Tag Archives: Sky

225. Stripes that are red like the blood shed for me. ~Author Unknown

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There’s a song in the air!
There’s a star in the sky!
~Joseph G. Holland

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The strongest connection one might make between the origins of the candy cane and any intentional Christian association is to guess that possibly some unknown person, at some indefinite time, took a long-existing form of sweet (i.e., straight white sticks of sugar candy) that was already associated with Christmas and produced bent versions of it to represent a shepherd’s crook and/or make it easier to hang on Christmas trees, but even that general association is nothing more than mere supposition with no supporting evidence behind it.  This is charming folklore, but one should not lose sight of the fact that such stories of the candy cane’s origins are, like Santa Claus, myths and not “true stories.”

There is one verifiable (albeit indirect) religious connection associated with the modern candy cane, however.

In 1919 Bob McCormack began making candy canes for local use and sales in Albany, Georgia, and by the middle of the century his company (originally the Famous Candy Company, then the Mills-McCormack Candy Company, and later Bob’s Candies) had become one of the world’s leading candy cane producers. But candy cane manufacturing initially required a fair bit of labor that limited production quantities (the canes had to be bent manually as they came off the assembly line in order to create their ‘J’ shape,) and it was McCormack’s brother-in-law, a Catholic priest named Gregory Harding Keller, who came up with the solution: Father Keller invented the Keller Machine that automated the process of shaping straight candy sticks into candy canes.   ~Barbara Mikkelson

The woman said to him, “I know Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ).  “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”  ~John 4:25  ✝

220. In the temple of my inner being, in the temple of my body, in the temple of earth, sea, and sky, in the great temple of the universe I look for the light that was in the beginning… ~J. Philip Newell

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For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right,
since its appearance changes at every moment;
but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life – the
light and the air which vary continually.
~Claude Monet

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All things in the natural world drink in sunlight, and they are affected by it a number of ways.  When the sun’s warmth touches skin, it creates a pleasant sensation on cold days.  That pleasurable feeling seems to sink down into the depths of human flesh; deeper and deeper it settles until it reaches places normally untouched by sunlight.  Flesh and spirit drink in other light too.  They take in “the light of God and energy itself” so that in an often cold and lonely, dark world the inner flame of our sacred origin keeps the hope filled glow of the eternal alive.

And light begets light, radiating outwards,
unable to be harnessed by any or all,
only a vessel that pours forth affirmation to its origins.
~Scottishmomus, (http://scottishmomus.wordpress.com)

God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.  ~Genesis 1:4   ✝

219. That each day I may walk unceasingly on the banks of my water, that my soul may repose on the branches of the trees which I planted, that I may refresh myself under the shadow of my sycamore. ~Egyptian Tomb Inscription, circa 1400 BCE

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Because they are primeval, because they outlive us,
because they are fixed, trees seem to emanate a sense of permanence.
And though rooted in earth, they seem to touch the sky.
For these reasons it is natural to feel we might learn wisdom from them,
to haunt about them with the idea that if we could only read
their silent riddle rightly we should learn some secret vital
to our real, our lasting and spiritual existence.
~Kim Taplin

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Before the sun fell over the edge of the world yesterday, it painted its recently traversed path with reddish-pink and mauve streaks.  In between the streaks were smaller golden rays that eventually blended into the pinker bands of light.  As these streaks shot up to the sky’s pinnacle, they oozed deliciousness through the open spaces in one of my favorite trees.  It’s a sycamore tree directly across the street from our house, and it’s so old that most of its bark has fallen away.  When it has, as it has now, lost most of its floppy brown leaves the tree’s strange fruits are more visible as area its long, slender alabaster arms, arms that seem to reach up and caress the heavens’ spacious blue lagoons.  Another thing I love about this particular tree is that in winter’s chilling winds its clattering branches seem to whisper prophecies of another spring’s birthing beneath the soil in silent chambers waiting for the prompting of the sun’s warmth on lengthening days and spring rains.

I’m the first one to admit that sometimes I’m hard pressed on difficult days to find reasons to be joyful, but I’m learning to look expectantly as well as long enough to find some measure of God’s glory in the day at hand.  When dealing with a run of painful days as I am now, it becomes not only more challenging but also more necessary.  The Holy Spirit within is the protector of one’s spiritual flame as well as a guide, and so if one turns inward to look for an appointment of grace, he/she will find what’s needed to press upward and onward.  On this day that spark of relief and mercy was found in the beauty of a tree.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.  ~Psalm 118:24  ✝

216. Like light dappling through the leaves of a tree and wind stirring its branches, like birdsong sounding from the heights of an orchard and the scent of blossom after rainfall, so You (Lord) dapple and sound in the human soul, so You (Lord) stir into motion all that lives. ~J. Philip Newell

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The oaks and pines and their brethren of the wood,
have seen so many suns rise and set,
so many seasons come and go,
and so many generations pass into silence,
that they may well wonder what
“the story of the trees” would be to us
if they had tongues to tell it,
or if we had ears fine enough to understand.
~Author Unknown

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Though left barren by a blue norther and seemingly now no more than silent sentries watching over the landscape, somewhere in the core of these trees their music plays on.  John Muir’s idea that the fibers of a tree’s being thrills “like harp strings” not only sets well with me, but it also answers the question Walt Whitman once asked, “Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?”  The music of life of which he and so many others have verbalized through the ages plays on in all of Creation.  We may not always hear or pay attention to the music but the melodies are there; we may be absent from the Lord, but He is never absent from us.  I know because I hear nature’s songs and I see reminders of the Lord’s continual and constant presence in the great and small pulsing lights in the heavens, in the caroling colors of earth and sky, in the sizzling efficacy of the sun’s warmth, in the rush of roaring waters and tides, in the sighing and howling of the wind, wind which like the Holy One is a presence that can be felt but not seen.

Let the trees of the forest sing, let them sing for joy before the Lord…  ~1 Chronicles 16:33  ✝

214. Angels descending, bring from above, echoes of mercy, whispers of love. ~Fanny J. Crosby

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Ever felt an angel’s breath
in the gentle breeze?
A teardrop in the falling rain?
Hear a whisper among the rustle of leaves?
Or been kissed by a lone snowflake?
Nature is an angel’s favorite hiding place.
~Carrie Latet

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Standing amid the remains of a dying year and clothed in a dress splattered with mud this garden angel retains every bit of her vibrant elegance.  Even in the high winds of last week’s arctic storm she held her ground, waiting and watching, as quietly as the trees and dormant roses around her.  And the angel will keep on watching over this garden while my friend, inside the house, continues to busy herself attempting to heal hurting, human hearts; for you see, my friend, like an angel, is a also guardian.  She guards the secrets of her clients who entrust the painful realities of their pasts to her keeping.  Both she and her garden angel then are reminders of the Lord’s love and watchfulness over Creation and His children.  The fruits of the Holy Spirit with which my friend is gifted are what she draws upon to sustain her clients while she speaks words of wholeness in their wounded spirits.  Why is speaking the tool of her trade?  The Lord spoke the world and all that live in it into being; therefore, the spoken word in all of us who are created in His image has great power, power for good and for evil.  When any of us choose to speak loving, affirming words they fall on mortal ears like the sweet breath of an angel whispering incantations of healing benedictions.  So it is that my friend’s loving words of understanding and compassion and wisdom can be to the soul of her clients what water, in this dry and arid land, is to her garden.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.  ~Genesis 1:26  ✝

199. Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering down from the autumn tree… ~Emily Brontë

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How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.
~Elsie N. Brady

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Pat.  Pat, pat.  Pat, pat, pat.  Pat.  Pat, pat.  Pat.  Pat, pat, pat.  “Listen to the falling rain; listen to it fall.”  A remembered lyric from an old José Feliciano song ran through my mind.  But wait, I didn’t feel anything wet and the afternoon sun was shining in a cloudless sky.  So if it wasn’t rain, what on earth had I heard behind me.  As I turned to investigate, I saw that it was indeed raining, but not in the way I expected.  November’s gusting winds were letting loose hundreds of colored leaves from their woody perches.  The ones not already brought down by the rains of recent days were not tumbling down silently as Brady suggests; they were pelting the shed, the greenhouse, the birdbaths, and the ground so forcefully that they sounded like huge raindrops.  So it was pouring all right; it was raining leaf after leaf after leaf, pretty autumn tinted leaves, and the air in which they were dancing was made gold and red and ripe.

For You make me glad by Your deeds, Lord; I sing for joy at what Your hands have done.  ~Psalm 92:4  ✝

 

195. Dull November brings the blast, then the leaves are whirling fast. ~Sara Coleridge

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Every landscape is, as it were,
a state of the soul,
and whoever penetrates into both
is astonished to find how much likeness
there is in each detail.
~Henri Frederic Amiel

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It blew and it blew and it blew all day long yesterday.  Then in the night the lightning lit up our north Texas skies and the thunder growled its mighty roars while rain pelted the house and brought down masses of Autumn’s colored leaves.  The serious rain had ended by midnight, but the clouds never left and today their gentle, mists have made blurry our November sky off and on all day.  The temperature dropped to almost freezing over night, and the winds, though not as strong as yesterday’s, have continued as well so that it has been very cold, very wet and very blustery.  It seems the ancient, arctic curmudgeon wanted to give us a taste of wintry stuff before his appointed reign on winter’s throne begins.  But seasons are like that, aren’t they?  There’s always a beginning, a middle, and an end, and everything but the middles is really a overlapping of the before and after so to speak.  One season doesn’t just slam the door on the other or keep the next one locked out according to some appointed date on the calendar.  The new one just sort of oozes in a little at a time and then after a while slowly, but surely lets the next one start taking hold making of the seasons an ongoing continuum rather than a series of separate entities.  And nature’s patterns have played themselves out like that for over 4 billion years!  Amazing!  Nature is simply amazing!  As is her Creator!  Something else to consider is that the seasons of our lives come and go in much the same way, do they not?

The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.  ~Ecclesiastes 1:6  ✝

190. Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves… ~Humbert Wolfe

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Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapory air. . .
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.
~William Cullen Bryant

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What a season of contrasts autumn is!  Many of its striking contradistinctions and “mellow smiles” can be seen on a single day, and yesterday was a fascinating example of Fall’s many faces.  Early in the morning the sky was a clear, brilliant blue, and as I wandered the yard I found a butterfly prettily perched on the leaves of a climbing rose.  Then the winds picked up and threatening clouds blew in.  About 30 minutes later, a narrow band of rain clouds passed over us leaving not a single drop, however, in their wake.  Afterwards the sun sat smiling again in the sapphire sky, but it was streaked with a few bands of Cirrus clouds.  Not too long after that the stormy/clear scenario repeated itself.  Finally late in the afternoon a blustery wind blew down like rain more of the yellow leaves off the willow tree as it chased the sun away for good.  What had been an almost balmy day in the mid-70‘s had rapidly changed, and the bite of the chilling north wind stung my unsuitably-clad body when I went out to unplug the fountain and close up the greenhouse.

He(God) wraps us the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.  ~Job 26:8  ✝

182. Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn. ~Elizabeth Lawrence

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In the garden, Autumn is,
indeed the crowning glory of the year,
bringing us the fruition of months
of thought and care and toil.
And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time,
do we get such superb color effects
as from August to November.
~Rose G. Kingsley

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Autumn, a time when magnificent days are often set ablaze under crystalline, sapphire skies or leaves are made to glisten on gloomy, rainy days.  Then there are the chilly eves with their rising moons on star-speckled, indigo nights that add more drama to the sensational spectacle.  What’s more lingering in sylvan settings observing flights of migrating birds or monarch butterflies, or watching busying squirrels gather acorns, or gazing at confetti-colored leaves fluttering gracefully to the ground under broad expanses bathed in the bluest of blues are rich, restorative times of hushed mellowness.  And what about the frosts that adorn grasslands and hills or  the fallen leaves that are the color of reddish, ripened persimmons?  All of it, simply all that autumn has to offer, is in fact “the crowning glory of the year.”

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth.  ~Psalm 57:5  ✝

179. November’s sky is chill and drear, November’s leaf is red and sear. ~Sir Walter Scott

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Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem:
There’s not a leaf that falls upon the ground
But holds some joy of silence of sound,
Some spirits begotten of a summer dream.
~Laman Blanchard

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The first Sunday of November had been running out like slow, thick molasses as deepening autumn’s shades of gray hung on it like a shroud.  Even the flocks of busying birds and the foraging squirrels succumbed, as did I, to the hypnotic laziness of the day’s dark, engulfing gloom.  However, things became a little livelier for a time late in the day when the cement on the patio became a dance floor filled with tiny rain-drop dancers jitterbugging to the short-lived “drippy” rhythms.  After the rainy spell light broke briefly through the clouds, and it was enough to highlight a few colorful leaves and a potted petunia.  Together those two sights interjected a touch of color while the wrought-iron furniture that glistened in the light added a bit of beaded elegance to the drab scene.  How sweetly even a token display of earth’s delights can thrill this observer!

Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty and will lift up your face to God.  ~Job 22:26  ✝