“To honor life, we must be willing
to grow through what we don’t know yet,
and outgrow what we know no longer fits us.
We must be willing to give in to the process, moment by moment,
realizing a new plot may be unfolding.”
~ Iyanla Vanzant
Text & image source: Iyanla Vanzant https://web.facebook.com/DrIyanlaVanzant/
Lay your hands on me
braced against bad weather
what a welcome
coming in from the cold
It’s every time you gather me close
all I can hear is your heart
beating like
Gabriel’s drum of skin
at the beginning of the world
you
begin me
with each
breath
forming laborious as
fatigued children
stubbornly persist
to dance
with half sleeping limbs
slack and graceless
In their abundant honesty
unguarded weariness
not intoxicate enough
to peel them from an ache
for music reveals
your song
If translated
portioning day into ribbons
each wreath a moment
pressed behind slide
to reexamine in mind palace
the sound of life
cymbals beneath earth
flutes and oboe forming wood
paper as soft as hide
writing our language by intoned key
first a rise, a fall, a swell
contagious momentum picking
up trained netting drawing flickering
into chalice
drunk deeply by fingers of pyre
dipping…
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“We know from Scripture that God can turn the hearts of kings (Proverbs 21:1 ✝). That means we should be praying for God’s will to be done and for our leaders to seek God and listen to Him. We should pray that they be surrounded by godly counsel and most important, that our leadership would personally know God and the salvation found through faith in Jesus Christ alone.” ~Billy Graham
It is very clear we are to submit to those that have rule over us, to pray for those in leadership, and to obey the laws of the land. Nowhere in the Bible do we see that we are to wish death and destruction to our leadership. ~Excerpted lines from an article found on the Internet.
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls… ~Hebrews 13:17 ✝
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls… ~Hebrews 13:17 ✝
Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor(president) supreme… ~1 Peter 2:13 ✝
…A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed,
we would launch one. It would explode high in the air-
explode softly-and send thousands, millions,
of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth –
boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn’t go cheap, either –
not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four,
with the sharpener built right in.
~Excerpted lines by Robert Fulghum
Today I ran across this photo that I took one afternoon last fall. I had been outside looking for signs of coming fall when I noticed a large patch of weeds in my front flowerbed. After I sat down to pull them, I heard a strange, fiery kind of noise overhead. It wasn’t a fire breathing dragon as I first feared it might be but instead this hot air balloon making its way right over the top of my house. The big bright balloon was a colorful, fanciful thing, and for some strange reason the first thing I thought of was Fulghum’s whimsical parody about a Crayola bomb. At least to me the balloon looked like something that might be on a mission to drop something fun on those of us below. In fact the balloon itself almost looks like a crayola drawing. Then as I pondered writing about the pretty thing, I remembered the old 5th Dimension’s song from the 70‘s wherein the listener is hears “Would you like to ride in my beautful balloon…
Up, up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon.
The world’s a nicer place in my beautiful balloon;
It wears a nicer face in my beautiful balloon.
We can sing a song and sail along the silver sky.
Suspended under a twilight canopy
We’ll search the clouds for a star to guide us.
We can float among the stars together,
you and I, for we can fly.”
~Excerpted and edited lyrics
by the 5th Dimension
Something extraordinary had turned an ordinary day into one of delight especially for my inner child.
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into eternal continuity that keep us.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
~Excerpt from TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US,
by John O’Donohue
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. -Psalm 23:6 ✝
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie,
and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—
who is forever praised.
Amen.
Romans 1:25
When the truth of God is turned to a lie,
his glory is obliterated.
John Calvin
(a purple passion flower found blooming deep in the Georgia woods / Julie Cook / 2017)
When I frist read today’s quote by John Calvin regarding turing God’s truth to a lie…
which therefore obliterated His glory…
I thought “YES, that’s it!”
“That’s what’s going on here”…
“That’s exactly what they’re doing…”
“They’re taking God’s word and altering it to fit the skewed and warped desires of
these current times of ours.”
“Twisting and turning everything God has uttered into some sort of carnal, wanton
and depraved acknowledgement which in turn makes these current times of wants
and desires all really ok.”
It’s been done ever so slyly…
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We must save our bees! Here’s another reason why! 🙂
I’ve got my eye on you ! Photography done by constance carlsen
“Allsorts of fruit and vegetables are pollinated by honey bees, such as broccoli and squash, apples and almonds. Pollination is not just important for the food we eat directly, it’s vital for the foraging crops, such as field beans and clover, used to feed the livestock we depend on for meat”
Well, spring sprang.
We’ve had our state of grace
and
our little gift of sanctioned madness,
courtesy of Mother Nature.
~David Assael
As oncoming summer’s blast furnace begins to heat up so do the colors in the garden. It has literally become a lively fiesta outside my doors and creatures, great and small, winged or afoot, are partaking of the feasts that have been laid before them on Creation’s table.
In fact they’ve been so busy of late supping on the produce of May’s “potent blood” that I’ve only been able to capture two recent “critter” images with my camera. But I wouldn’t keep any of them from their tasks even if I could for what they’re doing not only satisfies their hunger but also mine, and it guarantees that this time next year there will be more.
God’s designs are such ingenious plans! For example these pollinating creatures are so much smaller than we and their lives span such a brief period of time, but what power their tiny wings and feet have in the grand scheme of things! We, mortal humanity that is, think ourselves to be so mighty and yet mankind literally owes its very existence to what comes from the labors of these annual pollinating dances upon earth’s stage.
And sadly too many lives play out solely in the technological bubbles of modern society and so are completely unaware of the miraculousness of such scenarios and the utter life-supporting significance of what goes on outside myopic, sterile, and godless environments.
Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. ~Excerpted line from Jeremiah 8:7 ✝
**All photos taken in her yard by Natalie
“There is no statute of limitations on starting over.
Re-invent yourself every day.
Be the girl who walks barefoot and listens to the blues.
Tomorrow, wear a trench coat and speak fierce truths.
Be a phoenix. Be ashes. Burn down. Resurrect.
Let go of the idea that you must always be who you have always been.”
— Coalsuns
Art by Jennifer Yoswa
Text & image source: Rivers in the Ocean https://web.facebook.com/RiversInTheOcean/
Happy Memorial Day!
**Images via Pinterest; text added by Natalie
Sacred Touches 