Tag Archives: Memory

508. All our lives we are engaged in preserving our experiences and keeping them fresh by artificially sprinkling the water of memory over them. ~Vimala Thakar

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Memory is a child walking the seashore.
You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up
and store away among its treasured things.
~Pierce Harris

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Events-a heartbreak here, a miracle there-come and go weaving the experiences of our seasons solidly into the fabric of our lives and who we are. Layer upon layer of growing moves us through doors that forever alter our reality and render us somewhat different than we were prior to each particular journey. And as we leave behind places and people, time attempts to swallow them up. But we carry the treasured “pebbles” we pick up with us into every new arena because they’ve etched indelible marks in us which continue to reverberate deep within our hearts. And these memories of past events that we’ve “stored away” never cease to ebb and flow even from behind foggy mists of forgetfulness. With me they are often remembered in moonlight reveries when seeking the feel of God’s presence or when lingering in places of beauty with no other agenda but to relish the glory of all that He made.

In the secret,
in the quiet place,
in the stillness
You(God) are there.
~Excerpt from the lyrics of a song
by Chris Tomlin

I will perpetuate your memory through all generations; therefore the nations will praise you for ever and ever. ~Psalm 45:17   ✝

** Image via Pinterest

501. There is no glory in star or blossom till looked upon by loving eye; there is no fragrance in autumn breezes till breathed with joy as they wander by. ~William C. Bryant

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He couldn’t stop smelling the air
in great, deep, loud sniffs.
It was so delicious.
It smelled of water, and mud,
and maple trees, and autumn.
~Elizabeth Enright

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Sweet fruit
high above me,
out of reach
up in the canopy
formed by wire and bush
Another smell of autumn
sweet sweet smell
of Concord grapes
warming ripening
ready to burst with flavor
strong urgent smell
lured me closer
spreading outward
from the makeshift arbor
a plume twenty feet wide
enticing, coaxing
me to linger
luxuriate in its aroma
smile at the memory
of other pickings
long ago
~Edited poem by Raymond A. Foss

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. ~2 Corinthians 2:14   ✝

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475. To one who has been long in city pent, ‘tis sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven-to breathe a prayer full in the smile of the blue firmament. ~John Keats

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Nature is man’s teacher.
She unfolds her treasures to his search
unseals his eye, illumes his mind, purifies his heart;
an influence breathes from all the sights
and sounds of existence.
~Alfred Billings Street

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It is not so much being “city pent” that keeps me from looking long into the “fair and open face” of the heavens in summer. It’s from being “house pent.” However, to keep my heat-driven incarceration inside my air-conditioned home from totally stifling my spiritual breathing, I hungrily emerge out of doors for a while very early and/or very late in the day. Outside and under the heavens I am able at last to breathe long and deep in prayer. According to Howard Pyle, “The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived.” In my childhood nature and her sweet stories left a profound impression in my memory. Because as Pyle suggests that impression was not thrown on “the rubbish heap” and because late in life I reentered nature’s haunts by means of a garden, I was brought back to a reverent and devoted relationship with the Maker of my soul and Creation.

Last night when I was out, I noticed that a pure white Angel’s Trumpet had opened, and it was still there briefly this morning. The brilliance of its whiteness reminded me of the temporal dominion of any kind of darkness and the inevitable return of light. Then when I came inside, I read an email from a friend in which he quoted “Peace is seeing the sunrise and sunset and knowing who to thank.” Though neither he nor I knew whom to credit for the thought, we always know who to thank for everything. So thank you, Lord, for sunrises and sunsets as well as endings and beginnings. For you see the Angel in the Trumpet intimated that the heat beast is on its last legs.

The earth is filled with Your love, Lord; teach me Your decrees. ~Psalm 119:64   ✝

Lord God, Your breath is within me, and I will honor and praise you with every breath that I breathe.

355. Forget diamonds, wear a crown of daisies. ~Sandra O’Connell

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… At my feet the white-petaled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece their–if you don’t mind
my saying so–their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in their roots. What do I know,
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain;
what the sun lights up willingly…
~Excerpt from “Daisies” by Mary Oliver

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He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me… It’s funny how some things, even those learned in early childhood, never fade from memory. I’ll bet most, if not all of you, remember pulling the petals off a daisy and reciting this ditty over and over again until the final petal gave up the supposed truth. Georgia O’Keefe, the American artist who painted those amazing, large-format pictures of enlarged blossoms, said of them, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in a city rush around so they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.” Why would she feel that way? I think it’s because there is just something in the “world of a flower” that exudes sanctitude and goodness, a revelation that sheds light into the mysteries of life. And its words seem to say over and over again, “I speak of a divine and devoted lover. I tell tales of a garden created in a faraway place, a long time ago. I describe a tragic fall therein from divine Grace. I relate attempts to redeem the lost children of subsequent generations. I narrate stories of a Savior who did His father’s bidding. I share the story of the Christ’s sacrifice and His magnanimous offer of redemption. I talk of holy men bound to spread the Messiah’s story who, as they moved from one monastery garden to another, spread species of my kind from place to place. I inspire men of rhymes to write poetry about me that speaks to human hearts. I sing hopeful, prophetic melodies of my faithful return year and year, millennia upon millennia. I whisper words from above of unending love into listening ears. Quite simply, if you look at me and hold me, cherish me and revere me, I will make known to you the Creator of heaven and earth, and you will forever bless His holy name for He is the One who answered once and for all your childhood query.

But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever. ~Psalm 52:8 ✝

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!

341. So pure, so still the starry heaven, so hushed the brooding air, I could hear the sweep of an angel’s wings… ~Edna Dean Proctor

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Our Lord has written
the promise of resurrection,
not in books alone,
but in every leaf in springtime.
~Martin Luther

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Creation is a perpetual outpouring of God’s creative and loving selfhood. The sacred isn’t merely above us but forever within the entire body of Creation. The holy sound of God resonates in everything. The earth gives us reason to feel His gracious hand upon us while the forces of heaven sustain us. These realities are meant to stir in humanity a sense of belonging and in turn spark a desire to seek the Lord, but should they not, finding God in Christ is something even the blind can do. Our Creator sent us His son over 2,000 years ago, and He came to be our memory and to remind us of who we are and to whom we belong. Jesus is a revelation of our loving Father and His Kingdom’s intention. Christ offers salvation to the children of the Light who are subjected to temptation by malevolent forces, and He is a leader who directs God’s children into righteous rhythms of life, into a willingness to serve others, and into the dance of life–a dance in which the whole universe partners.

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  ✝

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!

338. Memory is the diary we all carry about with us. ~Oscar Wilde

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Memory is a way of holding onto
the things you love,
the things you are,
the things you never want to lose.
~From the television show The Wonder Years

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More than half a century ago my father died on this date, and yet I listen still for his voice, a voice held dear and silenced forever when his mortal heart ceased to beat. In memory his deeds and words echo on in my heart, and neither the tears of sadness I’ve cried nor the moments of bitter resentment about his early death I’ve endured have muted the sounds of that beloved voice. Regrettably this was a door, and it has not been a singular one, that closed long long before it should have, and none of the ranting or raving or railing against any of it has altered the impact of the losses. The simple truth is that time marches unstoppably on as season after season passes over the fields of our lives; people continually move in and out, and there is a never ending series of opening and closing doors along the way. In the aftermath of unavoidable, grievous experiences our faith is tested, tried, and sometimes even forsaken, but the Holy One who walks with us is never absent nor is the offer of His gift of grace ever retracted.

How very precious every breath and every moment of life is! Declarations of love to family and friends and the Lord should be vocalized over and over again, and we need to hear the same from the ones we cherish. If such things are left unsaid what goes unspoken leaves gaping holes and wounds in the human heart, and the subsequent path to healing is enough of a long and arduous road as it is.

In you, Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. Psalm 31:1-3  ✝

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!

**Images via Pinterest

260. The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer. ~Vita Sackville-West

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January is the quietest month in the garden.
. . .But just because is looks quiet
doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.
The soil, open to the sky, absorbs the pure rainfall
while microorganisms convert tilled-under fodder
into usable nutrients for the next crop of plants.
The feasting earthworms tunnel along,
aerating the soil and preparing it to welcome
the seeds and bare roots to come.
~Rosalie Muller Wright

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I’ve heard it said that “the color of springtime is in the flowers” whereas “the color of winter is in the imagination.”  Thankfully I’ve got a good imagination, and when that fails, I have a large collection of photos to look back on because by the end of January my spirit is in dire need of a boost.  A place I like to frequent also helps to keep my imagination alive and well.  It’s a nursery, and this particular Dallas nursery not only has a great selection of flowers during the growing seasons, but year round it has all sorts of indoor plants too.  In addition  to the plants it has an oak cabinet with drawers full of fascinating seeds, racks of seed packets, shelves filled with gardening books, and an array of tools.  So between the plant and seed catalogs that start arriving in the mail after Christmas and my visits to Nicholson-Hardie’s nursery, the “dream” is kept alive even when the under-the-surface busy but ravaged-atop January garden appears to be completely shut down.  And it is this “stuff” of which gardener’s dreams are made that keeps my imagination churning and my head full of schemes, schemes that are the spice of a gardener’s life.  What a blessing is our memory, our imagination, and our ability to dream; God is so good.

I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify Him with thanksgiving.  ~Psalm 69:30  ✝

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  ✝

167. God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December. ~James M. Barrie

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I arise today
blessed by all things.
~John O’Donohue

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The English poet, William Blake, once penned that all “the daughters of the year shall dance” in autumn and “sing the lusty song of fruit and flowers.”  I think it might be hard to find a much lustier song or livelier a dance than what the beauties above are lending to October’s opus.  As a part of the process of summer’s “slow disrobing” and the “summing up” before year’s end, their ordained and impassioned performances are undeniably spreading a magnificent and long lasting “common feast for all that live.”  From this rich banquet, the berries will remain on winter’s menu for birds who fly not elsewhere for warmer refuge.  The seeds in the lower right corner produced from flowers like the pink and blue morning glories will foster faith and hope for we mortals as they carry the promise of spring through winter’s cold and dark dominion.  The scarlet spots in the throat of the yellow Canna will bleed thoughts of Christ into our awareness as we look forward to celebrating His birth in deep December.  And the scent and sight of the inimitable rose will take its usual place in memory whilst not in bloom.

I will perpetuate Your memory through all generations; therefore the nations will praise You for ever and ever.  ~Psalm 9:6  ✝

23. Nature, like man, sometimes weeps for gladness. ~Anonymous

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Rain! whose soft architectural hands
have power to cut stones, and
chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
~Henry Ward Beecher

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Each drop of rain is a powerful miracle, a miracle that falls between heaven and earth as it travels vast distances around earth’s surface.  It speaks so loudly of holiness that whenever it appears here, it never fails to draw me to itself.   Perhaps because somewhere in my memory’s oldest and deepest recesses there’s a vague in-utero recollection of the soothing nature of a watery beginning, a remembrance of a sacred mothering source.  When the first drops of rain hit the ground, especially after a long absence, they fall on my ears not unlike the chords of a beloved’s voice.  And after the rain, when the smell of wet soil and damp grass greet my nose, I “weep for gladness.”  The deliciousness of its return prompts the same urges I experienced in childhood.  What fun it would have been to have played in the rain and danced with wanton delight in the sloshy puddles beneath my feet had mom not forbid it.

All the water earth will ever have was granted us at the beginning of time.  In whatever form it falls to earth, be it rain, fog, frost, snow, or sleet, water is part of a divinely designed cycle to insure Creation’s continuance.  The holy water-bearers bring the stuff without which there is no life for it is the substance in which life is formed and the substance of which life is sustained.  As a part of the grand and holy design, falling waters move in never-ending circles to kiss the earth and return to the clouds.  Given that I can’t help but wonder how far each drop of moisture has traveled throughout the eons of time.  One thing of which I’m always certain though is that rain’s “soft architectural hands” were made by the soft Hands of He who made the earth and us.

I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit.  Leviticus 26: 4   ✝