Tag Archives: Life

242. For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice and to make an end is to make a new beginning. ~T. S. Eliot

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In my garden there is a large place for sentiment.
My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams.
The thoughts grow as freely and the flowers,
and the dreams are as beautiful.
~Abram L. Urban

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One of the fascinating things about a garden is that it’s never quite the same from year to year even if nothing is lost or nothing new is planted.  Depending on the variable nature of the weather and the seasons, there is always a difference from one year to the next in the way things grow and perform.  Since a garden is a living, breathing entity, it is always in a state of flux, a continuous inconstancy of gain and loss, rise and fall.  For example one never knows how many seeds will germinate and flourish or when they or something established will perish for one inexplicable reason or another.  So, like people, a garden awaits another “voice” each year, and every ending in it and us yields a new and somewhat different beginning.  Whatever was said and done last year is just that for both nature and humanity, and I’ve found it best to leave what was said and done in the past where it belongs.  Neither do I spend time thinking about new year’s resolutions because I know that the seasons in my life are always different and therefore evoke different feelings within me and different responses from me.

Time and time again life rises from death, and when it does, one can feel the beating heart of heaven and hear the hushed voice of grace–that unchanging holy voice of grace, that sacred in-and-out breath of life, the Presence that captures me again and again and again.  For me that is the only constancy, and I simply cannot live without it or the Ancient of Days by whose grace I live.

“The sounds, the aromas, the speech of life that infiltrates and seduces in heard and unheard melodies echoing from every life form to cocoon, to feed us, to excite us, to give solace, to renew, to cry in joy and sorrow, to create, to birth, to laugh at the sheer exuberance of feeling, I love.”    ~Patricia at: http://theenglishprofessor.net/qualifications.php

Obey the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; consider all the great things He has done for you.  ~1 Samuel 12:24  ✝

241. O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed the winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, each like a corpse within its grave, until thine azure sister of the spring shall blow her clarion o’er the dreaming earth. ~John Davies

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I paid a dime for a package of seeds
And the clerk tossed them out with a flip.
“We’ve got ‘em assorted for every man’s needs,”
He said with a smile on his lip.
“Pansies and poppies and asters and peas!
Ten cents a package and pick as you please!”

Now seeds are just dimes to the man in the store
And dimes are the things he needs;
And I’ve been to buy them in seasons before,
But have thought of them merely as seeds.
But it flashed through my mind as I took them this time
“You have purchased a miracle here for a dime!”

“You’ve a dime’s worth of power no man can create,
You’ve a dime’s worth of life in your hand!
You’ve a dime’s worth of mystery, destiny, fate,
Which the wisest cannot understand.
In this bright little package, now isn’t it odd?
You’ve a dime’s worth of something known only to God.
~Edgar A. Guest

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Nowadays a packet of seeds costs more than a dime; yet one can still buy a packet of “miracles” for a reasonable sum.  And the initial investment is small compared to the potential yield not only from the generous number of seeds in each packet but also from the seeds that those plants ultimately produce.  I know because my garden is full of plants started from seeds I never bought.  Not only that but lots of birds eat well on the excess “birdseed” I don’t have to buy.  So it is that in nurturing I am nurtured.  By becoming a part of the “cosmic consciousness,” I  get to participate in the sacred dance of life.

The Book of Genesis tells us that on the third day the Lord created seed-bearing plants and trees.  And from the moment He spoke those words, countless seasons have come and gone and the soil in any given garden has quaked with life from seeds forming in its dark wombs.  As the trembling in “dark wintry beds” increased, an impetus not unlike labor pains pushed roots downward and tiny green shoots upwards toward the light until at last new “miracles” became stable,visible, and tangible.  As more and more darkness melted away in the blaze of lengthening days and intensifying sunlight, the warp and woof of nature began weaving another springtime into existence.  And when the shroud of gloom, winter’s drab garment, was finally sloughed off it was replaced by spring’s brilliant, gauzy garments, garments as colorful as the “silks of Samarkand.”

Isaac sowed seed in that land, and in the same year reaped a hundredfold.  ~Genesis 26:12  ✝

240. …everyone wants to be excited by something magical and wondrous – to be reminded of how they once saw the world… ~John Geddes

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“I watched bulls bred to cows, watched mares foal, I saw life come from the egg and the multiplicative wonders of mudholes and ponds, the jell and slime of life shimmering in gravid expectation. Everywhere I looked, life sprang from something not life, insects unfolded from sacs on the surface of still waters and were instantly on prowl for their dinner, everything that came into being knew at once what to do and did it, unastonished that it was what it was, unimpressed by where it was, the great earth heaving up bloodied newborns from every pore, every cell, bearing the variousness of itself from every conceivable substance which it contained in itself, sprouting life that flew or waved in the wind or blew from the mountains or stuck to the damp black underside of rocks, or swam or suckled or bellowed or silently separated in two.”  ~E. L. Doctorow

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Life!  Life I say!  Life-sacred and mysterious–I’ve had a hand in creating life again!  And as usual, it is ever so magical and wondrous!  Since early last week I’ve been setting bulbs in containers in the greenhouse, and even as cold as it has been today, I made my daily visit out there to see if anything had started happening.   And as tiny a start as it was, life had indeed begun!  Actor Mike Dolan once said, you should “anticipate the day as if it were your birthday and you were turning six.”  I did and it was and I responded like any normal 6 year old, with a dropping of my jaw and squeals of joy.  The photos aren’t great but you can see where roots have started forming on the bottom of a hyacinth bulb and the tiny green emergence of a ranunculus bulb.

You garden because you need
to make a profound connection with the Earth.
It’s your birthright.
A primordial longing to experience
and participate in the magic of nature.
The deep knowing that ultimately nature is your teacher.
Your guide.
You’re a participant. A cog in the wheel. Not in charge.
~Fran Sorin, Gardening Gone Wild,  http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/

My garden and my greenhouse are my classrooms, and the Lord is my teacher and facilitator.  “See, God exalted in His power; who is a teacher like Him?”  ~Job 36:22

238. Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories. ~From the movie AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER

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To look backward for a while
is to refresh the eye,
to restore it, and to render it
the more fit for its prime function
of looking forward.
~Margaret Fairless Barber

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Events come and go weaving the threads of life and love into the fabric our beings.   A heartbreak here, a miracle there–layer upon layer of growing that alters the fibers of our realities and renders us, slightly or appreciably, different than before.  Even though swallowed up “patterns” of the past continue to be seen in the weave as we move into each new arena, memories of them tend to ebb and flow in mists of forgetfulness.

Bless the Lord, winter cold and summer heat; sing praise to Him and highly exalt Him forever.  ~Prayer of Azariah 1:45  ✝

237. Within the seed’s case a secret is held. Its fertile whisper shapes a song. ~Joan Halifax

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I have great faith in a seed.
Convince me that you have a seed there,
and I am prepared to expect wonders.
~Henry David Thoreau

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Shhh!  Can you hear it?  Look at the photos.  This is the hope; this is winter’s promise; this is the fertile whisper!   But wait, everything in the photographs is dried up and brown.  And dead!

Oh do not be deceived by appearances, my friends, for these seed cases are ripe and what they hold is ever so viable!  Their wealth may now be kept inside in secrecy but trust me these cases are vigilant and waiting–waiting for that wondrous moment in time when enough warmth and light and moisture will enliven their songs of fertility.  And then they will split wide open, spill their sacred secrets upon the soil, and spark new life.

David Walters said, “God’s promises are like the stars, the darker the night, the brighter they shine.”  For me seed cases are like God’s promises as well because the deeper and darker winter becomes, the more the expectation of what they hold brightens winter’s cold and forbidding days.  As their sweet melodies take shape, they keep the hopeful dream of spring alive when what I see conveys a story of death and decay.

God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.”  ~Genesis 1:29  ✝

236. Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale till its appropriate liberator comes to set it free. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Poetry is not always words.
Poetry is a layering of meanings…
Poetry evokes emotional or sensual responses…
Poetry creates musical or incantatory effects…
Poetry forms connections not previously perceived…
~Audrey Foris

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There are “wordless voices,” as Foris suggests, and they speak in a variety of ways.  Some are heard in music instead of poetry while others are witnessed in the spectacle of a drama or ballet, or they may be perceived in the steps and rhythm of a dance routine.  Humans can’t help but find a way to express what profoundly breaks into their inner silences and urges expression for they, being made in the image of a limitless Creator, are innately creative in some way.

As for me an artist or a poet I am not, but the desire to be gifted in such a way inhabits my soul.  I’ve tried my hand many times at being both but any real talent for either continues to be imprisoned within me.  So now with no “appropriate liberator” in sight I try only with my camera to satisfy the yearning of my incarcerated artist, and from time to time, at least in my own eyes, I achieve a marginal level of success.  How could I not for in its vast array of choices, the earth is a wondrous wellspring even with nothing more than a point and shoot camera.  As for my jailed poet self, her craving is partially satiated because life and the natural world have a way of writing their own poetry even in a photograph and because accomplished others have published readily, accessible poetic works.

So God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.  ~Genesis 1:27  ✝

235. The camera can photograph thought. ~Dirk Bogarde, English actor and writer

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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. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.  ~Vita Sackville-West

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Ah blessed sight, a function that is considered to be the most complex of the five senses. From the moment we wake until we close our eyes to sleep, our eyes act like a camera recording in memory what is seen.  For many, there is a compulsion to replicate what the eye sees.  Some use an actual camera to capture memorable images, some a paint brush, others the written word, and then there are those who are want to use more than one medium.  So it seems that something more than the optical nerve is touched by sight, does it not?  Perhaps the eye touches the soul as well.

He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen.  ~Deuteronomy 10:21  ✝

234. Year’s end is neither an end or a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. ~Hal Borland

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Time is the coin of your life.
It is the only coin you have, and only you
can determine how it will be spent.
Be careful lest you let
other people spend it for you.
~Carl Sandburg

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Recently I heard a college student talking about her graduate studies in Glasgow, Scotland.  As I listened, I remembered how much I’d wanted to study in Paris when I was her age.  That started me thinking about the life choices I’d made and wondering how different my life might have been had I chosen differently.  After pondering the matter for a few days, I came to the conclusion that geography changes very little, if anything.  One can dance and bloom and thrive wherever they are, and joy would be as joyful, sorrow be no less sorrowful, nor would trials be any less difficult.  Scripture states that time is more richly spent in the lives of people who choose to be happy wherever they are, who choose to do good while they live, and who choose to find satisfaction in all of their toils.

An example of God’s hand of blessing in blocking some of the choices one has to make came when my daughter who had 5 collegiate scholarships from which to choose was led to pick one that actually saved her life.  For tragically, at one of the universities she turned down, the girls on the swim team for which she was being recruited were all killed in a heart-rending bus accident that year.  So as another year ends and a new one starts, I praise the Lord who knows so much better than we about where and how to spend the time coin of our lives.  By His hand of goodness and mercy I did in fact finally get to Paris this last summer along with my daughter whose life had been spared so many years ago.

My wish today is that the “going on” of which Borland speaks brings each and everyone of you immeasurable blessings and that you encounter again and again the Holy One by whose Hand they will be delivered.

Trust in Him at all times, O people, pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us.  ~Psalm 62:8  ✝

230. He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter… ~John Burroughs

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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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This time of year there’s a separateness in the garden which I rather like, but I’ve heard others say that they detest the bleak lifelessness of winter.  When asked why, they’ll tell me it’s because it fills them with a sense of loneliness or it speaks too strongly of death.  I, on the other hand, find a comforting orderliness in its realm because I can see the garden’s defining lines again after they’d been blurred or even obliterated in some cases by summer’s reckless, spreading abandon.   And when I’m out working in the winter garden as I was today, I don’t feel any sense of sadness; the feeling I get is more of a silent, but willing withdrawal–a retreat back to a trusted, reviving source.  It seems to me that the barren remains stand self-assuredly in an awareness of Creation’s ever-faithful, annual renewal and somehow understands winter’s lesson of waiting with expectancy and hope.

As long as earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.  ~ Genesis 8:22  ✝

228. Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves. ~Eric Sevareid, CBS new journalist

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Every happening, great and small,
is a parable whereby God speaks to us,
and the art of life is to get the message.
~Malcolm Muggeridge,
English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Purporting that life is “a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing” or that it’s merely the result of events that can be explained through science or reason falls short of compelling realities to the contrary.  If mortals were simply intellectual beings, they’d not emote, express feelings, or commit loving acts that are seemingly inspired in some inscrutable place within their physical being.  These things, like all happenings in Creation, are symbolic narratives designed to teach or illustrate truths about the Ancient of Days who not only created us but also wired humans with the capacity to feel, to express emotions, and to extend kindnesses to one another.  So the sacred isn’t merely above us but forever within the entire body of Creation, and discovering the sacrosanct in it can’t help but stir in the descendants of Adam a sense of connection and belonging to a higher Power.  The resources and bounty of planet earth alone give us plenteous reasons to sense the presence of a Holy Benefactor and feel His gracious, creative, and loving hands at work in our lives.  But for me what sparks an even stronger desire within my human heart to seek the Creator is that God expanded the narrative and clearly revealed Himself when He sent His Son to be our Savior; Jesus is our memory, and in coming to offer us salvation, He reminds us of who we are and to whom we belong.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.  ~Ephesians 1:17   ✝