Three Strawberries

Three Strawberries, Duane Keiser

Colossians 3:3 by George Herbert

Colossians 3:3
by George Herbert

My words and thoughts do both express this notion,
That Life hath with the sun a double motion.
The first Is straight, and our diurnal friend,
The other Hid, and doth obliquely bend.
One life is wrapped In flesh, & and tends to earth:
The other winds towards Him, whose happy birth
Taught me to live here so, That still one eye
Should aim and shoot at that which Is on high:
Quitting with daily labour all My pleasure,
To gain at harvest an eternal Treasure.

Via Thomas Banks

Great Dane with Sausages: "Caesar, those who are about to die salute you!"

Great Dane with Sausages: "Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant, " Wilhelm Trübner
via J.R.'s Art Place

A Movie You Might Have Missed #6: What's Eating Gilbert Grape

It's been 10 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

6. What's Eating Gilbert Grape

The movie that convinced me Leonardo DiCaprio could act.

Johnny Depp is a teenage boy who loves his 400 pound mother, his mentally retarded brother (DiCaprio), and his restless sister but the weight of their combined needs results in crushing responsibility. Stuck in the backwater of tiny Endora, he sees no way out of his situation. The answer to his problems is not what one would anticipate and is as understated as Depp's performance in many ways. Along the way, we are shown each person in greater depth and as we do the quirkiness becomes less important than the different aspects of humanity. Life affirming and it will stick with you.

The Sad Kitchen by John Paul King

Years after the murder of her son, Helen Sampson has opened an underground, nighttime soup kitchen where people seek refuge when they are kept awake by a guilty conscience. But when one of her customers, Vern, writes a children's book that goes viral, The Sad Kitchen begins to attract public suspicion which calls into question Helen's motives.

This is a simple, yet engaging story. I really enjoyed it and, yet, struggle with how to give more of a description than is on the cover itself.

On one level, it is a meditation on forgiveness and mercy. There are crimes which are considered unforgivable by society, yet the Christian must still practice forgiveness and mercy on the truly penitent.

On another level, it is a meditation on the relationship of art to the artist. Can we judge the art separately from the person who created it? I myself say "yes" and yet there is one person whose movies I refuse to view based on his personal life. I suspect we all have that blind spot somewhere.

On yet a third level, it is a meditation on the power of the good person to change lives - simply by living as a good person.

So The Sad Kitchen is simple but there is plenty to think about.

Cherry Tree in Full Bloom at Mountain Temple

Cherry Tree in Full Bloom at Mountain Temple, Calligraphy in the view

Click through to see many more beautiful photos of cherry trees in blossom.

New Reviews for Thus Sayeth the Lord!

This Book is for Everyone

"I'm not a church-going spiritual kind of person but I am a spiritual person. I wasn't sure what I would find in Thus Sayeth the Lord. If it was all churchy I was outta there. But I was so happily engaged with a description and take on the prophets that I could relate to...that made me stop and think. Reread...think more. How often does that happen in a book? It was such a birds-eye view on big situations and brought into the perspective of today. Pretty interesting how now looking at current events is pretty relatable to what was going on for the prophets to deal with in their day. So buy it and enjoy...you will LOL, I promise!" — Lisa Montgomery

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Well worth the small cost for the fresh take.

"This book provides a refreshing down to earth look at some of the most interesting individuals in the Bible. It humanizes them and allows us a glimpse into their mentality and faith. " — John Austin

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A Good Introduction

"The Old Testament prophets are often hard to get a grip on, as each is embedded in a particular situation in time that usually isn’t familiar to the reader. They can seem detached, unrelated to anything in our current experience. Davis does an excellent job of making the prophets human for us, putting them in context, and making them relevant. As such, it’s an excellent starting for deeper study, and engaging and entertaining in its own right." — William Duquette

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Hear the word of the Lord with different ears

"Julie has a special way of listening to anything she reads or watches. She can't seem to ignore what God may be saying in even the most mundane, everyday things and events around us. That is how she listens to God speaking through his designated prophets, the ones in the Bible that we sometimes skirt in our own reading out of confusion, or sometimes fear of what we might hear. The prophets Julie has heard in writing this book may do and say scary things, and she can still help us hear the mercy and comfort our God wants to give us for our own lives." — Patsy Edinburgh

Many thanks to those who took the time to review my book! Here's where you can get your copy!

Media Bias/Fact Check

If you can't tell how a media is slanting it's reports ... and they all do, even if only from the way they phrase a headline, then this is the spot for you:

Media Bias/Fact Check

Our tests of different media we knew about seemed spot on and it is really interesting to read the criteria upon which they base their judgments of each one. Each isn't the same and they seem to be taking a lot of factors into account such as accuracy of fact checking, emotionally loaded word choices,  credible sources, and factual accuracy.

A cool summer morning in the Texas Panhandle

Taken by Traces of Texas

Daffodils

Daffodils, Edward B. Gordon

Good Friday was the perfect day to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

This is my fourth time through the series - there couldn't possibly be a better day to read the end of this book (of the series) than on Good Friday. Everything about Harry as a Christ figure resonates so strongly against the backdrop of Christ's passion which is so present during the Triduum. Really perfect.

What a series. Rowling wrote a master work. No character is left without motivation, no one is all good or all evil (except Voldemort, and even he is pitiable as seen in the way station).

See Me on a Live Webcast on OSV Today - 1 Central Time

This webcast will be a half-hour interview about - of course - my new book Thus Sayeth the Lord: A Fresh Take on the Prophets.

Here's where you can see it and it will be on-demand about an hour after we finish - so you can really see it any time at your convenience.

It looks as if you have to register to watch.

“God Does His Greatest Work Through Frail People” — My Interview with Tony Rossi

Though these stories are thousands of years old, Julie reiterates that they can apply to our lives today. She says, “These prophets were people just like us. We all are dealing with the Lord. What does He want us to do? Where are we God’s mouth, so to speak? These people were put in extraordinary circumstances and they had to really step it up. They were called to do big things, but in our own everyday lives, we’re called to do extraordinary things. They’re just not against the king. They’re with our next door neighbor, with our in-laws, with our children or our coworkers.”

My interview with Tony Rossi of The Christophers is available for your listening pleasure! :-)

The Kindle version is available at Amazon. The print version is now scheduled for June 1 (thank you coronavirus!).

The Haunted Lady by Mary Roberts Rinehart

It’s enough to stop Eliza Fairbanks’s heart. At least that’s what the elderly widow claims is being done to her. First, someone unleashes a cloud of bats in her locked bedroom. When that doesn’t do the trick, next comes a pack of rats to claw at her toes. Special duty nurse Hilda Adams, aka “Miss Pinkerton” to the Homicide Bureau, believes Eliza’s every rattled fear is true. She may be frail—but she’s not batty.

What Eliza is, is very, very rich. Out of the shady and oddball assortment of relatives swarming the mansion, someone clearly has an eye on the Fairbanks fortune. Now it’s Hilda’s job to keep an eye on Eliza before a potential killer resorts to more definitive means. And considering all the bad blood running through the heart of the Fairbanks family, it might already be too late to save her charge.

I enjoyed the heck out of this mystery from 1942. It is classic in just the way you want when the point of reading is to enter another world.

This is the classic mystery situation of the wealthy family full of disgruntled offspring. You can't tell who is simply calloused and who's up to no good. It's got bats, rats, ghosts, and spooky noises, none of which put Hilda off her sleuthing. The solution was perfect and I couldn't believe I hadn't figured it out. All the clues were there.

A lot of fun for those who like older style mysteries.

Monet in His Studio Boat

Monet in His Studio Boat, Eduoard Manet

Manet painted Claude Monet in his Studio Boat in the summer of 1874 at Gennevilliers.

Partly no doubt because he was more interested in the old masters than the other Impressionists and took a more traditional view of the painter’s role in society, Manet was slow to take up the idea of painting on the spot, in the open air.

But that summer it all changed quite dramatically when he spent some time painting with Monet and Renoir at Argenteuil, a small town just down-river from Paris. There it was Monet’s convictions which especially affected him, and although he never became particularly interested in landscape as such, took to painting people out of doors.

Here he has captured Monet and his wife Camille in the boat which the painter used as a floating studio, rowing it up and down the Seine and stopping whenever he spotted a promising subject. Monet was often desperately poor, but could always rely on a loan from Manet – who was equally unpopular but less dependent on art for his income.

Wikiart article

St. Corona - pray for us anyway

Saint Corona

In the middle of March, Catholic news outlets began to report an extraordinary coincidence: not only is there a saint named Corona, but she happens to be the patroness of epidemics. Suddenly, her cult exploded. The internet was flooded with new prayers and litanies beseeching this obscure Saint Corona to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

By the end of the month, however, the “fact”-checkers at Snopes (those renowned experts on the Roman martyrology) announced that Saint Corona was not, in fact, a patroness of epidemics. ...

In truth, they’re right. There’s no history of Corona being invoked against plague and pandemic. Traditionally, she’s regarded as the patroness of gamblers and treasure-hunters. In fact, she probably went by the name Stephanie in her mortal existence.

But, then, who cares? Do these wet blankets really think Corona is going to refuse our prayers just because she’s not an officially designated plague saint?

This is a wonderful article which points out that historically it is not the Vatican who chooses what saints are the patrons of, it is the people. And, in the case of St. Corona, the people have spoken! Plus, we can ask any saint we like for intercessory prayer, whether or not it is under their patronage.

I really love this bit of the article, which you should go read in its entirety.

We might imagine the popular patrons all rushing here and there, furiously answering petitions. St. Christopher is dashing between fathers who are setting off on long car trips; St. Anthony is tending to busy mothers who have lost their car keys. And there, amid all this bustle, sweet Corona sits on her little throne. Now and then she hears the plea of an Italian grandmother asking for help with her son’s gambling debt but, otherwise, her days are rather uneventful.

Then, suddenly, a loud roar goes up from the earth. The heavens quake; St. Peter’s book nearly falls from its pedestal. Saint Corona almost takes no notice, expecting St. Michael to fly into battle with his flaming sword or St. Brendan to leap into the sea with his great life-ring. Then she notices St. Anthony and St. Christopher, St. Michael and St. Brendan, have halted in their tracks. All at once, they turn and look at her.

Saint Corona blinks. Then, at last, she hears a hundred thousand voices calling her name. Baffled, she looks up at Our Lord. He smiles. “They’re asking for you, Corona.” So she rises from her throne, puts on her crown of glory, and gets to work.

This vision of Saint Corona suddenly going to her new job brought to mind Jo Walton's wonderful story Joyful and Triumphant: Saint Zenobius and the Aliens.

It is short, maybe three pages so go read it at the link. Walton says she wrote it when meditating upon what life in Heaven would be like. It is a delightful companion piece to the imaginings above.

Note: I hadn't heard of St. Corona. Many thanks to Maria for bringing this article to my attention!

Iris

Frank Vincent DuMond, Iris, c. 1902

My favorite flower. Did you know that different colors of irises have different scents?

Lazarus and the Coronavirus

Beautiful. Ten minutes long, but worth every second.

Considering how heartbreaking it is not to be able to accompany our loved ones who are dying of the Coronavirus, it is striking to note that when told that Lazarus had died, Jesus replied, "I am glad that I was not there." What did He mean? How are we to understand His reply?

A careful look at the numbers for coronavirus in the U.S.

This pandemic, now that it has reached America, has taken 3,173 lives here. This, from a tested population of 164,359 cases. That’s a mortality rate of 1.9%. But immediately, questions must be asked. We record every case of death from the coronavirus, but we have no idea how many people have had the coronavirus. Clearly, there are more than 164,359 cases because not everyone has been tested. That would put the mortality rate at less than 1.9%. That rate could be far, far less. As Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya, professors of medicine at Stanford, have written, based on their model of over 6 million cases they believe exist: “That’s a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two-week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%.”

William J. Bennett writing at RealClearPolitics has a good piece that helps us keep perspective. Or it helps me do so anyway. Read it all.

Coronavirus in Counties
This map from USA Facts lets you see the number of virus cases and deaths by county. As my husband reminded me, half the cases in the country are concentrated in a few places.

Just my deep breath moments over keeping the sense of perspective that most of the media lost long ago.

Holmes the busybody!

"I know you, you scoundrel! I have heard of you before. You are Holmes the meddler."

My friend smiled.

"Holmes the busybody!"

His smile broadened.

"Holmes the Scotland Yard jack-in-office."

Holmes chuckled heartily. "Your conversation is most entertaining," said he.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band