Be glad of life because it gives you the chance
to love,
to work,
to play,
and
to look at the stars.
~Henry Van Dyke
Morning glories always brighten a day and fill it with reason enough for hopefulness and gratitude.
Sing to the Lord with grateful praise; make music to our God on the harp. ~Psalm 147:7 ✝
The world is holy.
We are holy.
All life is holy.
Daily prayers are delivered
on the lips of breaking waves,
the whisperings of grasses,
the shimmering of leaves.
~Terry Tempest Williams,
American author and naturalist
I’ve even seen what seems like daily prayers being offered up from the nodding heads of birthing flowers in the garden. It’s as if they know to reverence life and its Giver. For we humans reverence for life sometimes comes through the senses for with them we are able to see, hear, smell, touch, and taste Creation’s pervasive holiness. Moreover, from a power of perception seemingly independent of the five senses we are able to discern the holiness that exists within the human heart. And why not? The human heart is, after all, the Divine’s sanctuary, and as such it is the mystical core from which God operates in our lives. To come into that inner place of holiness is to come “home” in a way for therein croons the voice, soft and sweet, of a loving Father. If we strive to listen to and obey His still, small Voice, a well within is filled with the mercy, forgiveness, and love needed for us to blossom into a purposeful anointing. Surely even the angels stand in awe of such as this.
. . . by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of His own purpose and grace. ~2 Timothy 1:9 ✝
It is a glorious privilege
to live, to know, to act, to listen, to behold, to love.
To look up at the blue summer sky;
to see the sun sink slowly beyond the line of the horizon;
to watch the worlds come twinkling into view,
first one by one, and the myriads that no man can count,
and lo! the universe is white with them;
and you and I are here.
~Marco Morrow
It is God’s privilege to conceal things and the king’s privilege to discover them. ~Proverbs 25:2 ✝
A Ming vase can be well-designed
and well-made and is beautiful for that reason alone.
I don’t think this can be true for photography.
Unless there’s is something a little
incomplete and a little strange,
it will simply look like a copy of something pretty.
~John Loengard
The annual beauty in a garden once spent is gone forever, except in memory, if not captured in some way. A camera is one of the ways we who love nature’s fleeting glory take it captive. Unlike Loengard, I believe photos can be more than just an uninteresting copy of a beautiful thing. For example part of what you see in the photograph above started out as that of a single rose. However, as an experiment with some computer technology, I turned the image into something “a little strange,” as Leongard suggests, and it added another level of interest. If one looks carefully at the altered image, fragmented pieces of what used to be negative spaces in the original photograph now have merged into engaging patterns, and so what can be seen raises questions about how much one really sees. “While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see,” claimed documentary photographer and photojournalist, Dorothea Lange. So it is that Hawthorne’s idea could be applied to my rose or his trees or to the reflection of anything, and it would speak a profound truth. We often don’t see what is right under our proverbial noses. The eternal underlies everything mankind sees, tastes, hears, touches, and smells, so much so that all things seem to quiver from the Divine energy emitted from them. But it’s only when the Lord’s demure presence is acknowledged that it becomes more and more keenly perceptible.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. ~2 Corinthians 4:18 ✝
God is always with you.
Simply turn your face to Him.
~Kirpal Singh
When I feel out of sorts, I’ve learned to get up and go outside even if I have to bundle up under layers of clothes or suffer the misery of triple digit heat. After wandering about my yard, its “shy presences” and silences begin to soothe me until eventually my inner compass restores the balance of my sanity. The simple truth is that the rhythm of earth’s heartbeat has a way of drowning out the rabid mongrels in a world too often torn by senseless tragedies and horrific madness. When that happens I find that being close to the land is as comforting and reassuring as was slipping my hand into the safety of my parents strong hands when I was a child. Now that they are gone and I am grown, I find the same kind of comfort when I draw near the Lord and His ever-present occupancy her on earth.
J. Philip Newell asks, “Where do we look, therefore, to learn of God? It’s not away from ourselves and away from Creation, but deep within all that has life.” What better place then to do that than a garden? Newell goes on to say that “in looking for the life of God by listening within we will hear falseness and confusion, selfishness and violence of heart, but deeper still is the Love that utters all things into being.” I heard such a silent utterance when I felt my child first move in my womb; the sensation felt like that of a butterfly’s wings barely grazing my flesh, but more than than it felt like the gentle touch of the Holy One Himself inviting me to walk in with Him in Eden.
“See, the Sovereign LORD comes with power, and his arm rules for him. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. He tends His flocks like a shepherd; He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” ~Isaiah 40:10-11 ✝
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we’ll try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.
~William Cullen Bryant
With every north wind that blows the landscape unravels more and more; after each assault the downed foliage leaves in its wake mounting numbers of skeletons bracing themselves for winter’s icy blasts. In addition the ornamental grasses are drying out and taking on their a wild and tattered look, and yet a few touches of color remain in the leaves and flowers that have yet to be exiled. Still audible in the “honey’d leavings” of warm afternoons are their faint renditions of the lusty songs of life, but regardless of how sweet the sound of that is, the sands in autumn’s hourglass are running out. Like all things, it too will come at last to its Sabbath and therein rest until its next appointed hour upon life’s stage.
She sat down in a weed patch, her elbows on her knees,
and kept her eyes on the small mysterious world of the ground.
In the shade and sun of grass blade forests,
small living things had their metropolis.
~Nancy Price
In and around blossoming things there is another mysterious metropolis. This one is above the soil, and therein airborne things move around yearning to “possess the sweet of every flower that blooms.” In that realm two simple equations are in place: a) if there are no flowers there are no pollinators; b) if there are no pollinators there are no flowers, no fruits, no crops. The hum or buzz of a pollinating agent and a flower’s blooming go hand in hand; together they commit reproductive acts of love as they dance the sacred dance of life orchestrated by the Lord. In so doing they “remind us that there are other voices, other rhythms, other strivings, and other fulfillments. . .” in God’s grand plan.
Recently in a National Geographic snippet on the internet, the narrator remarked that present-day humanity is the recipient of a 400,000,000 year old legacy bequeathed by earth. Imagine that! For all those years the sun has not failed to rise and set at its appointed time, fruits and crops have not failed to burst forth and ripen, and the earth has not failed to make its trip around the sun. One season has followed another repeating the Genesis story over and over again as per the Lord’s plan. Like the fruits and flowers and pollinators, our time here is very brief, and we who are fashioned by the same holy Hands as the sun and earth are no less adored and significant in our loving Father’s eyes.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. . . ~Ecclesiastes 3:1 ✝
O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stain’d
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may’st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.
~William Blake, English poet
Lusty indeed is the dance of the year’s 4th child; regaled in glory and reigning in majesty, she’s a darling of the gardener. Because fruitfulness and love run through her “thrilling veins,” those who choose to work the soil know they’ve got one last chance now before year’s end to plant, “to interact with nature, to share, to find sanctuary, to heal, to honor the earth, to leave a mark.” So it is when autumn’s chariots, with pink and purple banners flying or veiled in a gray fog or torrents of rain, enter the eastern sky at dawn, the gardener’s heart is electrified. Then when her crisp days are done and her carriage exits on the western horizon in a blaze of red and gold or is swallowed in the wetness of massive dark clouds, the gardener is left with the satisfied feeling that he’s conjured up or added yet another stroke or two to his beloved work of art. As for what Blake called her “jolly voice,” autumn often sings gladsome odes to joy, but there are days when it belts out threatening, thunderous refrains or croons “mournful melodies.” Regardless of what autumn vocalizes, it’s not until it plays “the harps of leafless trees” and sings the somber song of deep December that both the garden and gardener rest knowing that it’s time to let the Lord and Creation alone perform their miracles, God from on high and the earth from beneath the soil.
A common feast has been prepared at Creation’s hearty tables. Food for the soul, spirit, and mind has been prepared and offered up for all of us. So, come, dine with me there in the coming weeks.
Sacred Touches 