photobomb

Photobomb:
noun: photobomb;
plural noun: photobombs
a photograph that has been spoiled by the unexpected appearance of an unintended subject
in the camera’s field of view as the picture was taken.

(a piping plover inturrupted by a wandering gull / Julie Cook / 2020)

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life,
what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body,
what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns,
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,
will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’
or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father
knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Matthew 6:25-34

Simple, humble and pure…

“By reason of His immensity, God is present everywhere; but there are two places
where He dwells in a particular manner.
One is in the highest heavens, where He is present by that glory which He
communicates to the blessed; the other is on earth—within the humble soul that loves Him.”
St Alphonsus Liguori

(seagull and reflection/ Rosemary Beach, Fl /Julie Cook/ 2020)

“Furthermore, let us produce worthy fruits of penance.
Let us also love our neighbors as ourselves. Let us have charity and humility.
Let us give alms because these cleanse our souls from the stains of sin.
Men lose all the material things they leave behind them in this world,
but they carry with them the reward of their charity and the alms they give.
For these they will receive from the Lord the reward and recompense they deserve.
We must not be wise and prudent according to the flesh.
Rather we must be simple, humble and pure.
We should never desire to be over others.
Instead, we ought to be servants who are submissive to every human being for God’s sake.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on all who live in this way and persevere in it to the end.
He will permanently dwell in them. They will be the Father’s children who do his work.
They are the spouses, brothers, and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
St. Francis of Assisi, p. 333
An Excerpt From
Witness of the Saints

graces

“Three things are necessary to everyone:
truth of faith which brings understanding,
love of Christ which brings compassion,
and endurance of hope which brings perseverance.”
St. Bonaventure

(a gull prances in the surf / Julie Cook / 2019)

My Heart overflows with great mercy for souls, and especially for poor sinners.
If only they could understand that I am the best of Fathers to them and that
it is for them that the Blood and Water flowed from My Heart as from a fount overflowing with mercy.
For them I dwell in the tabernacle as King of Mercy.
I desire to bestow My graces upon souls, but they do not want to accept them.
You, at least, come to Me as often as possible and take these graces they do not want to accept.
In this way you will console My Heart.
Oh, how indifferent are souls to so much goodness, to so many proofs of love!
My Heart drinks only of the ingratitude and forgetfulness of souls living in the world.
They have time for everything, but they have no time to come to Me for graces.”
St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, p. 367
An Excerpt From
Diary of St. Faustina

drawn to God, He is waiting for you

“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

(gull / Rosemary Beeach, FL / Julie Cook)

“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

alas, life is now a living satire

Dennis: Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
King Arthur: Bloody peasant!
Dennis: Oh, what a giveaway!
Did you hear that?
Did you hear that, eh?
That’s what I’m on about!
Did you see him repressing me?
You saw him, didn’t you?
(lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

(Monty Python and the Holy Grail / the killer rabbit scene)

Way back in 1975 I can remember going to the theater to see a rather bizarre movie.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

At the time I was not up on my British comedies and was unfamiliar with Monty Python
let alone their often avant garde and most irreverent humor

As a young girl, I was always more serious than silly so the often blatant silly
comedic humor was lost on me as I found it just too…well, silly.

Having a keen interest in history…
which first started out with a love of history of heritage…
of which took me back to roots found buried deep in the soil of the British
and Irish Isles, coupled with my often vivid imagination…
well, I could envision myself mucking about with a metal detector trying to locate Excalibur, believing Arthur to have been once a living breathing king, I would then
be claiming that mythical sword in the name of some long lost relative.

So when I first watched Monty Python’s take on Arthur and the quest of the Holy Grail..
well I wasn’t sure how I felt about it or what to make of it.

But one thing was certain, I did develop a life long enjoyment from watching
John Cleese in action.

Yet what brought Monty Python to the forefront of thought today was not some fun or
amusing sketch I glanced while perusing the web but rather it came from the latest blog offering by the Scottish Pastor David Robertson.

Perhaps an odd coupling….

His most recent posting is actually an article written for Premiere Christianity
and is written in response to an article about a troubling incident where a church school there in the UK has deemed a Christian organization of being, well, too Christian to be
permitted in a church school.

And so here is where we que the insulting French knight who sadly is not showing up.

As in here is where the overt satire of the likes of Monty Python deviates to reality…
A sort of surrealism that just happens to be real….
In such that one just can’t make this kind of stuff up….
as in it is just so over the top and so so sad and so so troubling and ridiculous
all rolled into one, that one is left standing mouth agape.

A Christian group has been banned from a Church school because a few parents have complained that Christian teaching is extremist. Premier Christianity asked me to write a response – you can get the original here – (some of the comments afterwards from people who profess to be Christian are quite chilling – not least the two professing Christians arguing that to ask for a Christian group to be able to speak at a Christian school is intolerant, discriminatory and against the teaching of Jesus!)

As a retired educator this story certainly had my attention.
Now whereas I spent my career in the often anemic sector of public education that
basks in its secularization and the separation of church and state–
so much so that there are districts who have told their educators that they may not
have a Bible in the classroom but an Islamic prayer rug is ok….
if that makes any sense….
so I understand the raised eyebrows over religious groups coming in
to address the students….
But when an actual church school claims a Christian organization is just too Christian..
well we’ve got bigger troubles then I ever imagined…

3) There is a patronising and dangerous ideology that is being used to teach our children.

Education used to be about teaching children how to think. Now it is about teaching them what to think. And nothing must be allowed to deviate from that. Instead of education our schools are being turned into centres of social engineering where the secular Brave New World is indoctrinated into our children. Our children are being taught that marriage has nothing to do with gender. And now they are being taught Queer theory; that gender either doesn’t exist, or has nothing to do with biology, or is ‘fluid’. Now there’s a really harmful and dangerous ideology!

And the good Pastor goes on to then offer the following points…
(you’ll have to click the link below in order to read the commentary for
each of the points)

4) Those of us who warned that the introduction of Same Sex Marriage would quickly move from being a permissive to being a prohibitive decree have been proven right.

5) The Church only has itself to blame –

Jesus wept.

Christ wept over Jerusalem.
We must weep at the insanity that is gripping the UK, *[and might I add the US]
of which this incident is only the tip of the iceberg.
Christ’s sternest warning was for those who would harm any of “these little ones”.
Maybe its time for the Church to reflect the priorities of the Christ who said
“let the little children come to me,
and do not forbid them”?
Maybe for the sake of the children we should come out of our own comfort
zones and challenge the new State-imposed fundamentalist doctrines that
cause so much harm. If we are to be accused of extremism,
then let’s make sure that it is the kind of extreme and courageous love
that Jesus showed.
Whatever the cost.

* my little input

So just when we thought the likes of Monty Python to be just a mere comedic group
of both stage and theater, we see that they are actually becoming quite real…
quite real indeed….

Now teaching Christian doctrine at a church school is ‘extremist’. Move over Monty Python.

You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!…
You are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful,
but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.
Matt. 23:24, 27

A time of force verses a time of reason

“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

one day

There is only one day left, always starting over:
it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.
Jean-Paul Sartre

One day, while you’re out and about simply minding you’re own business…

(pigeon waddling on the beach / Rosemary Beach / Julie Cook / 2017)

As you’re merely caught up in the day to day business of living life while
pecking out an existence…

(a flock of plovers / Rosemary beach / Julie Cook / 2017)

Yet without hardly noticing, life begins to grow a bit dark as things
just seem to grow harder and harder…

(sparrow / Rosemary Beach / Julie Cook / 2017)

Suddenly one day, and very much out of the blue, you find that you’ve face planted…
falling helplessly into the sands of life…
and you realize you’ve all but given up the ghost…

(a dead loon / Rosemary Beach / Julie Cook / 2017)

The situation, having grown dire, hinges on just a matter of time…
For it is now or never…
Either you get up and get going, flying the coop….
or you succumb to the shifting sands…

(seagull /Rosemary Beach / Julie Cook / 2017)

And yet it is within the change in scenery…
that you slowly and most assuredly begin to find the solace,
along with the long sought healing,
all within the rhythmic motion of the tide…

(brown pelican / Rosemary Beach / Julie Cook / 2017)

and finding your happy place…
you begin to feel a bit more like your old self…

(yours truly / happy in the chilly gulf surf / Rosemary Beach / Julie Cook / 2017)

He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 147:3

a perspective

“We pay more attention to dying than to death.
We’re more concerned to get over the act of dying than to overcome death…”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(a gull takes flight at the onset of a wave / Santa Rosa Beach, Fl / Julie Cook / 2016)

The past two weeks or so have felt like an all out assault.
On all fronts.
With both Dad and me, each dealing with all sorts of issues, stuck in the middle…
All the while I’m finding myself dealing more with Dad’s issues than Dad…
such is the lot that befalls one’s power of attorney and one’s legal healthcare advocate.

The irony is not lost that there was a time that he was all of that for me, his only daughter.

Hard issues, with hard conversations.

We went yesterday to see his primary care physician…
to have one of those hard discussions…and to get his flu shot.

When we got there, Dad’s blood pressure had bottomed out.
They took it three times…with him sitting, then standing…with help, then sitting again.

An immediate IV of fluids was ordered.

While Dad and the nurse were dealing with which vein might work,
as each attempted vein kept collapsing,
the doctor and I had one of two hard conversations of the day.

We went over the notes from last week’s visit to the radiologist, the one dad keeps
calling a screwball. The radiologist had sent Dad’s doctor his recommendation…
The hard 7 weeks of daily radiation treatments.

We talked— as we both pretty much reiterated earlier thoughts and our own takes on
the situation.
An eloquent perspective of living and dying I suppose….

I explained that, how the day following the initial visit last week and dad’s willy nilly
panic of impending death, once Dad had had a chance to think about it all…
that his desire to “do nothing” was met with a peace in my soul.

Not because I felt relief that I wouldn’t have to make the final call…
only to live with the guilt of was it or wasn’t it the right call…
and not that I’d no longer be taking him here, there and yon…
watching what 7 weeks of daily treatment would do to his already frail state,
but rather because there was simply a peace in the
midst of the madness that Dad seemed resolute.

At first I too shared that sense of impending disaster…
as I panicked wondering how I would manage two months of commuting and
transporting a heavy wheelchair and a sick man…
all with my own bad back and pinched nerves,
watching a man who would only be getting sicker daily with treatments…
treatments that would not cure, but only hopefully slow the inevitable.
Knowing I would be watching what would be a losing battle with only poor results.

After our conversation, the doctor then went into the the exam room…
with poor ol Dad flat on his back, hooked up like a car filling up…
where he proceeded to put it all out there for Dad.

Very frank and very honest.

What would most likely happen if treatment was sought…
What would most likely happen if no treatment was sought…
Both grim…
with neither being a victory.

But all rather an issue of quality.

He spoke of maintenance and dealing with things as they came.
Failing bodily functions…
And eventually that of pain, real, unrelenting pain.
He spoke of Hospice.

Dad listened….
and asked a few questions.

Why radiation verses chemo?
What would each most likely do to him?
What would the doctor himself recommend?

And finally being in agreement…

Life is ok right now…
so we do nothing…

And the doctor told him that when things begin to “change”
as we all know things will indeed change….
there will be conservative treatments of getting through…day by day…
all of which will suffice for now…

As we are scheduled to meet with the Hospice folks soon enough…

So it was not lost on me this morning when I just so happened upon this observation
of dying and death by Dietrich Bonhoeffer…
I’ve seen the quote before, and even used it a while back…but how timely it should find me
again…now…

Bonhoeffer was a man all too familiar with death and dying as he faced his own death
by hanging in a Nazi Death Camp….
He looked beyond his own dying…
and rather to the fact that his death
would give way to the release of joining the Resurrection of Christ,
The very one who overcame death…forever

As this is all a matter of perspective—dying and living…

Socrates masterd the art of dying; Christ overcame death as the last enemy.
There is a real difference between the two things; the one is with the scope of human possibilities, the other means resurrection. It’s not from ars mourned, the art of dying, but from the resurrection of Christ, that a new and purifying wind can blow through our present world. Here is the answer to Archimedes’ challenge: “Give me somewhere to stand, and I will move the earth.” If only a few people really believed that and acted on it in their daily lives, a great deal world be changed.
To live in the light of resurrection–that is what Easter means.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Don’t let your eyes fool you

“It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that
by which we have even once been deceived.”
― René Descartes

(a gull catches a fish that proves a bit too large, prompting the other gulls to come steal his catch/
Santa Rosa Beach, Fl / Julie Cook / 2016)

When I was younger, my mother would always warn, “don’t let your eyes fool you”…
Meaning, as well as being very similar to the notion of not biting off more than you can chew…
that our eyes may deceive us—that just because we see it, doesn’t always mean we need it…
or even particularly want it…

This admonishment would often come when we would visit
a buffet style type of restaurant or reception…
As I would spy all those wonderfully prepared dishes…
just sitting there…simmering, succulent, steaming and savory…
practically begging for me to stop and partake…
The enticing scents wafting toward my hungry nose and eyes, drawing me ever closer…

I would politely ask for a little of this and a little of that…
dish after dish after dish—
with mother knowing all too well that as my plate grew, my stomach would not…
I’d eat maybe half of it and lament that I was suddenly too full to finish…
In turn being shamefully wasteful, as I was overcome by merely hungry eyes,
a hunger of vision verses true hunger and need of body….

In this land of the plenty, we tend to see things a bit skewed..
Always larger than life,
with all things being shiny,
wonderful,
and alluring

Prompting us to want to quickly snatch things right up…right then and there,
all before anyone else can get their hands on it…
Whatever ‘it’ may be…
Which in turn can often get us into some sort of trouble…

Remember… more often than not…
our eyes, and even our insatiable appetites, are more often then not,
bigger than our needs or wants…
do not be deceived by the hype, the glitz, the beguiling scents and sights…

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

Battles and busy as a….

“Never be so busy as not to think of others.”
Mother Teresa

“Live not for Battles Won.
Live not for The-End-of-the-Song.
Live in the along.”
Gwendolyn Brooks

(a lone seagul, Kinsale Harbor, Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

You thought I was going to say a bee…or maybe even a beaver…
As in busy as a typical busy sort of creature…
but there’s just something about this rather forlorn looking seagull which seems to sum up the current
state of affairs.

Busy times…
Crazy times…
Surreal times…
have been beset upon me and my brood…

It is during the overwhelming and consuming moments in our lives…those most trying times which seem hell bent on sucking the very life out of our beings…
that I am blessedly reminded of the wise counsel of St Padre Pio…the mystic Capuchin monk from Pietrelcina, Italy…

“Jesus is with you even when you don’t feel His presence.
He is never so close to you as He is during your spiritual battles.
He is always there, close to you, encouraging you to fight your battle courageously.
He is there to ward off the enemy’s blows so that you may not be hurt.”
(8/15/1914)

So it is off this Monday to the battle grounds…

May we all fight courageously…