You will be certain to find something you have never seen before...
Alexander Graham Bell
Here's what I was thinking about today, a quote from my daily "Simplicity" calendar, "inspiration for a simpler life:" Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. You will be certain to find something you have never seen before... Alexander Graham Bell I didn't dive into the woods, but I did wander a bit. I wasn't sure what I was looking for - but here's what I found! (Thanks for the challenge, Mr. Bell!) What were you looking for today? What did you find? HumminB
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Time for a wonder-full walk. Want to come along? With temperatures soaring to the 70’s - 30 or 40 degrees warmer than normal!!- we won’t even need our sweatshirts! (As you can tell, our walk happened a few days ago, since today is a rainy "high of 47 degrees" day!! I guess this makes our wonder-full walk even more of a treasure!) Let’s wander along Hickory Lane and Cemetery Road; the sky is a canvas of cloud splendor, and it might take us forever to walk a mile...I keep stopping to look up, to turn fully around and look again, gaping at the shifting magic overhead. The scene changes, reframes, comes into focus, fades, and changes again. I can't seem to find any words but Wow! And thanks! In the flooded meadow, the puddles are full of clouds, it’s Longfellow’s “Infinite meadows of heaven” reflected in slop, and I think, “This is my life.” (Yours too?) Still, it’s puddle-wonderful. (Thanks, e e cummings.) My heart is so full I can barely breathe. For three days, that one new worship song has filled my mind, my heart; now it overflows, and I’m singing truth loud and scaring the birds. Your deep, deep love Washes over me Your deep, deep love Fills my every need How I long to hear Your voice call out my name It draws me to Your deep, deep love... (You can learn it and sing along right here!) I adapt it and sing it again - "How I love to hear Your voice call out my name, it draws me to Your deep deep love..." The creek sings too, its own water music, lavishly splashing the full greenness of spring across a dead log. Willows wave promises, and I wave back. Overhead, a robin prances in the tree tops...(but won't perch for a clear photo!) Bluebird call notes make my heart race; a cardinal sings in the underbrush. And look! In the thorn thicket, a perky Carolina wren announces himself. Not all the sounds are music. Near the still-frozen pond, geese are loudly out-of-sorts. Probably, they wanted to take a float; their complaints rasp the air like rusty gate racket. But I still love them. They make me smile. And over everything, sky wonder. More extravagant than you would ever imagine seeing in this long valley in the drab of February. The skyscape is full of glory, clouds of all sorts gather and disband, little windows of azure open and close, and I wonder what’s coming next...Jesus? A cold front? Both? This vision of sky beauty and the smell of wet earth and the robin song of hope swell up inside of me and I’m sure if I don’t sing I’ll break wide open... Were the whole realm of nature mine. (Wait...isn’t it all mine for the seeing and hearing and feeling touching and even tasting, because it’s all His and so am I, and it’s all gift?) That were an offering... (a present, this present moment, my heart clear full, my vision fully clear for this glimpse of enough and glory, mud and clouds) Far too small – (and yet it’s all I have to offer, my small presence, my small gifts, my small full soul, broken, mended, filling, spilling joy.) Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all. It’s small, but it’s my all... and I fling it heavenward like a handful of feathers and of course it comes back all over me, joyful thanks pouring grace back over me. I’m walking on a cloud of His enoughness, and it carries me. Maybe tonight in my dreams, I’ll be flying. Hummin(flyin!)B
For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. Ivan Panin A half dozen gratitudes for the commonplace bits of beauty my eye has seen on a mild winter day... 1. Sunrise glowing like this, just for a few minutes... 2. Bluebirds calling and singing, as if they didn't notice the snow. 3. Soft spring-promise green shining on the meadow willow. 4. Late winter afternoon sun sparkling on a chattering creek... 5. Momentary parhelion shimmering along the mountain just before sunset... from the guest room window. And I almost missed it. Almost. 6. A delicately beautiful sunset streaked with every shade of blue. For most of these bits of beauty, the space between seeing and not seeing was moments... a glance, and then a second glance. The briefest pause...and oh! How many times do I miss the opportunity to see and to give thanks because I'm in too much of a hurry to notice, moving too fast to catch the glimpses of glory? That's why I need to wander and wonder. Because if Ivan Pavin is right, and "for every beauty there is an eye to see it," I want to be that eye. Let me be singing when the evening comes...or at least humming. HumminB.
I’m sitting in darkness at my morning spot, listening as rain drums steadily against the metal porch roof. I check my weather app: “Rain continuing for 120 minutes.” I know I won’t be needing my camera this morning. Eventually, light will seep across the valley in the least obvious manner, but nothing picture-worthy will splash across my view- no flung clouds in God-gaudy pink, no eye-pleasing blue backdrop. Blinding golden rays will not reach across my desk, stretching long shadows over my journal pages. And yet. I have no anxiety about whether the light will come. No doubt, no worry. I barely give it a thought. I’m sure. The light will come. Is this because of my great faith? Am I “naming and claiming” the certainty of sunrise? Of course, no. It seems silly to even mention the possibility. It’s not about me. It’s about the utter reliability of the sun. I can stake my claim with certainty – the light will come – because of the dependability of the sun. It seems so obvious. And yet. How often do I spend time fretting, anxious, full of fears and worries when I’m sitting in the dark of life, waiting for God to show up? As if this time He blinked and didn’t notice my struggle. As if He went for a short walk and missed my call. As if my text message got “lost in cyberspace” en route to His inbox, or the server was down. When will my trust in God match my faith in the reliability of the sun? No, He doesn’t always (often!) do just what I want. I find no guarantees for a certain type of sunrise, a color that’s my favorite, or a photo worthy cloud formation. But is God always at work, morning by morning, in my life? Will He show up? Can I count on Him? Well, I want to trust, but some days...my faith in the sun appears to be stronger than my faith in the One who makes it rise. If I had a child who was anxious about whether the sun was going to come up today, how could I help her be sure? I think the best thing she can do is study the sun (and the earth...because the sun doesn’t actually rise, we move to meet the sun, but that’s a different topic!) – figure out the nature and habits of the sun, discover what is known about the rotation of the earth, the declination of a location on the globe, etc. Eventually, as the seeker’s knowledge grows – both facts and personal experience with sunrise, - her certainty in the reliability of sunrise grows, and worry fades. In the same way, I don’t need to “conjure up” more faith when I’m struggling. (What a relief!!!) What I can do is focus on discovering what God is like as I read His Word and listen to the stories around me. When I pause to think about how I’ve experienced Him, when I hear how others in ancient times and recent days have seen God working, I expand my knowledge of “what God is like.” I study the Son...figure out the Nature and habits of the One. As I learn to know Him better, my trust grows, and my faith is deepened, and I spend less time wondering if He will show up, more time watching for Him to act in every corner of my day. Even in the dark, I can count on Him because He always shows up. The light will come. HumminB
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