270. Nature looks dead in winter because her life is gathered into her heart. ~Hugh Macmillan

February 5, 2014 by nataliescarberry

She (nature) withers the plant down to the root
that she may grow it up again fairer and stronger.
She calls her family together
within her inmost home to prepare them for being
scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.
~Hugh Macmillan

Early morning light steals across straw-colored grass and slowly warms the biting chill of a February dawn. Splinters of sunlight glisten and sparkle as they move over the garden’s frost-laden, bare bones. From my vantage point inside I can make out a lone, reddish leaf, not quite ready to be a memory, clinging tenaciously to a branch in the ornamental cherry tree. It reminds me that a wellspring of life lies dormant below in nature’s “inmost home” where “her life is gathered into her heart.” My attention is diverted next to the dogs I hear barking up and down the alleyway. The feral cats must be on the move in search of food. Then birds begin to show up at the feeders and high above their flutterings I see the first squirrels running the high wires. Soon birdsong breaks morn’s silence, and lights start coming on in the once darkened houses around us. The neighborhood is coming alive and gearing up for the day, but no, not I. Since retirement I’ve been able to linger as long as I like most mornings and from my well-situated chair watch the days and the changing seasons pass over my yard. Nature’s recurrent patterns and rhythms have always comforted me, and it’s delightful to be able to partake of her daily feasts. Though evidence of God’s grace is readily apparent in the spectacular moments of life, perhaps sweeter are the ones ferreted out of day to day, ordinary living. These are blessings that are not unlike the contrast of a mass of diamonds scattered out on a dark piece of velvet in which all are lovely but none seems particularly more special than the other and that of a singular diamond’s loveliness on the same piece of fabric which in its aloneness is brilliantly stunning.

For the word of the Lord is right and true; He is faithful in all He does. ~Psalm 33:4 ✝

263. Don’t grieve for me now. I am free. ~Author Unknown

January 29, 2014 by nataliescarberry

This post is in loving memory of Debbie Jeanne Avila , a friend and fellow blogger. Tonight I’ve chosen bits and pieces of some of Debbie’s poetry to honor her, and because she loved my photos of flowers, I’m including one with each excerpt. Sweet Debbie you will not be forgotten, and I am comforted that for you to be absent here, means that you are now and forever in the presence of Jesus. Till we meet again. Love, Natalie

I had forgotten what LIFE was all about,
Those dark chocolate nights dipped in indubitable doubts,
Wonderful wonderings if this was all there is,
And if it was, then, we had bitten envied bliss.

as sad as a morning glory that has never met
her glory I am damp with seeds that have never met
the portent wise sunlight–
damp with grinding dreams at my hoof and
damper after they sodden cold with dawn’s
twilight–
nothing reverts or inverts, if all formulates into
winter’s beginning and continuance

Help me with my un-perceived progress
I stand still, everything around me sweeping
Like a Kansas tornado.
So many
voices within, held down and pressed,
It scares me to hear such a composing
Of songs I alone know

September vivifies the introspections of soul like
The glaciating mountains in silence-
Ruminating, finding their niches so to sleep and then
Shake at springs kissing–
It embers gently, suspiciously as if someone would
Snuff it out too soon–

Miscreant as it may some times be with the unexpected
Heat and elongated sun-kissed troubling–
Days are slightly shorter for most living breathing ways,
As I turn down the lights,
Pick up Keats and Dickinson, Rumi and rosehips
For morning simmering decadence. (http://girlwiththepen1118.wordpress.com)

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” ~1 Corinthians 15:55 ✝

247. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. ~Rumi

January 14, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Every morning is a fresh beginning.
Every day is the world made new.
Today is a new day.
Today is my world made new.
I have lived all my life up to this moment,
to come to this day.
This moment–this day–is as good as any moment in all eternity.
I shall make of this day–a heaven on earth.
This is my day of opportunity.
~Dan Custer

Welcome the new day; it is a new creation. Greet it with gratitude. It is a nonrepeatable gift; it is a promise of resurrection. Miss not the day’s beauty. Miss not the joy. Miss not the wonder. Miss not chances to make the world a better place. Miss not opportunities to praise God!

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ~Lamentations 3:22-23 ✝

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 ✝

243. A Summer fog for fair, a Winter fog for rain. ~Weather Lore prediction

January 9, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Oh fog! Oh fog!
What can I say?
You’ve painted the day
A thick shade of grey.
~Adapted excerpt from a poem by Andrew D. Robertson

A textbook definition of fog is that it is a collection of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth’s surface–a cloud of sorts, as it were. Since it wasn’t cold enough last night for this one to have been formed from ice crystals, it had to have been from the little bit of misting rain we got yesterday. Thus, the only strange thing is that I’ve never seen a fog of either kind come so early or last as long as this one has, at least here in north central Texas. And the somewhat dense fog not only wrapped its arms around the morning, but it has also kept us held tightly in its embrace all day long. Furthermore, as darkness closed in on us, it still hadn’t lifted.

The fog is an illusion–
A master of disguise;
Which hides the tangible
Before our very eyes.

It gives an air of mystery
That has long prevailed.
Dangerously intriguing
Is the fog’s foggy veil.
~Excerpts from a poem by W. Salley

In the silence of its thick haze this strange January fog has been reducing visibility and cloaking our city and the outlying areas in its mysterious veil of shyness since first light. In grayness not unlike a pigeon’s feather, it has literally held our world close to the ground all day long, coating all the eyes could see. And lying heavy on all that it encompassed, it kept the sun pushed back which sheltered the earth, smothered most of the day’s colors, and blurred everything as it clung to all possible shapes it could find.

Foggy mist, misty fog
Marvelous manifestation
Of magnificent nature!
~N. Subbarman

The fog descends
in the wee hours of dawn
like a sacred thing.
~John Tiong Chunghoo

Like most weather events, fog is often seen as some kind of spiritual force as it creeps along the ground and across the sky. Actually there seems to be something about all weather phenomena that lends itself to perceptions of sanctity. Perhaps tis so because all such events fall from the heavens overhead or, like the fog, are a part of earth’s mysterious beneath-the-surface workings. And because they are beyond our control, we feel helpless to stop them and sometimes lives as well as homes are lost in the wake of the more forceful ones. Genesis tells us that a mighty wind swept over the waters as God set about the business of Creation, and in His hands He held the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. As He cast them out upon the wind, they were carried throughout the universe on its wild wings. How could one not stand in awe and consider sacred such immense and mysterious powers!

In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1 ✝

229. So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us. ~Gaston Bachelard

December 26, 2013 by nataliescarberry

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature.
Most persons do not see the sun.
At least they have a very superficial way of seeing.
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man
but shines into the eye and heart of the child.
The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses
are still truly adjusted to each other;
who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

God sometimes reaches out at the most unexpected times to capture our hearts and attention, and not infrequently does He do that by using one of Creation’s eye-catching spectacles. When a moment like that happens, it’s much like when a lover surprises his beloved by pulling a handful of flowers from behind his back. And every time I’m delighted by the Holy One in such a way, I fall in love with Him all over again. A friend of mine recently shared a moment like that with me, and as I read her description, I realized that understanding God’s parables can occur when the innocence of childhood floats up back up in our present realities.

On this cool, crisp morning, I arose before the sun and
went out my front door to look for the newspaper.
But that’s not what caused me to stop in my driveway, paper forgotten.
Overhead, Ursa Major and other stars twinkled brightly,
framed only by a few thin, wind-shaped clouds.
And at a time of the year when children take center stage,
I thought of the innocence in all of us.
For it was not my intellect that held me spellbound
but my own innocence, untarnished by age.
In that moment, caught by the wonder of nature,
blessed with its beauty, I felt magical.
~Emily Seate

Who is this that appears like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession? ~Song of Solomon 6:10 ✝

212. It is part of the cure to want to be cured. ~Seneca

December 10, 2013 by nataliescarberry

To feel keenly the poetry of a morning’s roses,
one has to just have escaped from the claws
of this vulture which we call sickness of body or heart.
~Adapted excerpt from Henri Frederic Amiel

In order to mend and bridge chasms of painful, isolating realities, I often douse the fires of what breaks my heart in cups of tea or tears that flow during quiet dawns or at night when the wee hours find me awake and alone. After the sipping or crying comes to an end, a numbed stillness often develops. When it does, I become aware in its clarity of the amazing nearness of God. Jesus, whom I’ve been calling, is offering to guide me through portals to places where pools of mercy await. Sometimes the healing waters lie deep within my own being where the Holy Spirit resides in His cloistered sanctuary. At other times they are found in the beautiful colors of autumn, or in the glistening dew on greening grass and flowers in springtime, or in the gentle gestures of another’s compassion, or in softly spoken prayers proffered by kind and endearing voices. Wherever the pool and whoever the beneficial bearer of blessing, one or both sustain me, if I yield, in the returning rhythm of fitness as the Lord’s grace works to render me wholly well.

I’ve discovered that tears have amazing restorative powers for frequently it is when my eyes are blurred with wetness from them that a sense of God’s presence is strongest. For surely in the loss of His own son by the hands of creatures He breathed life into, He shed more tears than we’ll ever know. We all endure difficult and sorrowful moments in our lives. So excruciating is the pain on occasion that it nearly stifles our very breath, but one breath and one step at a time begins the journey out of the depths of despair.

“But I will restore your health and heal your wounds,” declares the Lord… ~Jeremiah 30:17a ✝

**Whittard’s is a tea, coffee, and cocoa shop that we found in London last summer.

Music’s Mystery

November 18, 2013 by nataliescarberry

I’ve heard it said that only human beings have been given the gift of music; that only people create songs, sing and serenade their souls with this most magical and uplifting form of communication and communion. Yet, should we not consider the song of the lark? The haunting ballads of the whales? The mournful call of the wolf? The robin’s lyrical laugh at dawn and dusk? The crickets that serenade the nighttide? The burbles of monkeys swaying in the trees? The laughing of the hyena?

Who is to say that in their melodic tunes, caterwauls, howls, wails, and other worldly vocalizations there is not some measure of music. Why should we be the only ones to sing praise, to croon our love, and to bewail our distress? How can we know, in truth, in honesty, that the deliberate scree of the hawk, the piercing bugle of the elk, the chattering of raccoon and ferret, and the murmurings of infrasonic elephant calls is not music to their ears?

Music is a form of communication that lifts the soul, expresses emotion, and brings one being into contact with another being. If this is, indeed, the definition of music (of which it is a form) then can that being not be one other than human? Does not one wolf join another when it sings? Does not the whale song change season to season and year to year, picked up by another whale to be carried on? Does not one roaring lion inspire the entire pride by its lusty cry?

Consider what the morning would sound like without the sweet music of the birds. Contemplate what the summer night might be when not a single chirrup, trill, drone or buzz lilted through the air. Ponder how deep and lonely the oceans would be without the drifting, breathtaking songs of the whales. Can you even imagine a mountain landscape without hearing the echoing howl of a wolf or the bubbling laugh of the loon?

If these sounds, that can captivate us and uplift our thoughts, our hearts and even our souls, are not music and do not do the same for all those who hear them, regardless of race, than perhaps, we must follow that course of logic and say that cave paintings are not art, tap is not dance, improvisation is not acting and free verse is not poetry.

Or perhaps, Music Teaches the Soul what the Heart Feels and Guides the Heart with what only the Soul can Truly Know.

Music’s Mystery is by Morgan at: http://booknvolume.com

177. Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach

November 1, 2013 by nataliescarberry

All deep things are song.
It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song;
as if all the rest were wrappages and hulls!
~Thomas Carlyle

I loved teaching John Steinbeck’s novella, THE PEARL. The main character, Kino, lives intimately connected, physically and spiritually, to the natural world, even more so than I do. All through the story as he faces his instincts or any particularly powerful thing, he hears a song in his head, and these songs match whatever he’s feeling at the moment. For example, when he experiences happiness with his wife and child, he hears the Song of the Family. Or when the scorpion stings his child, he hears the Song of Evil. These songs are familiar, ancient ones handed down from generation to generation. Like his people and his ancestors Kino believes the songs give actual form to what he feels inside himself. As Carlyle put it, he perceives that “all deep things are song.” I realize not everyone grew up with the same cultural experiences that Kino had, but many of us do hum or sing songs we heard in childhood or familiar tunes we’ve listened to on the radio or TV over the years. My experience has been that there is a very comforting element in the songs I hear in my head and/or sing, and in some way they do express “the very central essence” of who I am.

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 ✝

176. For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature’s finest balm. ~Edwin Way Teale

October 31, 2013 by nataliescarberry

Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose
from out night’s gray and cloudy sheath;
softly and still it grows and grows,
petal by petal, leaf by leaf.
~Susan Coolidge

Tired of tossing and turning, I got up out of bed and went in to rock in my favorite chair. Not wanting to miss the “slow budding” of dawn’s light, however, I first raised the bamboo shade in front of the glass, patio-doors. After a short wait a faint pinkish glow appeared low on the horizon in the eastward sky, and as the sun inched up and up and up, a ray of golden light poured through an opening centered in the heart of a tall tree framed against it just above a neighboring housetop. The branches of the tree then took on a hallowed appearance so much so that a bird atop the roof and two squirrels sitting very still in nearby branches looked like parishioners in pews awaiting the high priest. Later, as the sun climbed high enough for night’s curtain to be lifted completely off earth’s stage, it was apparent that all who’d seen this amazing “salutation of the dawn” were summoned to make ready for the new day. The first to respond was a flock of birds darting willy nilly across the pastel blue sky in search of food, but beneath them as more and more drops of light appeared like jewels aloft in the bamboo I knew that despite a restless night the time for me to rise had come as well.

If I rise on the wings of dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast. ~Psalm 139:9-10 ✝

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

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