Tag Archives: Airy

1129. Butterflies dot springtime with flitting airy kisses. ~Terri Guillemets

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The butterfly long loved the beautiful rose,
And flirted around all day;
While round him in turn with her golden caress,
Soft fluttered the sun’s warm ray…
~Excerpt from a poem by
Heinrich Heine

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Butterfly, butterfly, where are you going?
Do you dine today with the regal rose
Or nectar sip with the lilies blowing
In the golden noontide’s sweet repose?
Away, away, on silken pinions,
Gay guest of Flora’s proudest minions.

Or will you pause midst the fragrant clover
And their humbler viands not despise,
While the proud tuberoses wait their lover
And the pansies smile from their velvet eyes?
Away, away, on dainty pinions
Gay guest in Flora’s fair dominions.
~Excerpted verses from a poem by
Martha Lavinia Hoffman

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Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. ~Song of Songs 2:12  ✝

**Top image found on Pinterest; edited bottom image found on the Internet

1040. It’s not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit. ~J.R.R. Tolkien

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The human spirit needs
places where nature
has not been rearranged
by the hand of man.
~Author Unknown

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The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is —

so it enters us —
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.
~Poem by Mary Oliver

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering the waters. ~Genesis 1:2  ✝

**Images via Pinterest; collage created by Natalie

 

817. Make yourself familiar with the angels, and behold them frequently in spirit; for, without being seen, they are present with you. ~St Francis of Sales

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     Angels are all around us, all the time,
in the very air we breathe.
~Eileen Elias Freeman

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The golden moments in the stream of life
rush past us and we see nothing but sand;
the angels come to visit us, and we
only know them when they are gone.
~George Elliot

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We not only live among men,
but there are airy hosts, blessed spectators,
sympathetic lookers-on,
that see and know and appreciate
our thoughts and feelings and acts.
~Henry Ward Beecher

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Angels come to help and guide us in as many guises
as there are people who need their assistance.
Sometimes we see their ethereal, heavenly shadow,
bright with light and radiance.
Sometimes we only feel their nearness or hear their whisper.
And sometimes they look no different from ourselves.
~Eileen Elias Freeman

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I had so many freckles that my mother used to say
that they were kisses from the angels.
~Lara Flynn Boyle

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Wishing you…
a sunbeam to warm you,
a moonbeam to charm you,
a sheltering angel, so
nothing can harm you.
~Irish Blessing

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Goodness knows I have plenty of freckles, and so I’m not surprised that with all those angel kisses all over my face I’ve felt the presence of ministering angels all my life. However, lately there have been even more than ever aflutter in my world. And so my post tonight is in praise of the Lord and His ever-vigilant angels. For I know not where any of us would be without angels watching over us. Where heaven meets earth, there are you, too, my friends!

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation. ~Hebrews 1:14  ✝

**Angel images via Pinterest

202. There is a communion with God, and there is a communion with earth, and there is a communion with God through the earth. ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French philosopher and Jesuit priest

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Grass is the forgiveness of nature-
her constant benediction.
Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish,
but grass is immortal.
~Brian Ingalls

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Maiden grass, purple fountain grass, blood grass, little bluestem, pink muhly–what’s not to love about such names.  Not only are they alluring monikers for gardeners, but their visual charms provide great cover for  wildlife and their seeds are good food sources for birds.  Few pests bother them, and given a bit of wind their airy, flower panicles, feathery plumes, or striking seed heads resemble fairy wands as they capture and play with available light.  What I like best about them is that in their swishing and swaying the echoes of the eternal and murmurs of sacred benedictions can be heard.  A garden and all its plantings, be they grasses or trees or shrubs or ferns or herbs or mosses, always speak of earth’s primeval and venerable origins as well as man’s connection to the Holy Voice that spoke everything into being.  But it is in the movement of the grasses that I most feel the in and out movement of God’s ruach, His life-giving breath.  Chardin whom I quoted above contended that the more he devoted himself in some way to the interests of the earth the more he belonged to God.  It is the same for me because being close to and working the earth is like being attached to an umbilical cord that keeps me forever connected to and sustained by Him, the loving Source of all life.

Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving; make music to our God on the harp.  He covers the sky with clouds; he supplies the earth with rain and makes grass grow on the hills.  ~Psalm 147:7-8  ✝

196. There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice. ~John Calvin

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The moment one gives close attention to anything,
even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome,
indescribably magnificent world in itself.
~Henry Miller

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Against the backdrop of “red leaf and the gold” ornamental grasses shift and sigh in autumn’s chilling winds, and as they do, they add to the landscape an ethereal element with their airy flower panicles, fluffy seed plumes, and striking seed heads.  Even after the initial onslaughts of freezing temperatures, grasses continue to grace the landscape with “fringe accents” by adding subtle colors, assorted textures, and the dimensions of motion and sound.  Throughout winter’s “vale of grief,” undaunted by the cold, they capture and play with whatever light is available, and in their animated swayings they speak of life and give us something “that glimmers in the sleep of things.”  And best of all, the lack of heaviness in their lyrical swishing motions along with their visible seed formations remind us that what’s happening is not an end but instead merely the onset of another beginning.

When He(G0d) thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth.  He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from His storehouses.  ~Jeremiah 10:13  ✝