Tag Archives: Life

1042. Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach

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And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents
And as silently steal away.
~Edited lines by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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In January, as winter begins to deepen, the rhythms that “wash away from the soul the dust of everyday life” grow faint, as if whispered. However, when nature’s earthly notes are muffled by icy gales, heavy frosts, or falling snow, the “echo of the spheres” overheard remains audible. And on the less chilly days, the ones between cold fronts, bits and pieces of tender, albeit potent, harmonies often continue to rise. Today, for example, I spotted the tiny tips of hyacinth bulbs breaking the cold, hard ground, and as if escaping through the tiny fissures the bulbs had created, Eden’s heartbeat jumped up another fraction of a decibel. Even on the really, really forbiddingly cold days, within the sounds of silence, there are pauses, ripe and pregnant, that are as eloquent as notes and lyrics. For it is in those rests and pauses that can be heard dulcet sounds, soothing honeyed ones which are recognized not by the ears, but by the soul. And although it has been said that trees and flowers grow in utter silence while the sun, the moon, and the stars above our heads do the same, I’m not sure that’s true. I contend that on any  given day of the year if one listens with a hunger in the heart and a thirst in the soul, the footfalls of God can yet be ascertained upon the sacred soil of Creation and His voice which spoke everything into being can still be heard echoing amid the orbs of the firmament. That’s why if one stills him or herself and earnestly seeks Yahweh’s face, it can be made out even winter’s inhospitable bleakness. And after it’s glimpsed, one’s ears can also discern the sweet, sweet sounds of the Father’s loving utterances as He calls out to His beloved children.

The music is not in the notes,
but in the silence in between.
~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day… ~Excerpt from Genesis 3:8 ✝

**Images via Pinterest; collage created by Natalie

1038. We are here and now. Further than that, all knowledge is moonshine(foolish talk). ~H.L. Mencken

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What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can’t

turn in any direction
but it’s there. I don’t mean

the leaves’ grip and shine or even the thrush’s
silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven’s slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;

or time that’s always rushing forward,
or standing still

in the same–what shall I say–
moment.

What I know
I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it on
one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn’t have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.
~Excerpted verses from a poem by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is my go to poet when life has been too big for too long, and though she, like me, has no concrete answers, I find her ability to make the unexplainable palatable comforting. Her words touch me in ways that are unexplainable as well, but then that makes two of us standing side by side “in the middle of the world, breathing” instead of me having to do it all by myself.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. ~Psalm139:5-7  ✝

**Image found on Pinterest

 

1034. Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of mystery. ~Max Planck

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Nature looks dead in winter because her life is gathered into her heart. She 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

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When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us then salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed’s self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.
~Edited excerpt from In Praise of Earth
by John O’Donohue


“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

1033. Memories are the architecture of our identity. ~Unknown

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Memory is a way of holding onto
the things we love,
the things we are,
the things we never want to lose.
~Kevin Arnold

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The Coin
Into my heart’s treasury
I slipped a coin
That time cannot take
Nor a thief purloin, —
Oh better than the minting
Of a gold-crowned king
Is the safe-kept memory
Of a lovely thing.
~Sara Teasdale

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A million feelings.
A thousand thoughts.
A hundred memories.
One person.
~Unknown

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Memories are the timeless
treasures of our hearts.
~Unknown

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I love those random memories
that make me smile no matter
what’s going on in my life.
~Unknown

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I will perpetuate your memory through all generations; therefore nations will praise you (Lord) for ever and ever. ~Psalm 45:17  ✝

**Collages created from photos in my Scrapbooks

1029. Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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The Journey

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One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
~Mary Oliver

Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all you shining stars! ~Psalm 148:3  ✝

**Image found on Pinterest

1022. While it robs them of life, it tears away the veil and reveals the golden gem of beauty and sweetness. ~Northern Advocate

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The death-glow always beautifies anything
that wears the trace of beauty ere it goes back to nothingness.
We do not understand the secret of this principle,
yet we know that it is some law of the infinite mind.
~Northern Advocate

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Threads, filaments, silken strands holding to the past and yet releasing the future in the air. The amazing looking objects in the photos above and below are seed pods from a milkweed (Asclepias) plant. Asclepias species produce some of the most complex flowers in the plant kingdom, and they are an important nectar source for native bees, wasps, and other nectar-seeking insects. Asclepias species produce their seeds in follicles, and the seeds, which are arranged in overlapping rows, bear a cluster white, silky, filament-like hairs known as the coma (often referred to by other names such as pappus, “floss”, “plume”, or “silk”). The follicles ripen and split open, and the seeds, each carried by its coma, are blown by the wind. Milkweed is an essential larval host plant for the Monarch Butterfly which is why I have grown some in my garden for the last two years. Endangered Monarchs must pass through the “Texas funnel” coming and going on their epic migration to and from Canada to their roosting grounds in Michoacán, Mexico, in the spring and fall, and so Texas has been deemed critically important to the health of these beautiful and unique butterflies, threatened by the loss of habitats. But why should I bring this up now at the end of the year since we won’t see butterflies for months to come? Because it shows that though winter is an ending, it’s important to remember that it is the first season of the new year and so it is a beginning as well. Not only that but when all seems drab and lackluster, one who looks carefully can find great beauty even in the dying of the past.

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We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. ~Romans 6:4  ✝

**Images via Pinterest.

1021. Life is a series of little deaths out of which life always returns. ~Charles Feidelson, Jr. 

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There is something frank
and joyous and young
in the open face 
of the country.
It gives itself ungrudgingly
to the moods of the season,
holding nothing back.
~Willa Cather

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Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. It’s only two days until the end of the year. The train carrying all of this year’s comings and goings has all but run out of track, and it has been almost 10 days since we entered the season of somber gardens, short, but lengthening days, decidedly lower temperatures, and more-gray-than-blue skies. The reckless abandon of the growing seasons has yielded to winter’s, seemingly unadventurous restraint, and the countryside has been at least somewhat ravaged. The bare bones of the landscape now stand like silent sentinels over treasures buried beneath the soil where masses of autumn’s fallen have come to rest. Although the countryside appears to be wasted and barren, the soil in reality is teeming with life, life which the decaying matter warms and protects. And so it is time for us to rest and reflect on life, love, and home, whatever, whoever, and wherever that might be for you.

~The land enjoyed its sabbath rests… ~Excerpt from 2 Chronicles 36:21  ✝

**Image via Pinterest

1019. There’s not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice. ~John Calvin

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We were always intoxicated with color,
with words that speak of color,
and with the sun that makes colors live.
~Andre Derain

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By filling the earth with color the Lord has painted a kind of portrait of himself, and in so doing He has revealed an intentional path to His throne. This is no less true in winter for color is a continuous, rhythmic part of the mystery of God’s life and thus is deeply rooted in all four seasons. Winter may allow periodic breathing spaces for garden and gardener on forbidding days, cold and lacking in sunshine, but on days when the sun does make an appearance, there’s the usual soft, golden glow at sunrise, the sometimes pinky/purply bands low on the eastern horizon at day’s end, and the random blazing red and orange streaks of intensely tinted sunsets in the west. On occasional cloudless nights, there’s the white glow of the moon at times illuminating the deep indigo canopy overhead; on days when the bright yellow sun shines, there are the china blues of daytime skies, and when the sun doesn’t appear, there are the lovely, velvety grays of clouds filled with rain or  in rolling fogs or mists. I’ve heard winter called the season of drabness of the spirit yet I find bliss and hope not only in the things I’ve already mentioned but also in the reds of winter berries and the cardinals at the feeders, in the white of snow when it falls, in the silvery sparkles of icicles and frosts, in the constancy of green on hollies, conifers, spruces, and such, in the beiges and browns of dried grasses, autumn leaves, and seed pods, in the magenta of hyacinth bean seed pods or ornamental grass seed heads, and on and on it goes, the glorious, never ending sacred voice of color.

Of all God’s gifts to the sighted man,
color is the holiest, the most divine…
~John Ruskin

…for God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable. ~Romans 11:29  ✝

**Images and collage by Natalie

 

1004. Prayer is exhaling the spirit of man and inhaling the spirit of God. ~Edwin Keith

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I believe in God, and that there are pieces of him, called love and goodness, in everyone. I also believe in prayer, not the memorized type mumbled in church but the spontaneous kind spoken, ironically, in the last breath of the day, when the lamp has been dimmed and the bedspread drawn down, and it’s just you and those pieces of God in you, alone…. I suspect that when a man grows too big to kneel, then he is destined to fall. ~Joe Kita

By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life. ~Psalm 42:8  ✝

**The image is of monarda that grew in garden last summer.

1001. 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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I don’t ask for the meaning of the song of a bird,
or the rising of the sun on a misty morning.
There they are, and they are beautiful.
~Pete Hamill

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As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of the ground,
Opening the imagination of wings
Into the grace of emptiness
To fulfill new voyagings,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.
~John O’Donohue

Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ~2 Corinthians 3:17  ✝

**Image via Pinterest