Category Archives: Notes

421. Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible. ~Virginia Woolf

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The bird a nest,
the spider a web,
man friendship.
~William Blake

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A spider, industrious and tireless, has made its home the rose covered trellis over the small porch outside my studio. I saw him again late yesterday while I was rocking in my chair beneath the arch; it kept dropping down on slender, silky threads and dangling in mid-air about a foot below the zenith of the arch. Then as darkness descended it began in earnest weaving its treacherous web; back and forth, back and forth it moved under the partially obscured waxing moon. As it worked, it glided like a skater along its airy tightropes, and a rumbling noise off in the distance added a touch of the sinister to the scene. Watching the vagabond’s rhythmic dance in the weaving of its intricate labyrinth of stickiness started lulling me into an almost hypnotic stupor, so much so that sleepiness lay heavy on my eyelids. But that ended quickly as I opened one eye just in time to see the spider begin what looked like a free fall into a bottomless pit of oblivion. When it finally stopped, it was hanging about eye level and within a foot of my startled face. Which of us was the more frightened, I know not, but seconds later it had beat a rapid retreat up its silky rope, and I had bid it goodnight and retreated indoors. In my mind, both were healthy acts of cowardice.

My eyes are ever on the Lord for only He will release my feet from the snare. ~Psalm 25:15  ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

** Image via Pinterest

420. At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

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“You’re lovely, but you’re empty,” he went on.
“One couldn’t die for you.
Of course an ordinary passerby would think
my rose looked just like you.
But my rose…is more important… since she’s the one I’ve watered.
Since she’s the one I put under glass.
Since she’s the one I sheltered behind a screen.
Since she’s the one for whom I killed the caterpillars.
Since she’s the one I listened to when she complained,
or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all.
Since she’s my rose.”

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“People where you live,” the little prince said,
“grow five thousand roses in one garden. . .
yet they don’t find what they’re looking for. . .”
“And yet what they’re looking for could be found
in a single rose. . .”

And the little prince added,
“But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.”
“One sees clearly only with the heart.
Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”

~Excerpts from THE LITTLE PRINCE by Antoine de Saint Exupéry

What the little prince said about the essential being invisible to the eyes is profoundly true. Scripture tells us we are made in the image of God, and that truth puts into perspective the vast and diverse abilities of our Maker. Simply put, it tells me that the Lord is bigger and more powerful that we could ever imagine. It also tells me there is a distinct reason for the uniqueness of every created entity. It tells me that how we feel about what our eyes see should be filtered first through that knowledge and our heart of hearts. It tells me that what we are matters only in the light of how we treat everyone and everything that crosses our path on this journey, be they flowers, be they animals, or be they people.

As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man. ~Proverbs 27:19  ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

419. Let your love be like the misty rains, coming softly, but flooding the river. ~Malagasy Proverb

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Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. ~Khalil Gibran

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My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.


Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,


which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth
and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam…

~Mary Oliver

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ~Deuteronomy 6:5  ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

418. Seeing, hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. ~Walt Whitman

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The fragrance of white tea is the feeling of existing in the mists that float over waters; the scent of peony is the scent of the absence of negativity: a lack of confusion, doubt, and darkness; to smell a rose is to teach your soul to skip; a nut and a wood together is a walk over fallen Autumn leaves; the touch of jasmine is a night’s dream under the nomad’s moon.  ~C. JoyBell C.

DSC_0159For the Senses


May the touch of your skin
Register the beauty
Of the otherness
That surrounds you.

May your listening be attuned
To the deeper silence
Where sound is honed
To bring distance home.

May the fragrance
Of the breathing meadow
Refresh your heart
And remind you you are
A child of the Earth.

May your inner eye
See through surfaces
And glean the real presence
Of everything that meets you.

May your soul beautify
The desire of your eyes
That you might glimpse
The infinity that hides
In the simple sights
That seem worn
To your usual eyes.

~John O’Donohue

Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Phillip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.  ~Acts 8:13   ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

417. The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others. St. John Chrysostom

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Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.  Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.  ~Rabindranath Tagore

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Veiled in this fragile filigree of wax is the essence of sunshine, golden and limpid, tasting of grassy meadows, mountain wildflowers, lavishly blooming orange trees, or scrubby desert weeds. Honey, even more than wine, is a reflection of place. If the process of grape to glass is alchemy, then the trail from blossom to bottle is one of reflection. The nectar collected by the bee is the spirit and sap of the plant, its sweetest juice. Honey is the flower transmuted, its scent and beauty transformed into aroma and taste. 
 ~Stephanie Rosenbaum

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The careful insect ‘midst his works I view,
Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew,
With golden treasures load his little thighs,
And steer his distant journey through the skies.
~John Gay

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His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for the bee’s experience
Of clovers, and of noon.
~Emily Dickinson

Eat honey, my child, for it is good; honey from the comb is sweet to your taste. ~Proverbs 24:13  ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

**Images via Pinterest

One Today

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radiatingblossom's avatarRadiating Blossom ~ Flowers & Words

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same…

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416. God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her through the night with a light from above. ~Irving Berlin

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Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men, and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.  ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

This, then, is the state of the union: free and restless, growing and full of hope.  So it was in the beginning.  So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith.  ~Lyndon B. Johnson

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.  ~William J. Clinton

O Lord, may we the people never take the gift of freedom for granted. May our hearts be filled with love, our souls with peace, and our lives with joy. May our prayers always be a chant of the humble and the grateful. May your hand of blessing always be over us, and may we praise and seek you in all things. In Jesus’ name!

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ~2 Corinthians 3:17   ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us!  You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace!