621. Color is a power which directly influences the soul. ~Wassily Kandinsky

January 23, 2015 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, or wine red.
~Eduardo Galeano

There is not one blade of grass,
there is no color in this world
that is not intended to make us rejoice.
~John Calvin

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud–
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms our ear or sight
all melodies the echoes of that voice,
all colours a suffusion from that light.
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In nature, light creates the color.
In the picture, color creates the light.
~Hans Hoffman

Color! Ah, the fabulous, mystic realm of color! Just look at these flowers I photographed in my greenhouse yesterday! What a sacred voice is the song of their colors! It never fails to wow me over and over again! Even in the low-light of a cold, grey, rainy winter’s day, color declares and praises God’s holy name! Thus, may it ever draw us near Him.

Sing the praises of the Lord, you His faithful people; praise His holy name. ~ Psalm 30: 4 ✝

620. There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you… ~Colette

January 22, 2015 by nataliescarberry

In solitude
she sifts silence
searching for insights
from a marsh of memories
within each of life’s stages
penning prayers and praise
tucking each thought
word by word
phrase by phrase
onto pages.
~Wendy L. Macdonald at https://greenlightlady.wordpress.com/

Drip, drip, drip fell the winter rain. Deep, deep, deep grew the morning’s silence. Dark were the clouds that dimmed the light of day. Delicious was the morn’s “marsh of memories” floating through stages of my life. Time and circumstance seemed irrelevant as I basked in the quiet solitude punctuated exclusively by the soft pitter pats of falling rain. There were no fret nor frenzy in the morning’s damp and whispered song, and so I sat sifting the silence in search of nothing more to pen on today’s page than words of praise for the blessing of rain and the gift of life for another day, nothing more than words of gratitude for the peace it had brought and the Holy Presence I felt all around me.

“Now, my God, may your eyes be open and your ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place…” ~2 Chronicles 6:40 ✝

**Image via Pinterest

561. If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul. ~Rabbi Harold Kushner

November 27, 2014 by nataliescarberry

Above me and below me
Hovers the beautiful.
I am surrounded by it.
I am immersed in it.
~Native American Saying

I thank God for the ways of Creation–
For eyes to see Creation’s beauty,
For ears to hear Creation’s sounds,
For a tongue to taste Creation’s savory delights,
For a nose to smell Creation’s sweet aromas,
For arms to embrace others with a loving touch,
For a heart to understand the ways of the Lord,
For words to praise the triune God, Maker of heaven and earth.
~Edited and adapted from a Native American prayer

I will praise God’s name in song and glorify Him with thanksgiving. ~Psalm 69:30 ✝

** Image via Pinterest

536. There is music in the meadows…There is rhythm in the woods, and in the fields…  ~William Stanley Braithwaite

November 2, 2014 by nataliescarberry

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

I imagine the eyes of Jesus
Were harvest brown,
The light of their gazing suffused
With the seasons:

The shadow of winter,
The mind of spring,
The blues of summer,
And amber of harvest.

A gaze that is perfect sister
To the kindness that dwells
In his beautiful hands.

The eyes of Jesus gaze on us,
Stirring in the heart’s clay
The confidence of seasons
That never lose their way to harvest.

This gaze knows the signature
Of our heartbeat, the first glimmer
From the dawn that dreamed our minds,

The crevices where thoughts grow
Long before the longing in the bone
Sends them towards the mind’s eye,

The artistry of the emptiness
That knows to slow the hunger
Of outside things until they weave
Into the twilight side of the heart,

A gaze full of all that is still future
Looking out for us to glimpse
The jeweled light in winter stone,

Quickening the eyes that look at us
To see through to where words
Are blind to say what we would love,

Forever falling softly on our faces,
His gaze plies the soul with light,
Laying down a luminous layer,

Beneath our brief and brittle days
Until the appointed dawn comes
Assured and harvest deft

To unravel the last black knot
And we are back home in the house
That we have never left.
~John O’Donohue

Jesus called the crowd to Him and said, “Listen and understand.” ~Matthew 15:10 ✝

* Edited image via Pinterest

532. Oh darkly, deeply, beautifully blue… ~Lord Byron

October 29, 2014 by nataliescarberry

The touch of an infinite mystery
passes over the trivial and the familiar,
making it break out into ineffable music…
The trees, the stars, and the blue hills
ache with a meaning
which can never be uttered in words.
~Rabindranath Tagore

The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water.

Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue.

The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance.

This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue. ~Rebecca Solnit

In the eyes, windows to the soul, of some and even in the color of our unique, blue marble of a planet one comes upon the divine mystery that “can never be uttered in words” at the “edges and in the depths” of the “deeply, beautifully blue” of which Byron, Tagore, Solnit, and “Holy Writ” speak.

They are to take a blue cloth and cover the lamp-stand that is for light, together with is lamps, its wick trimmers and trays, and all its jars for the olive oil used to supply it. ~Numbers 4:9 ✝

**Images via Pinterest

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

October 26, 2014 by nataliescarberry

If I were not a physicist,
I would probably be a musician.
I often think in music.
I live my daydreams in music.
I see my life in terms of music.
I get most of my joy  in life out of music.
~Albert Einstein

My heart, O God, is steadfast, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music. ~Psalm 57:7 ✝

495. It is such a secret place, the land of tears. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

September 22, 2014 by nataliescarberry

The Holy Scriptures praise the dew of the morning
and the dew of the evening;
ros matutinum, ros serotinum!
Happy is he who possesses the gift of tears!
When young, he will bear flowers;  when old, fruit!
~Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest,
translated from French by Isabel F. Hapgood

Tears are words
the heart can’t express.
~Author Unknown

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” ~Revelation 21:4 ✝

**Image via Pinterest

494. Every dew-drop and rain-drop had a whole heaven within it. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

September 21, 2014 by nataliescarberry

How cunningly nature hides  every
wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity
under roses and violets and morning dew.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Earth’s liquid jewelry, wrought of air.
The dew ‘tis of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy.
~Philip James Bailey

Angels in the early morning
may be seen the dews among.
Stooping, plucking, smiling, flying.
Do the buds belong to them?
~Emily Dickinson

That breath you just took; it was a gift! The day that lies before you; it’s a gift! And it’s a unique gift, a new creation of God’s ageless story. Twenty four hours a day, 7 days a week, His promise of renewal is delightfully visible especially early in the day when everything sparkles with the kind of magic that sometimes can be seen in the dew on roses and other things.

It’s easy to believe in magic when you’re young.
Anything you couldn’t explain was magic then.
It didn’t matter if it was science or a fairy tale.
Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious
and equally possible–elves probably more so.
~Charles de Lint

I may no longer be young but while birds call to one another and bees busily work, it’s easy still for me to imagine that garden fairies are blessing the flowers and sprinkling them with dew because they glisten and shine like Yahweh’s glory. And it is when I sense His Presence in the light and the sweet aromas that arise from the flowers and the soil that I fall in love with the Lord of Life all over again.

Listen, O heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants, I will proclaim the name of the LORD. Oh, praise the greatness of our God! ~Deuteronomy 32:1-3 ✝

Thank you, Lord, for my piece of Eden here on a small portion of the Texas prairie and for Your redeeming work on the cross at Calvary.

** Images via Pinterest

484. Flowers are those little colorful beacons of the sun from which we get sunshine when dark, somber skies blanket our thoughts. ~Dodinsky

September 11, 2014 by nataliescarberry

The earth has received the embrace of the sun
and we shall see the result of that love.
~Hunkesni (Sitting Bull)

The flowers in these photos are the result of another year’s embrace of the sun. It will be the remembrance of them and the haunting songs of their colors, separately and collectively, that will lift my spirits when in the months to come we traverse winter’s “vale of grief.” If my memory of them should grow dim, I’ll have but to look heavenward and watch for them in the rising and the setting of the sun on days when a window in the gloom has been opened. In those moments when they streak the eastern or western horizon in a blaze of glory I’ll remember that as the earth tilts back toward the sun, the sun’s embrace will bring the flowers, their lovely colors, and their songs back to life. When they return and the air is filled with the music of many rhymes, my prayer is. . .

That the morning sun stir us with gladness from ours bed,
That the winds of March move us happily along the new year’s road,
That the rains of April renew our strength,
That the flowers and colors of May captivate our sight,
That the summer inflame our zeal,
That autumn’s colors stimulate our dreams,
That the silver moon make us wiser yet,
That the Lord keep us young at heart so that
we are full of life, laughter, song, and gratitude
for the holiness and goodness in all that the sun and His love embraces.
~Edited and adapted from a blessing by Fr. Andrew Greeley

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. ~Psalm 19:1-5 ✝

** I made the collage of flowers from images found on PInterest.

455. For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. ~Albert Camus

August 13, 2014 by nataliescarberry

People usually consider
walking on water or in thin air a miracle.
But I think the real miracle is not
to walk either on water or in thin air,
but to walk on earth.
Every day we are engaged in a miracle
which we don’t even recognize:
a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves,
the black, curious eyes of a child —
our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

Did you hear them? There were explosions, lots and lots of big explosions! And yet there were no bombs falling from above, no heat seeking missiles flying through space, no rapid fire from automatic weapons, nor the noisy advance of charging legions. Rather there were the quiet explosions of life that I’m blessed to witness every morning in my yard. In lieu of bombs and missiles and guns, there are the bursts of light at dawn, the fluttering of avian wings, the buzz of nectaring bees, the dancing rhythms of butterflies, the sizzle of the sun, the gentle zephyrs that ruffle leaves, the bursting open of blossoms, the purring of furry felines, the hopping of grasshoppers and toads, the slithering of lizards and snakes and on and on and on it goes…Life, too wondrous and thrilling and miraculous for a mere mortal’s words.

Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? ~Galatians 3:5 ✝

Thank you, Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! May I dwell in Your holy presence and praise Your name for all that you have given and done.

Sacred Touches

Life is a time of purpose and anointed blossoming…

Tag Archives: Words