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

Humbling encounters

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
Henry David Thoreau

(a wee field sparrow visits the yard / Julie Cook / 2015)

It often borders on the spiritual. . .
Magical moments
Brief encounters
Hushed observations
It is when Nature is at her best with the local, and not so local, residents known as
Wildlife.

Most often times, these intimately captured moments and / or encounters
are much more sublime than wild.
These are the marvelous moments which. . .
soothe our nerves
slow us down
and wow our senses. . .
We take on the role of voyeur with our indirect interactions stealthily from afar.

To be so close, yet to go unnoticed as to allow “their” life to go on as it normally would, without our interruptions, our disturbances, our infringing, our alarming, our misguided desire to be closer than we should. . .
We see them as they are. . .
Free
Uninhibited
Reckless with abandon
Just simply happy to live
To eat
To fight
To play
To exist. . .
Uninhibited and unhindered. . . without our intervention and interaction—
Allowing those so fortunate a brief and tender taste of the Divine, just by merely being in close proximity.

We are humbled, being taken out of ourselves for but a brief moment.
Mesmerized
Content
Honored
Awed
We reconnect a part of ourselves to them.
A natural order seems to return to the world which otherwise is frustratingly spiraling out of our control.
There is a harmony and rhythmic accord which sweetly slips back into balance. . .
Which leaves us feeling forever grateful.

We may exhale and rest in the tiny window afforded us, a sneak peek into God’s masterful order
Be it quick,
Be it brief
Be it short lived
We regain our humanness
Our sense of wonder
Our decency. . .
For the quickly passing precious secret moments of observation, as well as for their presence in our lives, helps to make our existence happier, calmer, more joyous and seemingly better. . .

But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?
Job 12:7-9

Hallelujah

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”
― Pope John Paul II

(tiny redheaded woodpecker / Julie Cook / 2015)

And on this January day,
as the sun rose high into the crisp blue sky,
all of Nature could be heard rejoicing. . .

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

(female Flicker looking skyward / Julie Cook / 2015)

(female sparrow nibbling a branch / Julie Cook / 2015)

(both Peaches and a lizard enjoy a respite from the cold rains / Julie Cook / 2015)

(closeup of someone who should still be hibernating up on my sleeve / Julie Cook / 2015)

(small bed of moss / Julie Cook / 2015)

And as the beautiful sun settled downward in the distant western sky,
at the ending of this beautiful January day,
all of Nature could be heard whispering . . .

Amen, Amen, Amen

(Day is done as the sun sets in the western sky / Julie Cook / 2015)

The silent passing of life

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
― Ernest Hemingway

(small sparrow in the fountain outside of The Old North Church / Boston, Mass. / Julie Cook / 2014

“[S]he Is Not Dead

I cannot say, and I will not say
That [s]he is dead. [S]he is just away.
With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,
[S]he has wandered into an unknown land
And left us dreaming how very fair
It needs must be, since [s]he lingers there.
And you—oh you, who the wildest yearn
For an old-time step, and the glad return,
Think of him[her] faring on, as dear
In the love of There as the love of Here.
Think of him[her] still as the same. I say,
[S]he is not dead—[s]he is just away.”
― James Whitcomb Riley

Ann Alexander Cook
1928-2014

Vigilance

“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”
John Philpot Curran

The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man’s basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act – and if necessary, to suffer and die – for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied.
Haile Selassie

(sparrow / Savannah, Georgia / Julie Cook / 2014)

As I turn on the news each evening or peruse the electronic news feeds, I am constantly reminded, by the headlines of the day, of the perilous balance of liberties and freedoms–the same liberties and freedoms that we have grown blindly accustomed to. The freedoms that the Western World always seems to take for granted.

Our liberties, of which we merely assume are enjoyed around the world, those that are threatened on a daily basis, as the simple freedom of living is put to the test across the globe.
The freedom to worship.
The freedom to vote.
The freedom to choose an education—or not
The freedom to work as one wishes.
The freedom to live where one chooses.
The freedom to shop as one desires.
The freedom to dress as one pleases.
The freedom to travel openly.

All of which we take for granted—assuming to be our God given right.
We take as a given of simply being. . .
But oh how tenuous is the balance which the world hangs between. . .that of tyranny, oppression and death.

I do not propose that we of the “free world” are to be the police of the remainder of this world, nor are we to necessarily impose our form of belief upon others. . .but oh how I wish that those in this world, who continue to impose violence upon woman and children, those who impose death upon their fellow countrymen, those who wish death upon the innocents, or those who live to destroy our way of life, could / would understand that thuggery, death, violence, coercion, manipulation, torture, are not the answer.

May we be mindful to remain vigilant rather than rest in our complacency. . .