Tag Archives: Dance

471. We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer’s wreckage. ~Henry Rollins

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As in the bread and the wine, so it is with me.
Within all forms is locked a record of the past
and a promise of the future.
~Author Unknown

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During the course of a year, as humanity steps from one reality to another, there are visible ledgers of receipt and discernible promissory notes. So it is that in late August with less than a month to go before summer’s end and fall’s onset, my camera has captured an overlapping of this year’s waning third season and the waxing of its final season. The photos above prove that mortals are never left with an ending minus the birth of a new beginning. There is nothing finite that doesn’t contain signs of the infinite, and when such is seen the “little bird of hope” sings the loudest. So as summer draws to a close, may you realize that the seeds for tomorrow have and are being set, both in Creation and your lives. I know this because in the photo on the left is a fat seed pod I found in my garden this week, and it’s just waiting to spill its jewels of renewal upon the earth. As you dance with the, Lord and Lover of your soul, I pray that you realize you, too, are part of the splendor of the moment and that any discord endured in “dark nights of the soul” can be assuaged by shining new dawns. I pray also that you find a myriad of reasons to sing for joy, today and always.

“Glory be you, O God, for the rising of the sun, for colour filling the skies, and for the whiteness of the daylight. Glory be to you for creatures stirring forth from the night, for plant forms stretching and unfolding, for the stable earth and its solid rocks. . .that in the elements of earth, sea and sky I may see your beauty, that in the wild winds, birdsong and silence I may hear your beauty, that in the body of another and the interminglings of relationships I may touch your beauty, that in the moisture of the earth and its flowering and fruiting I may smell your beauty, that in the flowing waters of springs and streams I may taste your beauty, these things I look for this day, O God, these things I look for.” ~Excerpts from prayers by J. Philip Newell

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy. . . ~Psalm 96:11-12 ✝

445. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly. most perfectly alive. ~D. H. Lawrence

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There is the power of gathering:
it inspires us, delightfully,
to be more hopeful,
more joyful,
more thoughtful:
in a word, more alive.
~Alice Waters

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I feel alive
I come alive
I am alive
on God’s great dance floor.
~Excerpted lyrics from a song
written by Martin Smith, Nick Herbert, Chris Tomlin

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 8:38-39    ✝

Sweet Jesus, fill us with the mercy you bled and draw us back unto Yourself!

444. We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows. ~Robert Frost

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Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.
I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms.
~Carol Anne Duffy

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You are my hiding place. You always fill my heart with songs of deliverance. Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you. ~Excerpted lyrics by Michael James Ledner

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O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. ~Song of Songs 2.14   ✝

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You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. ~Psalm 32:7   ✝

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 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

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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

410. The butterfly is a flying flower, the flower a tethered butterfly. ~Ponce Denis Ècouchard Lebrun

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Black atennas twitch
as the caterpillar
strips the last green leaf
from the naked milkweed.

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Striped flesh shed,
the green skin below
becomes a jade pendant
rimmed in gold,
hung by a black thread.

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Nature, that green magician,
arranges a slight of hand.
The fat worm in a striped suit
slides into a chrysalis
naps for a fortnight
wakes,
draped in orange,
ready to dance.
~Tere Sievers

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He changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. Daniel 2:21  ✝

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.

Poem first posted at: http://ivonprefontaine.com/2014/06/26/monarch/

** Images via Pinterest

402. Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. ~Jeffrey Glassberg

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Given wings, where might you fly?
In what sweet heaven might you find your love?
Unwilling to be bound, where might you move,
Lost between the wonder and the why?
~Nicholas Gordon

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A caterpillar eats voraciously until it’s time to make a button of silk in order to fasten its body to a leaf or a twig. Later, when it emerges from its chrysalis, its wings are wet and wrinkled. To expand and dry them it uses its body as a pump and forces fluid through a series of tube-like veins. As the veins fill with fluid, the wrinkled surface of its wings is stretched out. And what beautifully striking wings are those of swallowtail butterflies!

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A butterfly’s life is all about flight and flying, and that takes a lot of energy so it drinks nectar from flowers to get the energy it needs. To find nectar it uses taste organs at the end of each of its six legs. When any or all of its legs touch a good food source, a reflex causes the proboscis to uncoil, and voilà, a delicious meal is had and the dance is on. As these two magnificent creatures danced this week, they wrote charming little couplets in my garden. As you can see by the blurry edges on the black one (I deliberately chose one of the blurrier shots because I love the image it made), it seldom stopped fluttering its wings; so its poetic ditties were penned with a bit of a stutter. The yellow one on the other hand stopped moving now and again maybe because it wanted to insert a pregnant pause between the lines of its clever rhymes.

I call on You, my God, for you will answer me: turn Your ear to me and hear my prayer. Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me in the shadow of Your wings… ~Psalm 17:6 and 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.

388. The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses. ~Hanna Rion

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How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?
~Andrew Marvell

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Then the heart, the poor jaded heart, that must etherize itself to endure the grimness of city life at all how subtly it begins throbbing again in unison with the great symphony of the natural. The awakened heart can sense in spring in the air when there is no visible suggestion in calendar or frosted earth, and knowing the songful secret, the can cause the feet to dance through a day that would only mean winter to an urbanite.

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The sense of taste can only be restored by a constant diet of unwilted vegetables and freshly picked fruit.

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The delicacy of touch comes back gradually by tending injured birdlings, by the handling of fragile plants, and by the acquaintance with different leaf textures, which finally makes one able to distinguish a plant, even in the dark, by its Irish tweed, silken or fur finish.

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And the foot, how tangibly it becomes sensitized; how instinctively it avoids a plant even when the eye is busy elsewhere. On the darkest night I can traverse the rocky ravine, the thickets, the sinuous paths through overgrown patches, and never stumble, scratch myself or crush a leaf. My foot knows every unevenness of each individual bit of garden, and adjusts itself lovingly without the conscious thought of brain.

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To the ears that have learned to catch the first tentative lute of a marsh frog in spring, orchestras are no longer necessary. To the eyes that have regained their sight, no wonder lies in the craftsmanship of a tiny leaf form of an inconsequential weed, than is to be found in a bombastic arras. To the resuscitated nose is revealed the illimitable secrets of earth and incense, the whole gamut of flower perfume, and other fragrant odors too intangible to be classed, odors which wing the spirit to realms our bodies are as yet too clumsy to inhabit.

~Excerpted paragraphs from Let’s Make a Flower Garden
by Hanna Rion (1912)

For hardship does not spring from the soil, nor does trouble sprout from the ground. ~Job 5:6 ✝

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

381. Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~Henry Ward Beecher

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Painting is poetry
that is seen rather than felt,
and poetry is painting
that is felt rather than seen.
~Leonardo da Vinci

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COLORS OF MY BRUSH

Blue for the eyes that loved my calm sky,
green for the soft grass we slept on,
white for the lilies we picked,
yellow for small daises,
purple for sunsets,
red for wild lips,
pink for skin,
rose for
you.
~by Andrew Crisci

Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and valuable is created. And no matter whether it be by painting, sculpture, architecture, music, writing (poetry, prose, drama), performing arts (theater or dance), film making, photography, or printmaking, the maker of whatever inspired the creative endeavor, has felt, experienced, and/or seen things so moving that the urge to give life to artistic expressions has erupted in his/her very soul. Why?  Because inherent in each of our souls is Yahweh’s creative abilities since we are made in His creating image.

Art is a collaboration
between God and the artist,
and the less the artist does
the better.
~André Gide

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. ~Genesis 2:7  ✝

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!

** Image via Pinterest.

375. It’s May! It’s May! The lusty month of May! ~Lerner and Loewe

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The May Queen is waiting.
Move with her in sacred dance
Living earth is breathing.
Loving through the night in the bright moonlight,
As seedlings open with the rain.
~Ruth Barren

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Yes, I will spend the livelong day
With Nature in this Month of May..,
~William Henry Davies

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Among the changing months,
May stands confest
the sweetest,
and in fairest colors dressed.
~James Thomson

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Spring’s last-born darling, clear-eyed, sweet,
Pauses a a moment, with white twinkling feet,
And golden locks in breezy play,
Half teasing and half tender, to repeat
Her song of May.
~Susan Coolidge

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Ask the Lord for rain in the springtime; it is the Lord who sends the thunderstorms. He gives showers of rain to all people and plants of the field to everyone. ~Zechariah 10:1  ✝

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Thank you, 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!

370. In the secret, in the quiet place, in the stillness You are there. ~Chris Tomlin

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As stillness in stone to silence is wed,
May solitude foster your truth in word.

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As a river flows in ideal sequence,
May your soul reveal where time is presence.

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As the moon absolves the dark of distance,
May your style of thought bridge the difference.

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As the breath of light awakens color,
May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder.

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As spring rain softens the earth with surprise,
May your winter places be kissed by light.

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As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance,
May the grace of change bring you elegance.

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As clay anchors a tree in light and wind,
May your outer life grow from peace within.

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As twilight pervades the belief of night,
May beauty sleep lightly within your heart.
~John O’Donohue

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Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always. Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles… ~1 Chronicles 16:11-12 ✝

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!

Speak Lord in the stillness,
While I wait on Thee;
Hushed my heart to listen
In expectancy.
~song lyrics by Worship

**Some images via Pinterest.