Tag Archives: Lord

212. It is part of the cure to want to be cured. ~Seneca

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To feel keenly the poetry of a morning’s roses,
one has to just have escaped from the claws
of this vulture which we call sickness of body or heart.
~Adapted excerpt from Henri Frederic Amiel

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In order to mend and bridge chasms of painful, isolating realities, I often douse the fires of what breaks my heart in cups of tea or tears that flow during quiet dawns or at night when the wee hours find me awake and alone.  After the sipping or crying comes to an end, a numbed stillness often develops.  When it does, I become aware in its clarity of the amazing nearness of God.  Jesus, whom I’ve been calling, is offering to guide me through portals to places where pools of mercy await.  Sometimes the healing waters lie deep within my own being where the Holy Spirit resides in His cloistered sanctuary.  At other times they are found in the beautiful colors of autumn, or in the glistening dew on greening grass and flowers in springtime, or in the gentle gestures of another’s compassion, or in softly spoken prayers proffered by kind and endearing voices.  Wherever the pool and whoever the beneficial bearer of blessing, one or both sustain me, if I yield, in the returning rhythm of fitness as the Lord’s grace works to render me wholly well.

I’ve discovered that tears have amazing restorative powers for frequently it is when my eyes are blurred with wetness from them that a sense of God’s presence is strongest.  For surely in the loss of His own son by the hands of creatures He breathed life into, He shed more tears than we’ll ever know.  We all endure difficult and sorrowful moments in our lives.  So excruciating is the pain on occasion that it nearly stifles our very breath, but one breath and one step at a time begins the journey out of the depths of despair.

“But I will restore your health and heal your wounds,” declares the Lord…  ~Jeremiah 30:17a  ✝

**Whittard’s is a tea, coffee, and cocoa shop that we found in London last summer.

210. If you really want to draw close to your garden, you must remember first of all that you are dealing with a being that lives and dies…One will not always see it dressed up for a ball, manicured and immaculate. ~Fernand Lequenme

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I love people,
I love my family,
my children…
but inside myself
is a place where I live all alone
and that’s where you
renew your springs
that never dry up.
~Pearl S. Buck

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Last week’s frigid winds and pelting sleet so punished the late blooming roses and perennials that their flowers, hips, and leaves were left hanging like the heads of mourners as they perished on nights too cold to sustain fragile life.  But usually when our area endures an arctic storm such as this one, it’s not too long before the temps warm back up enough to melt the snow and/or ice. This assault, however, lowered temperatures so far below the freezing mark and the cloud cover has stayed in place so long that it may be a week or more before the temps rise high enough to rid us of the treacherous frozen remains.  On those warmer days, whenever they do come, I’ll be chomping at the bit, as usual, to “draw close” to my beloved garden and dispose of the flowery carnage left in the storm’s wake.  I like to do that so that when next I’m in that place “where I live all alone” like Buck and am unable to get outside, I can look out the window at the garden’s “ball gown” without it looking quite so tattered and torn.

The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs…strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.  ~Isaiah 58:11

208. It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost… ~John Burroughs

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We feel cold, but we don’t mind it
because we will not come to harm.
And if we wrapped ourselves against the cold,
we wouldn’t feel other things,
like the bright tingle of the stars,
music of the Aurora,
or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin.
~Philip Pullman

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After last night’s winter storm, we woke to find the ground, the streets, and the rooftops covered in a solid blanket of sleet mixed with snow.  Icicles were hanging from eaves and other solid objects; branches, stems, leaves and the few remaining roses had been encapsulated in ice.  The forbidding frozen world outside was steeped in silence but for the occasional gusts of wind that sent falling leaves round and round in capricious little whirlwinds tapping softly against the icy ground.

In the coming days the garden will shrink dramatically.  It’s beauty will be harder to see, but for those who continually walk its paths with searching eyes and vivid memories, emerging treasures can be spotted and glory envisioned in places where it was and shall rise again from seeming nothingness.  During the warmer spells in the next few months, I’ll clean up the growing season’s spreading, untidy tangle and reshape her fetching figure while below in her fertile womb mysteries, ancient and sacred, are coming together to birth yet another springtime.

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm.  He said From whose womb comes the ice?  Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the water become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?  ~Job 38:1 and 29-30  ✝

206. The more I wonder, the more I love. ~Alice Walker, author of THE COLOR PURPLE

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It seemed to my friend
that the creation of a landscape-garden
offered to the proper muse
the most magnificent of opportunities.
Here indeed was the fairest field
for the display of the imagination,
in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty.
~Edgar Allan Poe

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Purple, the most powerful wavelength of the rainbow, can be seen sometimes simply streaking the heavens, and it is mentioned at least 25 times in the Bible.  Over the ages the color’s “novel beauty” has symbolized magic, mystery, spirituality, the sub-conscious, creativity, dignity, and royalty; statistics show that it has evoked all of those meanings more so than any other color.  And yet the color purple is a rarity in nature so much so that its earliest dyes could be made only at great expense rendering it a color to be worn solely by kings, emperors, nobility, and priests. So when I find samplings of purple in my yard as I did yesterday, it feels as if honored guests have arrived at my “table.”  Add to that the fact that pigments from these particular guests have been found in prehistoric depictions dating back 50,000 years and that those depictions were found where the Garden of Eden could have been, then the honored guests become not only venerable ones but also sacred ones.  I sent out the invitations to these purple invitees last August after happening upon Crocus Sativus corms at a local nursery.  Since I had long wanted to try growing the plants from which the spice saffron is obtained, I came home and immediately planted my 6 little corms and then came the watching and waiting for signs of life.  But as the leaves began to fall and collect in the beds and I was spending less time outside, I’d almost forgotten about them until yesterday when I went out to get the mail.  To my surprise I spied two of the beauties with their three crimson stigmas (saffron threads) pushing up from under a layer of leaves.  Like a child I literally squealed with delight; it was as if I’d stepped into the Lord’s holy presence as He walked in His garden.

They put a purple robe on Him(Jesus), then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on Him.  ~ Mark 15:17  ✝

204. The autumn leaves drift by my window, the autumn leaves of red and gold…and soon I’ll hear old winter’s song… ~Excerpts from a tune by Johnny Mercer

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There is music in the meadows, in the air…
Leaves are crimson, brown, and yellow…
There is rhythm in the woods,
And in the fields, nature yields…
~Excerpts from LYRIC OF AUTUMN by
William Stanley Braithwaite

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It was 1947 when Johnny Mercer borrowed lines from a French song to create the lyrics to his unforgettable melody, AUTUMN LEAVES, a song I find myself singing, at least the parts I remember, almost every year as I tear November’s page off the calendar.  Why?  I don’t know.  The words just seem appropriate when autumn’s persistent winds, wild with leaves, blow wide open the final month’s portals, and this year’s opening was no different.  November’s yet in place blustery gales did in fact sweep December onto its throne.  Once seated, the 12th month opened under bright, sunny skies, but by noon day one had become shrouded in unending shades of gray.   When night fell, there were few, if any, remaining leaves on the redbud and willow at the back of the yard.  The beneficiaries of these as well as the oak’s leaves when they fall are the big island bed and my secret garden in the north corner.  So now not only can my voice be heard singing autumn’s anthems, but wherever these tinted tidbits lie, I’ll be able to hear them crooning their embracing ballads of promise.  And theirs, songs different from the ones in springtime, pledge warmth and declare they’ll keep my plants safe during the bitter, stone-cold days of winter.  But wait, things like trees and leaves sing?  Really? As a matter of fact, according to some Scriptural references and to those of us who listen carefully, they do!

The Lord reigns…Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it.  Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing with joy.  ~Psalm 96:11-12  ✝

203. Surely a man needs a closed place where in he may strike root and, like the seed become. ~Antoine de St. Exupéry

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But he also needs the Great Milky Way
above him and the vast sea spaces,
though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.
~Antoine de St. Exupéry

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For me, autumn, especially late autumn, is a time for reflection, contemplation, and soul searching–a time for ruminating on the things that move me and make me who and what I am.  And so as I worked out in the yard on this sunny last day of November, the windmills in my mind started churning up memories of the events that led to its door.  Rather than covering every step of the journey, I decided to start when I found my “closed place” in this house with its spacious yards where I began to “strike roots.”  In the beginning, though the home and its conveniences served my physical needs and provided me with creature comforts, relief from old emotional wounds and peaceful contentment remained elusive long afterwards.  Years passed with little change in the status quo until one summer while recalling the beautiful flowers surrounding my childhood home (above) in California, I decided it was time to try growing my own flowers right here in hot old Texas.  Since I wasn’t sure I’d inherited the proverbial “green thumb” of my ancestors, I resolved to begin on a small scale.  So I cleaned off a corner of the patio, bought some bags of potting soil and an assortment of pots and seeds, and thus commenced what I know now to have been a pivotal moment in my life.  From the minute the first seeds germinated, a soul-saving passion for gardening was being birthed in me.  Despite the summer’s miserable heat, I faithfully watered and fussed over my thriving “little flock,” and it was those familiar flowery scents that were the catalysts which sparked my spiritual reawakening.  The next summer with the success of the previous year under my belt and a renewed recognition of Ruach Elohim (the Spirit of God), I decided to branch out and actually sow  seeds in the ground and dig a few holes for bedding plants.  Success came again and with it the quickening in my spirit intensified so much so that I decided to take my recently commissioned mentor’s advice to attend church once more.  This was the first step in righting the derailment of my faith journey that had begun after the early death of my father.

Scripture tells us that Christ is the vine, and we are the branches.  Until those first two growing summers the branch that was Natalie had been withering, not because the Lord had been doing less but because I had been turning a deaf ear and  blaming Him for the loss of my father as well as for painful, emotional wounds and the awful, unrelenting migraines that had started in my mid-twenties.  Since then I have spent season after glorious season planting, replanting, listening, seeking His presence, and marveling at the wonders of heaven and earth.  This pilgrimage that was involved in becoming the Natalie I am today has taught me that He, His Church, and His Creation, which includes the Great Milky Way, the vast sea spaces, and a garden, are the “holy foods” I must have to survive and live in peace and harmony.  Now minute by minute in this place where I have deeply “rooted” myself, the hungering need for “more” has been forever silenced by miracles great and small, blessing upon blessing, and the amazing grace He continues to bestow upon me.

I am the vine, and my Father is the gardener… Remain in me, as I also remain in you.  No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.  Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  I am the vine;  you are the branches.  If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  John 15:1 and 4-5

202. There is a communion with God, and there is a communion with earth, and there is a communion with God through the earth. ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French philosopher and Jesuit priest

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Grass is the forgiveness of nature-
her constant benediction.
Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish,
but grass is immortal.
~Brian Ingalls

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Maiden grass, purple fountain grass, blood grass, little bluestem, pink muhly–what’s not to love about such names.  Not only are they alluring monikers for gardeners, but their visual charms provide great cover for  wildlife and their seeds are good food sources for birds.  Few pests bother them, and given a bit of wind their airy, flower panicles, feathery plumes, or striking seed heads resemble fairy wands as they capture and play with available light.  What I like best about them is that in their swishing and swaying the echoes of the eternal and murmurs of sacred benedictions can be heard.  A garden and all its plantings, be they grasses or trees or shrubs or ferns or herbs or mosses, always speak of earth’s primeval and venerable origins as well as man’s connection to the Holy Voice that spoke everything into being.  But it is in the movement of the grasses that I most feel the in and out movement of God’s ruach, His life-giving breath.  Chardin whom I quoted above contended that the more he devoted himself in some way to the interests of the earth the more he belonged to God.  It is the same for me because being close to and working the earth is like being attached to an umbilical cord that keeps me forever connected to and sustained by Him, the loving Source of all life.

Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving; make music to our God on the harp.  He covers the sky with clouds; he supplies the earth with rain and makes grass grow on the hills.  ~Psalm 147:7-8  ✝

200. For flowers that bloom about our feet; for tender grass, so fresh, so sweet; for song of bird, and hum of bee; for all things fair we hear or see, Father in heaven, we thank Thee! ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Thanksgiving is the holiday of peace,
the celebration of work and the simple life. . .
a true folk-festival that speaks
the poetry of the turn of the seasons,
the beauty of seedtime and harvest,
the ripe product of the year –
and the deep, deep connection
of all these things to God.
~Ray Stannard Baker (David Grayson)

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At the beginning of time the Lord set the wheels in motion for the making of continual banquets for man and creature alike.  And so in light of His abundant provisions and as the Canticle of Creation plays on, it is time to pause and give thanks to our gracious Benefactor.  The year is drawing to its appointed end and before it sinks into winter, the Sabbath of the year, we must look around and take stock of the Lord’s never-ending activity in Creation and be thankful for the constancy of His love and beneficent involvement in each of our lives.  W. J. Cameron said, “. . .a thankful heart hath a continual feast,” and so with beholden hearts, let us give praise and thanks for our Heavenly Father, His Grace, and His goodness.  I pray that this be a blessed time of thanksgiving for all of you and those you love; may all the roads you travel be, now and forever, filled with grace and peace and love.

If I have enjoyed
the hospitality of the Host of the universe,
Who daily spreads a table in my sight,
surely I cannot do less
than acknowledge my dependence.
~G. A. Johnston Ross

Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name.  ~Psalm 100:4  ✝

199. Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering down from the autumn tree… ~Emily Brontë

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How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.
~Elsie N. Brady

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Pat.  Pat, pat.  Pat, pat, pat.  Pat.  Pat, pat.  Pat.  Pat, pat, pat.  “Listen to the falling rain; listen to it fall.”  A remembered lyric from an old José Feliciano song ran through my mind.  But wait, I didn’t feel anything wet and the afternoon sun was shining in a cloudless sky.  So if it wasn’t rain, what on earth had I heard behind me.  As I turned to investigate, I saw that it was indeed raining, but not in the way I expected.  November’s gusting winds were letting loose hundreds of colored leaves from their woody perches.  The ones not already brought down by the rains of recent days were not tumbling down silently as Brady suggests; they were pelting the shed, the greenhouse, the birdbaths, and the ground so forcefully that they sounded like huge raindrops.  So it was pouring all right; it was raining leaf after leaf after leaf, pretty autumn tinted leaves, and the air in which they were dancing was made gold and red and ripe.

For You make me glad by Your deeds, Lord; I sing for joy at what Your hands have done.  ~Psalm 92:4  ✝