930. The spirits of the air live on the smells of fruit; and joy, with pinions light, roves round the gardens, or sits singing in the trees. ~William Blake

November 5, 2015 by nataliescarberry

And November sad,—a psalm
Tender, trustful, full of balm,
Thou must breathe in spirits calm.
~Caroline May

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colours are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and its content. ~Lin Yutang

I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. ~Leviticus 26:4 ✝

**Image via Pinterest

909. Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty, I’m free at last. ~Adapted quoted by Martin Luther King, Jr.

October 19, 2015 by nataliescarberry

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Halleeelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Halleeelujah
~From Handel’s Messiah
by Georg Friedrich Händel

To one who has long been in the throes of confining heat,
‘tis very sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven–
to breathe a prayer full in the smile of the blue firmament.
~Adapted excerpt by John Keats

Okay, so I realize I’m probably committing some heinous sacrilege with these revered excerpts as they relate to my topic, but there is just no better or more accurate way to describe how I feel about what was outside my door this morning. I’d long waited and waited for it, I’d long prayed and prayed for it, and I’d long shed tears over its delay. But now at long last today it has arrived. So when I opened the door and felt that first autumn chill in the air, there was simply nothing else I could do but joyfully and thankfully throw my arms up and break into a hallelujah chorus. And it didn’t matter whether it was my own “couldn’t-carry-a-tune-in-a-bucket” rendition, a squirrel’s rendition, or an opera star’s rendition! But my shamefulness didn’t just end there. It got worse! For on the heels of the hallelujah chorus I then emitted a most diabolic and wrongfully wicked laugh at the thought of the “Heat Monster’s” impending and hopefully terrible demise! Yes, folks I am apparently a complete degenerate, but I could not help myself then nor now. So praise the Lord and hallelujah that autumn is finally throwing off her meekness and moving full throttle into this wretched place. I feel like an incarcerated prisoner who has been set free and instead of having the breath sucked out of me by suffocating and prolonged mugginess, thank you, God that I can once again “breathe a prayer full in the smile of the blue” and cool “firmament!”

Relieve the troubles of my heart and free me from anguish. ~Psalm 25:17 ✝

**Images via Pinterest

899. The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator. ~Richard Rohr

October 11, 2015 by nataliescarberry

Once you are in communion with God,
you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear other
people in whom God has also found a dwelling place.
~Henri Nouwen

Lover of my soul
Will you listen to me
I know you will
My spirit you see
My heart you touch
My soul you shape
My being is yours
I’m here, please take
Me away to that secret place
Where we connect
~Staci Lys Dunn Silva at:
https://stacilys.wordpress.com/about/

From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth—he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do. ~Psalm 33:13-15 ✝

**Rose image via Pinterest

889. What I love is near at hand, always, in earth and air. ~Theodore Roethke

October 1, 2015 by nataliescarberry

I will dance
The dance of summer’s passing
And waning feverishness

I will dance
The dance of October’s coming
And fall’s beguiling ways

I will dance
The dance of golden light
And the ever-shortening days

I will dance
The dance of autumn’s beauty
And whirling lovely leaves

I will dance
The dance of cooling winds
And clouds bearing rain

I will dance
The dance of meeker morn’s
And migrating flocks of birds

I will dance
The dance of earth’s melodies
And songs a-blowing in the wind

I will dance
The dance of God’s Creation
And ever-changing seasons
~Natalie Scarberry

Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with timbrel and harp. ~Psalm 149:3 ✝

**Image via Pinterest

880. Autumn comes with a subtle change in the light, with skies a deeper blue… ~Glenn Wolff and Jerry Dennis

September 23, 2015 by nataliescarberry

The stretch between dusk and dawn
A mere whisper in the wind
~reocochran at:
https://witlessdatingafterfifty.wordpress.com

And so it has been with the coming of the autumnal equinox. Autumn is yet a mere whisper in the wind between yesterday’s dusk and today’s dawn. However, with its arrival the “powers of summer” must now slowly disrobe themselves and go back from whence they came. Despite being sapped and dry from surviving the dog days of summer’s wrath, we should now be able to anticipate the coming of fall’s crisp days that will invigorate us, to hear murmurs of music in untamed winds that will blow freshness into us, to watch bird migrations that will that lift our spirits in the deepening blue skies, and to expect blustery storms that will infuse their energy into our heat-wearied flesh. Oh autumn, how happily we greet thee with our eager yearning for your scents and shapes, sounds and hues.

The birds are consulting, about their migrations,
the trees are putting on the hectic
or the pallid hues of decay,
and begin to strew the ground,
that one’s very footsteps may not
disturb the repose of earth and air, while
they give us a scent that is
a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit.
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

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ~James 1:17 ✝

**Image via Pinterest, text by Natalie

864. May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life. ~Apache Blessing

September 7, 2015 by nataliescarberry

The beauty of the trees,
the softness of the air,
the fragrance of the grass speaks to me.

The summit of the mountain,
the thunder of the sky,
the rhythm of the sea speaks to me.

The strength of the fire,
the taste of the salmon,
the trail of the sun,

and the life that never goes away,
they speak to me
And my heart soars.
~Chief Dan George

It is as though the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows His blessing, even life forevermore. ~Psalm 133:3 ✝

**Images via Pinterest

846. Light shot through diaphanous wings; its long beak dipped in the flower of life’s sweet nectar… ~Excerpt from a poem by Laurence Overmire

August 21, 2015 by nataliescarberry

A hummingbird in magic play
Appears to you this summer’s day.
Turquoise shades against the sky
Shimmer as it flutters by.

The sweetness of its beauty sings
Through rapid dance of tiny wings
On a random path of mystery
In brilliant, balanced harmony.

Gracefully it hovers there
In front of you atop the air.
Hold out arm and it will land
Upon the softness of your hand.
~Edited poem by Edna Whitney

From scarlet to dusty gold,
to yellow flames,
to the rare
ashen emerald,
to the orange and black velvet
of our girdle gilded by sunflowers,
to the sketch
like
amber thorns,
your Epiphany,
little supreme being,
you are a miracle…
~Excerpted lines from a poem
by Pablo Neruda

The weeds are gone! The weeds are gone! At long last the freakin’ weeds are GONE! (Well at least for the moment anyway.) When I had my meltdown earlier this week and decided to take a break from just about everything, I also decided to hire someone to come finish the weeding. And then as luck would have it, a cool front blew in two nights ago and dropped our temperature to 66. The next day we had a cloud cover all day, and though it brought only a smidgen of rain, it kept the day’s high in the low 70‘s. What an unexpected blessing that was! It was enough of a hint of autumn’s coming to begin lifting me out of the grumpy doldrums. So I spent the whole day pottering around the yard. In fact I overdid it a tad; well actually it was more than a tad, because I’ve had to pay the piper today. But the price of these aches and pains have not exceeded the joy; that’s for sure. And I happy to report that along with me, my little hummers (like the ones in the photos) have been dancing. Have you? I hope so.

I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember Your miracles of long ago. ~Psalm 77:11 ✝

Images via Pinterest

821. I am following Nature without being able to grasp her. ~Claude Monet

July 27, 2015 by nataliescarberry

I perhaps owe having
become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right,
since its appearance changes at every moment;
but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life –
the light and the air which vary continually.
For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere
which gives subjects their true value.
~Claude Monet

My favorite artist has always been Claude Monet who was the founder of French Impressionist painting. And so while we were in Paris, we took a bus tour to Giverny where in 1890 the artist bought a house and land. Later he added a greenhouse and a second studio. The artist remained the architect of his massive gardens at Giverny even after he hired seven gardeners to whom he wrote daily instructions, precise designs and layouts for the plantings, and invoices for his floral purchases. Then in 1893, he purchased additional land with a water meadow and began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds and a Japanese bridge, subjects of his best known works. Although, I expected his gardens to be gorgeous, that doesn’t even begin to describe what could well have been a model of the original Garden of Eden or what Heaven might look like. So over the next few days, I want to share with you some of the things I saw that day. Enjoy!

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ~Genesis 2:8 ✝

774. The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans. ~Sherwood Smith

June 17, 2015 by nataliescarberry

I like it when it rains hard.
It sounds like white noise everywhere,
which is like silence but not empty.
~Mark Haddon

After an extended period of hot weather,
comes the first rain shower creating
an exquisite and eloquent fragrance in the air –
an earthy sweet smell that permeates and floats all around us,
refreshing our minds and rejuvenating our lives.
~Edited and adapted excerpt
from Deodatta V. Shenai-Khatkhate

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
~Excerpt fro a poem
by Mary Oliver

If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ~1 Corinthians 12:17 ✝

733. Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. ~G.K. Chesterton 

May 13, 2015 by nataliescarberry

The air is old and patient
and filled with secrets…
~Trini Lind

O most noble Greenness, rooted in the sun,
shining forth in streaming splendor upon the wheel of Earth.
No earthly sense or being can comprehend you.
You are encircled by the very arms of Divine mysteries.
You are radiant like the red of dawn!
You glow like the incandescence of the sun!

O moving force of Wisdom, encircling the wheel of the cosmos,
Encompassing all that is, all that has life,
in one vast circle.
You have three wings: The first unfurls aloft
in the highest heights.
The second dips its way dripping sweat on the Earth.
Over, under, and through all things whirls the third.
Praise to you, O Wisdom worthy of praise!

Holy spirit, making life alive,
moving in all things, root of all created being,
cleansing the cosmos of every impurity, effacing guilt,
anointing wounds.
You are lustrous and praiseworthy life,
You waken and re-awaken everything that is.
~St. Hildegard Von Bingen

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. ~John 14:26 ✝

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

Tag Archives: Air