I love color. I love flaming reds, And vivid greens, And royal flaunting purples. I love the startled rose of the sun at dawning, And the blazing orange of it at twilight.
I love color. I love the drowsy blue of the fringed gentian, And the yellow of the goldenrod, And the rich russet of the leaves That turn at autumn-time…. I love rainbows, And prisms, And the tinsel glitter Of every shop-window.
I love color. And yet today, I saw a brown little bird Perched on the dull-gray fence Of a weed-filled city yard. And as I watched him The little bird Threw back his head Defiantly, almost, And sang a song That was full of gay ripples, And poignant sweetness, And half-hidden melody.
I love color…. I love crimson, and azure, And the glowing purity of white. And yet today, I saw a living bit of brown, A vague oasis on a streak of gray, That brought heaven Very near to me. ~Margaret Sangster “The Colors”
My eye is always looking for the glow of colors or combination of hues like a harmonious chord blending together. It is like a symphony to my retinas…
But if I don’t look closely enough, I miss the beauty of subtle color hidden in a background of drab. They sing, transcending the ordinary.
Today, it was these house sparrows, busy eating grass seeds behind a city building. I heard their chirping before I saw them, they were so camouflaged. They are also known as “gutter birds” given their plain and common appearance. Yet, hearing them and then watching their enthusiastic feeding, there was nothing plain about them.
They had brought a bit of heaven to earth. After all, the Word tells us His eyes are on the sparrow…
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One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice – – – though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. ‘Mend my life!’ each voice cried. But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations – – – though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do – – – determined to save the only life you could save. ~Mary Oliver “The Journey”
None of us can “mend” another person’s life, no matter how much the other may need it, no matter how much we may want to do it.
Mending is inner work that everyone must do for him or herself. When we fail to embrace that truth the result is heartbreak for all concerned.
What we can do is walk alongside the people we care about, offering simple companionship and compassion. And if we want to do that, we must save the only life we can save, our own.
Only when I’m in possession of my own heart can I be present for another in a healing, encouraging, empowering way. Then I have a gift to offer, the best gift I possess—the gift of a self that is whole, that stands in the world on its own two feet. ~Parker Palmer writing about Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey”
Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue. ~Eugene O’Neill
We are born hollering, suddenly set apart, already aware of our emptiness from the first breath, each tiny air sac bursting with the air of a fallen world~
The rest of our days are spent filling up our empty spaces whether alveoli or stomach or synapses starving for understanding, still hollering our loneliness and heart break.
So we are mended through our walk with others who are also broken – we patch up our gaps by knitting the scraggly fragments of lives lived together. We become the crucial glue boiled from gifted Grace, all our holes somehow made holy.
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Seeing this place for the first time today, I think God must thoroughly enjoy playing in this gigantic sandbox. He experiments with shapes and sizes, He changes color and texture, He stacks layers and piles up rubble.
It feels like I could be visiting another planet but this one is His masterpiece.
I am stupefied at the Creative Mind behind this.
At a time when the world’s cacophony is louder than ever, I needed this quiet assurance that God is still at work as sculptor and painter, shaping more than mere rock.
He is still at work shaping us, so that beauty lives above, below, all around and within us.
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Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. ~George Herbert “The Flower”
Our small church has several gracious and kind gardeners who share the produce from their yards each week to provide a fresh bouquet to sit on the table in front of our humble wooden pulpit.
It is a treat to walk into church and see what has been brought to the altar on Sunday morning. I have started to keep a photo album of these very special Sunday “pulpit posies.”
Why are these special? After all, almost every church displays a floral arrangement every Sunday.
These are special as most of these flowers are seeded, watered, fertilized and nurtured by one of our own, grown with love and caring, just as God cares for each of His children.
These are special as some are considered simple weeds, and are picked from ditches and hedges. They are still part of God’s creation and have a wild beauty that can be as breathtaking as a hothouse orchid.
These are special because they often go home with a congregant or visitor who will enjoy their loveliness for many more days, as if they represent the manifestation of God’s Word itself.
Some of us are dahlias, zinnias and roses. Some of us are rare gardenias and orchids. Most of us are dandelions, sagebrush, fireweed, burdock, and daisies populating the ditches.
No matter which roots we sprout from, or where, we are the wonders of this gardening God of love.
As we age, we bud afresh for Him.
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Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn. ~Leo Tolstoy from Reminiscences
I was drinking in the surroundings: air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers and greens in every lush shade imaginable offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow. ~Wendy Delsol
Let’s go I said, to find some light, but not just any light I said. Sure he said, let’s go.
He loves to drive winding roads to breathe chill alpine air.
We headed 90 minutes northeast to find what I needed. The highway empty going up. Gas tank nearing empty with no time to fill up. Only a few photographers there, searching too.
What we see from our backyard forty miles away overwhelms when standing awestruck in its own front yard.
Now my nearly empty tank slowly fills part-way. This dose of inner light will last me until next autumn. Overcome, overwhelmed, overpowered as though it’ll never be enough.
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One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies On water; it glides So from the walker, it turns Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it; As a mantis, arranged On a green leaf, grows Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
Your hands hold roses always in a way that says They are not only yours; the beautiful changes In such kind ways, Wishing ever to sunder Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose For a moment all that it touches back to wonder. ~Richard Wilbur “The Beautiful Changes”
I am changed again, as I blend into autumn.
We can’t help but be transformed by everything around us, you know.
Beautiful is the dying meadow, the shedding of dry reddened leaves, the tidal wave of wildflowers nodding goodbye until next summer.
Beauty is beheld with wonder and then lost to the ages. We cannot change what we see, but treasure its transience, as we cherish our own brief moments here.
We hold on lightly, ready to let go when the time comes. What comes next is beautiful beyond imagining.
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O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with color! That gaunt crag To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all, But never knew I this; Here such a passion is As stretcheth me apart,– Lord, I do fear Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year; My soul is all but out of me,– let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call. ~Edna St. Vincent Millay “God’s World”
Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute? I’m ready to go back. I should have listened to you. That’s all human beings are! Just blind people. ~Thornton Wilder, from Emily’s monologue in Our Town
Let me not wear blinders through my days. Let me see and hear and feel it all even when it seems too much to bear.
Lord, prepare me to be so whelmed at your world, that Heaven itself will be familiar, and not that far, Just round the corner.
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Silk-thin silver strings woven cleverly into a lair, An intricate entwining of divinest thread… Like strands of magic worked upon the air, The spider spins his enchanted web – His home so eerily, spiraling spreads.
His gossamer so rigid, yet lighter than mist, And like an eight-legged sorcerer – a wizard blest, His lace, like a spell, he conjures and knits; I witnessed such wild ingenuity wrought and finessed, Watching the spider weave a dream from his web. ~Jonathan Platt“A Spider’s Web”
Not everyone is taking a holiday today on Labor Day. Some are busier than ever, creating a masterpiece nightly, then waiting in hope for that labor to be rewarded.
I too spin elaborate dreams at night: some remembered, some bare fragments, some shattered, some potentially yield a meal.
We work because we are hungry. We work because someone we love is hungry and needs feeding.
Yet the best work is the work of weaving dreams ~out of thin air and gossamer strands~ where nothing existed before, not as a trap or lure or lair but as a work of beauty- a gift as welcome as a breath of fresh air.
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