574. No child but must remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

December 10, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.
~William Butler Yeats

The Song of the Acorn Fairy 

To English Folk the mighty oak
Is England’s noblest tree;
Its hard-grained wood is strong and good
As English hearts can be.
And would you know how oak-trees grow,
The secret may be told:
You do not need to plant for seed
One acorn in the mould;
For even so, long years ago,
Were born the oaks of old.
~Cicely Mary Barker

Fairies are invisible and inaudible like angels, but their magic sparkles in nature. ~Lynn Holland

In speaking of the angels he says, “He makes his angels spirits, and his servants flames of fire. ~Hebrews 1:7 ✝

** Images via Pinterest

552. So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days. ~Colette, French novelist and performer

November 18, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~Mary Oliver

Several of my readers have recently voiced, either by word or in the sounds of their silence between the lines, a measure of sorrow and despair. Know that you are loved and held in the arms of Divine Grace as well as in my heart and prayers. May you soon encounter the “angel of hope” bearing the “commonplace little miracle” which will “mend again the necklace of your days.”

You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit. ~Job 10:12 ✝

** Image via Pinterest

511. Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf. ~Rabindranath Tagore

October 8, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Only when you drink from the river of silence
shall you indeed sing. And when you have
reached the mountain top, then you shall climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs,
then you shall truly dance.
~Kahlil Gibran

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?

Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring,
or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?

~Mary Oliver

May God give you heaven’s dew and earth’s richness… ~Genesis 27:28a ✝

**Image via Pinterest

510. The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. ~W. B. Yeats

October 7, 2014 by nataliescarberry

A man should hear a little music,
read a little poetry, and see a fine picture
every day of his life, in order that
worldly cares may not obliterate the sense
of the beautiful which God
has implanted in the human soul.
~Johann Wolfgang Goethe

—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
~Excerpted lines from a poem
by William Wordsworth

The heavens praise your wonders, Lord, your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the holy ones. ~Psalm 89:5 ✝

**Photo is a wondrous macro shot of a dewdrop on sprouts via Pinterest

488. Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life. ~G. K. Chesterton

September 15, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Feel the wild imprint of surprise.
Free the joy inside the self.
Awaken to the wonder of life.
~Edited excerpts from John O’Donohue blessings

When children first feel “the wild imprint of surprise,” they easily let go the joy inside themselves, but by the time they enter adolescence most become guarded about their feelings and their expressions of joyfulness. Then as playgrounds and backyard recreations are left far behind when they enter young adulthood, they are, like I was, less and less exposed to the wonders of Creation. However, I discovered when I first retired “that like a forgotten fire, childhood can flare up again.” The flames were sparked when I could at last spend greater amounts of time in my garden and with my creative outlets that I found my inner child was still alive and well.

Sadly, the middle years of my life took me far from the things I loved in my childhood as well as through some deep valleys of brokenness. Now painful health issues rob me many nights of restful sleep, but I’ve yet to be “broken in two by time.” Though past and present circumstances have and continue trying to steal my “joie de vivre,” the Lord has not left me stranded on detours away from the His plan for my life nor stuck at dead ends. Instead the Shepherd keeps leading His lamb back into His keeping, and that as well as the freeing of my inner child helps to restore my joy. When one of my grandson’s was younger he told me once that he loved the way I often got down on the floor and played right alongside him and his brother. The question is: Was I doing it for them or for myself?

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. ~Isaiah 55:12 ✝

** Images via Pinterest

315. Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer. ~Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

March 23, 2014 by nataliescarberry

A garden spot may be a noisy place
Where droning bees
Seek honey, spiders weave their silver lace
Upon the trees,
And little birds sing songs the livelong day.

Or it may be so silent that it seems
The flowers sleep,
And shy, mysterious virgin dreams
Their vigil keep,
And God communes with earth the livelong day.
~Pringle Barret

Spring, ever so splendid springtime! God’s glory colors the arms of barren trees, the unfolding petals of flowers, and the fanciful wings of every creature in flight. Rebirth and renewal explode from soil seemingly laid waste by icy months of freezing temperatures, and the sunshine charges the air with invigorating currents. The hum of the bees and the song of the birds fill ears with melodies, sweet and grand, while spiders do indeed weave sticky lairs of “silver lace.” Then there are those splendiferous moments at dawn and twilight when a tranquil hush pervades the space between heaven and earth, and in the silence sacred whispers cross the thresholds of listening ears.

Listen! My beloved! Look! Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills. ~Song of Songs 2:8 ✝

May your salvation, Jesus, be with us always!

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 ✝

264. Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. ~Erich Fromm

January 30, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Sometimes we write love in small letters-
Spreading the butter on his toast or
Wiping down the kitchen counter dabbed with
Peanut butter and jelly…

Love is often dangling on a clothesline
And snatching a peek at a sleeping face;
It is the giving up and giving in
To another’s want with joy…

Blowing, kissing and holding tight is
Love’s voice upon a sore finger, a wrinkled
Cheek, a weary shoulder than saunters at
Days end hopelessly…

Minutes are just as vital in love’s scaling
Upward climb to perfection, the afternoons
Picking strawberries and the morning
Prayer that’s an alloy…

Write love, in capital or small, it doesn’t matter–
Pen it with every touch; add it to tuna casseroles
And let it water down every heartache at
Your midnight soliloquies

But compose it…
Jot it down
and engrave it without restraint!
Dirty your hands in it
and clean a soul with
It…
Like the only work you’ve employed.
~Deborah Jeanne Avila

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing… ~1 Corinthians 13 ✝

263. Don’t grieve for me now. I am free. ~Author Unknown

January 29, 2014 by nataliescarberry

This post is in loving memory of Debbie Jeanne Avila , a friend and fellow blogger. Tonight I’ve chosen bits and pieces of some of Debbie’s poetry to honor her, and because she loved my photos of flowers, I’m including one with each excerpt. Sweet Debbie you will not be forgotten, and I am comforted that for you to be absent here, means that you are now and forever in the presence of Jesus. Till we meet again. Love, Natalie

I had forgotten what LIFE was all about,
Those dark chocolate nights dipped in indubitable doubts,
Wonderful wonderings if this was all there is,
And if it was, then, we had bitten envied bliss.

as sad as a morning glory that has never met
her glory I am damp with seeds that have never met
the portent wise sunlight–
damp with grinding dreams at my hoof and
damper after they sodden cold with dawn’s
twilight–
nothing reverts or inverts, if all formulates into
winter’s beginning and continuance

Help me with my un-perceived progress
I stand still, everything around me sweeping
Like a Kansas tornado.
So many
voices within, held down and pressed,
It scares me to hear such a composing
Of songs I alone know

September vivifies the introspections of soul like
The glaciating mountains in silence-
Ruminating, finding their niches so to sleep and then
Shake at springs kissing–
It embers gently, suspiciously as if someone would
Snuff it out too soon–

Miscreant as it may some times be with the unexpected
Heat and elongated sun-kissed troubling–
Days are slightly shorter for most living breathing ways,
As I turn down the lights,
Pick up Keats and Dickinson, Rumi and rosehips
For morning simmering decadence. (http://girlwiththepen1118.wordpress.com)

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” ~1 Corinthians 15:55 ✝

240. …everyone wants to be excited by something magical and wondrous – to be reminded of how they once saw the world… ~John Geddes

January 6, 2014 by nataliescarberry

“I watched bulls bred to cows, watched mares foal, I saw life come from the egg and the multiplicative wonders of mudholes and ponds, the jell and slime of life shimmering in gravid expectation. Everywhere I looked, life sprang from something not life, insects unfolded from sacs on the surface of still waters and were instantly on prowl for their dinner, everything that came into being knew at once what to do and did it, unastonished that it was what it was, unimpressed by where it was, the great earth heaving up bloodied newborns from every pore, every cell, bearing the variousness of itself from every conceivable substance which it contained in itself, sprouting life that flew or waved in the wind or blew from the mountains or stuck to the damp black underside of rocks, or swam or suckled or bellowed or silently separated in two.” ~E. L. Doctorow

Life! Life I say! Life-sacred and mysterious–I’ve had a hand in creating life again! And as usual, it is ever so magical and wondrous! Since early last week I’ve been setting bulbs in containers in the greenhouse, and even as cold as it has been today, I made my daily visit out there to see if anything had started happening. And as tiny a start as it was, life had indeed begun! Actor Mike Dolan once said, you should “anticipate the day as if it were your birthday and you were turning six.” I did and it was and I responded like any normal 6 year old, with a dropping of my jaw and squeals of joy. The photos aren’t great but you can see where roots have started forming on the bottom of a hyacinth bulb and the tiny green emergence of a ranunculus bulb.

You garden because you need
to make a profound connection with the Earth.
It’s your birthright.
A primordial longing to experience
and participate in the magic of nature.
The deep knowing that ultimately nature is your teacher.
Your guide.
You’re a participant. A cog in the wheel. Not in charge.
~Fran Sorin, Gardening Gone Wild, http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/

My garden and my greenhouse are my classrooms, and the Lord is my teacher and facilitator. “See, God exalted in His power; who is a teacher like Him?” ~Job 36:22

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

Tag Archives: Mountains