regardless

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding,
disbelief or ignorance.

W. Clement Stone

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless
of the temperature of the heart.

Corrie Ten Boom


(tulips abound / Julie Cook / 2023)

Despite today’s current very cold dreary rain, Spring continues to come regardless…
Despite the dire hurdles we face as mortal Christians, Christ comes regardless!!
Alleluia…

Christ God, awe-inspiring name, vision of majesty,
inscrutable image of sublimity, infinite force,
model of the light of salvation, defender of life,
gate to the kingdom of heavenly rest,
path of tranquility,
refuge of renewal that ends sadness,
almighty sovereign of all being,
call to blessing,
voice of good news,
proclamation of bliss,
salve of immortality,
indescribable son of the one and only God.
What is impossible for me is easy for you.
What is beyond my reach was put there by you.
What is inaccessible for me is close to you.
What is hidden from me in my fallen state
is within view for your beatitude.
What is impossible for me is done by you.
What is incalculable for me is already tallied by you, who are beyond telling.
What is despair for me is consoling for you.
What is incurable for me is harmless for you.
What is sighing for me is rejoicing for you.
What is heavy for me is light for you.
What effaces me is written for your power.
What is lost for me is conquered for you.
What is inexpressible for me is comprehensible for you.
What is gloom for me is radiance for you.
What is infinite for me you hold in the palm of your blessed hand.
What is somber for me is refreshing for you.
What sets me to flight, you withstand.
What holds me in check, you handily turn back.
What is fatal for me is nothing before your
almighty essence.

St. Grigor Narekatsi
Prayer 57 A
from the book:
Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart

the hows and the whys…

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding,
disbelief or ignorance.

W. Clement Stone

rscn4568
(wildflower / Julie Cook / 2016)

Look at this amazing tiny wildflower…
it grows wild along the edge of the woods.

Looking at it closely, it really is amazing isn’t it?

The coloring…
those tiny magenta like spots demurely dotting a milky center…
along with those soft yellow streaks…
offered by what seems to be the errant brush stroke of an artist’s paint.

Those fine tiny little fuzzy hairs,
surrounding each gentle and tender petal…
ready and waiting to tickle the foot of any visiting bee….

Absolutely amazing…

Such attention to detail…

A microcosm of beauty that sits for no one in particular,
randomly along the edge of the woods….
Except say for the birds, the deer, the coyotes, the armadillos…
and chances are, it is only the bees that pay it any heed…

A delightful detail to be marveled over.
A sheer tiny portent of beauty….
offered freely to any passerby to gleefully behold…

Yet I do not see such a tiny marvel as mere happenstance.
I do not find it to be some random mix of atoms that swirled together
over the eons, then popped out as this flower…

I do not look upon anything on this earth as mere happenstance…
the oceans and all that they harbor and hold…
the sky with it’s endless cosmic delights…
the earth be it verdant growth or sandy dunes…
Nothing has happened without the knowledge of the Creator…

But…
there are many who would beg to differ.
There are those who will cry foul over such thoughts…
Those who will fight ardently, tooth and nail, to wipe away any such notion…
because for them, that’s all that such is…
mere notions of the uneducated, the simple, the naive and the misinformed…

So when I hear all of this up and arms wailing and gnashing of teeth over all
of this impending election mess of ours….
as in an exclamation point and question mark screaming after the statement…

THE CHOICE IS JUST THESE TWO CANDIDATES?????!!!!!!!

As in…
That’s it??????
That’s all we’ve got??

The anguished lamenting that is currently taking place over the fact that
out of the hundreds of millions of legal Americans,
not counting our illegal population,
we are left wondering how it came down…
to these particular two????!!!!

Down to a woman who has quite the checkered past…
Do you remember White Water???

A woman who was in charge of the this nation’s top security yet continues
to claim “no recollection” as to how that e-mail businesses got so messed up…
A woman who’s job it was to defend and protect our National security interests
around this globe yet chose to willfully ignore the continued pleas for help
by a United States ambassador…

A woman who now has blood on her hands…

Never mind she is married to the man who helped to usher in this ‘no holds bar’
lack of decorum, dare we say morality, in our press…
let alone in our highest ranking office in this nation…
as we disgustingly recall that infamous little red dress…

And there was that famous presidential address to the Nation…
you remember the one…the one in which that famously ridiculous lie was uttered
to both you and I…
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman…”
Only to come to find out that, well whoops, he did…

And then there’s the other of the two…
the fellow with the equally checkered past…
Lest we remember each and every wife, gaffe, boast, profane and vile remark…
A man who has made millions by always putting himself and his interests first…
Remember “it’s not personal, it’s just business”
cold, callous and calculating…

A man who has treated his fellow man and woman as less than and as mere objects…
A man who’s line, “you’re fired” has became a common household phrase…
as he can cut ties faster than we can bat any eye….

So yes, it is sadly, oddly, bizarrely down to these two,
out of all of the millions who could have been…
we’re stuck with these two….

So I’m of the thought that this is what happens when the Divine is removed from life.
When the Miraculous is coldly cast aside…
When He who is Greater than is cheaply rendered less than by the mere created?
When the Word of God is rewritten, ignored and replaced…
When we have decided that we are more important than everything and anyone else…
and that we obviously don’t need nor want God in our lives….

So should we really wonder how or why we’ve gotten into this mess…?

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” …
Hebrews10:26-31