Tag Archives: Earth

892. The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us. ~Ashley Montagu

by

23

There is no season when such
pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect
on the feelings, as now in October.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Screen Shot 2015-10-04 at 3.34.22 PM

The subtle beauty of this day
Hangs o’er me like a fairy spell,
And care and grief have flown away,
And every breeze sings, “all is well.”
I ask, “Holds earth or sin, or woe?”
My heart replies, “I do not know.”
Nay! all we know, or feel, my heart,
Today is joy undimmed, complete;
In tears or pain we have no part;
The act of breathing is so sweet,
We care no higher joy to name.
What reck we now of wealth or fame?
The past–what matters it to me?
The pain it gave has passed away.
The future–that I cannot see!
I care for nothing save today–
This is a respite from all care,
And trouble flies–I know not where.
Go on, oh noisy, restless life!
Pass by, oh, feet that seek for heights!
I have no part in aught of strife;
I do not want your vain delights.
The day wraps round me like a spell
And every breeze sings, “All is well.”
~A Golden Day Poem by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Surely you have granted him unending blessings and made him glad with the joy of Your presence. ~Psalm 21:6  ✝

**Image of mute swam at dusk via Pinterest

890. The music of summer yet flutters in the middle of the day around Autumn seeking its former nest. ~Edited and adapted excerpt by Rabindranath Tagore

by

18

Early mornings are cool now though autumn is still young.
Dew on the lotus scatters pure perfume;
Wind on the bamboos gives off a gentle tinkling.
~Edited and adapted excerpt
by Po Chu (772-864)

Screen Shot 2015-10-02 at 8.36.46 PM

The harvest moon hung round and high
It dodged clouds high in the sky,
The stars winked down their love and mirth
The Autumn season was giving birth.
Oh, it must be October…
~Pearl N. Sorrels

I will dance
The dance of day’s dawning
And scattering fragrances

I will dance
The dance of day’s closing
And twinkling stars

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  ✝

**Lotus image via Pinterest

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

by

42

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

Screen Shot 2015-09-30 at 3.41.00 PM

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

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

by

18

The lawn is pressed by unseen feet as
summer’s ghost surreptitiously returns at
dawn and retreats again at twilight…
~Edited and adapted quote
by T.S. Eliot

Screen Shot 2015-09-30 at 4.09.30 PM

Bye, bye summertime, hello cooler spells
I think I’m gonna sm-ile
Bye bye scorching days, hello chilliness
I feel like could celebrate
Bye bye September goodby-eye
Bye bye September goodby-eye
~Adapted lines from the song,
Bye Bye Love, recorded by the Everly Brothers in 1957

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

**Image via Pinterest; text by Natalie

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

by

13

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

Screen shot 2015-09-23 at 2.59.45 PM

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

876. Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. ~Ambrose Bierce

by

22

  Sometimes I do get to places just when
God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.
~Ansel Adams

DSC_0105

For the beauty of the earth,
For the glory of the skies;
For the love which from our birth,
Over and around us lies;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.

DSC_0086

For the wonder of each hour,
Of the day and of the night;
Hill and vale and tree and flow’r,
Sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.

Screen shot 2015-04-09 at 5.27.40 PM

For the joy of ear and eye,
For the heart and mind’s delight;
For the mystic harmony,
Linking sense to sound and sight;
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
~Folliot S. Pierpont

He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. ~Excerpt from Psalm 40:3  ✝

873. What you are is Gods’ gift to you, what you become is your gift to God. ~Hans Urs von Balthasar

by

31

Screen shot 2015-09-16 at 3.21.39 PM He who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth
is generally considered a fortunate person,
but his good fortune is small compared to that
of the happy mortal who enters the world
with a passion for flowers in his soul.
~Celia Thaxter

Screen shot 2015-09-16 at 3.08.15 PM

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs,
ask yourself what it is that makes you come alive.
And then go do it. Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive.
~Harold Whitman

Screen shot 2015-09-16 at 2.50.32 PM

They come, I see, they conquer! Beauties like the ones in these photos have left me spellbound for as long as I can remember. So it is that I have been blessed with a fire-fanning renewal of the passion of which Thaxter speaks month after month, season after season, year after year for 7 decades now. And as the yearly succession of earth’s flowers has advanced over the years, something in my soul has in fact felt more alive. As a result in the pregnant pauses of my days, over and over again I’ve heard a voice imploring me to make something good out of that passion. M. C. Entyre said that “singers and musicians know the power of the pause, the rest, the soundless beat,” and I’ve come to realize that the spaces between our thoughts or words are dwelling places where things register and then move inward. When we linger in spaces of quietude, we open ourselves to the possibility of an epiphany–the sudden knowing, the flashes of clarity where Christ enters with revelation. In such moments the veil lifts and we are, as Wordsworth put it, “surprised by joy,” the inexpressible joy of coming alive.

Screen shot 2015-09-16 at 3.15.45 PM

I love to think of nature as an
unlimited broadcasting station,
through which God speaks
to us every hour,
if we will only tune in.
~George Washington Carver

Screen shot 2015-09-16 at 2.59.35 PM

The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. ~Psalm 19:8  ✝

**Images via Pinterest, collages created by Natalie

872. The sun is new each day. ~Heraclitus

by

15

Every day is the world made new.
I have lived all my life up to this moment,
to come to this day. I shall make of this day –
each moment of this day – a heaven on earth.
~Dan Custer

Screen shot 2015-09-08 at 3.16.40 PM

Every morning the world is created.
Under the orange sticks of the sun
the heaped ashes of the night
turn into leaves again and
fasten themselves to the high branches —
and the ponds appear like black cloth
on which are painted islands of summer lilies.
If it is your nature to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails for hours,
your imagination alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit carries within it
the thorn that is heavier than lead —
if it’s all you can do to keep on trudging —
there is still somewhere deep within you a beast
shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted —
each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer
heard and answered lavishly, every morning,
whether or not you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not you have ever dared to pray.
~Mary Oliver

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  ✝

**Image via Pinterest

871. A bee is an exquisite chemist. ~Royal Beekeeper to Charles II

by

34

  A work of arte; yet no arte of man,
Can worke this worke, these little creatures can.
~Geffrey Whitney, 1586

Screen shot 2015-09-14 at 8.24.54 PM

Bees work for man, and yet they never bruise
Their Master’s flowers, but leave it having done,
As fair as ever and as fit to use;
So both the flower doth stay and the honey run.
~George Herbert

Screen shot 2015-09-14 at 8.40.02 PM

There is one masterpiece, the hexagonal cell, that touches perfection. No living creature, not even man has achieved, in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey. ~Maurice Maeterlinck, 1924

Screen shot 2015-09-14 at 8.33.22 PM

Hello gardeners! Please try to resist tidying away the hollow plant stems in your garden in the autumn and instead wait to the following year. They may have tiny bees hibernating inside! www.buzzaboutbees.net

Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. ~Proverbs 16:24  ✝

**All images via Pinterest; collages by Natalie

858. Faith sees a beautiful blossom in a bulb, a lovely garden in a seed, and a giant oak in an acorn. ~William Arthur Ward

by

29

Faith is that tiny beautiful songbird in
one’s heart that sings wonderful melodies
even during the darkest moments
because it feels and sees the divine light
that is yet to arrive with the dawn.

Screen shot 2015-04-08 at 4.07.38 PM

Faith enables us to believe in something,
something that may be beyond 
any
rationale, reasoning or logic.
And faith is also our inner strength that
empowers us to bring our dreams and vision
to fruition, with the Grace of God.
So take a leap in the unknown with
full faith in God and yourself.
~Author Unknown

The earth is filled with your love, Lord: teach me your decrees. ~Psalm 119:64  ✝

**Image via Pinterest