1376. Outside the open window the morning air is all awash with angels. ~Richard Wilbur

May 23, 2017 by nataliescarberry

open your eyes
to the beauty around you,
open your mind
to the wonders of life,
open your heart
to those who love you,
and always
be true to yourself.
~Maya Angelou

Screen Shot 2017-05-23 at 9.27.19 PM.png

May the touch of your skin
Register the beauty
Of the otherness
That surrounds you.

May your listening be attuned
To the deeper silence
Where sound is honed
To bring distance home.

May the fragrance
Of a breathing meadow
Refresh your heart
And remind you you are
A child of the earth.

And when you partake
Of food and drink,
May your taste quicken
To the gift and sweetness
That flows from the earth.

May your inner eye
See through the surfaces
And glean the real presence
Of everything that meets you.

May your soul beautify
The desire of your eyes
That you might glimpse
The infinity that hides
In the simple sights
That seem worn
To your usual eyes.

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. ~Matthew 6:22 ✝

**Images via Pinterest; collage by Natalie

738. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you. ~Rumi, as interpreted by Coleman Barks

May 18, 2015 by nataliescarberry

It is a golden maxim to
cultivate the garden for the nose,
and the eyes
will take care of themselves.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

May the fragrance
Of a breathing meadow
Refresh your heart
And remind you you are
A child of the earth.
~John O’Donohue

The meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing. ~Psalm 65:13 ✝

**Image via Pinterest

669. Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy… ~Line from a song written by Carole King and David Palmer

March 11, 2015 by nataliescarberry

If I had a tale that I could tell you
I’d tell a tale for sure to make you smile
If I had a wish that I could wish for you
I’d make a wish for sunshine all the while…
~Excerpted lyrics from the  above named song
that was  recorded by John Denver

It was such a lovely sunshine-day,
The house and the yard couldn’t hold me;
A meadow I found, so on my back I lay,
And sang what my spirit told me.

It was such a lovely sunshine-day,
The house and the yard couldn’t hold me;
I climbed up a tree, oh, what bliss to stay,
Where only could peace enfold me.
~Edited excerpted lines from poem
by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Beautiful – beautiful morning outside,
Bright with the sunshine and glows in the sky.
Birdies are singing and dewdrops are falling:
It’s a beautiful morning outside.

Day after day in this wonderful way,
Nature is showing its wonderful face,
With sunshine at mornings, and cheers every where;
It is morning again in this world.
~Excerpted lines from poem
by Parmanand Mahabir

This is what the Lord says to me: “I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. ~Isaiah 18:4 ✝

**Both image via Pinterest

541. Little things seem nothing, but they give peace, like those meadow flowers which individually seem odorless but all together perfume the air. ~Georges Bernanos

November 7, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Who will tell whether one happy moment
of love or the joy of breathing or walking
on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air,
is not worth all the suffering and effort
which life implies.
~Erich Seligmann Fromm

Let us bless the air
Benefactor of breath,
Keeper of the fragile bridge
We breathe across.

Air waiting outside
The womb, to funnel
A first breath
That lets us begin
To be here,
Each moment
Drawn from
Its invisible stock.
~Excerpt from In Praise of Air
by John O’Donohue

In His hands is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind. ~Job 12:10 ✝

**Image via Pinterest

418. Seeing, hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. ~Walt Whitman

July 6, 2014 by nataliescarberry

The fragrance of white tea is the feeling of existing in the mists that float over waters; the scent of peony is the scent of the absence of negativity: a lack of confusion, doubt, and darkness; to smell a rose is to teach your soul to skip; a nut and a wood together is a walk over fallen Autumn leaves; the touch of jasmine is a night’s dream under the nomad’s moon. ~C. JoyBell C.

For the Senses 

May the touch of your skin
Register the beauty
Of the otherness
That surrounds you.

May your listening be attuned
To the deeper silence
Where sound is honed
To bring distance home.

May the fragrance
Of the breathing meadow
Refresh your heart
And remind you you are
A child of the Earth.

May your inner eye
See through surfaces
And glean the real presence
Of everything that meets you.

May your soul beautify
The desire of your eyes
That you might glimpse
The infinity that hides
In the simple sights
That seem worn
To your usual eyes.

~John O’Donohue

Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Phillip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw. ~Acts 8:13 ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace! Like Saint Hildegard Lord, may I too be a feather on your holy breath and spread, like seeds, the gospel abroad.

389. Come let’s enjoy our winecup today… ~Wang Wei

June 6, 2014 by nataliescarberry

June is bustin’ out all over!
All over the meadow and the hill!
Buds’re bustin’ outa bushes…
~Rodgers and Hammerstein

The garden during this first week of June has been a dazzling fiesta of color staged around lively splashes in the two courtyard fountains. Little yellow and white butterflies, though not nearly as many as usual, have been beautiful “señoritas” gaily fluttering, whirling, and dancing amid the intensely orange daylilies, the bright yellow coreopsis, the flashy pink petunias, the blazing red roses, and the rich pink, blue, and purple hues of salvia spires, lavender spikes, and althea blossoms. The new month has also brought more of the white as snow angel’s trumpets which appear to be the lead musicians in the roving Mariachi bands. Their “divine music” has been, as expected, lively Latin “salsa” rhythms as hot as the rising temperatures of an oncoming Texas summer.

He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy. ~Job 8:21 ✝

351. What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. ~A.J. Balfour

April 27, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Lord, help me to grow as the wildflowers grow
be it a meadow or a crack in the cement.
Despite the terrain, be it good or bad,
let me know I am there by intent.

Instead of my sadly complaining within
regarding life’s rough terrain.
May my face, too, look upward to You
through seasons of drought and rain.

Help me to bloom as the wildflowers bloom,
regardless of where I am placed;
wherever the spot You plant me, Lord,
let the air there be sweet with Your grace.

Someday a tired pilgrim may stop to rest
from carrying his heavy load
And thank my Creator for placing me there
to brighten that spot on life’s road.
~Kitty Campbell

In Texas this time of year, we are blessed with undulating swaths of Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes. When we find the two blooming alongside one another, they indeed offer up a delectable feast and put a smile on our hungry faces.

Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it. ~Hebrews 13:2 ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace!

342. Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest… ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

April 19, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Undulating ranks of Iris
Slimly holding their broad flat blooms
Like tripods of incense
Aloft towards the moist spearing
Of morning sunlight.
~Michael Strange

Iris, most beautiful flower,
Symbol of life, love, and light;
Found by the brook, and the meadow,
Or lofty, on arable height.
You come in such glorious colors,
In hues, the rainbow surpass;
The chart of color portrays you,
In petal, or veins, of your class.
You steal the full beauty of Springtime,
With your fragrance and sharp color glow.
~Edith Edwards

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.” Isaiah 60:1 ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace!

322. A sudden softness has replaced the meadow’s wintry grey. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

March 30, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Just as the remnant green in tinted pot
So are these leaves, now rough and wrecked
Behind the flower umbels, that reflect
Only a hue of blue, more do they not.

Reflected are they, tear-stained, imperfect,
As if this they were prone to cease,
And as in blue and aged paper leaves
There’s yellow within, grey and violet.

Faded like a washed-out pinafore
No longer worn and of so little use:
How do we our too-short life endure.

But suddenly a blue renewed is seen
Among one of the umbels, and I sense
A blue delighted, smiling at the green.
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Not all the hydrangeas in the photos are blue like the one Rilke is describing, but I found these at the nursery today and they were just too gorgeous not to share. I have 5 hydrangeas in my garden, but the late freeze at the beginning of March has really set them back if not killed them. I’m seeing a few green leaves but by now they would normally be fully leafed out with signs of budding. Not so this year sadly.

For you, Lord, have delivered me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living. ~Psalm 116:8-9 ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us!

269. Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world and leave only a margin by which we see the blot. ~George Eliot

February 4, 2014 by nataliescarberry

You shall see them
on a beautiful quarto page,
where a neat rivulet of text shall meander
through a meadow of margin.
~Excerpt from “School for Scandal” by
Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Margins–our lives are lived within all kinds of marginal edges. In botany and entomology scientists talk of margins when they cite data about borders around leaves or the borders of insect wings. The earth itself has what I think of as margins. For example, phenomena like mountains, rivers, forests, or oceans hold things within or without; walled constructs built by the sea are held by nature and man. Even our written documents and texts are kept inside a border of blank space called a margin. In literary works poets and novelists speak of garden walls as the margins around growing spaces. The margins around my backyard gardening spaces as well as the ones in public gardens I visit are fences. Interestingly, at one time the margins around my yard were solely the fence lines, but now it is contained within its confines in places by an assortment of trees, some planted by human hands, others that sprang up by their own devices.

In the scriptural passage below God is telling the people of Jerusalem that although they are in a city without walls, He will protect them by being the barrier between them and their enemies. The Lord does that for His children even when they misuse the reins of free will to wander poorly chosen worldly paths. Fortunately for us we never get so far down those potentially dangerous paths that we are out from under the spread of Yahweh’s mighty wings of grace. When asked, He will pull us into a walled sanctuary where His forgiveness is an ever-standing offer for contrite hearts. And as a fellow blogger noted, He walls our hearts with His love.

“And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,” declares the Lord, “and I will be its glory within. ~Zechariah 2:5 ✝

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

Tag Archives: Meadow