All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth
befalls the sons of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life.
He is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself.
~Chief Seattle
So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith. ~Galatians 6:9-10 ✝
Happy days are here again!
The skies above are clear again!
So let’s sing a song of cheer again!
Happy days are here again!
~Excerpted lyrics by Milton Ager/Jack Yellen
Okay, so it’s not really spring yet, at least not according the the calendar, but springy things sprang up in my greenhouse yesterday. As a result melodies, not just from the birds, filled the air, and indeed it was an occasion for dancing. I didn’t care what the neighbors might think about an old lady jumpin’ around like a madwoman, it was definitely time for some singin’ and a little jig. Why? Well after weeks of waiting tulips were blooming, a daffodil had opened up, and the first bee of the season had found its way inside to sup on the nectar in my little grape hyacinths. I don’t know about you, but that’s a formula for springtime in my book. And every time beauty and miracles like that emerge from seemingly nothingness, I fall in love all over again with the Creator of the Universe. What amazing things He has made and given to us, we creatures who are often so undeserving of His gifts and His grace! Now that’s love, is it not?!
He said, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven or on earth, keeping covenant in steadfast love with your servants who walk before you with all their heart. ~2 Chronicles 6:14 ✝
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
Ambrosia, food or drink of the gods in Greek mythology, brought to Olympus by doves and thought to be a kind of divine exhalation of the Earth–oh how tasty is ambrosia–mouthwatering, yummy ambrosia! Leastways that’s the first word that comes to my mind when I see flower and color combinations like these is my photo. But wait, some would say such things can’t be ambrosial because they aren’t food or drink. And I would have to argue that they are, at least metaphorically speaking, because they are part of earth’s “divine exhalation” that satiates thirst in the spirit and hunger in the soul. All of Creation shouts to the world that there is a Creator, and such is just one of its many compelling cries–sacred touches, as it were, of a loving God who wants to be found.
Ever since the creation of the world His eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things He has made. ~Romans 1:20 ✝
**Photo taken in my greenhouse today.
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 ✝
You shall see them
on a beautiful quarto page,
where a neat rivulet of text shall meander
through a meadow of margin.
~Excerpt from “School for Scandal” by
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Margins–our lives are lived within all kinds of marginal edges. In botany and entomology scientists talk of margins when they cite data about borders around leaves or the borders of insect wings. The earth itself has what I think of as margins. For example, phenomena like mountains, rivers, forests, or oceans hold things within or without; walled constructs built by the sea are held by nature and man. Even our written documents and texts are kept inside a border of blank space called a margin. In literary works poets and novelists speak of garden walls as the margins around growing spaces. The margins around my backyard gardening spaces as well as the ones in public gardens I visit are fences. Interestingly, at one time the margins around my yard were solely the fence lines, but now it is contained within its confines in places by an assortment of trees, some planted by human hands, others that sprang up by their own devices.
In the scriptural passage below God is telling the people of Jerusalem that although they are in a city without walls, He will protect them by being the barrier between them and their enemies. The Lord does that for His children even when they misuse the reins of free will to wander poorly chosen worldly paths. Fortunately for us we never get so far down those potentially dangerous paths that we are out from under the spread of Yahweh’s mighty wings of grace. When asked, He will pull us into a walled sanctuary where His forgiveness is an ever-standing offer for contrite hearts. And as a fellow blogger noted, He walls our hearts with His love.
“And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,” declares the Lord, “and I will be its glory within. ~Zechariah 2:5 ✝
I write because there is nothing larger in life than
To be read, maybe even reread by another–
To be examined and then verified of being
Understood, or trusted like a saint–
I don’t imagine being immortalized
Or stacked in a library for hands with a million
Oppositions to wander through for
Poetic justice either–
Perhaps purpose is purchased or earned or even
Inherited by some mystic right–
But it is my reasoning I hearken to,
All that I am resonates with inscribing, putting down
My Self on the papyrus of today,
Like a manuscript never quite decrypt but
Interesting to the soul’s eye
For perpetual encounter.
~Deborah Jeanne Avila
All the kings of the earth shall praise you, O Lord for they have heard the words of your mouth. Psalm 138:4 ✝
You, O God, are the beginning of all that is.
From your life the fire of the rising sun streams forth.
You are the life-flow of creation’s rivers,
the sap of blood in our veins, earth’s fecundity,
the fruiting of trees, creatures’ birthing,
the conception of new thought, desire’s origin.
~J. Philip Newell
Creation has been described as “the grand volume of God’s utterance,” and isn’t it grand to know that we are a part of that utterance. When we seek God then we should not look “away from ourselves and away from creation, but deep within all that has life” including ourselves. We can and should search for Him in Scripture, but God is found in more than religious moments and environments. Simply put, He speaks to us through two books: Creation and the Bible. Because He exists in all contexts, His light is woven throughout the whole of Creation’s fabric. Whether recognized and acknowledged or not, nothing has life apart from God, and if we want to look for Him, we need to start in places where He yet dwells. I start in my garden because, like all gardens, it is a microcosm of the grander macrocosm of Creation itself, and even in a small piece of Eden is the whole of the mystery of God. In it I see the same ebbing and flowing and rhythms that I see in my life and Creation at large, and I know that I’m as connected to its Source as the infant in a mother’s womb is connected to its life-giving source. One of my friends told me once that when she was in college she would sometimes go lie down in a wheat field and look up at the sky because she knew to go out into Creation was to find Yahweh. She had learned as have I that wherever and whenever we look and listen, we shall find Him, and I pray this is a week where your encounters with the Holy One are many.
I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. ~Psalm 63:2 ✝
**In the photograph is some French Lavender that I found blooming in my greenhouse today. Even it speaks of the blue of our planet and the heavens.
Every gardener knows
that under the cloak of winter
lies a miracle–a seed waiting to sprout,
a bulb opening to the light,
a bud straining to unfurl.
And the anticipation nurtures our dream.
~Barbara Winkler
Miracles! Where would any of us be without the existence of miracles? Bad things happen on planet earth, but miraculous things occur on a daily basis too. And many times out of the dust and devastation of catastrophic disasters arise changes for the betterment of life and living conditions as well as the inevitable uplifting examples of an amazing goodness that exist in the human soul. I garden not just because of a love for flowers but more importantly because I find day to day evidence of the mystery and miracles of God and His goodness in the garden’s confines. Spending even the smallest amount of time in my garden brings repeated awarenesses of the Lord’s abiding presence, and that keeps me focused on Him and not on my own smallness or limitations. In spite of Creation’s brokenness and my own heart’s sufferings, I am guided to wellsprings of life and hope amid earth’s unmistakable hallowed workings. Both contentment and enlightenment can be found in the orbs of the heavens, in the green of the earth, in the flowing of its waters, in the warmth of the sun, and in the wind, that like Yahweh, can be felt but not seen. That in turn teaches me how to respond to life and its sometimes terrifying circumstances with a spirit of peace and love instead of anger, confusion, and frustration. Understanding is not promised unto us, but peace that transcends understanding is granted to those who seek the Prince of Peace and search for the true heart of life.
The Mighty One, God, the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets. ~Psalm 50:1 ✝
At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone. ~Excerpted from THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett
My first move of the day is from the bed to my recliner so I can sit a while and enjoy whatever is going on out in the yard. I’ve still not seen any robins, but as I kept watching the Cardinals come today to my feeders, their flashes of red were enough to bring thoughts of Burnett’s novel, The SECRET GARDEN. Her inspirational tale of transformation and empowerment for two children with very dim outlooks and prospects touches my heart on several different levels. When Mary finds the key to the secret garden, the “magical” powers of transformation come within her reach, and eventually she and Colin are “saved” and offered the prospects of present and future goodness and happiness. I didn’t begin gardening until much later in life than they, but my discovery of the healing power inherent in all living things and God’s abiding presence in Creation was a pivotal moment of transformation in my life as well. So I decided to post some lines from the novel tonight along with photographs (via Pinterest) in hopes of relaying the Divine’s “magic” that captured Mary, Colin, and me.
“Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off and they are nearly always doing it.”
“…the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs.”
“Never thee stop believin’ in th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full of it – and call it what tha’ likes. Tha’ wert singin’ to it when I come into t’ garden.”
“There’s naught as nice as th’ smell o’ good clean earth, except th’ smell o’ fresh growin’ things when th’ rain falls on ’em.”
“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.”
“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that ‘she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow.”
The Lord is my strength and my might, and He has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. ~Exodus 15:2 ✝
If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures
from the shelter of compassion and pity,
you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow man.
~St. Francis of Assisi
Between the houses on our street and the ones on the street behind us run power lines which also function as a sort of “interyard” highway for our sizable squirrel population. During the course of a day’s time the squirrels run back and forth and back and forth along the elevated “freeway” that exits on various nearby “farm to market” tree branch roads. From there they scamper down to the ground below or up to their hand built “high rise condos” or take “fence-line” lanes into adjoining yards. When not engaged in foraging for food or water they playfully chase each other round and round. Their spunky antics whilst doing so are often engagingly comical, and the agility with which they perform daring acrobatics with no fail-safe never ceases to amaze me.
The fluffy-tailed creatures seem to have little fear of me, but they become alarmed if and when a feral cat begins to stalk them. To date, though they’ve barely escaped being pounced upon a time or two, they’ve perceived the threat in time and avoided being captured by scampering up, up, and away into places too lofty for most cats to follow. Afterwards the escapee sometimes stays on high making chicken-like noises, until I, the games keeper, chase the predator away, or the cat grows weary of the clucking and leaves of its own accord, or the squirrel’s attention is diverted to or by something else.
The earth, its resources, and its creatures are a part of a holy, good deposit. And because I’ve always felt a closeness to and reverence for Creation, I try to be a good steward of my deposit–my home, my family, and my little patch of Eden. To that end through the National Wildlife Federation, my yard has been established as a wildlife habitat– a sacred sanctuary for me and all who dwell in or come here to visit.
Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you–guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. 2 Timothy 1:14 ✝
Sacred Touches 