Category Archives: Notes
748. Red is passion-lit, orange is flowerageous, yellow is suntastic, pink is lipsensual, green is lifebursting, blue is skyful, purple is berrydancing, gray is cloudrainy. ~Terri Guillemets
Beauty is the adjustment of all parts
proportionately so that one cannot add
or subtract or change without
impairing
the harmony of the whole.
~Leon B. Alberti
To conquer a piece of earth and make it as beautiful
as one can dream of it being: That is art, too.
A man cannot be separated from the earth.
I come out of the garden every day feeling,
oh, inspired in a way that one needs
in order to convert the daily-ness of the life
into something greater than that little life itself.
~Stanley Kunitz
Nothing is more the child
of art than a garden.
~Sir Walter Scott
But who can paint
like Nature?
Can imagination boast,
amid its gay creation,
hues like hers?
~James Thomson
Nature is painting for us,
day after day,
pictures of infinite beauty.
~James Russell Lowell
If you ask me what I came
to do in this world,
I, an artist, will answer you:
I am here to live out loud.
~Emile Zola
My garden is the canvas
upon which nature paints,
and in it I daily toil.
With my camera in hand
at other times,
I let live
Yahweh’s art
out loud!
~Natalie Scarberry
Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are al the work of your hand. ~Isaiah 64:8 ✝
**I took all these photos of flowers blooming in my yard.
747. Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling… ~What Whitman
I’ll tell you how the sun rose,
-a ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!”
~Emily Dickinson
“The sun says his prayers,” said the fairy,
Or else he would wither and die.
“The sun says his prayers,” said the fairy,
“For strength to climb up through the sky.
He leans on invisible angels,
And Faith is his prop and his rod.
The sky is his crystal cathedral.
And dawn is his altar to God.”
~Vachel Lindsay
Ya know coming all to soon upon us now are the days when I’ll be begging for clouds, any kind of clouds, even one big cloud to shade us at least for a little while from the sweltering heat of the summer sun here in Texas, but today after more than a month of gray, gloomy, cloudy, rainy days, I was thrilled to see the sun at daybreak. And although we have more chances for more the rest of the week, it has been deliciously sunny most of the day. Throughout the last decade we have been through a harsh and severe drought that left our water reservoirs in dangerously low or in some areas where the lakes or other water supplies had completely dried up. So I prayed and prayed for rain and promised never to complain about it ever be importune again. And I won’t break that promise to the Lord, but now that our rivers and lakes are approaching flood stage or already flowing over, I pray that the Lord spread the rains out over the summer months before there’s any more loss of life and/or property.
This is what the Lord says to me: “I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.” ~Isaiah 18:4 ✝
**Images via Pinterest; notice the photo of the deer who seems to be praising the Lord for the sun’s appearance.
746. I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day. ~Vincent Van Gogh
Night, the beloved.
Night, when words fade
and things come alive.
When the destructive analysis of day is done,
and all that is truly important
becomes whole and sound again.
When man reassembles his fragmentary self
and grows with the calm of a tree.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Vespers
The golden sun has gone, the busy day is done.
Twilight has come and with it peace draws near
To dwell an hour within my garden walls, while in
The lambent sky the first pale stars appear.
The wheeling shadows that so slowly marked the hours
Have left no impress on the tender grass,
Nor does the air hold fast the patterns bold and free
That winging birds weave as the warm days pass.
The rued pool is stilled at last, and Lily buds
Prepare to open gently to the night
And to the questing moth whose fragile, gauzy wings
Quiver too rapidly for human sight.
In. this tranquillity, touch, hearing, sight are lulled.
I am as selfless as the scented airs
That wrap me round, while daylight’s drowsy flowers
Send out the fragrance of their vesper prayers.
~Marie Nettleton Carroll
I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. ~Psalm 16:7 ✝
**Images of Hawk (Hummingbird) Moths via Pinterest
Quiet Moments
745. I hope your dreams take you to the corners of your smiles, to the highest of your hopes, to the windows of your opportunities, and to the most special places your heart has ever known. ~Author Unknown
You cannot help but learn more
as you take the world into your hands.
Take it up reverently, for it is
an old piece of clay, with millions
of thumbprints on it.
~John Updike
This is my lovely granddaughter. She was two years old when her father and our daughter, Nikki, got married. So I have been a part of her life almost from the get go and like to think that I’ve had a positive impact on her, if not by a blood link, then by a shared heart link. Like my daughter, Annie is beautiful and bright and has a compassionate, loving heart. She will graduate soon from high school, and then in the fall she will be headed off to college. Since her life will soon change in profound ways, I pray that she continues to follow the Lord and the holy nudgings of her own heart. Part of my desire for her is best stated in these quotes above and below and in what Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.” And I pray that she always knows that the “all” of who and what she is more than enough since she is made in the image of Almighty God. For a better insight into her sweet heart, check out some of her posts on her blog where she expresses her love and desire to serve the Lord at: https://alwayslivingforhim.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/little-moments-big-blessings/
To be nobody but yourself in a world
which is doing its best, night and day,
to make you everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight;
and never stop fighting.
~e.e. cummings, 1955
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. ~Marianne Williamson
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. ~Proverbs 3:5-6 ✝
Life
744. We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars … the stars form a circle, and in the center we dance. ~Rumi
Why does the snowflake melt?
To enliven spring flowers.
Why does summer sun blaze?
To ripen the garden.
Why does the leaf fall?
To bring forth beautiful snow…
Why do the seasons dance so?
To embrace us in the sacred circle.
~Deborah Morrison
Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons.
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.
Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again
.
And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return.
~Wendell Berry
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. ~Isaiah 40:22 ✝
**Image of the journaler’s page found on Pinterest
Spring/Praise
743. Zero (0) is not nothing. It’s a circle, without beginning or end. Holy. Healed. ~Wallace Black Elk, Lakota
A wheel was shown to me,
wonderful to behold.
Divinity . . . is like a wheel,
a circle, a whole,
that can neither be understood,
nor divided, nor begun nor ended . . .
no one has the power
to divide
this circle,
to surpass it, or to limit it.
~St. Hildegard of Bingen
beginnings, middles, endings,
so
go the circles of life
here
and over and over again
the sacred circles repeat themselves
with more beginnings,
more middles,
more endings,
and yet little seems the same from
day to day, month to month, year to year,
in these patterns of inconstancy
within the undeniable constancy
that create our “wow” now moments
as well as the not so “wow” ones
so what’s to be made of all the same
and not so same circular sameness
or the ups and downs and all around times
in the beginnings, middles, and endings
only the Ancient of Days knows why
these everlasting
holy rhythms
of the universe
move in such a way
~Natalie Scarberry
It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end. ~Deuteronomy 11:12 ✝
**Image via Pinterest
Sacred Touches 