inviting yet locked

“By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision
to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path
toward a spiritual life.”
Thomas More

As polarized as we have been,
we Americans are locked in a cultural war for the soul of our country.
Pat Buchanan

(an inviting, yet closed and obviously shuttered, secluded entrance way /
Rosemary Beach, Fl / Julie Cook / 2017)

(since we were speaking of journeys yesterday, I thought this other archived
post from 2017 would be another nice addition—please enjoy)

There is a lovely Orthodox Christian blog that I follow…
Where I often find the most beautiful wisdom presented in the simplest of fashions.
This morning was no exception.

https://thoughtsintrusive.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/what-does-charismatic-despair-mean/

When I first read this morning’s posting’s title, with words such as Charismatic and despair…words that at first glance appear to be polar opposites of one another,
I wasn’t prepared to find both a sweet reminder as well as an embracing
comfort all rolled into one.

I am reminded that as we each journey through this thing we call life,
we will each inevitably encounter times of great frustration, difficulty…
even overwhelming sorrow.

We will come to those places along on our walk where we find our pathway blocked
with various doorways—
those apparent entrances beckoning us to continue forward,
yet each shuttered and locked tight.
There will be no obvious alternate path allowing for us
to continue onward, proceeding freely and unhindered.
Only locked doors.

It is at such a juncture on this path, where we are met by
both doubt and despair.

Choice suddenly appears limited or even nonexistent.
Knowing we can’t progress forward and that we certainly
can’t turn around,
going back from whence we came…for too much time has passed for turn arounds,
we are stymied. A rushing fear washes over us as we realize that we have
no other options, no choices.

And this is where we must look not obviously outward from ourselves
seeking our answers,
but rather we must look inward…traveling deeply within ourselves.

For it is in this very moment of inward verses outward, of how we will decide
to interact with the obstacles and locked doors,
which will eventually decide how we continue forward on our journey.

And so it is here, tucked gently away in this morning’s reading of simple words,
words offered by a simple monk, where we are gently yet profoundly reminded that
in our apparent despair, we are driven not by the seemingly overwhelmingness
of that very despair and its accompanying frustration,
but rather we are driven by the divine interventions of the Spirit..
.
He who urges us, without our even being aware, to seek the only One who has
the key to unlocking those shattered doors, allowing for us to continue forward
on this odd little journey of ours.

It begins with a frustration or a pain or a sorrow and it ends with
an imploring prayer…

(the wisdom of Archimandrite Zacharias of Essex from the book
Remember Thy First Love)

Rest for the weary

The scorched land will become a pool
And the thirsty ground springs of water;
In the haunt of jackals, its resting place,
Grass becomes reeds and rushes.
Isaiah 35:7

(Dried thistle along the banks of the Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

(***since the Mayor and Sheriff are here for the Trick or treat weekend…
I opted to seek out a post from 2015—from the wisdom found on the road in Ireland–
thank you always Paul!!)

I was weary…
dry and brittle of body, heart and soul…
Yet you Oh Lord have heard me in my distress.
You have seen to my weariness…
to the dryness and brittle spirit which as clung to me like an ashen paste.
You have refreshed and soothed a parched and thirsty heart

(the wild Atlantic somewhere along the Dingle Peninsula / County Kerry, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

You have attended to a wounded soul…
My offering to you is a simple thankfulness that reaches to the depths of the sea,
and the width of an endless sky…

(somewhere along the road in County Donegal, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

“And the Lord will continually guide you,
And satisfy your desire in scorched places,
And give strength to your bones;
And you will be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”
Isaiah 58:11

The Spirit of God rather than your own…

“Do not be anxious: go straight on, forgetful of self,
letting the spirit of God act instead of your own.”
St. Julie Billiart

(magnolia /Julie Cook / 2021)

(soon to be sunflower/ Julie Cook / 2021)

“As St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to
remain children in intelligence: on the contrary.
He told us to be not only ‘as harmless as doves’,
but also ‘as wise as serpents’.
He wants a child’s heart, but a grown-up’s head.
He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate,
and teachable, as good children are;
but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job,
and in first-class fighting trim.”
C.S. Lewis, p. 77
An Excerpt From
Mere Christianity

Got our work cut out for us…

“I am sent not only to love God but to make Him loved.
It is not enough for me to love God, if my neighbor does not love Him.”
St. Vincent de Paul

(Black swallowtail butterfly / Julie Cook / 2020)

“Even though we know that God’s will and commandments apply to everyone,
we do not always have the strength to fulfill them.
Now, every time we respond faithfully to a motion of the Spirit,
out of desire to be docile to what God expects of us,
even if it’s something almost insignificant of itself,
that faithfulness draws grace and strength down on us.
That strength can then be applied to other areas and may make us capable of one day
practicing the commandments that up until then we had not been capable
of fulfilling entirely.”
Fr. Jacques Philippe, p. 20
An Excerpt From
In the School of the Holy Spirit

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

Questions and the spirit of God

“We should strive to keep our hearts open to the sufferings and wretchedness
of other people, and pray continually that God may grant us that spirit
of compassion which is truly the spirit of God.”
St. Vincent de Paul

(The Sheriff slumbers / Julie Cook / 2019)

(The Mayor profiling / Julie Cok / 2019)

Firstly…The picture of the Sheriff above is when his parents bring him to me before they
leave for work.
This is a pre-sickness shot.

I will usually put him in my bed and let him wake on his own time since this week he
was free from the dreaded daycare while in recovery mode.

So after visiting the Pediatrician yesterday, it appears that the Sheriff has basically
the croupy crud—
of which she believes he got when he went to the hospital on Friday for surgery.

Don’t you love going to a hospital well, relatively, and coming out like Typhoid Mary?

There’s not much to do but wait it out.
And that’s hard when it comes to babies.

When they are miserable and we, those entrusted with their care and well being,
are helpless to make things all better, we grow anxious,
worried and agitated…and quite miserable ourselves.

Moments, such as feeling helpless while watching the innocent suffer,
most often envoke a bit of ire with our Creator—if not sheer anger.
In other words, we get mad at God.

We get mad over all sorts of things but when it comes to watching our little loved ones suffer,
things can get out of hand frighteningly fast.

I know I felt it when our son was a baby and was sick and had surgery at 3 months.
Just as I know my son and daughter-n-law feel much the same now with the Sheriff…
as well as with the Mayor.

Throw in exhaustion as you sit holding a baby who can’t breathe, and coughs nearly continuously,
upright all night…
and you, my friend, have a toxic breeding ground for damaging negative emotions…
Of which set up a hard barrier between our Heavenly Father and ourselves.

It is at such moments when we lose the blessings He wants to offer because we
have essentially turned our backs.

And so after reading the day’s two quotes, I found them rather appropriate for just those
very moments…the moments when we find ourselves questioning what we don’t know or
understand regarding our God…which mind you can be so very vast.
But it is at such times that we must cling to what we do know.

Questions are always fine…but questions mixed with anger and resentment are spiritually
debilitating.

May we continue, as children, to learn trust while reaching our hand out to a loving Father who
longs to hold that outstretched hand.

(silly faces before we both got sick / Julie Cook / 2019)

“When uncertain about God’s will, it is very important that we tell ourselves:
‘Even if there are aspects of God’s will that escape me, there are always others that
I know for sure and can invest in without any risk, knowing that this investment always pays dividends.’
These certainties include fulfilling the duties of our state in life and practicing the
essential points of every Christian vocation.
There is a defect here that needs to be recognized and avoided: finding ourselves in darkness
about God’s will on an important question…
we spend so much time searching and doubting or getting discouraged,
that we neglect things that are God’s will for us every day, like being faithful to prayer,
maintaining trust in God, loving the people around us here and now.
Lacking answers about the future, we should prepare to receive them by living today to the full.”
Fr. Jacques Philippe, p. 55
An Excerpt From
Interior Freedom

“wash your spirit clean”

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in a while,
and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
John Muir

(a close up of a persimmon / Julie Cook / 2019)

Every now and then, we all need to go take a walk in the woods.

Walking away from the crowds, the city, the traffic, the noise, the stress…
Sometimes we even need to take a brief walk away from life…
and the best place to go to…is to the woods.

Allowing ourselves to marvel in the tiniest details of the Master’s hand…

(a small fallen dogwood seed / Julie Cook/ 2019)

(the last blooming “weeds” /Julie Cook / 2019)

(a lovely shelf fungus / Julie Cook / 2019)

(deer moss /Julie Cook / 2019)

(more deer moss / Julie Cook / 2019)

(hidden shelf fungus / Julie Cook / 2019)

(a fallen acorn / Julie Cook / 2019)

“I will make a covenant of peace with them and eliminate harmful beasts from the land
so that they may live securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods.
Ezekiel 34:25

“the ocean of God’s infinite vision”

“Consider God’s charity.
Where else have we ever seen someone who has been offended voluntarily paying out
his life for those who have offended him?”
St. Catherine of Siena

(A pack of plentiful piping plovers /Rosemary Beach, Fl / Julie Cook /2019)

In every contemplation, this double movement occurs:
the longing for God is fulfilled and at the same time enlarged to more consuming longing.
Any word of the Lord is sufficient to kindle in us this fire.
And this fire is the form in which human contemplation hands itself over to the Lord’s contemplation;
the small vision pours itself out into the ocean of God’s infinite vision.
Adrienne von Speyr
from Water and Spirit

The Spirit and the Soul

“O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart.
Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.”
St. Augustine

(the light coming in to a room at the old Cable home place at Cades Cove complete with rat hole/
Julie Cook / 2018)

“The strength of the soul consists in its faculties, passions and desires,
all of which are governed by the will.
Now when these faculties, passions and desires are directed by the will toward God,
and turned away from all that is not God, then the strength of the soul is kept for God,
and thus the soul is able to love God with all its strength.”
— St. John of the Cross, p. 259
An Excerpt From
Ascent of Mt. Carmel

coincidence or Spirit…

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self.
It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome,
we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit,
that it is God, the indivisible.
And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world,
yet undisturbed by its multiplicity,
for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
Hermann Hesse

One year ago yesterday on March 19th, my dad lost his battle with cancer.
At the time, the last thing I was thinking about was what all was going on around me
let alone the significance of dates on a calendar.
I was just doing good by planning a funeral and dealing with the remnants of a lost life…

I was simply oblivious to everything else.

Moments of such loss tend to do that to us…

We freeze as if caught in a glitch of both space and time…
we’re standing still but the world, and everything else around us is still
spinning and moving.

This year as March 19th arrived on the calendar, with me marking both it’s coming and going
with a bit of inward melancholy, I couldn’t help but notice that throughout the entire day
I had been subtly reminded that March 19th was not just a day marking a sad milestone in my
small corner of the world, it also just so happened to be the day that the Church remembers
St Joseph…the earthly father of Jesus.
As in the feast day of St. Joseph

As in a ‘dad’ sort of day.

And like I’ve said before, I’m not one for the notion of coincidence as I am more about the moving
of the Spirit. Because with God, there is no such thing as coincidence…
just the guidance offered by the third member of the Trinity.

And so as I found myself fondly remembering my own dad, the man who adopted me when I was but
a few months old, for both good and bad, who stood watch over me most of my life while that role
was reversed during the last 5 years of his life…
I now recall the one who stood watch over a growing God made man-child …
a boy who needed the perfect earthly father to guide him as He prepared to lead us all
to our own Salvation…

So whereas I was feeling glum as I moved throughout my day, I found my thoughts being gently
teased outward as I have been reminded that God is always greater, ever mindful and deeply full
of thought for each and every one of us in our ups as well as downs…
no detail is too small, no event too insignificant that He is not everpresent.