Good Morning, Digital Neighbors! Happy Friday ADD Irregulars, WSN Aficionados & Curators, Curmudgeons & Curmudgeonettas @ Padre’s. Good morning to all our Friends, Refugees, Early Birds, Later Dayers, Conversants and Lurkers over at the Report. Peaking behind the circus curtain to check in on the PHAM and all its Misfits over at Phetasy and finally returning to the Unhypnotized that sip with Scott.
I have been blessed with rural assignments since 2012 and my return to countryside has been a real and palpable blessing in my life and ministry. While I loved the city and all its hustle, bustle and immediacy that shaped the first 19 years of my priesthood, returning to a more rural setting help me rediscover the healing and wonderous power of nature. There is still plenty of technology and modernity in my life, too much to be honest, but seeing wildlife, smelling pastures, hearing the rooster at daybreak and the creepy crawlies at dusk is something often missed in suburbia. Not always, but often.
Having roads with less traffic and a slower speed limit, loading up the dog so she can stick her head out the window and suck in all the smells is a unique type of joy. Stopping to gaze at a field full of deer or look at the movements of creek are all part of the awaiting joys of the countryside. Nature is both healing and strengthening and I am only a peripheral visitor to nature, someone on the fringe of its wonders. I hope wherever life finds you, there is some contact with nature, some brush with reality beyond our control or dependent upon our efforts. Nature offers us no political parties, no social norms or constraints, no expectations other than to be seen and experienced with awareness. The more you bring to the table, the more nature provides, the less you bring to the table, the more you miss. It is good to discover and walk from time to time the path of no intent.
Your thought for today provided by C. David Hay who inspired this morning ramble. Have a great day digital neighbor!
COUNTRY LANE
Give me a road away from the crowd,
Away from the noise and the race
And let me wander the quiet trail
To a different time and place.
Where miles are measured in valleys,
And birches point the way
To somewhere we miss so dearly–
We call it yesterday.
All cares are soon forgotten
On the path of no intent;
The beauty of the countryside
Is surely heaven sent.
And when this journey’s over
The memories shall remain
Of daydream trips into the past
And down a country lane.
C. DAVID HAY
Mingo Wilderness in Mingo National Wildlife Refuge in Missouri. Photography by Robert Charity
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
