1057. When all is said and done, we exist only in relation to the world… ~Diane Ackerman

February 4, 2016 by nataliescarberry

The more we exile ourselves from nature,
the more we crave its miracle waters.
~Diane Ackerman

Screen Shot 2016-02-04 at 8.51.37 PM.png

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.
~Diane Ackerman

In the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. ~Hebrews 1:10 ✝

**Images via Pinterest; collage by Natalie

1053. Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle….a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream. ~Barbara Winkler

January 31, 2016 by nataliescarberry

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream.
The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg,
and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs.
Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
~James Allen

Screen Shot 2016-01-31 at 2.21.25 PM.png

Part of the genius of God’s grand design is that we awaken every day to a fresh flowing of His energy and vitality that has been stored in the seeds of our being, seeds that possess the same strength as that of the rising sun, earth’s swelling seas, and its fertile plains. An excellent time to look for the shining of His everlasting light in the “sanctuary of the soul” is in the first waking moments of each new day. That inward realm is where doors open to the germination of new life because inside each one of us the Lord has planted His “seeds of greatness.” There’s never a moment in life when either in and of ourselves or in the people around us that there are not yet unopened gifts of promise. Simply put, “heaven’s creativity on earth” is born in our bodies, and therein the Master’s “sacred hopes” are hidden. And His hopes come to fruition through the germination of our gifts and through the catalyst of prayer when we lift up “the agonies of life in the world” and ask for grace where “the human soul has grown hard” and lost sight of God’s light. May the “soil” of this week be such that the precious, holy seeds of the uniqueness that is you fully come to fruition.

Do you not know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? ~1 Corinthians 3:16 ✝

**Image found on Pinterest

776. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you. ~Rumi

June 19, 2015 by nataliescarberry

Poetry isn’t a profession,
it’s a way of life.
It’s an empty basket;
you put your life into it
and make something out of that.
~Mary Oliver

A tisket, a tasket
A green and rosy basket.
The wind blew a thistle’s seed.
On the way to elsewhere.
It blew it,
it blew it,
The seed that made my basket.
~Natalie Scarberry

(Basket-flower, also called American star thistle, is annual garden and wildflower native to southwestern North America. Resembling a spineless thistle, it has stout branching stems, and when the rose-coloured compact heads of disk flowers appear they are surrounded by fringed bracts, similar in appearance to a woven basket. Their seeds are borne in achene fruits and are wind-dispersed. These thistles are commonly planted in gardens to attract birds and butterflies.) I’d been watching this plant for months as I’d not seen one in my yard before, and so I wasn’t sure at first what it was. Then when it started putting on its baskets I knew it was an American thistle. And since the wind had blown it in, it was almost as if the blessing of blossoms had dropped from above. If you remember the nursery rhyme that started out like the first line of my silly little poem, it should sound more or less the same as the original if you sing along with the words. And I probably should ask Mary Oliver to forgive me for quoting her along with my feeble attempt at such.)

Thus the Lord God showed me, and behold there was a basket of summer fruit (or in my case, a basket thistle). ~Amos 8:1 ✝

735. Be empty of worrying…. Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. ~Rumi, as interpreted by Coleman Barks

May 15, 2015 by nataliescarberry

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid, more accessible,
to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, promise.
I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which came
to me as seed goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as a blossom, goes on as fruit.
~by Dawna Markova

Grass 
~by Mary Oliver

Those who disappointed, betrayed, scarified! Those who would still put their hands upon me! Those who belong to the past!

How many of us have weighted the years with groaning and weeping? How many years have I done it how many nights spent panting hating grieving, oh, merciless, pitiless remembrances?

I walk over the green hillsides, I lie down on the harsh, sun-flavored blades and bundles of grass; the grass cares nothing about me, it doesn’t want anything from me, it rises to its own purpose, and sweetly, following, the single holy dictum: tto be itself, to let the sky be the sky, to let a young girl be a young girl freely–to let a middle-aged woman, be comfortably, a middle-aged woman.

Those bloody sharps and flats–those endless calamities of the personal past. Bah! I disown them from the rest of my life, in which I mean to rest.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. ~Psalm 23:4 ✝

**Lord, thank you for this faithful promise above and for the blessed encounter today with someone who, whenever I see her, never fails to put the wind, the holy ruach, back under the frail wings, the torch, and the promise of this aging woman.

**Both images via Pinterest

723. Bee to blossom, moth to flame; each to his passion; what’s in a name? ~Helen Hunt Jackson

May 4, 2015 by nataliescarberry

I wanted to know the name
of every stone and flower
and insect and bird and beast.
I wanted to know  where it got its color,
where it got its life…
~George Washington Carver

The real name of this beauty is Tradescantia, but it’s commonly called Spiderwort, a name not my favorite for two reasons. First, I’m not a big fan of spiders and secondly as a kid I had lots of warts. And so to put those two irksome things together for such a colorful and interesting bloom seems to me to do it a terrible injustice. But then it’s real name is a tad hard to spell and to remember for that matter too. So what’s one to do? Though it got its color and its life from the Lord, it was mortal men who gave it such a dreadful name; perhaps now it is time for a change, and one day I shall just have to come up with a name of my own for this lovely, small, but fetching flower.

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear much fruit with seed in it, according to the various kinds.” And it was so…And God said, “Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” ~Genesis1:11 and Genesis 1:20 ✝

**The top photo is one I took in my yard yesterday; the others I found on Pinterest.

677. Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! ~Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa, Lakota holy man and tribal chief

March 20, 2015 by nataliescarberry

Spring has returned.
The Earth is like a child
that knows poems
by heart.
~Ranier Maria Rilke

The cycle of nature—the progress from seed to fruition
to dying-off and then renewal in the spring—
was mirrored in the wild fields and the cultivated garden alike,
while the fragility of harvest—the possible interruption of
the cycle by drought, wind, or other natural calamities—
established the pattern of how humans understood
the workings of the cosmos. The oldest of surviving
sacred stories have their roots in the garden
and reflect how humanity sought to understand
the changeable patterns of their world and, at the same time,
to imagine a world no longer subject to change.
~Peg Streep

See! The winter is past…flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is hear in our land. ~Song of Songs 2:11-12 ✝

**Image via Pinterest, text written by Natalie

668. There is…an order of succession in the garden year which is deeply pleasing…seed time flows on to flowering time and flowering time flows on to harvest time… ~Edited lines by Susan Hill and Rory Stuart

March 10, 2015 by nataliescarberry

A little seed for me to sow…
A little earth to make it grow…
A little hole, a little pat…
A little wish, and that is that.
A little sun, a little shower…
A little while, and then – a flower!
~Mabel Watts

SEEDS
The seeds I sowed –
For week unseen –
Have pushed up pygmy
Shoots of green;
So frail you’d think
The tiniest stone
Would never let
A glimpse be shown.
But no; a pebble
Near them lies,
At least a cherry-stone
In size,
Which that mere sprout
Has heaved away,
To bask in sunshine,
See the day.
~Walter de la Mare

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” ~Genesis 8:22 ✝

** Image via Pinterest

661. In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. ~John Muir

March 4, 2015 by nataliescarberry

The universe is walking with me;
In beauty it walks before me;
In beauty it walks behind me ;
In beauty it walks below me ;
In beauty it walks above me ;
Beauty is on every side.
As I walk, I walk with beauty.
~Traditional Navajo Prayer

Earth Teach Me to Remember
Earth teach me stillness
as the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering
as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility
as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring
as the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
as the tree which stands alone.
Earth teach me limitation
as the ant which crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom
as the eagle which soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation
as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration
as the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
as dry fields weep in the rain.
~by John Yellow Lark, Ute, North American

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. ~Joshua 1:9 ✝

645. And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, new created. ~D. H. Lawrence

February 15, 2015 by nataliescarberry

In slumber we fall into the deep, silent waters of consciousness, and then something, somewhere beneath the surface stirs us back to wakefulness. The same thing is happening now in my slumbering, wintry garden. A divine force or spark is stirring life back into seemingly lifelessness.

A spark. A flame. A fire. A seed. A plant. A flower. An egg. An embryo. A life. What is it that stirs matter and spirit? What is it that stirs us? What moves us? What is it that makes life taste bitter or sweet upon the tongue? What things do we feel that can’t quite be put into words?

The following poem was written by Wallace Stevens. In it, his is the voice of questioning meant to refute religion/Christianity, and yet his images are the kinds of things that stir me in the opposite direction by rousing and impassioning my faith and belief in Christ. So it seems to me that Stevens, even in his attempt at denial, was himself somehow stirred by things in nature not wholly of this world, And I also have to wonder what exactly he thinks a soul is? Is not the soul that which connects mortal man to the Holy One who made us? Isn’t it the piece of God in us?

Sunday Morning

What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul.
~Wallace Stevens

For God may speak in one way, or in another, yet man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, while slumbering on their beds, then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction. ~Job 33:14-16 ✝

618. The word “miracle” aptly applies to a seed. ~Jack Kramer

January 20, 2015 by nataliescarberry

There are two seasonal diversions
that can ease the bite of any winter.
One is the January thaw.
The other is the seed catalogues.
~Hal Bourland

And oh how I love seed catalogs. They not only awaken dreams of spring, but their covers have always been colorful works of art. And why shouldn’t they be, especially since they promote the sale of tiny miracles by the millions?

Now seeds are just dimes to the man in the store
And the dimes are the things that he needs,
And I’ve been to buy them in seasons before
But have thought of them merely as seeds;
But it flashed through my mind as I took them this time,
You purchased a miracle here for a dime.
~Edgar A. Guest

**Even though seeds today cost more than a dime, they are still relatively inexpensive. So what do you think? How much would you be willing to pay for a miracle with God’s autograph written all over it?

Two years ago, I was saying as I planted seeds in the garden, “I must believe in these seeds that fall into the earth and grow into flowers and radishes and beans. It is a miracle to me because I do not understand it. The very fact that some use glib technical phrases to explain it does not make it any less a miracle, and a miracle we all accept. Then why not accept God’s miracles?” ~Dorothy Day

You are God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples. ~Psalm 77:14 ✝

**Images of vintage seed catalogs via Pinterest; collages of them created by Natalie

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

Tag Archives: Seed