Holding it Together
Your Soul is the diamond
engagement ring of God’s love.
Category Archives: Notes
. . . you must not be defeated.
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.
In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats,
so you can know who you are, what you can rise from,
how you can still come out of it.”
~ Maya Angelou
~ Image by Mandy Disher
Text & image source: The Garden Of Pensiveness https://web.facebook.com/The-Garden-Of-Pensiveness-367268523352486/
Intimate affair
O, Star of wonder, star of night
Star of royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect light.
Lyrics from the Christmas Carol
“We Three Kings of Orient Are…”
(image of the Adoration of the Magi by Giotto / Cappella Scrovegni / Padova. Pad ova, Italy / 1305)
“Not everyone sees the star”
Observes Christoph Blumhardt in his Advent reflection The Wisemen’s Star.
If everyone had seen the star,
would not all of ancient Palestine been turned upside down from such
an extraordinary sighting of a brilliant light illuminating the eastern sky?
Has not history shown us that the sighting, and subsequent gathering,
was not intended as a major crowd massing phenomenon…
but rather a more intimate affair…
Gathered were a host of angels, a handful of shepherds, three wisemen,
along with a sundry menagerie.
Not exactly the breaking news, front page headline sort of…
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Today’s Quote
When my mind breathes in peace . . .
“When my mind breathes in peace even for a fleeting minute,
my heart starts dancing with the flying wings of the wind.”
~ Sri Chinmoy
Text & image source: ॐ Simplicity, Elegance and Grace of Nature ॐ https://web.facebook.com/%E0%A5%90-Simplicity-Elegance-and-Grace-of-Nature-%E0%A5%90-1594041744215476/
Reversal
1310. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.~George Eliot
Trickle, trickle, trickle! Plop, plop, plop! How
Steadily the sand falls in the year’s hourglass.
Wait, wait, wait. Day after day we’ve waited
Until at long last you stepped ever so lightly
Through a door which opened months ago.
How is it that I’m so sure of your presence now?
What is it that speaks loudly of your arrival?
Perhaps it’s the changed hue of a once green leaf,
Or the gusty winds, from both north and south.
Or could it be the chilled hours at dawn and again
At day’s end? Or it could be the slant of golden
Light, or the nip in the air, or the richness of colors
No longer faded by summer’s miserable heat.
Or just maybe it’s being able to dally on mellow
Afternoons, or it could be seeing northers
Push hard against the garden’s weathervane
Or maybe it’s the deep blue of the skies above.
Last season and fourth child of the year,
Autumn, golden, splendid, glorious autumn,
You are late in coming but you’re finally here
And oh, oh, oh, how very welcome you are!
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. ~Psalm 136:1 ✝
**All of these photos were taken by me in and around my neighborhood today. I know many of you have been enjoying autumn for some time, but the colorful part of ours didn’t starting happening until recently. I know not how long it will last since we are rapidly approaching the Winter Solstice but I shall enjoy ever minute of it until winter topples her and sits on its chilly throne.
To Be of Use
Marge Piercy wrote this poem about what it means to immerse one’s self in one’s life. She does use the word work, which is not always what we immerse ourselves in.
Hans-Georg Gadamer used a German word that means to while over the worth of something. We linger over those things that have meaning to us and make us feel useful in our lives. We do not want those things to end. When we find work that feels like that, we do not want it to end.
Something magical happens when we encounter something worth taking our time with in life. It is like it waits for us and we feel real when we come to know it. When are doing that, we experience being useful and giving back in a very real way.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
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1309. O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley
So I like best of all autumn,
because its tone is mellower,
its colors are richer,
and it is tinged with a little sorrow.
~Lin Yutang
If I had to pick a recent, appropriate emblem for deep November, it would be the mellow richness of this rose. Though a wild west wind has blown today, the day I found it, dawn had broken under a heavy fog, and when the mist lifted, this rose and everything else in the garden was left completely soaked. It was as if the heavens had rained down a multitude of tears and tinged the landscape with more than the little autumn sorrow of which Yutang speaks. I for one have to wonder if, with daybreak coming later and later and darkness falling earlier and earlier, a garden knows that the year has almost completed another turn around the sun. If so and because the longing to be, to exist as an expression of the Divine Presence, can be seen in all Creation, that longing is not easily given up.
As this year draws to its end
we give thanks for the gifts it has brought
and how they came inlaid within,
where neither time nor tide
could touch them, and we also thanks
for the days when the veil lifted
and the soul could see delight;
when a quiver caressed the heart
in the sheer exuberance of being here.
-Excerpted and edited lines
by John O’Donohoe
When we take time to look beyond the trials of life, we see God’s blessings and realize that daily we continue to be given endowments of grace from the Host of the universe. From unmistakable “quivers that caress the heart” we know that we are not alone. We know that we belong to God and recognize a longing within us to touch Him. We know that He sits at the heart of life, and from there works at bringing to fruition that which He inlaid in us from the beginning. We know too that He is beside us in every moment and that our sadness is His sadness, our joy His joy, our loss His loss, our victory His victory.
Give praise to the Lord, proclaim His name; make known among the nations what He has done. ~1 Chronicles 16:8 ✝
Prayer of the heart
(my mom’s tiny rose bush musters on 30 years after her death / Julie Cook / 2016)
O Lord my God.
Teach my heart this day
where and how to find you.
You have made me and re-made me,
and you have bestowed on me
all the good things I possess,
and still I do not know you.
I have not yet done
that for which I was made.
Teach me to seek you,
for I cannot seek you
unless you teach me,
or find you
unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire;
let me desire you in my seeking.
Let me find you by loving you;
let me love you when I find you.
St. Anselm
Sacred Touches 