Tag Archives: Sunlight

1424. The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness. ~Jessamyn Westl

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The prairie skies can always make you
see more than what you believe.
~Jackson Burnett

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It was still that day, evocatively still and sacredly quiet. The plain’s grasses shone golden in the sunlight and spread out before us like butter on warm toast in and around the craggy terrain. Mountains, hills, buttes, mesas, and plateaus framed these prairies and stood like paternal sentinels over the hallowed ground they had erupted upon eons ago. And although there was barely a breeze blowing on that chilly autumn day when we travelled through northern New Mexico, one could faintly hear, or maybe just imagine, the earth playing her vast array of harmonies, harmonies wrought of whispering grasses, pounding hooves, lapping waters, laughing children on the run, and the call of wild birds in flight. That particular day, however, there was only a lone hawk soaring above in the cloudless expanse of the day’s sapphire blue sky. Nevertheless it it was enough to inspire images in my mind of sun-bronzed bodies riding bareback on painted ponies, wispy curls of smoke rising from tee pees, herds of grazing buffalo, joyful children at play, beautiful black-haired women going about their daily tasks, and perhaps the faint sound of drums and flutes playing a shamanic kind of melody. Despite wanting to get to our home hundreds of miles away from there, with every advancing mile I lamented that we were drawing closer to the end of this peaceful and prepossessing land, and as we neared its end I began to feel a deep sense of sorrow. There was in me a longing and a sense of envy for those who and that which had known the earth in her beautiful infancy, loved the earth for its providence and splendor, worked the land and revered it as well as its Maker..

Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. ~Psalm 37:3 ✝

**Image via Pinterest

1250. A vignette-a small illustration or photograph that fades into its background without a definite border. ~New Oxford American Dictionary

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For summer there, bear in mind, is a
loitering gossip, that only begins to talk
of leaving when September rises to go.
~George Washington Cable

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Ah summer, barbarous in the sun’s rays,
the sands in your hourglass remain but few
and yet your closing hours have not cooled.
Days now shorter still bring too large a measure
of treacherous heat amid high levels of humidity.
What once were colorful, flowery arrays fade
more and more into backgrounds blurred by eyes
weary of squinting from the blinding rays of sunlight.
There is only a mere tidbit of vignettes of what
once was the garden’s grandeur on an unequaled scale.
So, Rilke, I pray your prayer, and may the Lord
hear my pleas for summer’s heat to come to an end.
~Natalie Scarberry

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Lord, it is time.
The summer was very big.
Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and
on the meadows let the winds go loose.
Command the last fruits that they shall be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them on to fulfillment and drive
the last sweetness into the heavenly wine.
~Rainer Maria Rilke

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. ~Isaiah 40:29  ✝

**All photos taken by me in yard; collages by me; and I deliberately blurred the edges of them. 

1245. The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. ~Eden Phillpotts

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One who not merely beholds the outward shows of things,
but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them,
whose garment and revelation they are–if he be such, I say,
he will stand, for more than a moment, speechless with something
akin to that which made the morning stars sing together.
~George MacDonald

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A new day woke to dawn’s sweet song
Winged creatures warbled to rejoice
Sunlight chased the night shadows long

Blue skies bow as day’s colors hoist
Hued symphony of the new dawn’s might
Winged creatures warbled to rejoice

Nature’s perfection in our sight
Creation gives salutations
Hued symphony of new dawn’s might

Rivers and streams sang oblations
Watery praises raised on high
Creation gives salutations

The sun marched across the sky
A glittering parade in stride
Watery praises raised on high

The light grew stronger as the night died
A new day woke to Dawn’s sweet song
A glittering parade in stride
Sunlight chased the night shadows long.
~A terzanelle by Kristen

Wake up, my soul! Wake up, harp and lyre! I will wake up the dawn. ~Psalm 57:8  ✝

1222. We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves. ~Leonora Carrington

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From within and from behind, a
light shines through us upon things,
and makes us aware that we
are nothing, the but light is all.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I was up early this morning and so went wandering around the yard looking for something picture worthy. As I took these photos, I decided that they were more spectacular because of the play of early morning light on them. I saw only a portion of the flower as I rounded the corner, and even so the light shining through the leaves and the small portion of this flower’s filaments was both magical and mystical. And I’m always struck by how much holiness I sense in the light, even small pieces of it. It’s like God’s radiance falls on things in the garden as well as the sunlight. When it was all said and done, I couldn’t decided which was more stunning, the fragment of the flower or in the whole thing.

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Later in the day during a Bible Study I found myself surrounded by people who like these leaves and flowers were filled with notable and holy spiritual light. In the course of our discussion we talked about the fact that we are all made in the image of God. And so it occurred to me that whenever we look in a mirror we are actually seeing the face of God, coming face to face, as it were, with the very one who breathed life into us. And when you think of it that way, you realize that we are never separated from the Lord, no matter where life takes us or what we do or don’t do. He is always there behind the face, behind the light. Notice in the lines below how the First Nation’s people also connected life with light and breath.

What is life? It is the flash
of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo
in the wintertime. It is
the little shadow which runs
across the grass and loses
itself in the sunset.
~Crowfoot

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. ~Matthew 6:22  ✝

1132.I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty. ~Edgar Allan Poe

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grass greening again
spring began early advance
air too warm for me

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poppies and larkspur
bloom from seed sown in autumn
no sign of rainfall

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high winds diminished
zephyrs blow dandelions
blue springtime skies

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spider spins a web
backdrop of purply flowers
glory leaps from soil

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day’s end yields pink peace
springtime sunlight waxed and waned
aromas waft forth

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In peace I will lie down and sleep, for You alone, Lord make me dwell in safety. ~Psalm 4:8  ✝

**Poppy image from my yard; all others from Pinterest or Pixabay

1098. How can I stand on the ground every day and not feel its power? How can I live my life stepping on this stuff and not wonder at it? ~William Bryant Logan

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A garden is the mirror of the mind.
It is a place of life, a mystery of green,
moving to the pulse of the year,
and pressing on and pausing the whole
to its own inherent rhythms.
~Henry Beston

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After the autumnal equinox passes sometime in late September the days begin to grow shorter and shorter so that light blesses the soil less and less. Soon with each new cold front that blows in temperatures start dropping more and more from the feverish pitch of their summertime highs. Then as the year’s last child draws near its end, the first freeze comes and the garden starts to wither and unravel. Soon afterwards another freeze arrives, harder than the last, and then another until the stage is set for ice or snow or frost to layer the land. With each onslaught winter’s sting strikes deeper and deeper at the remains of the garden. However, after the winter solstice occurs, the process of “pausing the whole” slowly but surely begins to reverse itself so that day by day there’s a little more sunlight and a little more and a little more until somewhere in all of that movement of the sun and the earth and the stars, the divine mystery and its miracles spark children of the soil into being once more. Faithfully in hidden wombs beneath soil or in bark, embryos have been growing and waiting for the elements to create the right catalytic mixture to push tiny tips upward or outward into the light of day. Following the first emergence of new life, earth’s sacred rhythms, which had been faint as we traversed winter’s veil of grief, become louder again until buds, nurtured by water, warmth, and sunlight, grow large and ripe enough to come into their time of blossoming. So it is that the “pausing” at last comes to an end, and spring’s first comers to press upward, outward and onward burgeoning into flowers and the “mystery of green” that’s a garden. And then in the mirror of my mind I can see clearly the countenance in the Face of all faces because as Robert Brault says, “As a gardener, I’m among those who believe that much of the evidence of God’s existence has been planted.”

Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. ~Psalm 85:11  ✝

882. If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. ~Albert Einstein

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 From Under Toadstools They Came.

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Swirling around me
they danced upon twinkling tips
over shimmering shards of grass
stirred by the early morning breeze.
A hundred sparkling amber eyes watching as
I walk amongst them, smiling, mesmerized by such beauty,
riveted on the turn of a new season, now the last butterflies have gone.
Filligrees of autumn, flashing golden in the low, warmish sunlight,
dashing off across the field only to return to peek once more.
Delicately, they flutter up around and skyward,
And I watch
magically
transfixed
as faeries
descend down
again from up above
~Adapted poem by Ruby Watson

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The fairy poet takes a sheet
Of moonbeam, silver white;
His ink is dew from daisies sweet,
His pen a point of light.
~Joyce Kilmer

Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants. ~Deuteronomy 32:2  ✝

**Images via Pinterest; collage by Natalie

849. Yellow-the hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying between green and orange, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy… ~The Dictionary

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DSC_0012 It has been a kind of yellowlicious day,
and what could such be, one might say?
Well, yellowlicious is as
yellowlicious does,
and what yellowlicious does is color
our days with the brightest of luscious flowers.
~A Dr. Seussical kind of query
by Natalie Scarberry

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I caught
a yellow rhyme
in my hands, and
it fluttered
like a bevy of
bright butterfly wings

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Since yellow is
the brightest color
in the rainbow,
why shouldn’t it
pen flaxen happiness
in the sunlight

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As it spreads
its luminous wings
and paints across
the yard in swaths of gold,
landing here and there
as nimbly as a butterfly

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Now I can’t help but
wonder if one couldn’t
catch such dazzling
poesy and turn it
into butterfly smiles
for the whole world to see.
~Heavily edited and adapted poem
by Gregory Golden

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God your love is so precious. You protect people in the shadow of your wings. ~Psalm 36:7  ✝

751. What light through yonder window breaks? ~William Shakespeare

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A single sunbeam is enough
to drive away many shadows.
~St. Francis of Assisi

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Birds sing after a storm;
why shouldn’t people
feel as free to delight
in whatever sunlight remains
to them.
~Rose Kennedy

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The top picture above was taken a month ago of a river in our area.  The photo beneath it is that same river now, a month later.  But today the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and all’s right with the world. Praise the Lord! Thank you for the rain and for the end of this awful drought here; thank you now for the sun that’s blessing this Sabbath.

The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the Lord binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted. ~Isaiah 30:26  ✝

**Top photo via Pinterest; bottom two aerial photos via local news station

744. We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars … the stars form a circle, and in the center we dance. ~Rumi

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Why does the snowflake melt?
To enliven spring flowers.
Why does summer sun blaze?
To ripen the garden.
Why does the leaf fall?
To bring forth beautiful snow…
Why do the seasons dance so?
To embrace us in the sacred circle.
~Deborah Morrison

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Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons.
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.



Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again

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And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return.
~Wendell Berry

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  ✝

**Image of the journaler’s page found on Pinterest