478. If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God. ~Gilbert K. Chesterton

September 5, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Tonight the sun died like an Emperor…
great scarlet arcs of silk…
saffron…green…crimson…
and the blaze of Venus to remind one
of the absolute and the infinite…
~John Coldstream

The busy buzzing of the bees had ceased, and the butterflies had completed the day’s last waltz as gentle breezes began ruffling leaves late yesterday. As the zephyrs moved through the yard, the nodding sea oats looked like jittery lawn dancers in the descending, shadows of darkness. The sunlight, with night, the vanquishing “emperor,” nipping at its heels, had almost oozed out of the day as I went out to watch it yield more and more of its hold on the garden. While I kept an eye on the stunning blaze along the western horizon, I saw the yard birds diving and darting into safe havens for the night and the screeching grackles, much higher in the sky, looking for lodging elsewhere. The hastening darkness added frantic drama to their random forays for nightly asylum but not enough to make me feel even the slightest remorse for making sure they didn’t return to my yard. Then in the distance I heard a train whistle, and from the sound the locomotive seemed to be moving at a fast and frenzied pace for home, and I hoped it, too, would make it before long. As the last shaft of sunlight moved up and off the towering oak, a velvety hush lowered, and the lone sparrow who’d been sitting on the edge of the roof at last vanished. Then, boom, the sun fell off the edge of the world, and the blackness of night was to be denied no longer.

Each part of a day has a feel and reality of its own. Take time to savor the uniqueness in each passing moment and say a prayer of simple praise for comforting patterns and rhythms.

May you go into the night
blessed, sheltered and protected.
May your soul calm, console and renew you.
~John O’Donohue

By day the Lord directs His love, at night His Son is with me-a prayer to the God of my life. Psalm 42:8 ✝

476. Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination. ~Mrs. C.W. Earle

September 3, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Take thy spade,
It is thy pencil;
Take thy seeds, thy plants,
They are your colours.
~William Mason

The level of sand in summer’s hour glass may be low, but there is still a fair measure of glory remaining in the year. Since earth’s palette has not yet been wiped clean, the “greatest show on earth” is definitely not over nor will it be until months from now when Jack Frost’s frigid sting puts an end to it. Even now some flowers are abloom, but the coming cooler days and weeks will bring even more blossoming beauties. In addition the squirrels still have nuts to gather, the birds have songs yet unsung, the butterflies and bees have more pollinating rounds to make, and the roses have their second big flush of blooms to proffer. Not to mention that in the not too distant future the year’s pumpkins will make their colorful appearance amid the stunning array of autumn leaves. So the show ain’t over, folks!

I will wait until after the equinox on the 22nd of September to take up my spade and plant as well as sow seeds, but in the meantime I’ve already started my imaginings about additions and changes in the garden. And what a great place a garden is to let one’s imagination run wild! It can loosed over and over again in plotting the shapes of flower beds and paths, in deciding the kinds of plants to be introduced or removed, in installing new flower supports and garden structures, and so on. One of the best parts is that all this imagining feeds my starving, heat beleaguered inner child and my thirsting would-love-to-have-been an artist selfie.

. . . and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts-to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship. ~Exodus 31:3-5 ✝

468. What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance. ~Jane Austen

August 26, 2014 by nataliescarberry

This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.
~A verse from a poem by Marge Piercy

Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. ~Hebrews 6:7 ✝

Let it rain! Let it rain! Let it rain! And Word of God speak, and pour down like rain, and let us rest in Your holiness!

**Image via Pinterest

455. For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. ~Albert Camus

August 13, 2014 by nataliescarberry

People usually consider
walking on water or in thin air a miracle.
But I think the real miracle is not
to walk either on water or in thin air,
but to walk on earth.
Every day we are engaged in a miracle
which we don’t even recognize:
a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves,
the black, curious eyes of a child —
our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

Did you hear them? There were explosions, lots and lots of big explosions! And yet there were no bombs falling from above, no heat seeking missiles flying through space, no rapid fire from automatic weapons, nor the noisy advance of charging legions. Rather there were the quiet explosions of life that I’m blessed to witness every morning in my yard. In lieu of bombs and missiles and guns, there are the bursts of light at dawn, the fluttering of avian wings, the buzz of nectaring bees, the dancing rhythms of butterflies, the sizzle of the sun, the gentle zephyrs that ruffle leaves, the bursting open of blossoms, the purring of furry felines, the hopping of grasshoppers and toads, the slithering of lizards and snakes and on and on and on it goes…Life, too wondrous and thrilling and miraculous for a mere mortal’s words.

Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? ~Galatians 3:5 ✝

Thank you, Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! May I dwell in Your holy presence and praise Your name for all that you have given and done.

452. She told me about rolling hills covered with cornfields and treeless miles of land without water. ~A. LaFaye

August 10, 2014 by nataliescarberry

I have no hostility to nature,
but a child’s love to it.
I expand and live in
the warm day like corn and melons.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

August is upon us now with its usual dry nastiness and so the “parcels of corn” have indeed become “brown and sere.” Though their yield was harvested some time ago and the plants left to die under the blistering summer sun, I think their golden-brown, curled flag-leaves create a kind of unique beauty. And now that the farmers have begun the process of removing the dry, dead remains, even the barren, stub-filled fields have an intriguing eye-appeal. Although both my parents were raised on farms in farming communities, I had my very first experience with growing a crop like corn a few summers ago when our daughter and her husband decided to sow some corn in their inner city garden. Once the seedlings got going, it seemed like almost every day for a while that the stalks grew taller and taller. Then as the tassels appeared, the stalks began to buzz with the constant hum of more honey bees than I’ve ever seen in a suburban garden. Later on when the pale yellow silks started emerging, our excitement heightened again as the bees buzzed on harvesting the huge amounts of yellowish pollen falling from the floppy tassels. At that point I became so fascinated by the goings on that I went to the internet and was truly dumfounded to read that each piece of pollen that lands on a silk produces only one of the two to four hundred kernels that typically appear on a single ear of corn. How amazing is that! When it was all said and done, not only was their small crop of corn the tastiest any of us had ever eaten, but it also aroused in us and our offspring a sense of respect for the generations of farmers within our family lineage as well as for the ancient civilizations whose cultures had had a marked and ongoing influence on the global landscape. But more than anything, we marveled, as we always do, at the wonders of Creation and its Maker.

May the people praise you, O God; may all the people praise you. Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God will bless us. ~Psalm 67:5-7 ✝

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! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

448. A blue jay’s feathered back holds spots of white clouds and soft, glistening blue. ~From a poem by Gayle Sween

August 6, 2014 by nataliescarberry

We saw–through milky light, above the doghouse–
A blue jay lecturing the neighbor’s cat
So fiercely that, at first, it seemed to wonder
When birds fought the diplomacy of light
And met, instead, each charge with a wild swoop,
Metallic cry and angry thrust of beak.
Later we found the reason,
Near the fence
Among the flowerless stalks of daffodils,
A weak piping of feathers.
Too late now to go back
To nest again among the sheltering leaves…
~Excerpted lines from a poem by Paul Lake

Photo posted on Flickr by Brian E. Cushner

Noisy blue jays screech in the alley calling for help because a baby has been snatched from the nest by a prowling cat. Alarmed I look up at one of my cavity nests where I recently heard the tiny peeps of newly birthed baby sparrows. I’m relieved to see Mom and Pop sparrow sitting close by in attentive, watchful vigilance for they’ve spotted the cat wandering back inside the yard. But they too have been seen and in a flash the cat charges ready to pounce. The sparrows quickly take to wing, however, and make a clean getaway fearing not for the safety of their children for they know that having just been fed the hatchlings will lay quietly inside the nest till their return. And so now whilst the feline huntress sleeps under her favorite lawn chair she can only dream of better days when she’ll once again have her way.

Hardly a day goes by when one cannot find something engaging or new being birthed in a garden. Even in late autumn and winter there’s a hopeful progression of captivating events. Our lives are like that too, I think. Since it’s a bit harder sometimes to realize much variation or progression in our day to day living, I love to go out and walk or sit in my garden so I can feel the thrill of moving constancy, intrigue, and rebirth.

The end of a thing is better than its beginning; the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. ~Ecclesiastes 7:8 ✝

Sweet Jesus, fill us with the mercy you bled and draw us back unto Yourself! Let us be aware of You in all that we see and hear in Creation!

443. August bursts on the scene like a matchflame in the heat and haze of crimson sunsets. ~Edited excerpt from a poem by Elizabeth Maua Taylor

August 1, 2014 by nataliescarberry

August

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

  all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

  of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.
~Mary Oliver

Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety. ~Leviticus 25:10 ✝

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.

** Photo via Pinterest

431. Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but have a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring… ~Henri-Frédéric Amiel

July 20, 2014 by nataliescarberry

The morning-glory’s blossoming
Will soon be coming round
We see their rows of heart-shaped leaves
Upspringing from the ground.
~Maria White Lowell

breathing in and out I
picture morning glories…
blue, bluer, bluest
~Kirsty Karkow

I love and am fascinated by the mystery of seeds, the ones that I sow, the ones that nature sows, and the ones the Lord sows. The morning glory vines I’ve had for several years now came not from the work of my own hands. They’ve been self-sown, and each year the vines have come up more numerous and hardier than before. Perhaps, it would be so then that if, as Amiel suggests, we left a little fallow corner in our hearts, the “winds” that blow through our lives might bring hardier beauty and more powerful strengths than ever before.

For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations. ~Isaiah 61:11 ✝

418. Seeing, hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. ~Walt Whitman

July 6, 2014 by nataliescarberry

The fragrance of white tea is the feeling of existing in the mists that float over waters; the scent of peony is the scent of the absence of negativity: a lack of confusion, doubt, and darkness; to smell a rose is to teach your soul to skip; a nut and a wood together is a walk over fallen Autumn leaves; the touch of jasmine is a night’s dream under the nomad’s moon. ~C. JoyBell C.

For the Senses 

May the touch of your skin
Register the beauty
Of the otherness
That surrounds you.

May your listening be attuned
To the deeper silence
Where sound is honed
To bring distance home.

May the fragrance
Of the breathing meadow
Refresh your heart
And remind you you are
A child of the Earth.

May your inner eye
See through surfaces
And glean the real presence
Of everything that meets you.

May your soul beautify
The desire of your eyes
That you might glimpse
The infinity that hides
In the simple sights
That seem worn
To your usual eyes.

~John O’Donohue

Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Phillip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw. ~Acts 8:13 ✝

409. Count the garden by the flowers, never by the leaves that fall. ~Author Unknown

June 27, 2014 by nataliescarberry

I determine to live intentionally, God.
My life will be one of preparation and purpose,
bringing a heavenly fragrance into the stuff of earth.
~Jerome Daley

The scent of a flower invites wildlife to its fragrant banquet, and the guests in turn purposefully do what they do so that the banquet table will never vanish or be empty. The Israelites were asked repeatedly in the Old Testament to offer up burnt sacrifices as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. Though animals are no longer sacrificed as burnt offerings, there are ways we can offer up a pleasant aroma not only to the Lord but as Daley suggests to bring a heavenly fragrance into the very “stuff of earth.” Even when physical pain or emotional loss, like a knife wielding demon, carves out great chasms of anguish within body and soul, one can choose to emit “a heavenly fragrance” instead of a demon-defeated foul stench. So it is that today I lift up my voice as a pleasant aroma to the Lord though the challenges of an aging and ailing body be great and painful. And this lovely gladiola that came only to be blown to the ground by high winds, I count not as loss but as gain that the lovely lady came at all.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. -Psalm 19:14 ✝

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

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