Category Archives: Notes

480. Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. ~Henry David Thoreau

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Seasons knocking on the door
Each one with its unique lore

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Springtime fingerpaints the earth
Spreading its immeasurable mirth

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Summer’s heat bursts upon the scene
And each day the sun reigns as queen

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Autumn casts a cloak of burnished hues
With copper tinged foliage as its muse

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Winter’s kingdom wears robes of pristine white
While snowflakes whispered dance is quite the sight

Seasons stand side by side, natural neighbors
Observing each other’s seasonal labors.
~Edited poem by Kristen A.

He (G0d) made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. ~Psalm 104:19   ✝

479. It is only when we silence the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts. ~K. T. Jong

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In the attitude of silence
the soul finds the path in a clearer light,
and what is elusive and deceptive
resolves itself into crystal clearness.
Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.
~Mahatma Gandhi

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When I spied it, this Canna’s last bloom of summer was standing supremely beautiful in its silence and solitude. It was early in the day, no one else was around, and it was deliciously quiet in the garden. But in the silence I heard whispers, murmurings of the undeniable truth that all is the valued work of the Divine’s intelligent design and not the random scattering of atoms. On a late summer’s day, this was more than enough for me to be grateful and celebrate the life the Lord had granted me and the flower.

I arise today
In the name of Silence
Womb of the Word,
In the name of Stillness
Home of Belonging,
In the name of the Solitude
Of the Soul and the Earth.
~John O’Donohue

“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”  ~Psalm 46:10  ✝

478. If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God. ~Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Tonight the sun died like an Emperor…
great scarlet arcs of silk…
saffron…green…crimson…
and the blaze of Venus to remind one
of the absolute and the infinite…
~John Coldstream

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The busy buzzing of the bees had ceased, and the butterflies had completed the day’s last waltz as gentle breezes began ruffling leaves late yesterday. As the zephyrs moved through the yard, the nodding sea oats looked like jittery lawn dancers in the descending, shadows of darkness. The sunlight, with night, the vanquishing “emperor,” nipping at its heels, had almost oozed out of the day as I went out to watch it yield more and more of its hold on the garden. While I kept an eye on the stunning blaze along the western horizon, I saw the yard birds diving and darting into safe havens for the night and the screeching grackles, much higher in the sky, looking for lodging elsewhere. The hastening darkness added frantic drama to their random forays for nightly asylum but not enough to make me feel even the slightest remorse for making sure they didn’t return to my yard. Then in the distance I heard a train whistle, and from the sound the locomotive seemed to be moving at a fast and frenzied pace for home, and I hoped it, too, would make it before long. As the last shaft of sunlight moved up and off the towering oak, a velvety hush lowered, and the lone sparrow who’d been sitting on the edge of the roof at last vanished. Then, boom, the sun fell off the edge of the world, and the blackness of night was to be denied no longer.

Each part of a day has a feel and reality of its own. Take time to savor the uniqueness in each passing moment and say a prayer of simple praise for comforting patterns and rhythms.

May you go into the night
blessed, sheltered and protected.
May your soul calm, console and renew you.
~John O’Donohue

By day the Lord directs His love, at night His Son is with me-a prayer to the God of my life. Psalm 42:8   ✝

477. With finger in her solemn lip, night hushed the shadowy earth. ~Margaret Deland

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Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof;
but in the open world it passes lightly,
with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours
are marked by changes in the face of Nature.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

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A black and white cat has leisurely strolled across our patio for several nights in a row now, and it, like all the other felines who wander by, doesn’t seem to be the least bit interested in or fearful of us as long as we’re on the other side of our patio doors. Actually some nights it’s like a holiday parade out there, only it’s peopled by cats, possums, and raccoons, all of whom are the suspected culprits of destructive mischief such as the broken rose stem I discovered this morning. Then some nights, in addition to all that activity, there are the gecko lizards who like to run up and down our patio doors chasing bugs. So it is that though the enchanting yard and gardens have disappeared into the darkness, even in our absence life and the living prevail in the hush of night.

I call our glass patio doors, our big screen TV because the indoor cats and I have wiled away many an hour just watching what goes on outside. In so doing I’ve witnessed a wide spectrum of good and bad, feast and famine, and life and death over the years. And I’ve always found a comforting harmony and balance in those opposing forces. For example it’s easy to lose a sense of how beautiful a garden or the earth in general is without a picture of the kind of devastation that a storm or a drought or some such can do to it. That’s why I think the beauty of spring is so breathtaking; it comes after the landscape has been ravaged by winter’s often harsh and cruel assaults. In the same way, who among us could ever begin to bear the brutality in the world without having also witnessed life’s abundant goodness.

I love the house where you live, O LORD, the place where your glory dwells.  ~Psalm 26:8   ✝

 **Image via Pinterest

476. Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination. ~Mrs. C.W. Earle

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Take thy spade,
It is thy pencil;
Take thy seeds, thy plants,
They are your colours.
~William Mason

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The level of sand in summer’s hour glass may be low, but there is still a fair measure of glory remaining in the year. Since earth’s palette has not yet been wiped clean, the “greatest show on earth” is definitely not over  nor will it be until months from now when Jack Frost’s frigid sting puts an end to it. Even now some flowers are abloom, but the coming cooler days and weeks will bring even more blossoming beauties. In addition the squirrels still have nuts to gather, the birds have songs yet unsung, the butterflies and bees have more pollinating rounds to make, and the roses have their second big flush of blooms to proffer. Not to mention that in the not too distant future the year’s pumpkins will make their colorful appearance amid the stunning array of autumn leaves. So the show ain’t over, folks!

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I will wait until after the equinox on the 22nd of September to take up my spade and plant as well as sow seeds, but in the meantime I’ve already started my imaginings about additions and changes in the garden. And what a great place a garden is to let one’s imagination run wild! It can loosed over and over again in plotting the shapes of flower beds and paths, in deciding the kinds of plants to be introduced or removed, in installing new flower supports and garden structures, and so on. One of the best parts is that all this imagining feeds my starving, heat beleaguered inner child and my thirsting would-love-to-have-been an artist selfie.

. . . and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts-to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship. ~Exodus 31:3-5 ✝

475. To one who has been long in city pent, ‘tis sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven-to breathe a prayer full in the smile of the blue firmament. ~John Keats

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Nature is man’s teacher.
She unfolds her treasures to his search
unseals his eye, illumes his mind, purifies his heart;
an influence breathes from all the sights
and sounds of existence.
~Alfred Billings Street

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It is not so much being “city pent” that keeps me from looking long into the “fair and open face” of the heavens in summer. It’s from being “house pent.” However, to keep my heat-driven incarceration inside my air-conditioned home from totally stifling my spiritual breathing, I hungrily emerge out of doors for a while very early and/or very late in the day. Outside and under the heavens I am able at last to breathe long and deep in prayer. According to Howard Pyle, “The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived.” In my childhood nature and her sweet stories left a profound impression in my memory. Because as Pyle suggests that impression was not thrown on “the rubbish heap” and because late in life I reentered nature’s haunts by means of a garden, I was brought back to a reverent and devoted relationship with the Maker of my soul and Creation.

Last night when I was out, I noticed that a pure white Angel’s Trumpet had opened, and it was still there briefly this morning. The brilliance of its whiteness reminded me of the temporal dominion of any kind of darkness and the inevitable return of light. Then when I came inside, I read an email from a friend in which he quoted “Peace is seeing the sunrise and sunset and knowing who to thank.” Though neither he nor I knew whom to credit for the thought, we always know who to thank for everything. So thank you, Lord, for sunrises and sunsets as well as endings and beginnings. For you see the Angel in the Trumpet intimated that the heat beast is on its last legs.

The earth is filled with Your love, Lord; teach me Your decrees. ~Psalm 119:64   ✝

Lord God, Your breath is within me, and I will honor and praise you with every breath that I breathe.

474. For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go. ~George Washington Cable

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September days have the warmth of summer
in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings
a prophetic breath of autumn.
The cricket chirps in the noontide,
making the most of what remains of his brief life.
The bumblebee is busy among the clover blossoms
of the aftermath, and their shrill and dreamy hum
hold 
the outdoor world above the voices
of the song birds, now silent or departed.
~Rowland E. Robinson

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Whew! Am I glad August is over!!! It’s still extremely hot, but at least September, bearer of the autumnal equinox, holds the possibility that later in the month we’ll be blessed with our first cool, crisp morn. Although autumn’s voice nor breath are yet discernible, its harbingers have alerted my eyes and therefore my camera. So with forbearance I shall press on through the remainder of the “heat beast’s” reign, knowing and delighting in the fact that its days are numbering fewer and fewer. Perhaps one day I shall be able to embrace the idea that “the discipline of blessings is to taste each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet and the salty, (even the insanely hot) and be glad for what does not hurt.” Indeed, God has lots of work left to do in me.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens… ~Ecclesiastes 3:1   ✝

473. When summer opens, I see how fast it matures, and I hope it will not be too feverish; but after the heats of July and August, I am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to September and the coming of autumn. ~Edited and adapted quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson 

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August, with its masses of spent blooms,
August, with its humidity and cloudless skies,
August, with days too hot to relish,
August, torrid and dry in the blazing sun,
August.

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And the locusts in brazen chorus, cry
Like stricken things, and the ring-dove’s note
Sobs on in the distance rim.
~Excerpt from a poem by Hamlin Garland

I(God) cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of the burning heat. ~Hosea 13:5   ✝

Thank you, Lord, that the seasons are ever-changing and that you always care for us!

** Image via Pinterest

472. Outside the open window the morning air is all awash with angels. ~Richard Purdy Wilbur

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Angels descending, 
bring from above,
echoes of mercy, 
whispers of love.
~Fanny J. Crosby

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My cats start meowing for food around daybreak, and when I hear them, I heed the call, put out their food, and then settle back in my recliner to snooze a little longer. In between my snippets of sleep, I open my eyes to enjoy the spectacle of day’s coming as it moves in and across my backyard. Yesterday because I had seen a hummingbird at my feeder, I’d decided to leave my camera near my chair. So the photo above was shot early this morning from inside through a sliding glass door and its screen. Sadly the little guy was not up as close as I’d have liked nor is he completely in focus. But I loved the image because as he hovered with wings still rapidly in motion, the camera captured him just at the right moment so that it looks like he has the tiny wings of an angel. And who knows? Perhaps he was and had been sent to remind me that…

It’s not just another day.
It’s the one day that is given to me today.
It’s a gift.
It’s the only gift I have right now,
and the only appropriate response
is gratefulness.
~Verse taken from “A Good Day” 
by David Steindl-Rast

“The Lord lives! Praise be to my Rock! Exalted be my God, the Rock, my Savior!” 2 Samuel 22:47   ✝

Lord, Your beauty draws all things to Yourself. Please let me stay and rest in your holiness.