fact of God is necessary for the fact of man.
Think God away and man has no ground of existence.”
A.W. Tozer
(Sandpiper in the surf / Grayton Beach State Park / Julie Cook / 2016)
I doubt that there has ever been a single person who,
at some point or another during the course of a life time,
has not pondered the reason for their existence.
Most likely for much of their lives, there are countless numbers of forlorn souls
who have grappled, nay continue to grapple, with this quandary…
…with the very profound depth of such a nagging question…
Longing for some semblance of direction…
Seeking and craving to know what it is that is to be done…
how shall they, how shall any of us, make their mark?
Yearning to know purpose and course…
For some the question and elusive answer is but a fleeting passing of slight discomfort…
However for others, it is a lifetime quest…
To make a difference.
To change the world.
To find one’s place
One’s calling
One’s destiny…
Yet imagine finding yourself in a hopeless situation…
In the midst of misery and death…as life is slowing and agonizingly ebbing away…
Imagine feeling defeated while knowing your very existence is in grave jeopardy.
You are plagued by torment, illness and and evil beyond comprehension…
Do you now shrug your shoulders and concede that all is lost?
As a sickening realization settles over you
that this is simply the destitute lot for which you now reside …
or…
Do you know without doubt or question that no matter the bleakest, darkest circumstance…
there still remains both purpose and reason…
But as the rest of the world grew stranger, one thing became increasingly clear.
And that was the reason the two of us were here.
Why others should suffer we were not shown.
As for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call,
our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope.
Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire,
we gathered about it, holding out our hearts to its warmth and light.
The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned
the word of God.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”
Corrie Ten Boom reflecting on her time in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp as
was written in her book The Hiding Place.
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