Love’s secret is always lifting
its head out from under the covers,
“Here I am!”
~Rumi, as interpreted by Coleman Barks
Morning’s first light
kisses the day to wakefulness
and announces Yahweh’s presence.
See it!
Feel it!
Taste it!
Touch it!
Hear the secrets
the dawn has to tell!
~Natalie Scarberry
The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy. ~Psalm 65:8 ✝
Down, down, down and drip, drip, drip
falls the gray, gray, grayness of yet another rainy day.
And outside my feet go squish, squish, squish
from the rain and snow and rain and snow and rain,
but oh heavens no, no, no you won’t find me a fussin’
because now, my friends, a grow, grow, growin’
we’ll find the sweet green, green, greening things
of advancing, birthing, sprouting spring.
~Natalie Scarberry
O the green things growing, the green things growing,
The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!
I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve,
Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing.
O the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing!
How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing;
In the wonderful white of the weird moonlight
Or the dim dreamy dawn when the cocks are crowing.
I love, I love them so – my green things growing!
And I think that they love me, without false showing;
For by many a tender touch, they comfort me so much,
With the soft mute comfort of green things growing.
And in the rich store of their blossoms glowing
Ten for one I take they’re on me bestowing:
Oh, I should like to see, if God’s will it may be,
Many, many a summer of my green things growing!
But if I must be gathered for the angel’s sowing,
Sleep out of sight awhile, like the green things growing,
Though dust to dust return, I think I’ll scarcely mourn,
If I may change into green things growing.
~Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. ~Ephesians 5:19b-20 ✝
** Image via Pinterest
Blessings are the things we take for granted.
Most know the Earth is utterly enchanted
Yet walk through life and love mechanically.
Love brings the sweet relief of absolution,
Enveloping our hesitance in need.
No touch inspires so swift a revolution,
Transforming all the hieroglyphs we read.
In your love is the charity of spring,
Nor self-obsessed nor blinded by some creed,
Embracing the grey dawns that blessings bring.
~Excerpted lines by Cornelius Lyons
Dawn washes away night’s darkness and brings light to the day. Be grateful for the light, your eyes, and the purposes they serve. Ears allow humankind to hear the song of the birds and words of love. Be grateful for them and the purposes they serve. Feet take mortals places where they want and need to go. Be grateful for them and the purposes they serve. Arms and hands enable people to work, care for themselves, and embrace others. Be grateful for them and the purposes they serve. The in and out movement of breath sustains the gift of life all have been granted. Thus, in all things honor the gifts, the Giver, and the blessings that they are and that they bring.
…because of your father’s God, who helps you, because of the Almighty, who blesses you with blessings of the skies above, blessings of the deep springs below, blessings of the breast and womb. Your father’s blessings are greater than the blessings of the ancient mountains, than the bounty of the age-old hills… ~Genesis 49:25-26 ✝
**Image via Pinterest
I love to think of nature
as an unlimited broadcasting station,
through which God speaks to us every hour,
if we will only tune in.
~George Washington Carver
The child whispered, “God, speak to me”
And a meadowlark sang.
The child did not hear.
So the child yelled, “God, speak to me!”
And the thunder rolled across the sky
But the child did not listen.
The child looked around and said,
“God let me see you” and a star shone brightly
But the child did not notice.
And the child shouted, “God show me a miracle!”
And a life was born
But the child did not know.
So the child cried out in despair,
“Touch me God, and let me know you are here!”
Where upon God reached down
And touched the child.
But the child brushed the butterfly away
And walked away unknowingly.
~Ravindra Kumar Harnani
He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals his thoughts to mankind, who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth–the Lord God Almighty is His name. ~Amos 4:13 ✝
** Images via Pinterest
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
What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not for this alone.
Is it to feel our strength –
Not our bloom only, but our strength -decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?
Yes, this, and more!
It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.
It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel:
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion -none.
It is -last stage of all –
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves…
~Excerpted lines from a poem by Matthew Arnold
Echoes, echoes of the past–voices, so many familiar voices gone, now silenced by the closing of their life’s doors–memories, memories mingling with the present, all bringing the dark clouds that move in across her brain where the fury of raging storms begin on unfamiliar shores. The echoes, the voices, and the memories become scrambled in her dementia so that things and people once cherished create anxiety, anguish, and at times torment. Her mind, once sharp and clear, is now befuddled as she becomes more and more lost inside herself and her fears. Her family raised, her labors done, there is nothing left now but the lonely silence of her worsening deafness and the rapid waning of her vision. Soon she will be ever so far away from me, the one in whose womb my life began. Will she then still know my face and the feel of my touch? Will the skies ever again clear in her head and cast her weary, but back on familiar shores? Or has she begun the final journey of her dreaded aloneness? Please Lord, be with my mother as she struggles to navigate these dark passages of uncharted waters. Bring her comfort and peace, and if not mine, then let her recognize Your touch and know Your face. Let the child she has again become blindly trust as she once did that all is well with her soul and that You will care for her always. And let Your sweet benedictions steal into her senescent heart and fragile mind that’s becoming so profoundly confused, wounded, and betrayed by her aged, earthly body.
One of my followers commented yesterday on my memory post about the sadness of dealing with an aging parent who has Alzheimer’s, and I know that others of you are caring for elderly parents whose memories are failing. In those situations there are two or more people affected by the circumstances; both the aged and their caregiver(s) are profoundly impacted by this passage. So I decided to share the above with all of you. It is something I wrote in my journal during a long, hard night when I was caring for my 92-year-old mother before she passed away.
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you. ~Isaiah 46:4 ✝
**Image via Pinterest
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you. ~Isaiah 46:4 ✝
My Garden is a pleasant place
Of sun glory and leaf grace.
My lilac trees are old and tall;
They send their perfume over trees
And roofs and streets, to find the bees.
I wish some power would touch my ear
With magic touch, and make me hear
What all the blossoms say, and so
I might know what the winged things know.
And I would sing them all for you!
My garden is a pleasant place
Of moon glory and wind grace.
O friend, wherever you may be,
Will you not come to visit me?
Over fields and streams and hills,
I’ll pipe like yellow daffodils,
And every little wind that blows
Shall take my message as it goes.
A heart may travel very far
To come where its desires are,
Oh, may some power touch my ear,
And grant me grace, and make you hear!
~Excerpts from a poem by Louise Driscoll
I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. ~Ecclesiastes 2:5 ✝
**photo via Pinterest
Who loves a garden
Finds within his soul
Life’s whole,
He hears the anthem of the soil
While ingrates toil;
And sees beyond his little sphere
The waving fronds of heaven, clear.
~Louise Seymour Jones
I’ve been trying to figure out today what it is about a garden that is so seductive and irresistible for me, but I’m still no closer to an answer than when I’ve pondered it before. I just know that something in nature calls to me and touches me on a deep level, brings glad music to my heart, and feeds “life’s whole” within my soul. That’s why the losses due to last weekend’s dirty “trick” have struck a grievous blow to my heart which in turn has sent me sinking down, down, down into what one writer has called winter’s “vale of grief.” Normally I can shake things off pretty quickly, but in addition to that casualty the arthritis in my left knee and left foot have me hobbling around on a cane, unable to get outside and do things that need to be done in the garden, and that’s creating a bluer than blue, bluish “funk.” Now after spending way too much time inside, stationary and feeling a bit sorry for myself, I’m STARVED!!! Like a junkie, I need my “fix.” I need to hear the “anthem of the soil.” Moreover, I need to touch the earth and dig in the dirt. I need to feel Eden’s beating heart, her rhythms. I need to hear the birds singing over my head. I need color. I need to see things growing and to look upon flowery faces, even a wretched dandelion would do. I need to feel the sun’s warmth on my back. And as much as anything else I need to feel God’s palpable presence in my tiny corner of His sanctum sanctorum.
Alas, sadly, I’m afraid it will be sometime before all those needs are met. So I dug around on Pinterest board’s trying to find the kinds of images that typically draw me into a garden’s web of magic and glory. Since I have no way of knowing when Old Man Winter will return to his arctic cave nor when my body will stop betraying me, they and a a little garden poetry will have to suffice.
From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul. ~Deuteronomy 4:29 ✝
Sometimes we write love in small letters-
Spreading the butter on his toast or
Wiping down the kitchen counter dabbed with
Peanut butter and jelly…
Love is often dangling on a clothesline
And snatching a peek at a sleeping face;
It is the giving up and giving in
To another’s want with joy…
Blowing, kissing and holding tight is
Love’s voice upon a sore finger, a wrinkled
Cheek, a weary shoulder than saunters at
Days end hopelessly…
Minutes are just as vital in love’s scaling
Upward climb to perfection, the afternoons
Picking strawberries and the morning
Prayer that’s an alloy…
Write love, in capital or small, it doesn’t matter–
Pen it with every touch; add it to tuna casseroles
And let it water down every heartache at
Your midnight soliloquies
But compose it…
Jot it down
and engrave it without restraint!
Dirty your hands in it
and clean a soul with
It…
Like the only work you’ve employed.
~Deborah Jeanne Avila
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing… ~1 Corinthians 13 ✝
The world is holy.
We are holy.
All life is holy.
Daily prayers are delivered
on the lips of breaking waves,
the whisperings of grasses,
the shimmering of leaves.
~Terry Tempest Williams,
American author and naturalist
I’ve even seen what seems like daily prayers being offered up from the nodding heads of birthing flowers in the garden. It’s as if they know to reverence life and its Giver. For we humans reverence for life sometimes comes through the senses for with them we are able to see, hear, smell, touch, and taste Creation’s pervasive holiness. Moreover, from a power of perception seemingly independent of the five senses we are able to discern the holiness that exists within the human heart. And why not? The human heart is, after all, the Divine’s sanctuary, and as such it is the mystical core from which God operates in our lives. To come into that inner place of holiness is to come “home” in a way for therein croons the voice, soft and sweet, of a loving Father. If we strive to listen to and obey His still, small Voice, a well within is filled with the mercy, forgiveness, and love needed for us to blossom into a purposeful anointing. Surely even the angels stand in awe of such as this.
. . . by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of His own purpose and grace. ~2 Timothy 1:9 ✝
Sacred Touches 