312. At last the vernal equinox — “Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn.” ~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard

March 20, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Such Singing in the Wild Branches

By Mary Oliver

It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves—
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness—
and that’s when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree—
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing—
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky— all, all of them

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last

for more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you’ve been there,
you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then— open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

Lord Jesus, “Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes.” ~a line form a Matt Redman song

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come… ~Song of Songs 2:12a ✝

**Thrush photo via Pinterest

308. All was silent as before – all silent save the dripping rain. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

March 16, 2014 by nataliescarberry

One by one great drops are falling
Doubtful and slow,
Down the pane they are crookedly crawling,
And the wind breathes low…
~Excerpt from a poem by James Russell Lowell

Rain! Deliciously glorious rain finally came for the first time in many months from the grayness of a late winter’s day, and the drought-ridden soil soaked it up like a sponge. Thankfully this rain was not the child of violent clashes of hot and cold air which can, this time of year, spawn rushing winds or tornados charged with electricity and loud claps of thunder. Instead it tapped softly on rooftops and windows beating out long-awaited, haunting harmonies accompanied only by occasional rolls of muffled thunder and flashes of distant lightning. After the parched ground had drunk in enough, puddles began to form, and from them rain’s captivating smell rose to bless my nose. Scientists may say the scent in rain is petrichor, which is an oil produced by plants, absorbed by rocks and soil, and then later released into the air during rainfall, but I personally think it’s the alluring scent of the Holy One, Yahweh Himself.

Oh, how I’ve missed the rain! I adore it; I always have! And now that I live in a place where rain can be absent for long periods of time, my spirit experiences an aching hunger when it’s gone. So I envy those who live in areas where it rains regularly. There’s just something very comforting and inviting about the sound of rain, the sight of it, the feel of it, and the unmistakable fragrance of it. It has a way of reassuring me that “God’s in His heaven and all’s right with the world,” and if rainy days bless my soul in such a way, I can’t help but believe the earth feels the same sweet joy.

In time of silver rain
The earth puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads

Of Life,
Of Life,
Of Life!

In time of silver rain
The butterflies lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth new leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls
Go singing, too,

In time of silver rain
When spring
And life
Are new.
~Poem by Langston Hughes

As the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I(God) desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. ~Isaiah 55:9-11 ✝

305. Awake, thou wintry earth – Fling off thy sadness! ~Thomas Blackburn

March 13, 2014 by nataliescarberry

It was one of those March days
when the sun shines hot
and the wind blows cold:
when it is summer in the light,
and winter in the shade.
~Charles Dickens

The vernal equinox, official start of spring, is still 7 days away, but there are signs of its coming. And with each new green shoot Creation’s heart beats stronger, God’s ancient utterances grow louder, and the potential for lifting humankind’s spirits increases. As the sanctuary of earth and sky throws open its doors, doors once “frozen” in wintry bondage, the introit to the full ceremonial form of springtime’s metaphorical “high mass” is beginning. Presiding over the opening ceremonies are their highnesses, the avian cardinals. With the arrival of the equinox on the 20th, other “clergy” donning different vestments will appear, and they too will perform their holy sacraments upon earth’s hallowed altars. Currently only chants can be heard echoing close to the ground or reverberating near branch and cane. However the rest of spring’s holy voices will soon join in, and their loud arias will climb garden walls and charge over hedgerows. As ever increasing waves of spring’s sweet sounds cross the land, they will be discernible to some extent even in the mighty cement jungles of commerce. Despite clouds of spiritual pollution, the light that was in the beginning will break forth anew, and sounds of the eternal will be able to be heard above the cacophonous noises of humanity’s hectic busyness. Earth’s quiet, eternal rhythms still proffer wholeness, harmony, and healing in the maelstrom of madness within today’s “cultural currents.”

God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding. ~Job 37:5 ✝

**Image via Pinterest

304. The sun has come out…and the air is vivid with the coming spring’s light. ~Adapted excerpt from Byron Caldwell Smith

March 12, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Let me arise and open the gate,
to breathe the wild warm air…
To let Life in, and to let out Death.
~Violet Fane

Blow, Breath of heaven, blow! Blow through the land and over the waters. Carry away death’s dark vapors and let life in. Let every mountain, plain, and valley break forth in gladness. Let the “wild warm air” of coming spring spark life in every nook and cranny. Let the ceaseless waves of the seas and the rushing currents of rivers roar with renewed passion for life. Let the clouds suckle earth’s waters and send rain from heaven to moisten the earth and let loose her flowering. Let life, whole and vibrant, dazzle us anew. Blow, sweet Breath of heaven, blow! Blow through Your children and take us down to the bottom of our souls where You, O God, the Breath of all things, are present “deep within all that has life.” We who have traversed icy winter’s dark domain yearn to feel your warmth and vitality course in us and all of life again. We long for earth and sky’s vast array of bright colors to take away winter’s preponderance of grays and browns. O Holy One, come; let us see You “in every emanation of Creation’s life.” We give you glory and thanks for all that You are, for Your ever-lasting goodness and never-ending love, “for creatures stirring forth,” “for plant forms stretching and unfolding,” “for the stable earth and its solid rocks.” O blessed Breath of heaven, arise and blow life afresh through Eden’s gates! (Quoted phrases from SOUNDS OF THE ETERNAL by J. Philip Newell)

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth. ~Psalm 33:6 ✝

**photos via Pinterest

295. Of all God’s gifts to the sighted man, color is the holiest, the most divine… ~John Ruskin

March 3, 2014 by nataliescarberry

In the house of words was a table of colors.
They offered themselves in great fountains,
and each poet took the color he needed:
lemon yellow or sun yellow,
ocean blue or smoke blue,
crimson red, blood red, wine red.
~Eduardo Galeano

What a glorious tangerine and white dream is the daffodil in the photograph, and holiness indeed is written all over it! As God speaks to mankind through the Bible and Creation, we can see that He values color, the intent of which seems, like all else, to be that its hallowed voice draw His children closer to Him. Color appears first in holy writ in the opening pages of Genesis when God fathered the whiteness of light on day 1 of the Creation story. Then on the second day the Lord created expanses to separate water from water, and both the sky and the reflection of the heavens in it are shades of blue. On day 3 He created earth’s green vegetation. Day 4 brought the placement of lights that governed the heavens, and day’s greater light, the sun, is yellow; up close pictures of the sun also show reds and oranges in its make up. Fish and great sea monsters swam the seas and birds took flight on the fifth day, and whales and sharks have been seen as hallmarks of an ancient pagan idol symbolized by the color orange. The sixth day brought the creation of man and animals; the name Adam means red and the blood that courses through the veins of man and beast alike is red. Day 7, the Sabbath, was sanctified by God whose robes and glory are perennially symbolized by white, and later when atoning for man’s sins His son, Jesus, wore a purple robe.

“And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. Genesis 1:30-31 ✝

276. There is no greater sorrow in the world, than eyes unseeing, color everywhere, or ears unhearing, softly wafted notes from nature’s great cathedral of the air. ~Mabel G. Austin

February 11, 2014 by nataliescarberry

What is pink? a rose is pink
By a fountain’s brink.
What is red? a poppy’s red
In its barley bed.
What is blue? the sky is blue
Where the clouds float thro’.
~Christina Rossetti

Well, it’s another gloomy winter’s day hereabouts, but I’m a singin’ away, a singin’ in the rain as a matter of fact. “I’m laughing at the clouds so dark up above, what a glorious feelin’ I’m happy again…” Okay, so it isn’t much rain, but it has rained a bit nevertheless. And what am I a singing? I’m a singin’ the blues. No, no, no, not the sad blues–the happy blues because some of my little, blue grape hyacinths are blooming in the greenhouse, and they like “girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes” are “a few of my favorites things.” I love the color blue and I love some of the expressions using the color blue, expressions like: true blue, out of the blue, bluer than blue, blue on blue, once in a blue moon, something borrowed, something blue, and on and on it goes. I also love some of the ways people describe what the color blue means to them. For example I’ve heard things like: blue is the wonder in my mind; blue is the sound a sunny day makes; blue is the smell of blueberries ripening in the sun; blue is the wind over water; blue is the color of the never-ending sky; blue is the place where song birds fly; blue is a world of sweet mellow joy; blue is the sky that God holds close to His presence; blue was meant for us to see and believe.

Blue is the color of God’s Glory according to some rabbinic sages, and it is a constant in our lives. Not only is it the color of the clear sky and the deep sea, but it’s the color of our planet, Mother Earth, our precious blue pearl in the heavens. God does indeed hold the sky close to His presence, and we were meant to see evidence of Him, our Creator, in its orbs and in “my blue, blue, blue heaven.”

Speak to the Israelites, and tell them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the generations to put a blue cord on the fringe at each corner. ~Numbers 15:38 ✝

260. The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer. ~Vita Sackville-West

January 26, 2014 by nataliescarberry

January is the quietest month in the garden.
. . .But just because is looks quiet
doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.
The soil, open to the sky, absorbs the pure rainfall
while microorganisms convert tilled-under fodder
into usable nutrients for the next crop of plants.
The feasting earthworms tunnel along,
aerating the soil and preparing it to welcome
the seeds and bare roots to come.
~Rosalie Muller Wright

I’ve heard it said that “the color of springtime is in the flowers” whereas “the color of winter is in the imagination.” Thankfully I’ve got a good imagination, and when that fails, I have a large collection of photos to look back on because by the end of January my spirit is in dire need of a boost. A place I like to frequent also helps to keep my imagination alive and well. It’s a nursery, and this particular Dallas nursery not only has a great selection of flowers during the growing seasons, but year round it has all sorts of indoor plants too. In addition to the plants it has an oak cabinet with drawers full of fascinating seeds, racks of seed packets, shelves filled with gardening books, and an array of tools. So between the plant and seed catalogs that start arriving in the mail after Christmas and my visits to Nicholson-Hardie’s nursery, the “dream” is kept alive even when the under-the-surface busy but ravaged-atop January garden appears to be completely shut down. And it is this “stuff” of which gardener’s dreams are made that keeps my imagination churning and my head full of schemes, schemes that are the spice of a gardener’s life. What a blessing is our memory, our imagination, and our ability to dream; God is so good.

I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify Him with thanksgiving. ~Psalm 69:30 ✝

257. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining the win the sky. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

January 23, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Have you ever noticed a tree
standing naked against the sky, how beautiful it is?
All its branches outlined and in its nakedness,
there is a poem, there is a song…
When the spring comes, it again fills the tree
with the music of many leaves.
And this is the way of life.
~J. Krishnamurti

Trees don’t just provide shade or rhyme and lyric for mortals; they are frequented by and home to an assortment of wildlife. For example birds not only perch and sing in their lofty heights; they build nests in them as do squirrels who also use the branches as connecting highways to get them from one branch or tree to another. When it’s winter as it is now and the trees are leafless, I can see the little fluffy-tailed acrobats make leaps, sometimes very daring ones, from one branch or tree to another as they work back and forth or up and down gathering acorns and building nests. This week while I was observing their antics, I started looking at the differing filigreed patterns of our naked trees. It was then I noticed the combined density of several trees in the northeast corner of our lot. They obscure the heavens now almost as much as they would when in full leaf. In this aerial thicket of woodiness the horizontal branches of my willow tree cross in front of the vertical branches of neighboring trees, and so their poetry or music is more of a series of mingled couplets or vocal duets as they make their “endless efforts to speak to the listening heavens.”

The trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord… ~Ezekiel 17:23a ✝

244. The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees… ~Ranier Maria Rilke

January 10, 2014 by nataliescarberry

It is a good idea to be alone in a garden
at dawn or dark so that
all its shy presences may haunt you and
possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.
~James Douglas

Reverence rises, a hush falls, and a lone bird sings on in the silence of twilight until there is no more cloud cover, no more noise, no more light. A waxing gibbous moon climbs higher and higher in an azure sky that’s quickly deepening to dark indigo. Silhouetted trees stand like giant sentinels over the winter-ravaged garden. The darkness around me now is steeped in calmness beneath the ancient moon that’s casting its glow through the branches of the huge oak as it heads up to cross over heaven’s dome. Although there’s an element of fear in the dark of night, something sacred draws me into it. Whenever possible, I linger and, in being haunted by all its shy presences, I feel the wonder of Creation beneath the stars.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established…O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Psalm 8:3,9 ✝

243. A Summer fog for fair, a Winter fog for rain. ~Weather Lore prediction

January 9, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Oh fog! Oh fog!
What can I say?
You’ve painted the day
A thick shade of grey.
~Adapted excerpt from a poem by Andrew D. Robertson

A textbook definition of fog is that it is a collection of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth’s surface–a cloud of sorts, as it were. Since it wasn’t cold enough last night for this one to have been formed from ice crystals, it had to have been from the little bit of misting rain we got yesterday. Thus, the only strange thing is that I’ve never seen a fog of either kind come so early or last as long as this one has, at least here in north central Texas. And the somewhat dense fog not only wrapped its arms around the morning, but it has also kept us held tightly in its embrace all day long. Furthermore, as darkness closed in on us, it still hadn’t lifted.

The fog is an illusion–
A master of disguise;
Which hides the tangible
Before our very eyes.

It gives an air of mystery
That has long prevailed.
Dangerously intriguing
Is the fog’s foggy veil.
~Excerpts from a poem by W. Salley

In the silence of its thick haze this strange January fog has been reducing visibility and cloaking our city and the outlying areas in its mysterious veil of shyness since first light. In grayness not unlike a pigeon’s feather, it has literally held our world close to the ground all day long, coating all the eyes could see. And lying heavy on all that it encompassed, it kept the sun pushed back which sheltered the earth, smothered most of the day’s colors, and blurred everything as it clung to all possible shapes it could find.

Foggy mist, misty fog
Marvelous manifestation
Of magnificent nature!
~N. Subbarman

The fog descends
in the wee hours of dawn
like a sacred thing.
~John Tiong Chunghoo

Like most weather events, fog is often seen as some kind of spiritual force as it creeps along the ground and across the sky. Actually there seems to be something about all weather phenomena that lends itself to perceptions of sanctity. Perhaps tis so because all such events fall from the heavens overhead or, like the fog, are a part of earth’s mysterious beneath-the-surface workings. And because they are beyond our control, we feel helpless to stop them and sometimes lives as well as homes are lost in the wake of the more forceful ones. Genesis tells us that a mighty wind swept over the waters as God set about the business of Creation, and in His hands He held the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. As He cast them out upon the wind, they were carried throughout the universe on its wild wings. How could one not stand in awe and consider sacred such immense and mysterious powers!

In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1 ✝

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

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