If Christ be risen…

Since death has become such a stark reality this past year, thoughts of heaven have occupied my mind.  The Good Lord lead me to the works of George MacDonald before Jan’s struggle with cancer.  During that struggle and afterword his writing have been a constant refuge from darkness.  Last night this was MacDonalds offerings on Jesus’ Resurrection and as a result ours.

MacDonald describes Mary’s encounter with our Risen Lord:

“Mary lingered weeping by the place which was not now even the grave of the beloved, so utterly had not only he but the signs of him vanished. As she wept, she stooped down into the sepulchre. There sat the angels in holy contemplation, one at the head, the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain. Peter nor John had beheld them: to the eyes of Mary as of the other women they were manifest. It is a lovely story that follows, full of marvel, as how should it not be?”

“Woman, why weepest thou?” said the angels.”

“Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him,” answered Mary, and turning away, tear-blinded, saw the gardener, as she thought.

“Woman, why weepest thou?” repeats the gardener.

“Whom seekest thou?”

Hopelessness had dulled every sense: not even a start at the sound of his voice!

“Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”

“Mary!”

“Master!”

“Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and your God.”

She had the first sight of him. It would almost seem that, arrested by her misery, he had delayed his ascent, and shown himself sooner than his first intent. “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended.” She was about to grasp him with the eager hands of reverent love: why did he refuse the touch?”

“Doubtless the tone of the words deprived them of any sting. Doubtless the self-respect of the woman was in no way wounded by the master’s recoil. For the rest, we know so little of the new conditions of his bodily nature, that nothing is ours beyond conjecture. It may be, for anything I know, that there were even physical reasons why she should not yet touch him; but my impression is that, after the hard work accomplished, and the form in which he had wrought and suffered resumed, he must have the Father’s embrace first, as after a long absence any man would seek first the arms of his dearest friend. It may well be objected to this notion, that he had never been absent from God—that in his heart he was at home with him continually. And yet the body with all its limitations, with all its partition-walls of separation, is God’s, and there must be some way in which even it can come into a willed relation with him to whom it is nearer even than to ourselves, for it is the offspring of his will, or as the prophets of old would say—the work of his hands.  That which God has invented and made, which has its very origin in the depth of his thought, can surely come nigh to God. Therefore I think that in some way which we cannot understand, Jesus would now seek the presence of the Father; would, having done the work which he had given him to do, desire first of all to return in the body to him who had sent him by giving him a body. Hence although he might delay his return at the sound of the woman’s grief, he would rather she did not touch him first. If any one thinks this founded on too human a notion of the Saviour, I would only reply that I suspect a great part of our irreligion springs from our disbelief in the humanity of God. There lie endless undiscovered treasures of grace.  After he had once ascended to the Father, he not only appeared to his disciples again and again, but their hands handled the word of life, and he ate in their presence. He had been to his Father, and had returned that they might know him lifted above the grave and all that region in which death has power; that as the elder brother, free of the oppressions of humanity, but fulfilled of its tenderness, he might show himself captain of their salvation. Upon the body he inhabited, death could no longer lay his hands, and from the vantage-ground he thus held, he could stretch down the arm of salvation to each and all.”

Excerpt From Miracles of Our Lord by George MacDonald

Further along in the same chapter MacDonald writes:

“If Christ be risen, then is the grave of humanity itself empty. We have risen with him, and death has henceforth no dominion over us. Of every dead man and woman it may be said: He—she—is not here, but is risen and gone before us. Ever since the Lord lay down in the tomb, and behold it was but a couch whence he arose refreshed, we may say of every brother: He is not dead but sleepeth. He too is alive and shall arise from his sleep.

The way to the tomb may be hard, as it was for him; but we who look on, see the hardness and not the help; we see the suffering but not the sustaining: that is known only to the dying and God. They can tell us little of this, and nothing of the glad safety beyond.”

“With any theory of the conditions of our resurrection, I have scarcely here to do. It is to me a matter of positively no interest whether or not, in any sense, the matter of our bodies shall be raised from the earth”…

“What seemed to the disciples the final acme of disappointment and grief, the vanishing of his body itself, was in reality the first sign of the dawn of an illimitable joy. He was not there because he had risen.”

Excerpt From Miracles of Our Lord by George MacDonald

Since St. Mary Magdalene was the first to meet the risen Lord MacDonald had previously written about the Mary meeting the Risen Lord.  See my amended post on St. Mary:

This song is for those of us who are left behind…

I still need this song. When Jan told me she was ready to die, we discussed what Heaven or Paradise would be like. She thought it might be like Montana while I though more of Scotland. We had been to some beautiful places in God creation. We decided Heaven is beyond our imaginings. Then she spoke of seeing colors beyond belief. Truly the vision of an artist’s eye. Eventually I said, ” You are going to be with Our Lord.” After that I burst out sobbing uncontrollably knowing selfishly that she would be leaving me…

My beloved George MacDonald wrote that Jesus was ‘disappointed’ in Martha and Mary, Lazarus’ sisters, when they ask The Lord to bring their brother back to this transitory life. MacDonald felt Jesus’ disappointment was that Lazarus was with His Father in Paradise. To return meant their brother would have to endure life’s trial and tribulations only to face death again. We, like Martha and Mary, who are left may well be selfish to want our loved ones back…

Here are more thoughts of George MacDonald on praying for others as I and others prayed for Jan:

“….he who prays for his friends shall be heard of God. I do not say he shall have whatever he asks for. God forbid. But he shall be heard. And the man who does not see the good of that, knows nothing of the good of prayer; can, I fear, as yet, only pray for himself, when most he fancies he is praying for his friend. Often, indeed, when men suppose they are concerned for the well-beloved, they are only concerned about what they shall do without them. Let them pray for themselves instead, for that will be the truer prayer. I repeat, all prayer is assuredly heard:—what evil matter is it that it should be answered only in the right time and right way? The prayer argues a need—that need will be supplied. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. All who have prayed shall one day justify God and say—Thy answer is beyond my prayer, as thy thoughts and thy ways are beyond my thoughts and my ways.”

Excerpt From: ‘Miracles of Our Lord’ by George MacDonald

Tombstone was a favorite movie of mine…

Tombstone was a favorite movie of mine.  Doc Holliday, played by Val Kilmer, was a character of Shakespearean dimensions, powerfully memorable. This scene is forever etched in my memory.  For indeed time has shown me that ‘there is no normal life, it’s just life’ so we need to get on with it.  Recently life’s finality bitterly brought me back to that reality.  I have ‘come to believe’ we are all called to live life fully, Love openly and intensely, join the Dance as we become what the Good Lord intended for us to be.  So even in our sadness we must ‘get on with it!’  For in the end we may all die with ‘our boots off.’  In the meantime lets join the Dance…Carpi Diem! 

Also see my earlier post about Doc Holliday. Doc was a dentist like the famous western writer Zane Grey which piqued my curiosity. In the previous post Doc Holliday’s biography was mentioned. His real story is more fascinating than the movie version. He was a complicated highly intelligent man who in the end stood for GOOD!

See the previous post about Doc: https://www.dksmith918.com/?p=836
Also see the post about ‘The Divine Dance’: https://www.dksmith918.com/?p=1156

Saint Mary Magdalen (Revisited)….

Originally Posted on July 7, 2016 by dksmith918

Saint Mary Magdalen…

Saint Mary Magdalen

Even More from MacDonald on St. Mary:

(Added on July 28, 2019)

“…the border-land where thought and matter meet is the region where all marvels and miracles are generated. The wisdom of this world can believe that matter generates mind: what seems to me the wisdom from above can believe that mind generates matter—that matter is but the manifest mind. On this supposition matter may well be subject to mind; much more, if Jesus be the Son of God, his own body must be subject to his will. I doubt, indeed, if the condition of any man is perfect before the body he inhabits is altogether obedient to his will—before, through his own absolute obedience to the Father, the realm of his own rule is put under him perfectly.”…..

…“Why was this miracle needful?

Perhaps, for one thing, that men should not limit him, or themselves in him, to the known forms of humanity; and for another, that the best hope might be given them of a life beyond the grave; that their instinctive desires in that direction might thus be infinitely developed and assured. I suspect, however, that it followed just as the natural consequence of all that preceded.

If Christ be risen, then is the grave of humanity itself empty. We have risen with him, and death has henceforth no dominion over us.  Of every dead man and woman it may be said: He—she—is not here, but is risen and gone before us. Ever since the Lord lay down in the tomb, and behold it was but a couch whence he arose refreshed, we may say of every brother: He is not dead but sleepeth. He too is alive and shall arise from his sleep.”

Excerpt From Miracles of Our Lord by George MacDonald

(Added on July 22, 2019)

Of Lazarus’ return from death Mary becomes totally devoted to her Lord…“Joy of all joys! The dead come back! Is it any wonder that this Mary should spend three hundred pence on an ointment for the feet of the Raiser of the Dead?”

“I doubt if he told them anything? I do not think he could make even his own flesh and blood—of woman-kind, quick to understand—know the things he had seen and heard and felt. All that can be said concerning this, is thus said by our beloved brother Tennyson in his book In Memoriam:

  ‘Where wert thou, brother, those four days?’

 There lives no record of reply,

  Which telling what it is to die,

  Had surely added praise to praise.

  Behold a man raised up by Christ!

  The rest remaineth unrevealed;

  He told it not; or something sealed

  The lips of that Evangelist.”

“Why are we left in such ignorance?

Without the raising of the dead, without the rising of the Saviour himself, Christianity would not have given what it could of hope for the future. Hope is not faith, but neither is faith sight; and if we have hope we are not miserable men. But Christianity must not, could not interfere with the discipline needful for its own fulfilment, could not depose the schoolmaster that leads unto Christ. One main doubt and terror which drives men towards the revelation in Jesus, is this strange thing Death. How shall any man imagine he is complete in himself, and can do without a Father in heaven, when he knows that he knows neither the mystery whence he sprung by birth, nor the mystery to which he goes by death? God has given us room away from himself as Robert Browning says:—

…”God, whose pleasure brought

  Man into being, stands away,

  As it were, an hand-breadth off, to give

  Room for the newly-made to live,

  And look at Him from a place apart,

  And use His gifts of brain and heart”—

and this room, in its time-symbol, is bounded by darkness is bounded by darkness on the one hand, and darkness on the other. Whence I came and whither I go are dark: how can I live in peace without the God who ordered it thus? Faith is my only refuge—an absolute belief in a being so much beyond myself, that he can do all for this me with utter satisfaction to this me, protecting all its rights, jealously as his own from which they spring, that he may make me at last one with himself who is my deeper self, inasmuch as his thought of me is my life. And not to know him, even if I could go on living and happy without him, is death.

It may be said, “Why all this? Why not go on like a brave man to meet your fate, careless of what that fate may be?……

What better sign of immortality than the raising of the dead could God give? He cannot, however, be always raising the dead before our eyes; for then the holiness of death’s ends would be a failure. We need death; only it shall be undone once and again for a time, that we may know it is not what it seems to us. I have already said that probably we are not capable of being told in words what the other world is. But even the very report through the ages that the dead came back, as their friends had known them, with the old love unlost in the grave, with the same face to smile and bless, is precious indeed…..

“To sum up: An express revelation in words would probably be little intelligible. In Christ we have an ever-growing revelation. He is the resurrection and the life. As we know him we know our future.

In our ignorance lies a force of need, compelling us towards God.

In this, as in all his miracles, our Lord shows in one instance what his Father is ever doing without showing it.

In our ignorance likewise lies the room for the development of the simple will, as well as the necessity for arousing it. Hence this ignorance is but the shell of faith.

Even the report of this is the best news we can have from the other world—as we call it.”

Excerpt From Miracles of Our Lord by George MacDonald

More on Mary Magdalene from George MacDonald:

(MacDonald like CS Lewis and myself see her like ourselves as a sinner. Mary upon being healed dedicates her life to serving her Lord!)

“We hear next, from St Luke, of certain women who followed him, having been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, amongst whom is mentioned “Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils.” No wonder a woman thus delivered should devote her restored self to the service of him who had recreated her. We hear nothing of the circumstances of the cure, only the result in her constant ministration. Hers is a curious instance of the worthlessness of what some think it a mark of high-mindedness to regard alone—the opinion, namely, of posterity. Without a fragment of evidence, this woman has been all but universally regarded as impure. But what a trifle to her! Down in this squabbling nursery of the race, the name of Mary Magdalene may be degraded even to a subject for pictorial sentimentalities; but the woman herself is with that Jesus who set her free. To the end of time they may call her what they please: to her it is worth but a smile of holy amusement. And just as worthy is the applause of posterity associated with a name. To God alone we live or die.  “Let us fall, as, thank him, we must, into his hands. Let him judge us. Posterity may be wiser than we; but posterity is not our judge.”

Excerpt From Miracles of Our Lord by George MacDonald

Revisiting Saint Mary Magdalen:

Saint Mary Magdalen…… I can identify with St. Mary.  She was a rich party girl and I was a rich arrogant party boy.  She was under the control of seven demons, demigods that rendered her powerless.  I too was powerless over small gods that were destroying me.  My story is long but I remember when I was broken and cried out ‘Lord Help me’….

CS Lewis wrote in “Membership” (in the Body of Christ) this tribute to St. Mary Magdalen:

“It is nice to be still under the care of St. Mary Magdalen…The allegorical sense of her great action dawned on me the other day.  The precious alabaster box which one must break over the Holy Feet is one’s heart.  Easier said than done.  And contents become perfume only when broken.  While they are safe inside they are like sewage.  All very alarming.”

Earlier I posted:

St. Mary Magdalen has always been a favorite biblical character of mine.  She was one of Jesus’ inner circle and the first to see the Risen Lord.  Her redemption from a ‘rich party woman’ (some say worse) with seven demon possessions to one closest to Christ gives hope to us all…I enjoy the group‘Cry Cry Cry’ so I share this….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0OH4pIvXBQ&list=RDH0OH4pIvXBQ&start_radio=1

(This I first saw during Lent.  I reviewed it today and will soon be reading about the other Mary.)

Hearing this song (below) in August (2019) I am reminded how St. Mary Magdalene knew this Holy Essence better than any of Jesus’ followers…enJOY!

Mary the Mother of Jesus…

This Mother’s Day let us remember Mary, Mother of Jesus…Think about it, Mary bore the Son of God in her womb then gave birth to the First Born of the New Creation.  Jesus calls us to be brothers and sister with Him.  His Father is Our Father.  From beyond the confines of time and space Jesus came to dwell with us.  He entered into this life through Mary’s womb because of this I will honor Mary like my Roman Catholic friends do.  She was, is and always will be called Blessed…

The Prophet Simeon “blessed them and said to Mary, Jesus mother: ‘This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.’” Luke 2:34-35 NIV

The Mothers in my Life…

Mom…

Jan…(aka Princess…)

A favorite photo of mine…

Lexi came home….

Jan and Her Mom, Jeane…

Jan was a Blessing too many…

Our Daughters became Mothers too…

Amy…

Erin…

I have been Blessed….

Below is a live performance of ‘Mary’….so well done!

“We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity.  That is what has to be believed.”  —from Mere Christianity by CS Lewis

When Jan and I both knew that she was going to  die, I said to her as I burst out in tears, “You are going to be with Jesus.”  We both believed that she would be there immediately after her death just as the criminal was promised as he died beside our Lord Jesus Himself.  “And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” Luke 23:43 KJV  (Remember that St. Luke was a physician.)

Not by chance we, Jan and I, had recently read numerous books written by believers who have returned from death.  Little did we know then the significance of those books.  Their description of Paradise (Heaven) were much like Jan’s glimpses that she described to us.  At least two of those authors were physicians who discounted neurological explanations for the visions of Paradise, as Jesus called heaven. 

Jan had the ‘Blessed Assurance’.  She was ready for the pain and suffering of this life to end.  She was ready to enter the True Life…

Interestingly the scenes in this video above are reminiscent of Montana and Scotland both of which Jan and I thought might be heavenly place here on earth…

Here is a live version of the song “Death was Arrested.” Of course the song implies that we will have glimpses or inklings of heaven here in this life…

Lexi is a rescue dog from an abandon litter, bottle fed.  As a result I realize that she can be fearful.  When I recognize her fear, I tell her, “It’s Ok.”  We all need to remember that ‘we’re gonna be OK’.  The Good Lord holds us in His Hand.  Let us remember that! We must let Him. We must hold His Hand…Let Him show us the Way!

It is not just saints who have Dark Nights of the Soul.  I’m no saint! I have had many!  Dark Nights of the Soul don’t have to be mystical experiences like St. John of the Cross wrote about. Although I am beginning to understand what St. John meant when he wrote ‘The Dark Night of The Soul’. No one can escape this life without having the darkness engulf us.  We have clay feet.  The darkest emotion beneath all others is FEAR!  In those Dark Nights hopefully we recognize our smallness and our powerlessness.  Many of us simply cry out,  “Lord help me.”   

It’s Gonna be OK…

Hold on…Don’t Let Go…

The longer I live the more people I meet who have also been rescued. Truth is we all need rescuing from ourselves mostly but also from life’s ‘Dark Nights.’

It requires that we SURRENDER…

For more thoughts on those dark times see…https://www.dksmith918.com/?p=1202

Pottery by Maria Martinez from the San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico…

(Jan and I visited Maria several time. Having artists hearts we shared more than pottery and clothes.)

“Trying to mold this life within our hands…”

“But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.” Isaiah 64:8 KJV

“Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” Romans 9:21 KJV

This song below is from these angel voiced sisters, ‘The Walling Jennys’.  During LENT we are called to retreat to our desert places either literally or spiritually.  There for forty days we are to measure and inspect how our life is being molded.  Where are we misshapen, distorted or warped?  On the ‘Great Potter’s Wheel’ we may need let Him have control to reshape our misshapen clay.  It may mean that He snatches our clay up off of the potter’s wheel, squeeze and shape us in His hands and slap us back on the wheel to be reworked…Which simply mean to ‘let go’ and let the wind of His Spirit carry us from the desert to the mountain tops…

I read in the last day or two that God’s greatest Gift to us may be ‘Free Will.’  That seems counterintuitive.  Yet I believe it is True.  On one hand Free Will can be our greatest means of distortion.  On the other hand it is God’s desire that: we freely Choose JOY!   

Yet each day we must begin again…

The stillness and quiet of a snowy woods can always refocus my distorted view of this life…Those snowy places would be a favorite ‘desert place.’

You are not alone…

Being alone requires adjustment beyond my experiences.  Time, my friends who have dealt with such a loss as this, will eventually ease the pain.  The emptiness is becoming more tolerable.  Lexi, my canine companion, has been a Blessing.  Not the same though!  More of the past was us.  The past that I owned alone keeps me busy now.  Those things that were mine occupy as much of my time as I can give them.  Whether living alone is in my future only the Good Lord knows.

This song by Patty Griffin reminds me of what my college roommate told me of the loss of his wife.  There will be moments of ‘a love connection’ that transcends ‘time and space.” 

A couple weeks later…

St. John of the Cross, an old mystic, said that this place where I feel Godforsaken is an important part of my faith journey. As a follower of Christ it’s the dark night of my soul.

It is a place of loneliness, darkness, chaos, doubt and even fear, where I am invited to stand steadfast in faith, even if I am feeling and thinking differently.

I wish there were a different way, an easier way. But I am going to suffer losses, experience disappointment and rejection. Life is still going to happen to me with feelings of despair that overwhelm me. And like Jesus, I too will feel lonely at times and ask: “Why?”

But this is the path I have to take – a purifying journey on which I follow Jesus in his last hours and being led through the dark night of the soul.

At the end of Jesus’ earthly existence, He experiences an intense loneliness – nobody understands Him, they reject Him, his friends leave Him, He is humiliated, He suffers physically and goes through spiritual torment, and a helplessness that He himself can do nothing about. But He holds on to one thing: Through this lonely experience, He can fulfill the will of the Father.

Surely God can and will also use loneliness in my own life? I have definitely been lonely before, but do I now have to welcome it into my life?

There is also a different kind of loneliness that I can experience. And like Jesus, it is not because I acted wrongly, but as a result of acting correctly…

In this loneliness I discover more and my inner world expands. I discover how I am more sensitive to others’ pain and how I increasingly realise the magnitude of God’s goodness. Deep in my soul things are happening and I become more and more aware of it. The old saying in the Jewish apocalyptic writings expresses the awakening in my inner world:

Every tear brings the Messiah closer….

But loneliness means more than just a physical death. There is a loneliness in the silence of retreat where my self-centeredness, illusions, fantasies, arrogance and myths that I live with, are exposed and I am invited to lay these down, to die in myself.

God found me and in Christ I found God, but like Peter I sometimes am in that undesirable place. Like Jesus now, here on the cross, I too sometimes experience that intense loneliness – the times that I withdraw, retreat into silence.

From The Bible app 

For more thoughts on those Dark Nights see the earlier post: Revisited…’Dark Night of the Soul.”

Even if…In the Darkness’s we still have HOPE!

In her final days, maybe as long as two weeks, Jan was ready to ‘Go Home.’  She was ready to have ‘the stone to be rolled away.’  In hind sight she stayed long enough to say good bye to those she loved…I wept hard and bitterly when I told her she was going to be with the Lord…My weeping was selfishly for myself!

Added on August 17,2019

(This I received from two of my skeet shooting friends…It has become a before each night’s sleep meditation…)

Death Is Nothing At All

by Rev. Canon Henry Scott-Holland

Death is nothing at all.

It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.

I am I, and you are you,

and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.

Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

It is the same as it ever was.

Life means all that it ever meant.

There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you, for an interval,

somewhere very near,

just round the corner.

All is well.

Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/61768

Copyright ©

We who are left mourning have the consolation of Christ Jesus…

And for her and my Celtic spirit…

Jesus wept for those who mourn…

I have participated in this study done by Harvard School of Public Health since I was in dental school.  Here is a copy of the studies recent findings.  Once again the ‘side benefits’ of aspirin are revealed.  We already knew that aspirin benefited the heart and reduced the risk of colon cancer but here are new benefits.  Also there is more evidence that the mediterranean diet is good for us…

Diet, Exercise and other health related issues have been previously highlighted over the years…

Grief or its expression, mourning, can make us feel separated from God…Yet in painful times our need for God is strongest.  When times are good how easily we forget what really matters.  When a loved one is lost the wound is deep the pain intense.  That is the way of this life.  Let us stop to remember this life is temporary transient and maybe a proving ground for Life itself…It is a mystery humans will never solve.  We must live by Faith.  Hoping that LOVE will reunite us with those we have lost…Remember:  ‘Jesus Wept’ for his friend ,Lazarus, and his sisters.

Here is what George McDonald wrote about Mourning:

“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.’—Matthew v. 4.

Grief, then, sorrow, pain of heart, mourning, is no partition-wall between man and God. So far is it from opposing any obstacle to the passage of God’s light into man’s soul, that the Lord congratulates them that mourn. There is no evil in sorrow. True, it is not an essential good, a good in itself, like love; but it will mingle with any good thing, and is even so allied to good that it will open the door of the heart for any good. More of sorrowful than of joyful men are always standing about the everlasting doors that open into the presence of the Most High. It is true also that joy is in its nature more divine than sorrow; for, although man must sorrow, and God share in his sorrow, yet in himself God is not sorrowful, and the ‘glad creator’ never made man for sorrow: it is but a stormy strait through which he must pass to his ocean of peace. He ‘makes the joy the last in every song.’ Still, I repeat, a man in sorrow is in general far nearer God than a man in joy….there are two door-keepers to the house of prayer, and Sorrow is more on the alert to open than her grandson Joy…Men mourn because they love. Love is the life out of which are fashioned all the natural feelings, every emotion of man. Love modelled by faith, is hope…”

March 11 Additional thoughts…

As I read further this is also what McDonald had to offer concerning grief and accompanying mourning…

“The Lord would have us know that sorrow is not a part of life; that it is but a wind blowing throughout it, to winnow and cleanse…

There is one phase of our mourning for the dead which I must not leave unconsidered, seeing it is the pain within pain of all our mourning—the sorrow, namely, with its keen recurrent pangs because of things we have said or done, or omitted to say or do, while we companied with the departed. The very life that would give itself to the other, aches with the sense of having, this time and that, not given what it might. We cast ourselves at their feet, crying, Forgive me, my heart’s own! but they are pale with distance, and do not seem to hear. It may be that they are longing in like agony of love after us, but know better, or perhaps only are more assured than we, that we shall be comforted together by and by….

The Lord has come to wipe away our tears. He is doing it; he will have it done as soon as he can; and until he can, he would have them flow without bitterness; to which end he tells us it is a blessed thing to mourn, because of the comfort on its way. Accept his comfort now, and so prepare for the comfort at hand. He is getting you ready for it, but you must be a fellow worker with him, or he will never have done. He must have you pure in heart, eager after righteousness, a very child of his father in heaven.”

From Hope of the Gospel by George MacDonald

I will continue to draw strength from George McDonald’s writing!

“Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.” Revelations 2:17

Scripture tells us that each one of us is so specially unique that our ‘name will be written on a white stone’ or more accurately as McDonald writes…“I have my message of my great Lord, you have yours. Your dog, your horse tells you about him who cares for all his creatures. None of them came from his hands. Perhaps the precious things of the earth, the coal and the diamonds, the iron and clay and gold, may be said to have come from his hands; but the live things come from his heart—from near the same region whence ourselves we came”….

”I say, then, that every one of us is something that the other is not, and therefore knows some thing—it may be without knowing that he knows it—which no one else knows; and that it is every one’s business, as one of the kingdom of light, and inheritor in it all, to give his portion to the rest; for we are one family, with God at the head and the heart of it, and Jesus Christ, our elder brother, teaching us of the Father, whom he only knows. 

We may say, then, that whatever is the source of joy or love, whatever is pure and strong, whatever wakes aspiration, whatever lifts us out of selfishness, whatever is beautiful or admirable—in a word, whatever is of the light—-must make a part, however small it may then prove to be in its proportion, of the inheritance of the saints in the light; for, as in the epistle of James, ‘Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.’”

George McDonald from ‘Unspoken Sermons’

DKS

Originally Posted on February 9, 2016 by dksmith918

The Greatness of God…

The Greatness of God

This morning I read this again about the ‘Greatness of the Universe’ and the ‘Awesomeness’ of our Creator.  It reminded me of a video I had created a few years ago about the same subject.  When you consider the vastness of the universe, it’s orderliness, majesty, solemnity, all of which Einstein (and others) helped us to understand.  And on the other hand the randomness, seemly disorderliness and chaos of the subatomic world, you can’t help but be awed!  How it all works together! In this video I tried to capture the sense of solemnity and awe….

(This video contains both my own photos and those I collected from the internet plus those taken by the Hubble Telescope.)

DKS

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To every thing there is a season…

Holding on…

The Holy Spirit gives us breath.  (If you are not a Christian, you probably believe that we have a divine spark in us that keeps us alive.)  Months before we knew that Jan’s cancer had returned to her lung, I heard this song while riding.  It is about holding on.  If you love someone you want to hold them, physically, mentally and spiritually.  Then there come the time when we must let go.  That very moment is etched deeply into my memory.  Each of us, who loved Jan, had to let go so the suffering and pain would stop.  I wept when I said that she was going to be with the Lord.  When her breath left her as she went to be with God, I still wanted to hold her…

Letting go is difficult and painfull…

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, …”  Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 KJV

Scripture tells of Martha and Mary struggling to let go…

George McDonald wrote about how hard it was for Martha and Mary to ‘believe’ Jesus that their brother was in a better place with His Father: “Lazarus had to die again, and thanked God, we may be sure, for the glad fact. Did his sisters, supposing them again left behind him in the world, make the same lamentations over him as the former time he went? If they did, if they fell again into that passion of grief, lamenting and moaning and refusing to be comforted, what would you say of them? I imagine something to this effect: ‘It was most unworthy of them to be no better for such a favour shown them. It was to behave like the naughtiest of faithless children. Did they not know that he was not lost?—that he was with the Master, who had himself seemed lost for a few days, but came again? He was no more lost now than the time he went before! Could they not trust that he who brought him back once would take care they should have him for ever at last!’ Would you not speak after some such fashion? Would you not remember that he who is the shepherd of the sheep will see that the sheep that love one another shall have their own again, in whatever different pastures they may feed for a time? Would it not be hard to persuade you that they ever did so behave? They must have felt that he was but ‘gone for a minute … from this room into the next;’ and that, however they might miss him, it would be a shame not to be patient when they knew there was nothing to fear. It was all right with him, and would soon be all right with them also!”

McDonald continues: “’You mean that if your husband, your son, your father, your brother, your lover, had been taken from you once and given to you again, you would not, when the time came that he must go once more, dream of calling him a second time from the good heaven? You would not be cruel enough for that! You would not bemoan or lament! You would not make the heart of the Lord sad with your hopeless tears! Ah, how little you know yourself!…’If it was, it is worthless indeed—as worthless as your behaviour would make it. But you are dull of heart, as were Martha and Mary. Do you not see that he is as continually restoring as taking away—that every bereavement is a restoration—that when you are weeping with void arms, others, who love as well as you, are clasping in ecstasy of reunion?’” Ooh how flawed we are!

This morning Fr. Lito helped me with this grief experience…Reminding me that this is a natural part of the process. The wound is deep because of the depth of our Love. Reminding me that God is Love (see the post ‘God is Love’). It is not right or wrong. It just is…So let it BE…

Holding Jan’s memory in my heart is an eternal act of LOVE…

DKS

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.”  John 1:1-4 KJV

“God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”  1 John 4:16 KJV

I conclude from this that, ‘in the beginning there was Love.’  Before God created the fabric of time and space when nothing existed, Love was there with God.  Physics teaches us that indeed there was a ‘Big Bang.’  God spoke and bang there was Light.  Time and space came into being.  There was light. Eternity intersected time and space.  There was creation.  From the point of creation of the universe as we know it, time began to unfold with the four dimensions of the time-space continuum.

Belgian astronomer and Catholic priest Georges Lemaître theorized the moment of creation, giving us the big bang theory which is consistent with the scriptural description of creation.  So there was Light.  The absence of Light is darkness.  Likewise the absence of Love is hate.  I have come to believe that God is the source of all ‘Love’.  Over the ages man has defined different kinds of love.  CS Lewis in his book “The Four Loves” wrote of various types of love. Some loves are simpler than others.  For example the ‘affection’ one has for a dog is a simple love.  Yet it seems to me that the essence of all loves begin with God.  Therefore it must be concluded that Love can transcend time and space and touches eternity or intersect with eternity…

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV

POST SCRIPT:  

“Of course, what these people (materialists) mean when they say that God is love is often something quite different: they really mean ‘Love is God’. They really mean that our feelings of love, however and wherever they arise, and whatever results they produce, are to be treated with great respect. Perhaps they are: but that is something quite different from what Christians mean by the statement ‘God is love’. They believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else.” CS Lewis from Mere Christianity​

“The Last of the Mohicans” was written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826.  Cooper was a favorite early American authors of mine when I was in college.   

Enjoy this version with scenes from the movie…

(We WILL be reunited with our loved ones…)

In March I added this:

We get just a glimpse fo God’s Light…

Human love whether it be affectionate, friendship or Eros is but a faint flicker of True Love.  God is Love.  The universe is a reflection of His Love.  God’s Love is infinite brightness, warming heat and glowing Peace.  Here on this our island home we get glimpses of His Light in our flickering faint human sight through our human loves…This song always brings that to my mind…

In July 2019 I added this:

Our human love are but a foretaste of God’s LOVE….

DKS

Heaven is incomprehensible…

Of course lately I have considered the concept and reality of heaven.  Yet can we even imagine what Paradise must be like?  That reminds me of an old story about the debates concerning what heaven is like.  It is attributed to a Monk from the Middle Ages.  The middle ages (from my point of view) was a time of strong spiritual beliefs when science had not captured our thought processes thereby diminishing the spiritual point of view.  Science can engender skepticism concerning spiritual realities.  Although science since that time has proven itself to be less reliable that it claims to be.  Science itself is an evolving truth.  

The Monks Tale…

There were twins in a womb.  Just before their birth they were debating, “What it would be like out there in what we call the real world.”  One of the twins was excited about being birthed seeing it as wonderful and beyond his imagining.  The other wanted to stay in the warmth and security of his mother’s womb.  The second was afraid.  Of course we know the the second twins’ fear was unjustified. The first told the second not to fear that where they were going would be wonderful.  The first was Hopeful.  The first twin was full of Faith.  The first twin was full of Love for his fellow twin trying to dispel his fears.

The Inklings …

The Inklings (Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield, Bennett, Cecil, Williams, et al)…

This group of thinkers held to the belief that Truth was contained in mythology.  That the human imagination revealed spiritual truth in it’s mythology.  The fact that similar myths exists in different times and cultures…Here is what CS Lewis has to say about heaven…

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. . .  Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for?- From “The Problem of Pain”

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door (in the Shadowlands as Lewis calls it). We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.—from “The Weight of Glory” by CS Lewis 

Some musical offerings…

Music of the Spheres…

We are called to be Children of the Light…

“Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.” 1 Thessalonians 5:5 KJV 

(Is this filmed in Scotland with a red deer stag as an extra?)

When my life brought me into dark valleys, God’s Grace has always been there.  His Grace allowed Sister Barke to hear my screams, when I was an infant, coming to lift me off the fire. Decades ago when I had fallen into the dark pit of alcoholic desperation His Spirit cried out from within me.  In that moment of clarity I choose to try to live in the Light.  Of course I stumble often but hopefully I will keep picking myself up, continuing on the Way of the Light.  Remembering to silence the small self with it’s pride.  That small self wants to take credit for the mountain top moments.  With clear vision I choose to celebrate God’s Gift of Grace.  

Traveling through another dark period of life, I am assured that God’s Grace will carry us from this dark valley to the mountain tops of His Grace.

Lift me from this Dark Valley….

For more evidence of God’s Grace in my life see the page ‘The Accident: God is with me’

There is never a good time for the loss of a ‘Loved One.’  Yet the season of Advent brings comfort to me as I grieve the loss of my ‘Princess Jan.’  For although Jan has left us in this life for the greater LIFE.  We remain here in the shadowlands where “we  see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV)…
For I believe that now her vision is clear, her body is whole and she knows the TRUTH which has set her free at last.  For that truth I am Thankful.  Some would call it ‘Blessed Assurance’…

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV)
Love, I believe transcends time and space.  Before time and space came into being, there was Love.  Love was the Word and the Word was God.  Then Love spoke and ‘bang’ there was creation.  A close friend from my Emory years said of his wife and Jan’s passing from this life, “I still have strong moments of missing her and you will as well. In a way it means the connection is in fact not gone; your shared Love remains in your heart.” (Gordon Finlayson)

So in this season of Advent when our Creator humble Himself to come to us incarnate as an Infant I believe that Jan is with the Lord in Paradise.  Oh yes…Faith, Hope and Love…

Contemporarily….

Or more Traditionally…

Thank you Lord for your GRACE…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btcGAAahSTs

“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”  Matthew 5:45 KJV

We are all as Henri Nouwen wrote ‘Wounded Healers’.  No one escapes this life without pain and suffering. Some of it is visible and some invisible. That is the nature of this life but Christ offers us a better LIFE that we can occasionally get a fore taste of here and now…  This is the Season of Joy when our Creator came among us…

Let us enJOY the season and be carriers of CHRIST since we are called to be His hands and feet!

The Season of JOY…

TIME and SPACE...

(Photo is from the internet)

Albert Einstein’s fascination with ‘time’ (and space) lead him to discover the ‘Theory of Relativity’ which was subsequently proven to be true.  This gave us a new perspective on our universe from the distant galaxies to subatomic particles.  So when we look into the night sky we understand a little more than our ancestors did when they studied the stars.  Yet our universe remains an awe inspiring mystery. 

 Modern physics shows us that the ’Time Space Continuum’ that is our living reality is like fabric.  A fabric that stretches out from the ‘beginning to then end.’  It is revealed to us in our senses not only in the three dimensions that we see but others that we don’t see.  (How many dimensions is still speculation.)  So ‘time and space’ is all that we understand.  It is our limited reality!

 Unless you are an atheist who believes that our universe (time and space) just happened ‘by a cosmic accident’, we wonder how it all came about?  (Atheists I ask you, ” How can an accident happen if there is no cosmos?”)  Of course the TRUTH is that in the beginning there was God and nothing else.  HE spoke then ‘the Big Bang’ (which was so name by a Christian Physicist) happened. So the great MYSTERY of our universe was born.  God is not within ‘time and space’ but is the Creator of time and  space.  

 I read this (again) this morning which caused this reoccurring fascination about ‘TIME’: 

“We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do. . . .

Almost certainly God is not in time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty—and every other moment from the beginning of the world—is always the Present for Him.  If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.”  Mere Christianity” by CS Lewis 

O God…“The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun.”  Psalm 74:16 KJVA

Additional thoughts-

(Added 11.9.18)

“God is not hurried along in the time stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world.

The way in which my illustration breaks down is this. In it the author gets out of one time series (that of the novel) only by going into another time series (the real one). But God, I believe, does not live in a time series at all. His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours: with Him it is, so to speak, still 1920 and already 1960. For His life is Himself.

If you picture time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.”

(Added 11.10.18)

You cannot fit Christ’s earthly life in Palestine into any time-relations with His life as God beyond all space and time…God has no history. He is too completely and utterly real to have one. For, of course, to have a history means losing part of your reality (because it had already slipped away into the past) and not yet having another part (because it is still in the future): in fact having nothing but the tiny little present, which has gone before you can speak about it. God forbid we should think God was like that. Even we may hope not to be always rationed in that way…

“Mere Christianity” by CS Lewis 

(Photo is from the internet)

DKS

Worry…

Worry is a waste of energy and spiritual stupidity so says George McDonald…

“The next hour, the next moment, is as much beyond our grasp and as much in God’s care, as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is just as foolish as care for the morrow, or for a day in the next thousand years—in neither can we do anything, in both God is doing everything. Those claims only of the morrow which have to be prepared to-day are of the duty of to-day; the moment which coincides with work to be done, is the moment to be minded; the next is nowhere till God has made it….

The care that is filling your mind at this moment, or but waiting till you lay the book aside to leap upon you—that need which is no need, is a demon sucking at the spring of your life. ‘No; mine is a reasonable care—an unavoidable care, indeed!’ ‘Is it something you have to do this very moment?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then you are allowing it to usurp the place of something that is required of you this moment!’ ‘There is nothing required of me at this moment.’ ‘Nay, but there is—the greatest thing that can be required of man.’ ‘Pray, what is it?’ ‘Trust in the living God. His will is your life.’ ‘He may not will I should have what I need!’ ‘Then you only think you need it. Is it a good thing?’ ‘Yes, it is a good thing.’ ‘Then why doubt you shall have it?’ ‘Because God may choose to have me go without it.’”

From ‘Unspoken Sermons’

The Serenity Prayer:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as Jesus did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that You will make all things right,

If I surrender to Your will,

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

“And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”

Mark 9:24 KJV

Historic Georgetown: Where 5 River flow into the Atlantic…

Sometime during the summer Danny and I decided to plan a red fishing trip to the South Carolina coast.  The coast is famous for large bull redfish.  We checked out guide services from below Charleston to Myrtle Beach.  Georgetown is touted as a ‘hot spot’ for bull redfish.  The best time of the years for ‘bull reds’ begins in October.  I checked the solar lunar tables and decided that the first weekend in October would be prime time for our trip.  

The girls were lured into our plan with the promise of ‘a quaint historic town with excellent shopping.’  Pawley Island was just over the bridge with more ‘hot shopping sites.’  So everybody was on board… 

Then just before the trip happened two events threatened the trip.  First, hurricane Florence came into the coast of the Carolinas flooding most of  the rivers and some of the towns.  Fortunately most of the flooding had flowed into the Atlantic by the time the weekend came. The only issue with the flooding was that most of the fish were forced into the ocean by the outflow of ‘fresh water.’  Second, Jan was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma about two weeks prior to the adventure.  Her treatment, immunotherapy, was to begin the week after the trip.  So the excursion became a pleasant adventure before that began!

Papa’s previous ‘largest redfish’…

This was a 36″ redfish caught a few years ago with Captain Rick Muldrow.  This was out of Yankeetown Florida in the Gulf of Mexico…

GOD’S GRACE

(If this doesn’t bring a smile to your face…Then Oh my!)

I believe God’s Grace has always been with me even during my burning.  This beautiful song is about God’s Grace.  I heard this song yesterday while riding my bike.  Unfortunately this group, The Civil Wars, broke up but their song endures.  Sadly we will no longer hear their mystical harmony.  Looking back over my life I see that God has been with me all the time.  For the whole story see ‘The Accident’ page on this site… 

To see the lyrics watch this…

(If this doesn’t bring a smile to your face…Then Oh my!)

I was Blessed with a gifted mind and a wounded body.

If nurtured both of these Blessings can bare fruit. 

The harvest of a gifted mind can produce: wisdom, insight, empathy, tolerance and understanding.

While the harvest of a wounded body yields: humility, empathy, perseverance, persistence, endurance and long suffering.

Together they, if in balance with all of life, can bring peace, serenity and Joy.  I have learned that often what appears to be tragedy often yields the most precious Fruits of the Spirit…Of course the trick again is to keep it simple and tune in to God’s Will…(See “The Accident: God is with me” page.)

This song brought this to mind as I cycled today…

DKS

“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 NIV

Jesus said,  “Be Perfect…

Of course being perfect for any human, whether he or she a sinner or a saint, is impossible.  But He told us that with His help anything is possible.  The process of being remade into the person God means for us to be is sometimes difficult.  Sometimes we resist because it makes no sense to us.  It is not the way we would have it.  The difficulty for me is to be patient, to let go and to let God have His Way with me.  When I let His Will prevail miracles happen…

For as CS  Lewis wrote:  “I find I must borrow yet another parable from George MacDonald. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of…a palace not a little cottage…”

– “A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works” by C. S. Lewis

The Mountain House…

The building of the Mountain House in Sapphire…(Mom and Dad’s beloved home!)

DKS

George McDonald:

(There is a series of eight YouTube offerings on McDonald.  This is #2.  They all are worth watching in order to understand McDonald and his appeal.)

I began reading McDonald about a year ago.  So many authors found him inspirational.  Those writers include:  Lewis Carroll, W.H. Auden, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Walter de la Mare, E. Nesbit, Madeleine L’Engle, G. K. Chesterton, Elizabeth Yates, Oswald Chambers, Mark Twain and others.  So I had to know why he inspired so many.

To this date I have read many of his works.  All of them lure me in as I begin to read.  Some are too deep and will need to be revisited.  Most capture my imagination and beg me back to continue further into his worlds.  Some of his worlds are fantasy while others’ stark reality that become vivid images. 

McDonald sees life as it really is which sometimes seems dream-like or mystical…George McDonald always includes in his fantasies, poems or novels a character (he or she) who is ‘Christ-Like’ especially in how the character relates and treats others…We are called to put on Christ, to be His hands and feet…

Of McDonald CS Lewis writes:

“The Divine Sonship is the key-conception which unites all the different elements of his thought. I dare not say that he is never in error; but to speak plainly I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself. Hence his Christlike union of tenderness and severity.” Nowhere else outside the New Testament have I found terror and comfort so intertwined. The title “Inexorable Love” which I have given to several individual extracts would serve for the whole collection. Inexorability—but never the inexorability of anything less than love—runs through it like a refrain; “escape is hopeless”—“agree quickly with your adversary”—“compulsion waits behind”—“the uttermost farthing will be exacted.” Yet this urgency never becomes shrill. All the sermons are suffused with a spirit of love and wonder which prevents it from doing so. MacDonald shows God threatening, but (as Jeremy Taylor says) “He threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.”

Excerpt From George MacDonald by C. S. Lewis

What’s Mine’s Mine 

This book I read last and liked the most so far.  The characters struggle to find God’s Will not happiness in the material world, that is to become God’s Children.  For the Macrudadh clan that ultimately meant not loving and idolizing the land of the ancestors…At this point in the story (near the end) they all must leave Scotland’s highlands.

The Macruadh clan left the Highlands in solemn procession with pipes playing:

“When evening came, with a half-moon hanging faint in the limpid blue, and the stars looking large through the mist of ungathered tears—those of nature, not the lovers; with a wind like the breath of a sleeping child, sweet and soft, and full of dreams of summer; the mountains and hills asleep around them like a flock of day- wearied things, and haunted by the angels of Rob’s visions—the lovers, taking leave only of the mother, stole away to walk through the heavenly sapphire of the still night, up the hills and over the rushing streams of the spring, to the cave of their rest—no ill omen but lovely symbol to such as could see in the tomb the porch of paradise. Where should true lovers make their bed but on the threshold of eternity!”

…“When they came to the corner which would hide from them their native strath, the march changed to a lament, and with the opening wail, all stopped and turned for a farewell look. Men and women, the chief alone excepted, burst into weeping, and the sound of their lamentation went wandering through the hills with an adieu to every loved spot. And this was what the pipes said:

We shall never see you more, Never more, never more! Till the sea be dry, and the world be bare, And the dews have ceased to fall, And the rivers have ceased to run, We shall never see you more, Never more, never more!”

“They stood and gazed, and the pipes went on lamenting, and the women went on weeping.

“This is heathenish!” said Alister to himself, and stopped the piper.

“My friends,” he cried, in Gaelic of course, “look at me: my eyes are dry! Where Jesus, the Son of God, is—there is my home! He is here, and he is over the sea, and my home is everywhere! I have lost my land and my country, but I take with me my people, and make no moan over my exile! Hearts are more than hills. Farewell Strathruadh of my childhood! Place of my dreams, I shall visit you again in my sleep! And again I shall see you in happier times, please God, with my friends around me!”

And they prospered in their new world, Canada:

“But the Macruadh yet dreams of the time when those of the clan then left in the world, accompanied, he hopes, by some of those that went out before them, shall go back to repeople the old waste places, and from a wilderness of white sheep and red deer, make the mountain land a nursery of honest, unambitious, brave men and strong-hearted women, loving God and their neighbour; where no man will think of himself at his brother’s cost, no man grow rich by his neighbour’s ruin, no man lay field to field, to treasure up for himself wrath against the day of wrath.”

Excerpt From

What’s Mine’s Mine (Complete)

George MacDonald

Since McDonald was such a prolific writer I still have much more of him to read…

 More on McDonald…

(a contemporary take on McDonald…)

DKS

Gaelic…

Gaelic is such a beautiful language.  Scotland’s beauty cannot be described it must be breathed.  It is raw.  Here Julie Fowlis’ pure voice and vivid video captures both the language and the land’s splendor…The Australian Shepard is an extra-touch…ENJOY!  

The must be something in my genes, deep within the DNA spiral helix…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARfc9Ayv9D4

And… 

DKS

Each day is a new beginning…Lord let me begin today with an open and grateful heart…As St. Francis said, “Lord let me be an instrument of your Peace.”

Lord…Not my will but Thy Will be done…

DKS