Clouds III

[Shin]

'The soul has followed Moses and the cloud, both of these serving as guides for those who would advance in virtue; Moses here represents the commandments of the Law; and the cloud that leads the way, its spiritual meaning. The soul has been purified by crossing the Sea; it has removed from itself and destroyed the enemy army. It has tasted of the waters of Marah, that is, of life deprived of all sinful pleasure; and this at first had seemed bitter and unpleasant to the taste but offered a sensation of sweetness to those who accepted the wood. Next it enjoyed the beauty of the palm trees of the gospel and the springs; it filled itself with the living water, that is, the rock. It took within itself the bread of heaven. It overwhelmed the foreign host - a victory due to the extended arms of the Lawgiver, which thus foreshadowed the mystery of the Cross.

Only then can the soul go on to the contemplation of transcendent Being.'

St. Gregory of Nyssa

[eschator83]

This wonderful post seems to be for me an amazing coincidence because it served to refresh and amplify much of my recent reading and posting.  My first reaction was to rethink my longstanding, I think life-long, fascination and enjoyment in watching clouds of all types.  It got me thinking about our Christian Joy, that Jesus was so desirous to share with His followers, and that I think is extremely important and beneficial for modern Christians to also share with our neighbors and all the world if possible.
My second, deeper reaction was to consider how it seeks to answer the question how can a soul contemplate a Transcendent Being, whether Father, Trinity, Son, Spirit, Angel, Saint, or even demon.  This lead to reflection on the growth of Joy as our faith grows and strengthens, from Consolation, to Hope, and Love, to Rapture, Beatitude, and perhaps Ecstasy, which I think St Paul said was a gift of the Holy Spirit.
There are many segments of St Gregory's teaching that seem far beyond me, yet it recalls vividly many happy hours of seeing delightful images in the clouds, often religious, of Our Lord Jesus, His Holy Mother, churches, angels, and much more.
Many thanks for your post.

[Shin]

Thanks be to God for your kind and inspiring words. Inspiration leads to inspiration, kindness kindness, virtue to virtue, charity to charity. Charity beyond measure. God is good, His virtues beyond our understanding.

[eschator83]

I just clicked on replies to my posts, for the first time in ages.  It just found this one reply, but what a wonderful encouragement it is.  Thank you, thank you.

[eschator83]

I am struggling at this moment to transfer here a cloud photo I deeply love, showing also My bride and I at our camp lake.  My stepdaughter took the picture and made a notepad for me wiith the picture on the cover.  I pray I can get it to show up here.  I photoed the notebook cover, but even my bride couldn't figure out how to send it here from my cell phone.  She sent it to my laptop as an email (I don't get emails on the cell phone and don't want to) but we also can't figure out how to copy it from the laptop.  I'll keep working on copying.  Can anyone please advise?  AI Copilot wants to rewrite some of this.  I'll try to put that down below.

Copilot wants me to copy and paste this text to another screen.  May that's a hint to try first with the cloud picture.