Tag Archives: Mother

358. White. . .is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. . . ~G. K. Chesterton

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White, pristine, unblemished…

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The paper I write is white

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White is holy, pure

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They say light is white
Because it combines all colors

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So white is the mother of all colors

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The churning of all yellow, blue, green

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Colors sacrifice their egos
To the eternal white
The matriarch of all colors

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The fountain of extent colors
~Excerpted random lines
from a poem by John Matthew

White appears often in nature, and down through the ages references have been made to it in music, art, poetry, and prose. It seems it’s a color many have sought and still seek to embrace. Could it be because it’s the color of the heavenly orbs, the moon and stars that illuminate darkness, or because it’s the color of light, light that warms, heals, and inspires faith, or because it’s perceived as the color of purity, purity of the spirit, of the soul, and in the Christ. Regardless of what draws mortals into its web, many, like me, adore white and sing its praises especially the white flowery faces that grace a garden. In them it’s easy to see that as Chesterton asserts the color white is a “shining and affirmative” thing. Walter Bellingrath once rightfully noted that a garden “is like a beautiful woman with a different ball gown for each week of the year.” And dressed in her gowns of glistening white, a garden is one of the most glamorous and inspiring muses at the party.

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. ~Ecclesiastes 9:7-8 ✝

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!

**Some of the images are from Pinterest

327. I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. ~Wendell Berry

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Not undelightful, friend, our rustic ease
To grateful hearts; for by especial hap,
Deep nested in the hill’s enormous lap,
With its own ring of walls and grove of trees,
Sits, in deep shelter, our small cottage – nor
Far-off is seen, rose carpeted and hung
With clematis, the quarry whence she sprung,
O mater pulchra filia pulchrior,
(What a beautiful mother and beautiful daughter,)
Whither in early spring, unharnessed folk,
We join the pairing swallows, glad to stay
Where, loosened in the hills, remote, unseen,
From its tall trees, it breathes a slender smoke
To heaven, and in the noon of sultry day
Stands, coolly buried, to the neck in green.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

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“I (Jesus) am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be more fruitful.” ~John 15:1-2 ✝

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!

**Photos are of blossoms on my new Clematis vine…

318. Water is the driver of nature. ~Leonardo da Vinci

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Be praised, My Lord,
through Sister Water;
she is very useful,
and humble,
and precious,
and pure.
~St. Francis of Assisi

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The sight of water, be it in a pond, a river, the sea, a fountain, or even a drop from a spigot touches something deep in “the temple of my inner being.” I love to sit quietly and watch water fall or splash or ripple or break like the waves on a seashore. And if I peer down long enough into the mysterious depths of a body of water, my mind conjures up images of earth’s origins, and subsequently the Garden of Eden comes alive in my soul’s eye. Even gauzy reflections which quiver and quake in a puddle or body of water seem to possess a captivating life, a compelling story, a gripping sanctity of their own.

Although I know not where it rests in the human psyche, I believe somewhere therein mortals recognize familiar things not necessarily of this world, things they appear to know without human tutelage or logic’s reason. In the same way a child instinctively recognizes its biological mother even after the umbilical cord is severed, I believe we, who are temporarily separated from the Holy Source of our being, retain a sense of the Father’s parenting presence because we belong to the Lord and are inextricably a part of Him. It could be that’s why earth and its waters not only call to me but also comfort me.

…by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. ~2 Peter 3:5  ✝

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

**Photo via Pinterest

303. The garden is a love song, a duet between a human being and Mother Nature. ~Jeff Cox

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In the corner of his garden, there’s a patch he used to keep
All to himself, to allow nature to creep
There are no trimmed edges
or prim, proper hedges
He left his earth still and alone
Allowed the forces of nature to roam
He said that you don’t always have to be tidy and neat
Just watch the beauty of opportunity grow at your feet
He said just watch the earth produce its own glory
And I watched…and held on to his story
My granddad was right
Add water and light
Behold the sight
There are poppies and flowering weeds
Buttercups and oat coloured reeds
Daisies gingerly lift their heads
Dandelions roar from muddy beds
Purple thistles and strange grasses
Colours that alight and ignite masses
Dark ferns and heathers
Dandelion clock feathers
Birds foot trefoil, a four leafed clover
My granddad’s story is not over
He may have gone, I may have cried
But the beauty he predicted never died
~Melanie Waters

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth.  ~Psalm 57:5  ✝

**photos via Pinterest

301. Fingers now scented with sage and rosemary, a kneeling gardener is lost in savory memories. ~Dr. Sun Wolf

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I know a garden with a loveliness
Deeper than eye can see or indrawn breath
Can measure rightly. Ancient centuries press
Against its walls till time is gone and death
Is lost in fragrance of the lavender
That grows serenely by a lichened stile.
Basil, rosemary, marjoram are there,
And savory, whose blossoms lift a smile
Beside a dripping pool. There silver sage
And lads-love, that all our mothers knew
And pressed for us in many a yellow-page.
Woodruff is there, mint, caraway, and rue.
Old flowers are lovely, lovelier still are these
Sweet scented herbs near box and cedar trees.
~Catherine Coblentz

Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind!  Blow upon my garden that is fragrances may be wafted abroad.  Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits.   ~Song of Solomon 4:16   ✝

 **photos via Pinterest

262. If God had wanted to be a big secret, He would not have created babbling brooks and whispering pines. ~Robert Brault

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You, O God, are the beginning of all that is.
From your life the fire of the rising sun streams forth.
You are the life-flow of creation’s rivers,
the sap of blood in our veins, earth’s fecundity,
the fruiting of trees, creatures’ birthing,
the conception of new thought, desire’s origin.
~J. Philip Newell

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Creation has been described as “the grand volume of God’s utterance,” and isn’t it grand to know that we are a part of that utterance.  When we seek God then we should not look “away from ourselves and away from creation, but deep within all that has life” including ourselves.  We can and should search for Him in Scripture, but God is found in more than religious moments and environments.  Simply put, He speaks to us through two books: Creation and the Bible.  Because He exists in all contexts, His light is woven throughout the whole of Creation’s fabric.  Whether recognized and acknowledged or not, nothing has life apart from God, and if we want to look for Him, we need to start in places where He yet dwells.  I start in my garden because, like all gardens, it is a microcosm of the grander macrocosm of Creation itself, and even in a small piece of Eden is the whole of the mystery of God.  In it I see the same ebbing and flowing and rhythms that I see in my life and Creation at large, and I know that I’m as connected to its Source as the infant in a mother’s womb is connected to its life-giving source.  One of my friends told me once that when she was in college she would sometimes go lie down in a wheat field and look up at the sky because she knew to go out into Creation was to find Yahweh.  She had learned as have I that wherever and whenever we look and listen, we shall find Him, and I pray this is a week where your encounters with the Holy One are many.

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.  ~Psalm 63:2    ✝

**In the photograph is some French Lavender that I found blooming in my greenhouse today.  Even it speaks of the blue of our planet and the heavens.

12. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, the flying cloud, the frosty light. . . ~Alfred Lord Tennyson

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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

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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.

7. Meditation and water are wedded forever. ~Herman Melville

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Water, the Hub of Life.
Water is its mater and matrix, mother and medium.
Water is the most extraordinary substance!
Practically all its properties are anomalous,
which enabled life to use it as building material for its machinery.
Life is water dancing to the tune of solids.
~Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

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Seldom do I see a body of water that it doesn’t seduce me with its wiles into a meditative reverie.  In that quiet stillness I feel drawn to peer down into its mysterious depths until imagined or perhaps real images of earth’s origins come alive.  Water seems to possess in all its forms and properties extraordinary qualities so otherworldly that the phenomena of water reaches down and touches pools in “the temple of the inner being.”  While looking into its depths an unmistakable awareness of the Divine’s presence surfaces and holiness rises like a mist.  Gauzy reflections in water quiver and quake as if they possess a life of their own.

Although I know not where it rests in the human psyche, I believe somewhere therein mortals remember their watery beginning and recognize familiar things not of this world, things they know without tutelage or reason.  In the same way a child instinctively recognizes its biological mother after the umbilical cord is severed, I believe we, who are separated here from the Source of our being, retain a sense of His parenting presence because we are of the Lord and inextricably a part of Him.