Tag Archives: Quietude

1143. In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world. ~Wendell Berry

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Ask the world to reveal its quietude —
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.
~Wendell Berry

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When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests
in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~Wendell Berry

Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you. ~Job 22:21  ✝

**Image by Mike Bizeau found at: https://naturehasnoboss.com/2016/05/01/bluebird/

873. What you are is Gods’ gift to you, what you become is your gift to God. ~Hans Urs von Balthasar

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Screen shot 2015-09-16 at 3.21.39 PM He who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth
is generally considered a fortunate person,
but his good fortune is small compared to that
of the happy mortal who enters the world
with a passion for flowers in his soul.
~Celia Thaxter

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Don’t ask yourself what the world needs,
ask yourself what it is that makes you come alive.
And then go do it. Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive.
~Harold Whitman

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They come, I see, they conquer! Beauties like the ones in these photos have left me spellbound for as long as I can remember. So it is that I have been blessed with a fire-fanning renewal of the passion of which Thaxter speaks month after month, season after season, year after year for 7 decades now. And as the yearly succession of earth’s flowers has advanced over the years, something in my soul has in fact felt more alive. As a result in the pregnant pauses of my days, over and over again I’ve heard a voice imploring me to make something good out of that passion. M. C. Entyre said that “singers and musicians know the power of the pause, the rest, the soundless beat,” and I’ve come to realize that the spaces between our thoughts or words are dwelling places where things register and then move inward. When we linger in spaces of quietude, we open ourselves to the possibility of an epiphany–the sudden knowing, the flashes of clarity where Christ enters with revelation. In such moments the veil lifts and we are, as Wordsworth put it, “surprised by joy,” the inexpressible joy of coming alive.

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I love to think of nature as an
unlimited broadcasting station,
through which God speaks
to us every hour,
if we will only tune in.
~George Washington Carver

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The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. ~Psalm 19:8  ✝

**Images via Pinterest, collages created by Natalie

137. Silence is the universal refuge…a balm to our every chagrin. ~Henry David Thoreau

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Soon silence will have passed into legend.
Man has turned his back on silence.
Day after day he invents machines and devices
that increase noise and distract humanity
from the essence of life. . .
~Jean Arp, French sculptor, painter, and poet

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We see patterns of stillness and silence in the natural world.  Day gives way to night, fruitfulness gives way to fallowness, bodies give way to fatigue.  However, in today’s noisy culture, there exists an almost obsessive tendency toward unending busyness.  Rest and yielding to silence has for many become a forgotten art or at best difficult.  But on days like today, in the midst of the noise a profound silence can be found in rain, and in that silence some seem still to be able to hear the slowing voice of quietude.  And I find that if one takes time to sit, listen, and watch the rain, an ancient holy voice has a way of pulling him/her into a deep peacefulness.  What’s more if the listener seeks a way to come back again and again to that quiet place, an intimate relationship begins to form.  Mother Teresa once said, “We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness.  God is the friend of silence.  See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. . .We need silence to be able to touch souls.”

“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”  -Psalm 46:10    ✝