436. The spiritual quality of earth: eternally pregnant and containing in its fertility the unwritten cipher of cosmic lore. ~Frieda Harris

July 25, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry,
Take your walk
To the shady leaf, or stalk,
Or what not,
Which may be the chosen spot.
No toad spy you,
Hovering bird of prey pass by you;
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.
~Christina Rossetti

Photo by: http://littlepicsofhope.wordpress.com/

I know the thrill of the grasses
when the rain pours over them.
I know the trembling of the leaves
when the winds sweep through them.
I know what the white clover felt
as it held a drop of dew pressed close in its beauteousness.
I know the quivering of the fragrant petals
at the touch of the pollen-legged bees.
I know what the voracious caterpillars need
from the host plants on which they feed,
I know what the stream said to the dipping willows,
and what the moon said to the sweet lavender.
I know what the stars said when they came
stealthily down and crept fondly into the tops of the trees.
~Adapted excerpt from “Creation Songs”
by Muriel Strode

The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy. ~Psalm 65:8 ✝

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.

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

July 9, 2014 by nataliescarberry

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

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 ✝

** Image via Pinterest

350. But I always think the best way to know God is to love many things. ~Vincent Van Gogh

April 26, 2014 by nataliescarberry

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

The purple-headed mountain,
The river running by,
The sunset, and the morning,
That brightens up the sky;

The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden,
He made them every one.

The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water,
We gather every day;–

He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell,
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.
~Cecil Frances Alexander

Your righteousness, God, reaches to the heavens, you who have done great things. Who is like you, God? ~Psalm 71:19 ✝

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!

329. Every April, God rewrites the Book of Genesis. ~Author Unknown

April 6, 2014 by nataliescarberry

That God once loved a garden
we learn in holy writ.
And seeing gardens in the Spring
I well can credit it.
~Winifred Mary Letts

There’s just something very reassuring about springtime, isn’t there? It tells us that what God put in place is still in place and that renewal is as much a part of life as anything else. Death may be undeniable, but so is life.

Come rain and speak of rivers and seas and holy healing waters.
Rise sun and speak of nurturing warmth and holy grace.
Blossom flower and speak of beauty and holy mysteries.
Hum bee and speak of faithful and ordained holy purpose.
Sing bird and speak of joy and grateful thanksgiving.
Beat heart and speak of pulsing rhythms and coursing holiness.
Move breath and speak of God within and holy beginnings.
Walk feet and speak of the road to Emmaus and holy encounters.
Twinkle stars and speak of the void filled by God’s holy, life-giving hands.
Speak silence of the Ancient of Days who’s waiting to be heard.
Shine light, drive darkness away, and speak of Christ’s redemptive work.
Come love and speak of peace and sacred surrender.

Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. ~Psalm 85:11 ✝

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!

**Photo via Pinterest.

312. At last the vernal equinox — “Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn.” ~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard

March 20, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Such Singing in the Wild Branches

By Mary Oliver

It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves—
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness—
and that’s when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree—
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing—
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky— all, all of them

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last

for more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you’ve been there,
you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then— open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

Lord Jesus, “Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes.” ~a line form a Matt Redman song

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come… ~Song of Songs 2:12a ✝

**Thrush photo via Pinterest

292. The force of Spring – mysterious, fecund, powerful beyond measure. ~Michael Garofalo

February 27, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of Spring
The Winter garment of repentance fling;
The bird of time has but a little way
To fly — and Lo! the bird is on the wing.
~Omar Khayyám

In the rising of the morning sun God speaks to us of grace and new beginnings, and the fertility of the earth is a sign of how life wells up from within, from the dark unknown place of God. ~J. Philip Newell

Come and see what God has done: He is awesome in his deeds among mortals. ~Psalm 65:5 ✝

244. The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees… ~Ranier Maria Rilke

January 10, 2014 by nataliescarberry

It is a good idea to be alone in a garden
at dawn or dark so that
all its shy presences may haunt you and
possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.
~James Douglas

Reverence rises, a hush falls, and a lone bird sings on in the silence of twilight until there is no more cloud cover, no more noise, no more light. A waxing gibbous moon climbs higher and higher in an azure sky that’s quickly deepening to dark indigo. Silhouetted trees stand like giant sentinels over the winter-ravaged garden. The darkness around me now is steeped in calmness beneath the ancient moon that’s casting its glow through the branches of the huge oak as it heads up to cross over heaven’s dome. Although there’s an element of fear in the dark of night, something sacred draws me into it. Whenever possible, I linger and, in being haunted by all its shy presences, I feel the wonder of Creation beneath the stars.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established…O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Psalm 8:3,9 ✝

200. For flowers that bloom about our feet; for tender grass, so fresh, so sweet; for song of bird, and hum of bee; for all things fair we hear or see, Father in heaven, we thank Thee! ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

November 27, 2013 by nataliescarberry

Thanksgiving is the holiday of peace,
the celebration of work and the simple life. . .
a true folk-festival that speaks
the poetry of the turn of the seasons,
the beauty of seedtime and harvest,
the ripe product of the year –
and the deep, deep connection
of all these things to God.
~Ray Stannard Baker (David Grayson)

At the beginning of time the Lord set the wheels in motion for the making of continual banquets for man and creature alike. And so in light of His abundant provisions and as the Canticle of Creation plays on, it is time to pause and give thanks to our gracious Benefactor. The year is drawing to its appointed end and before it sinks into winter, the Sabbath of the year, we must look around and take stock of the Lord’s never-ending activity in Creation and be thankful for the constancy of His love and beneficent involvement in each of our lives. W. J. Cameron said, “. . .a thankful heart hath a continual feast,” and so with beholden hearts, let us give praise and thanks for our Heavenly Father, His Grace, and His goodness. I pray that this be a blessed time of thanksgiving for all of you and those you love; may all the roads you travel be, now and forever, filled with grace and peace and love.

If I have enjoyed
the hospitality of the Host of the universe,
Who daily spreads a table in my sight,
surely I cannot do less
than acknowledge my dependence.
~G. A. Johnston Ross

Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name. ~Psalm 100:4 ✝

164. Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love — that makes life and nature harmonize. ~George Eliot

October 17, 2013 by nataliescarberry

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

**I was hoping you could see that the morning glory below, heavy with dew after the rain, was an awesome, pink delight to behold, but the image is too smalll here for you to see its alluring sparkle.

Northerly winds in the night blew our gray, rain-bearing clouds away, and the day dawned under a fresh, China blue sky. Layers of dust that had been blowing in on southerly winds for weeks were washed away, sent back to the soil from whence they came. As a result heaven’s dome along with the landscape looked sparkling clean and pristine. In the day’s early light growing green things shined greener, new growth pushed up on rose canes, seedlings appeared in soil once parched and cracked by summer’s fiendish assaults. Wildlife, though always smaller in number in October, flew, crawled, and buzzed with renewed energy and enthusiasm in the aftermath of the recent slow, soaking rains. And so with a bit of an almost frosty nip in the air, this day evolved into our first quintessential, autumn day. How, then, on such a day, could the early call to venture out in the yard, camera in hand, have been ignored? Or how could it have been a surprise that the vignettes I found were so exquisite that all I could muster, with eyes blurred by joyful tears, was praise for the Holy One whose presence amidst the glory was sweetly palpable?

Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind. Let them sacrifice thank offerings and tell of his works with songs of joy. ~Psalm 107:21-22 ✝

72. Come, fill the Cup, . . . the Bird of time has but a little way to fly–and Lo! the Bird is on the wing. ~Omar Khayyám

April 9, 2013 by nataliescarberry

The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
~Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyám, 11th century Persian poet

In my twenties, I came face to face with the reality of what this Persian poet articulated in the Rubaiyat, but thankfully in my thirties I also realized that every spring all that God created begins again. So even though I have no a chance to do anything about the past, in the season of restoration and rebirth God built into the fabric of Creation, I can forge on with writing new stories and/or penning different endings to ones not yet finished. However, lest I get too comfortable in dalliances a long the way and to show how quickly what the poem’s author revealed can come about, I must remember that a new year’s garden progeny and its days come and go quickly, and when done they are never, as Khayyám said, to be lured back nor washed away by tears. So with every spending of my time coins, I must seize opportunities opening to blushes of newness. Scripture may tell the world that the “birthing and restoring” of new years will go on “as long as earth endures,” but last November’s brush with death taught me to make the most of each day and not rely on what I, myself, may not be given.

The best things in life are nearest:
Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet,
duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.
Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes,
certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
~Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish poet

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” ~Genesis 8:22 ✝

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

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