His Rough Sketches

Painting: Carl Spitzweg

He Cannot Turn Away

For I Am Convinced

Yet He Feeds Them

Love Consists in This

Sunrise

The Eyes of the Lord

EVERYTHING

Let Your Heart Delight

As a Father

Every Little Step

Neither Height Nor Depth

His Plans

To Spiritual Love

'I think the chief reason why the unseen God willed

to appear in the flesh and mix with men

was that He might draw to Himself the love of those

who were not able to love except in a carnal manner.

And so: He could lead them on to spiritual love.'

St. Bernard of Clairvaux 

Painting: Cortona,Virgin and Child with Saints

Why Am I Not Receiving God's Gifts?

Hope and a Future

God Loves Us Too Much...

Painting used: Gerard van Honthorst, The Denial of St Peter

All The Kindly Waterfalls

Let all the waterfalls of Your
 kindly Fatherhood
run down upon me.
Let all the fountains of the great abyss
of Your infinite mercy burst open over my head.
Let the depths of Your charity engulf me....
Let me be lost in the flood of Your living love,
as a drop of the sea is lost in
its immensity... 
as a burning spark dies in the
rushing current of the river... 

St. Gertrude 



Painting: August Lucas

Treasure in the Old Bookshop, Revisited

The shop was long and narrow, dimly lit by naked bulbs dangling from the ceiling. It was a shadowed, solemn, wondrous place, tucked away in a dusty corner of the city where shops didn't sparkle like the department stores over on Main. Mysterious and musty it was, filled with rows and racks and piles of volumes. Used hardbacks, yellowing paperbacks, comics... all stacked haphazardly and ready for a rummager's quest.

I'd step out of the light of day and onto the squeaky wood floor in search of buried treasure. It was my own personal library, but the best part was: I could read the books and then I could keep them!  No stamps inside warning that this was a "14 day book," no falling in love with a whole fictional family only to have to dump them on a library counter at the end of the month.

I was allowed to buy all of the books I could carry, pretty much.. and this because of the kind man who took me to the bookstore. My father, who (okay, I'll admit it) spoiled me.  Rather than leaving me home on a Saturday so he could go rummage for his own treasures at "our bookshop," he patiently took his bubbly little buddy and shelled out who-knows-how-much for mystery stories I would stay up much too late reading.  I think back now and imagine the one sided "conversations" he had to endure on the drives home, as I cradled newfound treasures in my arms (no putting them in a bag for me, no sir) and rattled on about this being the EXACT Nancy Drew I've been wanting and oh LOOK at the green cover on this book it's JUST like leather and omigosh I once got this one from the library and then couldn't find it ever again and oh Daddy isn't this just the best BEST day?

Today I live surrounded with shadows of our bookshop.  Shadows of a good kind, as I savor the comfort of books lining walls of my home.  Shadows of a better kind, as I thank God for a father who was generous with his attention and his time.  These shadows of the better kind are ones I hope I've passed along to my own children, and now to my grandchildren as we share games and books and make-believe. I pray to be generous with my attention and my time, helping them make memory-shadows of their own.

And I live with shadows of the best kind, because the generosity and attention of my earthly father was, itself, a dim shadow of the attention of my Heavenly Father.  

I can only imagine how HE looks upon me when I accept with joy His outpouring of gifts.  Think of how it must please Him when we bubble over with thanks and praise.

There are treasures all around, if I just look for them.  It is again time for some counting, and some thanking. And who knows?  I might even bubble just a bit.... 

(this is a slightly edited version of a post from our archives) 

Photo on this post © 2015 N Shuman

 

Love in Heaven

'If love, even human love, 

gives so much consolation here, 

what will love not be like in heaven?'

St. Josemaria Escriva

Painting:William Adolphe Bouguereau, Maternal Admiration