hidden treasures in the middle of nowhere

“That’s the place to get to—nowhere.
One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.”
D.H. Lawrence

“Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.”
William Goldman, The Princess Bride

(all pics from the middle of nowhere west Ga / Julie Cook / 2021)

Yesterday, I wrote a post, while offering a picture that I had labeled  “in the middle
of nowhere Georgia…
Karla over on Flannel in Faith (https://flannelwithfaith.com)
commented that she loved my “middle of nowhere” caption for the
photo used in the post…of which started me thinking…

Thinking that yes, I often need to go to ‘nowhere’ in order to find myself.
So here are a few of the hidden treasures I found while losing myself in the
middle of nowhere while looking for where I needed to be…

(****all pics from the middle of nowhere west GA , Julie Cook / 2021)

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord,
plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29:11

A few lovely thoughts

“We find rest in those we love, and we provide a
resting place for those who love us.”
St. Bernard of Clairvaux

(Glendalough / Co. Wicklow / Julie Cook 2015)

“And I saw that truly nothing happens by accident or luck,
but everything by God’s wise providence …
for matters that have been in God’s foreseeing wisdom,
since before time began, befall us suddenly,
all unawares; and so in our blindness and ignorance we say
that this is accident or luck,
but to our Lord God it is not so.”
St. Julian of Norwich

Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.
Henry Van Dyke

Faith makes all things possible…
love makes all things easy.
Dwight L. Moody

“Love,” said Meister Eckhart, “is the will to, the intention.”
By that definition,
it is possible to obey the divine command to love our neighbor.
We may not in a thousand years be able to feel a surge of emotion
toward certain “neighbors,”
but we can go before God and solemnly will to love them,
and the love will come.
By prayer and an application of the inworking power of God,
we may set our faces to will the good of our neighbor and
not his evil all the days of our lives, and that is love.
The emotion may follow,
or there may be no appreciable change in our feelings toward him,
but the intention is what matters.
We will his peace and prosperity and put ourselves at his disposal
to help him in every way possible, even to the laying down of
our lives for his sake. Love, then,
is a principle of good will and is to a large extent under our control.
That it can be fanned into a blazing fire is not denied here.
Certainly God’s love for us has a mighty charge of feeling in it,
but beneath it all is a set principle that wills our peace.
Probably the love of God for mankind was never more beautifully
stated than by the angel at the birth of Christ:
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to man on
whom his favor rests.”
A. W. Tozer
Agape

Weird things happen

“That proves you are unusual,” returned the Scarecrow;
“and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration
in this world are the unusual ones. For the common
folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.”
L. Frank Baum, The Land of Oz

(a fallen persimmon / Julie Cook / 2021)

Yesterday I thought I had an entire post dedicated to my trappings through the woods
while sharing my excitement over knowing fall was soon at hand because of all
the persimmons I found ripening on the trees….

I thought I had written that we all knew it’s getting to be fall when I was out
spotting persimmons.
I also thought I had written about how we just needed to forget about life’s madness
for just a bit while we simply enjoyed a brief respite out of doors,
albeit for just a minute or two.

I had a bunch of different pictures of persimmons that I’d uploaded to the post
that I wanted to share.

And so this morning, just like every morning, I grabbed my phone since
I use my WP app in order to publish my posts as I grab my coffee,
and so I thought after it showed “published” I was good to go.

It wasn’t until I finally sat down this afternoon
(yesterday if you’re reading this today) and pulled up the blog that I
saw the bulk of the post was MIA.

Huh?
The post looking at me was not the post I last saw last night…
Not the post that I had saved in order to publish the following day.
It was woefully incomplete…
Where’d what I’d written and uploaded go??

Well, who the heck knows.
So ode to the WP gremlins.

And so today, I had decided that I wanted to write a scathing post
about what our past great military brass—leaders such as Washington,
Grant, Nimitz, Bradley, Pershing, Patton, McArthur, Eisenhower,
Powell, and even ‘Stormen’ Norman…what would these men who were tried
in the fires of the horrors of war think?…
What would these men think about the likes of what we’re
stuck with today????—
Stuck with a set of currently woke, painfully politically correct,
inept, blind and deaf, treasonous military leaders???!!!!

Can anyone say following the correct chain of command?
Can anyone say court-martial???
Can anyone say treason???
Can anyone say sleeping with the enemy??

So instead of that needed post…we’ll just go back to persimmons.

Persimmons harken to a gentler life…
No treason found thankfully in a persimmon.

(***all images are various ripening persimmons/ Julie Cook / 2021)

On the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
Psalm 145:5

a needed day in the woods–following the traces–the lowest, not the highest

“I ask you to consider that our Lord Jesus Christ is your true head and that
you are a member of his body.
He belongs to you as the head belongs to the body.
All that is his is yours: breath, heart, body, soul and all his faculties.
All of these you must use as if they belonged to you,
so that in serving him you may give him praise, love and glory.”
St. John Eudes

(fungi continue to sprout /Julie Cook / 2020)

“Since Jesus has gone to Heaven now,
I can only follow the traces He has left behind.
But how bright these traces are! How fragrant and divine!
I have only to glance at the Gospels;
at once this fragrance from the life of Jesus reaches me,
and I know which way to run:
to the lowest, not the highest place!”
St. Therese of Lisieux, p. 153-4
An Excerpt From
Story of a Soul

When in the woods, especially this time of year with falling leaves and treasures hidden underfoot,
I have learned to look for the lowest secrets rather than those of the highest and most soaring wonders.
I give thanks for being able to spend time in God’s creation!

Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!
Psalm 33:8

without measure

“The true measure of loving God is to love Him without measure.”
St. Bernard of Clairvaux

(a spent mushroom in the depths of the woods / Julie Cook / 2020)

“The Spirit of God teaches us how we can live our faith with great generosity of spirit.
There is a vertical dimension to our faith (praising and worshiping God),
but there is also a horizontal dimension to our faith in which we show our love to
our sisters and brothers, God’s beloved children.”
Rev. Jude Winkler, p. 8
An Excerpt From
Daily Meditations Holy Spirit

To the place where God is hidden

“Faith and love are like the blind man’s guides.
They will lead you along a path unknown to you,
to the place where God is hidden.”
St. John of the Cross

(mushrooms found along my walk in the woods / Julie Cook / 2020)

The point is simply that without God’s grace we cannot be good.
Without love, justice turns to cruelty.
Without hope, courage turns to blind despair.
Without faith, this-worldly wisdom is foolishness to God.
The two levels, natural and supernatural, hang together.
Peter Kreeft
from Back to Virtue

‘patches of Godlight’

“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could
never get from reading books on astronomy.
These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’
in the woods of our experience.”
C.S. Lewis

(shelf fungus oddly existing on the dry red dirt of Georgia / Julie Cook / 2020)

I think we need to go to the woods.
Why?
Because we need a diversion from ourselves.

I am oh so weary from the vitriol and hatred that is eclipsing our senses.

We need to be reminded that we are truly small and that there is a world out there that is
actually much greater than ourselves.

We actually need to be put back in the food chain in order to grasp
the bigger picture—-
however sadly, we tend to run in the realm of human predation…so what can I say.

Let’s get out of our cities, our lockdowns, our narrowmindedness.
Let’s get out from under the bickering and hatred racing around our lives.
Let’s go to the woods…

But before we actually get into the woods, we’ve got to park the truck.
We’ve got to start walking…
and here’s what we see before we even get into the woods…

We see a lone downy turkey feather covered in the morning dew…

(turkey feather covered in dew / Julie Cook / 2020)

(detail of turkey feather covered in dew / Julie Cook / 2020)

Before we venture much further, before we leave the rutted red dusty path and diverge
into the thick stand of trees and vines, we see a carpet of dew-covered netted webs…

(a spider web covered in the dew / Julie Cook / 2020)

(detail of dew covering a spider web/ Julie Cook / 2020)

More tomorrow when we finally venture readily and willingly deep into another world…

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9

ask

“When one has nothing more to lose, the heart is inaccessible to fear.”
St. Théodore Guérin

(an odd place for a road sign / Julie Cook / 20202)

We were out walking a property line over the weekend, in the middle of the woods
in the middle of nowhere.

We found an old logging road so we headed down the clearing rather than creeping
our way through the thick bramble and new growth woods.

The logging road bordered an old-growth forest and a clear cut on the opposite side.
We walked down the road a bit further before being stopped abruptly by a deep flowing creek.
There was no bridge but we could see that the old road continued on the other side.

However, it was obvious there was no way to cross.
Not unless we opted to slip down a wet muddy slope while attempting to ford a deep flowing creek
then pull ourselves up on the other slippery slope—
needless to say, we opted to turn around…

And that’s when I saw it.

There in the middle of these woods, in the middle of nowhere, was a sign.
To be fair, there was a posted sign tacked to a tree,
but it was the road sign that had me most intrigued.

It was a beat-up old road sign propped up against a tree.
A curve in the road sign.
A skewed curve sign, but a curve sign none the less.
A warning to drivers that a curve was up ahead.

Yet here, deep in the woods, where there was no road per se, no curve, there was indeed a sign.

Obviously, for good or bad, there had been others here long before we showed up.

“In the spiritual life there are two great principles which should never be forgotten:
Without grace we can do nothing; with it we can do all things.
Sometimes it anticipates our desires; ordinarily, God waits till we ask for it.
This is a general law thus expressed by Our Lord: ‘Ask, and it shall be given to you.’
Prayer is, therefore, not only a precept, it is a necessity.
God places the treasure of His graces at our disposal, and its key is prayer.
You desire more faith, more hope, more love; ‘ask, and it shall be given to you.’
Your good resolutions remain sterile, resulting always in the same failures:
‘ask, and it shall be given to you’.
Precepts are numerous, virtue painful, temptation seductive, the enemy ruthless,
the will weak: ‘ask, and it shall be given to you.'”
Rev. Dom Vitalis Lehodey p. xv
An Excerpt From
The Ways of Mental Prayer

wonder upon wonder

“If you become Christ’s you will stumble upon wonder upon wonder,
and every one of them true.”
St. Brendan of Birr

(the vegatation on the forest floor / Julie Cook / 2020)

“Undertake courageously great tasks for God’s glory,
to the extent that he’ll give you power and grace for this purpose.
Even though you can do nothing on your own, you can do all things in him.
His help will never fail you if you have confidence in his goodness.
Place your entire physical and spiritual welfare in his hands.
Abandon to the fatherly concern of his divine providence every care for your health,
reputation, property, and business; for those near to you; for your past sins;
for your soul’s progress in virtue and love of him; for your life, death,
and especially your salvation and eternity—in a word, all your cares.
Rest in the assurance that in his pure goodness,
he’ll watch with particular tenderness over all your responsibilities and cares,
arranging all things for the greatest good.”
St. John Eudes, p. 363
An Excerpt From
A Year with the Saints

senses put in order

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed,
and to have my senses put in order.”
John Burroughs

(shelf fungus / Julie Cook / 2019)

That quote by John Burroughs is so true is it not?
After any walk outside, out in nature…be it in the woods, through a meadow,
a ragged shoreline or a challenging mountain top…I always find myself at peace…
All worry and fret subsides…as that which is so much bigger, so much grander
than my mere self, has an enormous way of healing that which currently ailes my soul.

God is good like that.
Offering me the vast glory of His creation…

So it is no surprise that I love wandering in the woods especially this time of year…
It’s a time when I am not bothered by such things as spiders, snakes, or ticks.

No fears, no immediate worry as I can walk unimpeded—not fretting about where
I put my foot, as long as I avoid any and all stump holes—
those rotted out places in the ground, holes left gaping which are the remains of a dead tree…
such holes can be readily covered by the freshly fallen leaves and not immediately detected
by a mere glance downward.

Many a sprained ankle or even a break can happen when falling into such a hole.
I should know…thankful nothing ever broken…just usually sore and bruised.

And so I can hunt for those small wonders that still wait to be uncovered…
wonders that are not hibernating or buried deep within the ground waiting for Spring.

Shelf fungus and mushrooms are always a favorite to find as their shape, size, and colors
are usually most eye-catching.

Here are just a few from the other day…

(mildewed shelf fungus / Julie Cook / 2019)

(shelf fungus / Julie Cook / 2019)

(shelf fungus / Julie Cook / 2019)

(mushrooms, mushrooming out from under the crevis of a wooden bridge/ Julie Cook / 2019)

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully,
he can learn more than what is in books,
for they speak with the voice of God.
George Washington Carver