811. A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. ~Chinese Proverb

July 17, 2015 by nataliescarberry

In order to see birds,
it is necessary to become
part of the silence.
~Robert Lynd

Birds are a miracle
because they prove to us
there is a finer,
simpler state of being
which we may attain.
~Doug Coupland

You have to believe in happiness,
or happiness never comes…
Ah, that’s the reason a bird can sing –
On its darkest day he believes in Spring.
~Douglas Malloch

There is nothing in which the birds
differ more from man than the
way in which they can build and yet
leave a landscape as it was before.
~Robert Lynd

He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. ~Psalm 91:4 ✝

**Images via Pinterest

777. Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting. ~Line spoken by the White Rabbit in ALICE AND WONDERLAND

June 20, 2015 by nataliescarberry

Summer makes a
silence after spring.
~Vita Sackville-West

Tomorrow is the summer solstice, and with its coming begins the worst of another long, hot Texas summer. Thus the silence after spring hereabouts is markedly pronounced as the heat all but stifles the breath out of anything that talks, hums, or buzzes including and especially “moi.” That’s why when I have to be outside to care for and attempt to keep my garden’s “babies” alive, the heat presses hard enough against my lips that what utterances I can muster are mostly profane mutterings. So not only am I thankful to be leaving for Paris next week but also that we’ll be spending 16 days in far more pleasant climes.

…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:18 ✝

**Image taken and posted by Mike Bizeau at: http://naturehasnoboss.com/2015/06/18/wabbit/

774. The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans. ~Sherwood Smith

June 17, 2015 by nataliescarberry

I like it when it rains hard.
It sounds like white noise everywhere,
which is like silence but not empty.
~Mark Haddon

After an extended period of hot weather,
comes the first rain shower creating
an exquisite and eloquent fragrance in the air –
an earthy sweet smell that permeates and floats all around us,
refreshing our minds and rejuvenating our lives.
~Edited and adapted excerpt
from Deodatta V. Shenai-Khatkhate

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
~Excerpt fro a poem
by Mary Oliver

If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ~1 Corinthians 12:17 ✝

717. A whisper in the silence; it’s grass having some fun, rustling in the sunshine… ~Excerpt from poem by Olivia Kent

April 28, 2015 by nataliescarberry

Where is that secret glade?
The one where time seems to fade
In that place of magic pools
Where ladybugs and fairies lounge on the toadstools…
~Adapted excerpt by Will Justus

Dumpy toadstools grew close by
Our old peach tree: some were high,
Peak’d, like half-shut parasols;|
Others round and low, like balls,
Little hollow balls; and I
Called my father to the tree:
And he said, ‘I tell you what:
Fairies have been here, you see.
This is just the kind of spot
Fairies love to live in. Those
Are their houses, I suppose.
Yes, those surely are their huts!
Built of moon and mist and rain…
~Excerpted lines from a poem
by Madison Julius Cawein

**The “lady” in ladybug refers to the Virgin Mary. Legend has it that crops in Europe during the Middle Ages were plagued by pests, so the farmers began praying to the Blessed Lady, the Virgin Mary. Soon, the farmers started seeing ladybugs in their fields, and the crops were miraculously saved from the pests. They associated their good fortune with the black and red beetles, and so began calling them lady beetles. In Germany, these insects go by the name Marienkafer, which means Mary beetles. The 7-spotted lady beetle is believed to be the first named for the Virgin Mary; the red color represents her cloak, and the black spots represent her sorrows. ~Image via Pinterest; information about the ladybug via the Internet

And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of His servant. From now on all generations will call be blessed. ~Luke 1:46-48 ✝

707. Silence is exhilarating at first – as noise is – but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep. ~Edward Hoaglan

April 18, 2015 by nataliescarberry

Let me silent be,
For silence is the speech of love,
The music of the spheres above.
~Richard Henry Stoddard

Poetic Black and White Watercolors  of Children With Wild Animals  by Elicia Elidanto

Spring

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her —
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
~Mary Oliver

…a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak… ~Ecclesiastes 3:7 ✝

676. The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. ~Hans Hofmann

March 19, 2015 by nataliescarberry

All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman’s silence
receiving the river’s grace,
the gardener’s musing on rows….
~Wendell Berry

To find the universal elements enough;
to find the air and the water exhilarating;
to be refreshed by a morning walk
or an evening saunter…
to be thrilled by the stars at night;
to be elated over a bird’s nest
or a wildflower in spring —these are
some of the rewards of the simple life.
~John Burroughs

The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. ~Psalm 19: 7 ✝

**Image via Pinterest

653. He (winter) withers all in silence, and his hand unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life. ~William Blake

February 22, 2015 by nataliescarberry

Drops fell…and rang like
little disks of metal.
Ping! Ping! and there was not
a pinpoint of silence  between them.
~Amy Lowell

Mama, mama mía! Here we go again! Down, down, down plummet the temps! And this time newly birthed lives will be lost in the chicanery of this winter skirmish.

Why? Because here in north central Texas late January and early February often conjure up enough unseasonably warm days to convince the land that spring has sprung. And the dastardly scoundrels have done it again!

These two deceiving culprits have successfully hoodwinked gardens and parks alike into believing it is time for blooming things to emerge from branch and soil. Now, after their two-faced, heartless lies, a harsh north wind doth blow.

Moreover, freezing rain is falling and soon will switch to sleet and/or snow. In the frigid, darkness of night, the samaras of a Red Maple, the yellows of a smattering of daffodils and forsythia as well as the pinks and whites of some saucer magnolias will be washed out leaving only the browns of death and decay. Oh what a wicked, wicked, fickle web Mother Nature ofttimes weaves.

So that your trust may be in the Lord, I teach you today, even you. ~Proverbs 22:19 ✝

646. I sing because I’m happy; I sing because I’m free. His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me. ~Excerpts from the song, His Eye is on the Sparrow, by Civilla D. Martin

February 16, 2015 by nataliescarberry

If you hear a voice within you say
you cannot paint, then
by all means paint and
that voice will be silenced.
~Vincent van Gogh

Write because you want to communicate with yourself.
Write because you want to communicate with someone else.
Write because life is weird and tragic and amazing.
Write because talking is difficult.
Write because it polishes the heart.
Write because you can.
Write because you can’t.
Write because you’re trying to figure yourself out.
Write because you might not ever figure yourself out.
Write because there still aren’t enough love poems in the world. Write because there is a blackbird outside of my window right now  and oh my God isn’t that the best start to the day?
~I found this on Amy’s The World is a Book blog,
and Amy found it at Pho Trablogger’s.

We are made in the image of God, the Creator of all life as well as the earth and the moon and the stars and the sun and the planets and the galaxies and the oceans and the trees and the forests and on and on and on all that Yahweh made goes. So I can’t help but believe there is indeed an internal voice in each of us that can only be silenced when we find an outlet for our creative urges. What holds many back I think is the fear that someone else will not like what they do and/or will laugh at them. But who are others to judge anyone else’s voice and its calling? Instead of simply watching and judging, everyone needs to be finding his or her own calling and begin silencing his and her own voices. But then that takes courage and work while being an uncharitable “critic” requires neither of those things. The only ones we need ever please are ourselves and He who created the “voice” and its calling. So sing or write or paint or whatever it takes to silence not only the “voice” but also to fulfill your purpose.

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. ~Genesis 1:27 ✝

**Images via Pinterest

620. There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you… ~Colette

January 22, 2015 by nataliescarberry

In solitude
she sifts silence
searching for insights
from a marsh of memories
within each of life’s stages
penning prayers and praise
tucking each thought
word by word
phrase by phrase
onto pages.
~Wendy L. Macdonald at https://greenlightlady.wordpress.com/

Drip, drip, drip fell the winter rain. Deep, deep, deep grew the morning’s silence. Dark were the clouds that dimmed the light of day. Delicious was the morn’s “marsh of memories” floating through stages of my life. Time and circumstance seemed irrelevant as I basked in the quiet solitude punctuated exclusively by the soft pitter pats of falling rain. There were no fret nor frenzy in the morning’s damp and whispered song, and so I sat sifting the silence in search of nothing more to pen on today’s page than words of praise for the blessing of rain and the gift of life for another day, nothing more than words of gratitude for the peace it had brought and the Holy Presence I felt all around me.

“Now, my God, may your eyes be open and your ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place…” ~2 Chronicles 6:40 ✝

**Image via Pinterest

611. All that is eternal in me welcomes the wonder of this day… ~John O’Donohue

January 13, 2015 by nataliescarberry

May this be a morning
of innocent beginning…
A morning when you become
a pure vessel for what
wants to ascend from silence…
~Excerpted lines by John O’Donohue

I arise today

In the name of Silence
Womb of theWord,
In the name of Stillness
Home of Belonging,
In the name of Solitude
Of the Soul and the Earth.

I arise today

Blessed by all things,
Wings of breath,
Delight of eyes,
Wonder of whisper,
Intimacy of touch,
Eternity of soul,
Urgency of thought,
Miracle of health,
Embrace of God.
~Excerpted lines by John O’Donohue

It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. ~Lamentations 3:22-23 ✝

**Image via Pinterest, text added by Natalie

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

Tag Archives: Silence