Monthly Archives: May 2016

1148. Being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure. ~Bob Marley

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19

To become whole
first let yourself be broken.
~Based on lines from
the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

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To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything and your heart
will be wrung and possibly broken.

If you want to make sure of keeping
it intact you must give it to no one,
not even an animal.

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies
and little luxuries;
avoid all entanglements.
Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin
of your selfishness.
But in that casket, safe, dark,
motionless, airless, it will change.

It will not be broken;
it will become unbreakable,
impenetrable, irredeemable.

To love is to be vulnerable.
~C.S. Lewis

Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. ~James 1:12  ✝

**Watercolor image found on Pinterest

1147. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. ~William Shakespeare

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All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener’s garters, Shepherd’s purse,
Bachelor buttons, Lady’s smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.
~Excerpt from a poem
by Robert Louis Stevenson

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What’s in a flower’s name? Goodness knows!
Surely you all know some of them, I suppose.
I’ve heard some say a rose is a rose is a rose,
But is a lily a lily by any other name like the rose.
Some time ago I discovered that the answer is no,
For in my garden fair grow some that are not so.
There are daylilies and spider lilies and crinum lilies,
Basket lilies and blackberry lilies and asiatic lilies.
However, only one of those is true to its name.
Could you guess which one if this were a game?
Furthermore there’s even one “un-lily” that’s referred to by
Yet another name which is indeed just as false a lie.
Sometimes that particular one is called a Peruvian daffodil,
Like yellow “daffadowndillies” which define spring so well.
And then there is one more that’s not really a lily
Whose leafy spears resemble the iris; isn’t that just silly?
So though, by any other name they might “smell” as sweet,
Five of these names in the true lily family shall we not meet.
~Natalie Scarberry

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“…rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” ~Excerpt from Luke 10:20  ✝

**Some images in the collages are mine; others were found on Pinterest. The groups of two in each category are of the same species and arranged in the order I mentioned them in my poem.