Monthly Archives: September 2013

126. What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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Take almost any path you please,
and ten to one it carries you down to a dale,
and leaves you by a pool in the stream.
There is magic in it.
~From MOBY DICK by Herman Melville

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Like Melville, I’m drawn to water and its magical properties.  The curious thing is that the magic happens not only in vast bodies of water like oceans but also in bodies of water as limited as what might be found in a garden fountain or the  sometimes glassy stillness of water that stirs up magic and mystery.  Yes, mystery too, and part of the mystery is that water gives the feeling that one is in the presence of something alive and vibrant.  I remember as a child begging to go out and play in the rain or snow.  If and when I got the chance, like most children,  I’d stick out my tongue to catch raindrops or snowflakes and was so thrilled when either of them landed on my tongue.  When I felt the wetness I knew instinctively that I was being fed something good, something essential to my existence.  Perhaps  deep in my heart of hearts, I knew even then that the Presence I felt in water was the Holy One’s.  After all it was He who once hovered over earth’s waters and imbued them with His sanctity and His life giving force.

For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills. . .  ~Deuteronomy 8:7   ✝

125. There brews He beautiful water! And beautiful it always is. ~John Bartholomew Gough

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Water, thou has no taste, no color, no odor;
canst not be defined,
art relished while ever mysterious.
Not necessary to life,
but rather life itself,
thou fillest us with a gratification
that exceeds the delight of the senses.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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Water!  Blessed water!  Just looking at it has a cooling effect.  And when it’s a 100 degrees outside, one looks for anything that makes it feel cooler.  James and I go to Dallas every so often to eat at our favorite little burger place near SMU and to what I think are two of North Texas’ best plant nurseries.  Both the restaurant and the nurseries are fairly close to Turtle Creek, an area of Dallas that’s also one of our favorite haunts.  Not only are the creek and the grounds along the creek beautiful, but the homes and estates on either side of the it are some of the most spectacular in Dallas.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  ~Genesis 1:2

124. Every flower about a house certifies to the refinement of somebody. Every vine climbing and blossoming tells of love and joy. ~Robert G. Ingersoll

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What a desolate place would be
a world without a flower!
It would be a face without a smile,
a feast without a welcome.
~A .J. Balfour

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With its delicate tendrils the striking, lacy pink coral vine rapidly climbs up, over, and on anything it can find.  Because it is a vigorous vine upon which masses of flowers are situated, it needs support to produce the masses of green heart-shaped leaves and large branching flower stalks.  Once it reaches high enough and the dainty pink blooms appear, the sweet of it delights the bees.  And of course like all flowering vines it feeds my soul.

Return to us, God Almighty!  Look down and see!  Watch over this vine. . .  ~Psalm 80:14  ✝

123. Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. ~Melody Beattie

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Be glad of life because it gives you the chance
to love,
to work,
to play,
and
to look at the stars.
~Henry Van Dyke

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Morning glories always brighten a day and fill it with reason enough for hopefulness and gratitude.

Sing to the Lord with grateful praise; make music to our God on the harp.  ~Psalm 147:7  ✝

122. Has the luster of the infinite holiness of God ever shone upon your heart and drawn your heart to him? ~Jeremiah Burroughs

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The world is holy.
We are holy.
All life is holy.
Daily prayers are delivered
on the lips of breaking waves,
the whisperings of grasses,
the shimmering of leaves.
~Terry Tempest Williams,
American author and naturalist

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I’ve even seen what seems like daily prayers being offered up from the nodding heads of birthing flowers in the garden.  It’s as if they know to reverence life and its Giver.  For we humans reverence for life sometimes comes through the senses for with them we are able to see, hear, smell, touch, and taste Creation’s pervasive holiness.  Moreover, from a power of perception seemingly independent of the five senses we are able to discern the holiness that exists within the human heart.  And why not?  The human heart is, after all, the Divine’s sanctuary, and as such it is the mystical core from which God operates in our lives. To come into that inner place of holiness is to come “home” in a way for therein croons the voice, soft and sweet, of a loving Father.  If we strive to listen to and obey His still, small Voice, a well within is filled with the mercy, forgiveness, and love needed for us to blossom into a purposeful anointing.  Surely even the angels stand in awe of such as this.

. . . by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of His own purpose and grace.   ~2 Timothy 1:9   ✝

121. Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher. ~William Wordsworth

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In the midst of darkness, light;
In the midst of death, life;
In the midst of chaos, order.
Thus has it ever been,
Thus it is now, and
Thus it shall always be.
~Edited excerpt by Orlog, in the Norn’s Chant

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You will be secure, because there is hope; you will look about and take your rest in safety.  ~Job 11:18  ✝

120. Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. ~Malcolm Muggeridge

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The world has different owners at sunrise. . .
Even your own garden does not belong to you.
Rabbits and blackbirds have the lawns;
a tortoise-shell cat who never appears in daytime
patrols the brick walls,
and a golden-tailed pheasant
glints his way through the iris spears.
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh,
pioneering American aviator and author

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In my yard are squirrels instead of rabbits, mockingbirds instead of blackbirds, an assortment of stray cats instead of one tortoise-shell cat, and garter snakes that slither through the grass instead of a pheasant that glints his way through the iris spear.  So it is that my yard has as Lindbergh penned “different owners at sunrise.”  But since I planted everything for the wildlife as much as for me, why shouldn’t they come and sometimes in large numbers all through the day and night.

J. Philip Newell says that God’s glory glows “in the glistening of a creature’s eyes” as well as in “every emanation of creation’s life,” and that we can reverence God “in all that has life.”  My guess is that’s why some people garden in the first place.  We are fascinated by and delighted with the flowers and the wildlife, but we long for the presence of God into our green temples–that Presence that we feel and see in tiny buds breaking the soil, in pinkish purply glows in the eastern sky, in a silver slivers of the moon in the darkness of night, or in the delicious stillnesses in the garden as day passes into night.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. . .  ~Romans 1:20   ✝

118. Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. ~N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa-Cherokee writer

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If delight may provoke men’s labour,
what greater delight is there then to behold the earth
as apparelled with plants, as with a robe of imbroidered worke,
set with orient pearles, and garnished with great diversitie
of rare and costly jewels?
The delight is great but the use is greater,
and joyned often with necessitie.
~John Gerarde, English herbalist and botany writer

Oh how beautiful is the butterfly supping on earth’s delights!  As they flit from flower to flower nectaring on sweet profferings they give flight to the wings of the day.  Were it not for such as they, would the human spirit ever be able to soar above the madness?  Thank you Lord for revealing yourself and your goodness through all that you created.

In the beginning God created the heavens and earth. . .God saw all that He had made, and it was very good…  ~Genesis 1:1, Genesis 1:31a  ✝

117. I don’t like standard beauty – there is no beauty without strangeness. ~Karl Lagerfeld

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the loveliness is everywhere
even in the ugliest and most hostile environment
at the turning of a corner
in the eyes and on the lips of a stranger
in the emptiest areas where is no place for hope
and only death invites the heart
the loveliness is there
it emerges
incomprehensible
inexplicable
it rises in its own reality and what we must learn is
how to receive it~into ours
~Kenneth White

Ordinarily the rose in the photo is an exquisite beauty; in fact Belinda’s Dream is nearly perfect in color and form.  But Texas has been in the throes of its usual hot August nastiness and our temp here hit 106 yesterday; so this poor baby opened only to have a fair measure of her pretty petals fried before mid-afternoon.  Yet, she held so much of her beauty that I couldn’t resist taking a picture of her “non-standard” beauty.  How could I not when the strangeness of her heat-altered beauty was almost as alluring as the face she normaly presents in the garden.

One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.  ~Psalm 27:4  ✝