is completely enchanted with the couple next door. You have to click the picture and look closely, top right and bottom left. They answer when you call to them, and live in the tree just 50 feet from our porch. Stunningly beautiful. I have never seen one in the wild, and here they seem to have adopted us...
This is totally the kind of thing that makes me weep with appreciation. So haunting...
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Wow...fortunate you! They are so beautiful and their gaze - it's like they possess a wisdom of the ages.
Any idea what particular brand of owl?
Screech owls. They had been calling for weeks but none of us realized what the sound was until we saw them!
Aren't they the coolest thing?
They are, in fact, wicked cool (as we say in our local dialect)! I am totally enamored with the "guy" with the big ears!
What a blessing for you and your family. Enjoy!
Wow! No doubt a beautiful sign from God of the Wisdom you are helping to share with your writings and blog, POTA! I wonder if they are mating, since they are a pair. Perhaps some baby owls will be blessing your property too!! Maybe we should ask for St. Francis' intercessions to keep them safe. Your followers will undoubtedly be picturing you outside...preaching God's Holy Word to them like the good Saint used to do to the animals that approached him! Thanks for sharing this! (ps, perhaps Matt. 6: 25 ff is the message for you with these creatures...just a thought that popped into my head before sending this off).
Hello seated members of the OTA roundtable...just reporting in for a quick request for prayers. I think I may have stumbled upon a format that might work for my book. I hate to describe it right now for fear of jinxing it! But since yesterday was Pentecost, and a beautiful breeze blew through my family room this morning when I started to "employ" this particular format of writing, I was given a certain, solid hope. Up til now (and perhaps this is the struggle of working through and with the ADD), every other way of beginning my book has ended like so many projects in my life...starting out with a zeal and firestorm of words, but then fizzling out when I think about how or where to end it. Perhaps you two can help...at least for now with your prayers. I feel like am ready to make the leap to "writer" but admit so much fear. It's so easy to defend and explain "carpenter." Try defending "writer" to the in-laws. Maybe this is the time for busting out of all my fears of actually completing something. Or maybe it's another beginning that will soon fizzle. Either way, I do it for the Lord, and I hope and pray that that is what pleases Him. If I show up at heaven's doorsteps one day with a thousand unfinished books, then that's a thousand times better than a thousand empty pages.
Oh, on another note, just want to share something I stumbled upon while re-visiting the Gospel account of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery (John 8). I followed the footnotes in the New American Bible to Jeremiah 17:13. It notes that the RSV reads: "Those who turn away from thee shall be written in the earth..." I just thought how amazing it is that so often, God (here, Jesus) stands outside of time. What happens first can actually happen second. He sees all and knows all. So for Him, knowing the sinful men who will turn away from Him...these men can have their names "written in the earth" either before OR after they turn away from Him. In Jeremiah, they turn away THEN their names are written in dirt. In John, their names are written in dirt, THEN they walk away. Of course, this assumes that what Jesus wrote was their names, as many old commentaries have hinted. Or perhaps it was just the writing in the earth by Jesus that reminded these so-called scholars of the words of Jeremiah...and they didn't want to be around to see if THE Prophet would etch their names as well.
The real beauty of the reference back to Jeremiah is the second part of verse 13: "...for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters." It becomes even more beautiful when you go back to John 7 and hear Jesus (preaching one day earlier in the Temple) say "Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink" (John 7:37).
This is all taking place during the Feast of the Tabernacles.... Interesting, isn't it? Here, a woman caught in adultery... a woman whose "tabernacle" was so badly treated by lustful men over how many years of being "used"...but was restored by Jesus' power to heal and forgive. If only the feminists could "get this" about what Jesus did for women who are trapped in a male-dominated, lustful, self-righteouse society!
Just sharing... thoughts from the Holy Spirit to you all.
Len – that’s great news about the formatting break-through for your book. One word at a time, bro, and you’ll get there. Like POTA, you have a gift with the pen. Re: defending “writer” to the in-laws – I will offer an empathetic prayer for you. [My lovely bride and I will hit our 20th anniversary in July, and there are times with my in-laws I still feel like the bumbling college student that I was, proving myself worthy of the hand of their only daughter.] No fear, Len; we’re rootin’ (and prayin’) for ya!
“God (here, Jesus) stands outside of time. What happens first can actually happen second.” …see POTA’s post today about Lost and time travel etc…and how this relates to destiny…
Len, I am SO glad you are having a breakthrough on the book. No defense necessary; just do it! Praying for you brother +
I LOVE the writing in the dirt thing for so many reasons. I have always wondered what he wrote there, and I bet that reference is why the commentators speculate it was their names; what a scary thought.
I also appreciate the Feast of Tabernacles reference. I have found that paying attention to whatever was going on liturgically in the Scriptural narratives provides a lot of insight to what is being said and done. Fascinating.
Hugs!
I do not think any of the references are just coincidence, esp. with that reference to the feast of tabernacles and the timing of the healing of the woman caught in adultery. If you think about it, the whole Gospel seems to be one huge pro-life reference...which is what I want to explain with my book, btw. Here, Jesus is in the Temple...during the feast of the Tabernacles...and what do these men want to do? They seem bent on killing someone...anyone...first this adulterous woman, then Jesus Himself. He tells them in John 8:44..."You belong to your father the devil and you unwillingly carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning..." Here, Jesus is IN the Temple, the place where the Word of God should be protected and nurtured and explained and adored. In other words, they should be down on their knees, for they have this golden opportunity to meet face to face with God Himself, Jesus, inside the place where the Holy of Holies meets the human...and what do they do? They invoke the LAW!!! Especially the part of the law that requires that a person should die. They have no clue that they are just as much in need of God's Mercy as the adulterous woman! And then look at how Jesus follows up that scene in the Temple. He meets the blind beggar, and He cures the man's blindness by having him go wash the dirt...the same dirt He just spit on, as if to make a point that He is Lord of the Law and can write it on the ground if He wishes, and then, if He wishes, He can spit upon what He writes and turn it into a healing clay. He tells the man, "Go wash in the Pool of "the Sent". Again, the water, which washes away the dirt. And the pool...oh how i'd love to make a movie of this scene...the blind man goes down into the pool, and who is there to help him get the clay off his eyes but the woman who was just healed herself. How she must have longed all her life to wash away the sinfulness that men put upon her...and now, like the blind beggar, she has the pardon from God Himself and can go wash there. In the movie, I would have it where the blind man's first sight is into her loving, forgiven eyes...a gaze of tender mutual acceptance of the Divine Acceptance they've just been given. Two new disciples, now brother and sister, in a pool that's just been sanctified by Jesus' little portion of spittle that separates from the dirt and turns the waters Holy. Mel Gibson, where are you?! I gotta screenplay for you!!!
Wow - Len - that's good bread. Between POTA and you...the food that the two of you dish out - keep it coming!
"a pool that's just been sanctified by Jesus' little portion of spittle" ...AND there's that potent word again: "little."
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