Tag Archives: Spheres

1265. The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live. ~Flora Whittemore

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The fact that I’ve been unhappily dealing with an intense, killer migraine since 4 AM this morning has reminded me of an incident that happened years ago. It was a day when I had been grappling with physical pain like I’ve had to do off and on throughout my adult life, and I was feeling quite sorry for myself even grumbling inwardly about it. So when it was suggested that we go to a movie which would include a long walk to get to a downtown theater, I wasn’t particularly interested in going. But I was eventually talked into it, and because I am slower these days, I was trailing along somewhat behind the others. As we rounded the last corner I almost bumped into a homeless man of color with no legs who sitting on the sidewalk in a wheelchair. His head was down but all of a sudden he looked up and smiled the most engaging, warm smile, looked straight into my eyes, and said, “God bless you!” I replied in kind but perhaps without the same warmth and walked on to catch up with the others After mulling it over I knew for certain it was no accident that the man was there at that exact moment in time for a Divine reason. So I glanced back with thoughts of running back and saying thank you as we entered the theater, but he was gone. Nevertheless, in our brief encounter this nameless, homeless disabled man had driven a clear message straight into my heart–I had a home, I had legs, I was not confined to a wheelchair nor was I having to endure hard days and nights living on the streets and going hungry. And so if he could ask God to bless me when the differences between our circumstances were so vasrly different, then it was time for me to rise above my trials and do the same.

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. ~1 John 4:12  ✝

**Top image by LilAS and LOlAS found on Facebook; text box created and written by Natalie; collage by Natalie

996. Hold me, Lord, in the light of Your Being…

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Then, Breath of heaven, come dance
with me as autumn comes to an end

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And turn me round and round
on the earth, the beautiful hem of heaven

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So you can sing in my ear
the hymns of the spheres

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To fill me with heavenly peace
beneath the moon and stars

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Oh dance with me Yahweh
o’er fields of mercy and grace

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Waltz with me Emmanuel
as the angels and I sing, “Hallelujah”in praise of You

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Let them praise His(God’s) name with dancing… ~Excerpt from Psalm 149:3   ✝

**Images via Pinterest

893. . The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere. ~Empedocles

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The moon is most happy
When it is full.
And the sun always looks
Like a pernfectly minted gold coin
That was just polished
And placed in flight by God’s playful kiss.

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And so many varieties of fruit
Hang plump and round
From branches that seem like a sculptor’s hands.
I see the beautiful curve of a pregnant belly
Shaped by a soul within,
And the earth itself,
And the planets and the spheres–-

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I have gotten the hint:
There is something about circles
The Lord likes.
~Hafez, 14th century Persian Poet

He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. ~Isaiah 40:22  ✝

He drew a circle that shut me out– heretic, rebel, a thing to flout–
but Love and I had wit to win, we drew a circle which took him in…
~Poem by Edwin Markham sent to me by Julie Cook at:
http://cookiecrumblestoliveby.com

**Images via Pinterest; collages created by Natalie

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

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

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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   ✝

528. Behold congenial autumn comes, the Sabbath of the year. ~John Logan

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There’s music in the sighing of a reed;
There’s music in the gushing of a rill;
There’s music in all things, if men had ears:
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
~Lord Byron

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Year after year I fall in love again with autumn, and this one is no different than all the others. Even though few leaves have changed colors, there are tangible signs of Keats “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Samples of such manifest themselves daily in the form of ripening seeds, nuts, hips, berries, fruits, and acorns. As well several crisp mornings have filled autumn’s cup with its quintessential sanctity, and some shrouded in foggy mists have revealed squirrels scurrying about with greater urgency while birds, soon to pull out on migratory treks, feast on seeds and berries like the ones in the photo. These are American beautyberries, and they first appeared months ago in shades of pretty, pale greens, but as autumn drew near they deepened into their stunning shade of magenta and began issuing forth tunes in this, the next series of earth’s delightful melodies.

Passages in Scripture indicate that music originated with God and accompanied Creation, and there are those who yet hear the continuing echoes of Yahweh’s “Divine symphony” as made evident in the lines I quoted from Lord Byron. The American evangelist, Beth Moore, says that a song is “the fluent language of the soul,” and I couldn’t agree more because it is my soul that “hears” the myriads of earth’s melodic voices. I think perhaps the hymns of nature are more discernible in spring and autumn after they’ve been weighed down by winter’s oppression or nearly snuffed out by the intensity of summer’s fires, but earth’s music never fails to play on. And whenever the “echo of the spheres” and “the music in all things” of which Baron Byron spoke is heard, it is a privilege to “listen” to the “songs of the morning stars and the angels shout for joy” (Job 38:7). And how blessed are we, the peoples of the earth, that God “takes delight” in us, that “He quiets” us “with His love,” and that “He rejoices” over us “with singing.”

“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”   ~Zephaniah 3:17   ✝

323. Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds, but animated nature sweeter still, to soothe and satisfy the human ear. ~William Cowper

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There’s music in the sighing of a reed;
There’s music in the gushing of a rill;
There’s music in all things, if men had ears;
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
~Lord Byron

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The wings of spring have taken flight in the feisty winds of March. In so doing they have lifted Columbine’s curving, knob-tipped spurs on fanciful flights. Spilling down from deep in the throats of the yellow, flowering “bells” are stunning filaments and anthers which are like tiny, musical tongues issuing forth sweet, golden proclamations. Winter, as inanimate as it seems, has a lyrical sound, but the sounds of spring as the earth reanimates itself are far richer and more honeyed. They along with the other silvery sounds of spring are soft-hearted and serene in the beginning; however, as spring grows long in the tooth and summer approaches, the arias reach almost deafening crescendos. Then after the solstice passes, summer moves along to a steady, hot latino beat until autumn comes again and tones down earth’s rhythms with ripe, mellower tones. We, mortals, may never understand the what and where of earth’s magic and music, but that certainly can’t stop us from enjoying it nor from adoring the mysteries of the music’s Maker.  Lest one believe that it is only poets, writers, and musicians who hear the music of the natural world, let me say that it was Giuseppe Mazzini, an influential Italian political thinker, who said, “Music is the harmonious voice of Creation, and echo of the invisible world.”  I believe the love of music comes from the Lord because He gave birds their songs, and also those who love and compose music are created in God’s image.

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Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent. ~Victor Hugo

Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to Him on the ten-stringed lyre. Psalm 33:2 ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us!

227. This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing; haste, haste to bring him laud, the babe, the son of Mary. ~William C. Dix

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May your home be a sanctuary
wherein you feel the continual presence of Yeshua, the Christ.
May you feel His mantle of love perpetually
surrounding you and all those you love.
May there be forgiveness and healing wherever there is brokenness.
May your life be long and yield a multitude of days
filled with laughter, love, and well-being.
May your world be blessed with plentitude and joy.
May there always be love in your heart; in your soul, may there be peace;
and in your mind may tranquility reign.
May each season of the coming years bring you
the best they have to proffer.
May you never be lacking enough and never want for more.
On rainy or troubling days may there be rainbows,
physical or spiritual, to gladden your eyes and heart and spirit.
As you listen for the sacred incantations of heaven’s orbs
may your hear the “echoes of the spheres”
speak of the Holy One and His goodness and mercy.
O come let us adore Him! He has come! The Messiah has come!

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  ~Romans 8:38-39  ✝

12. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, the flying cloud, the frosty light. . . ~Alfred Lord Tennyson

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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’ll try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.
~William Cullen Bryant

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With every north wind that blows the landscape unravels more and more; after each assault the downed foliage leaves in its wake mounting numbers of skeletons bracing themselves for winter’s icy blasts.  In addition the ornamental grasses are drying out and taking on their a wild and tattered look, and yet a few touches of color remain in the leaves and flowers that have yet to be exiled.  Still audible in the “honey’d leavings” of warm afternoons are their faint renditions of the lusty songs of life, but regardless of how sweet the sound of that is, the sands in autumn’s hourglass are running out.  Like all things, it too will come at last to its Sabbath and therein rest until its next appointed hour upon life’s stage.