Simplicity is beauty
and beauty is simplicity,
nothing more, nothing less.
~Oscar Wilde
In character,
in manner,
in style,
in all things
the supreme
excellence
is simplicity.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Simplicity, clarity, singleness:
These are the attributes that give
our lives power and vividness and joy
as they are also the marks of great art.
They seem to be the purpose of
God for his whole Creation.
~Richard Holloway
A pretentious, showy life is an empty life; a plain and simple life is a full life. ~Proverbs 13:7 ✝
**Images via Pinterest, collages created by Natalie
Keep a diary and
one day it’ll keep you.
~Mae West
It is necessary to write, if the days are not
to slip emptily by. How else, indeed,
to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?
For the moment passes, it is forgotten;
the mood is gone; life itself is gone.
That is where the writer scores over his fellows:
he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.
~Vita Sackville-West
However we go about the process, I believe those of us who write do find it necessary to do so. Perhaps, it’s because “clapping the net over the butterfly of the moment” helps define who we are for ourselves before “life itself is gone” and perhaps to help us know how who and what we are matters in the world. Whatever the reason, as tired as I am, I felt the need to put my fingers on the keyboard tonight. Thank you for all the prayers for my sister, Linda, and her husband, Dick. It seems that he blacked out last night because his blood pressure plummeted to critical levels. Then because the dropping of the blood pressure to such dangerously low levels causes the organs to start shutting down he went into renal failure. However, the good news tonight is that his BP is up to a normal range for him and his kidneys are functioning which means he is still on track for the transplant eligibility when a heart becomes available. Praise the Lord! The docs still have to find out what caused his blood pressure to drop so low, but I have faith that they will. Sadly he still does in fact look like he has been hit by a truck as his left eye is black, and he has a bad gash on the back of his head not to mention a whole bunch of large bruises. But they have put stitches in the cut above that eye, and as for the broken bones beneath his eye where it has turned pitch black, there is yet some question about what will need to be done, if anything, about those broken bones. They have also put staples in the cut on the back of his head, and thankfully, he apparently has no concussion. So, though very tired, we are grateful, more relieved, and praising God tonight.
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. ~Colossians 4:2 ✝
The music of the spheres has your name on its dance card.
So what are you waiting for?
Get on up and dance to the music!
~Natalie
We ought to dance with rapture that we might be alive…
and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.
~D.H. Lawrence
Everything in the universe has rhythm.
Everything dances.
~Maya Angelou
Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded
from the curriculum of all noble education;
dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words,
and, need I add that one must also
be able to dance with the pen?
~Friedrich Nietzsche
Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to Heav’n.
~Alexander Pope
To be creative means to be in love with life.
You can be creative only if you love life enough
that you want to enhance its beauty,
you want to bring a little more music to it,
a little more poetry to it,
a little more dance to it.
~Osho
Dancing can reveal all the mystery
that music conceals.
~Charles Baudelaire
To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.
~Hopi Indian Saying
Dance, even if you have nowhere
to do it but your living room.
~Kurt Vonnegut
Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world,
for I would ride with you upon the wind
and dance upon the mountains like a flame!
~William Butler Yeats
I would believe only in a God
that knows how to dance.
~Friedrich Nietzsche
You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy. ~Psalm 30:11 ✝
Watch the rising of the sun.
Listen to the morning’s chorus outside.
Feel the day’s vibrancy, the clanging of life in the sun’s rising.
Such is the dance of life, my friends.
Smell the aromas of life.
Taste life’s goodness all around you.
Take time to touch others in a meaningful way.
Such is the dance of life, my friends.
Look at the stars.
Watch the jitterbug of the fireflies.
Hear the music of the night.
Such is the dance of life, my friends.
Life is the dance and you are the dancer!
“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time
like the dew on the tip of a leaf.”
~Rabindranath Tagore
Let them praise His name with dancing and make music to him with the timbrel and harp. ~Psalm 149:3 ✝
A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life,
for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.
~Bertrand Russell
Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted.
Only in a quiet mind is the adequate perception of the world.
~Hans Margolius
We hunger for quiet times;
we find in them a womb to renew our strength.
~Virginia Ann Froehle
…have a mind so quiet, that you can hear doves whispering
as they rest their wings in the rafters of your silent sanctuary.
~Kate Mullane Robertson
With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony,
and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.
~William Wordsworth
But I’ll tell you what hermits realize.
If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet,
you’ll understand that you’re connected with everything.
~Alan Watts
And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place,
touch the depths of truth, feel the hem of heaven.
~Adlai E. Stevenson
Noise, the relentless distraction of noise, surrounds us day after day after day. And it steals from us that which is not its to take. So seek a “silent sanctuary” in which you can “feel the hem of heaven” and renew your strength in that quiet “womb.”
Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. ~1 Peter 3:4 ✝
We live between the act of awakening
and the act of surrender.
Each morning, we awaken to the light
and the invitation to a new day in the world of time.
Each night, we surrender to the dark
to be taken to play in the world
of dreams where time is no more.
~John O’Donohue
Every morning is a chance to forget
the pains of yesterday and to see
the changes a brand new day brings –
chances to dance and laugh again,
chances to make up for wrong things done.
Most of all, it’s God’s reminder
that He’s sending another blessing –
another chance at this thing called “LIFE.”
~Edited lines by Justice Cabral
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness, Lord. ~Lamentations 3:22-23 ✝
Oh Lord, lover of my soul, thank you for coming to dance with we again…
Roots of the weed sucked first
life from the genesis of earth
and hold the essence of it still.
Always the weed returns; and
the cultured plant retreats before it.
~Beryl Markham
They know, they just know where to grow,
how to dupe you, and how to camouflage themselves
among the perfectly respectable plants,
they just know, and therefore, I’ve concluded
weeds must have brains.
~Dianne Benson
Man oh man am I up to my “derrière” in weeds. After the huge amount of rain we had last spring, more weeds than ever sprang up, and they are EVERYWHERE. I was already losing the battle with them when we left for Europe on the 22nd of June; then after we got home nearly three weeks later, they had grown exponentially denser and bigger.
Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste. ~William Shakespeare
So in this awful heat I’ve been going out when I can to save my flowers from being overcome by their immensity and girth. However, since many have already dropped seeds that will lie dormant until next year, I’ve essentially already lost next year’s battle too. Oh well, if one wants beds and beds of pretty flowers and/or veggies, a weeding one must go, right?! But, ya know, it’s not so much the backbreaking work of pulling or digging them up that’s a problem; it’s this relentless, searing heat that sends me grumbling back in the house dripping with sweat from head to toe and in clothes that are wet down to my underwear.
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust are you and to dust you will return. ~Genesis 3:19 ✝
The doors we open and close
each day decide the lives we live.
~Flora Whittemore
Life is…
Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise it, fulfill it.
Life is a sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.
~Mother Teresa
In Him(Christ) was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. ~John 1:4 ✝
Angels are all around us, all the time,
in the very air we breathe.
~Eileen Elias Freeman
The golden moments in the stream of life
rush past us and we see nothing but sand;
the angels come to visit us, and we
only know them when they are gone.
~George Elliot
We not only live among men,
but there are airy hosts, blessed spectators,
sympathetic lookers-on,
that see and know and appreciate
our thoughts and feelings and acts.
~Henry Ward Beecher
Angels come to help and guide us in as many guises
as there are people who need their assistance.
Sometimes we see their ethereal, heavenly shadow,
bright with light and radiance.
Sometimes we only feel their nearness or hear their whisper.
And sometimes they look no different from ourselves.
~Eileen Elias Freeman
I had so many freckles that my mother used to say
that they were kisses from the angels.
~Lara Flynn Boyle
Wishing you…
a sunbeam to warm you,
a moonbeam to charm you,
a sheltering angel, so
nothing can harm you.
~Irish Blessing
Goodness knows I have plenty of freckles, and so I’m not surprised that with all those angel kisses all over my face I’ve felt the presence of ministering angels all my life. However, lately there have been even more than ever aflutter in my world. And so my post tonight is in praise of the Lord and His ever-vigilant angels. For I know not where any of us would be without angels watching over us. Where heaven meets earth, there are you, too, my friends!
Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation. ~Hebrews 1:14 ✝
What is the reason,
The meaning behind life?
What causes its movement,
What makes it come alive?
Nature is a sacred text,
Pages with the deepest truths.
And beyond all outward forms
Lies the secret place of wisdom.
Galaxies roam the universe
Waves flow from shore to shore
Trees seek the heavens
The moon rises at night, why?
The answer is simply Love
All of this, my friend, is in the name of Love
~Edited excerpted passages from the book,
FINALLY BACK HOME, by
Irfaan Ihsan Jaffer
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. ~1 Corinthians 13:1-3 ✝
Sacred Touches 