"Every day, from early spring to late fall, she made a little wander around her house and yard to see what was coming up or getting ready to bloom or blooming." -Wendell Berry
2 Comments
"Quia per incarnati Verbi mysterium, nova mentis nostrae oculis lux thrae claritatis infulsit: ut dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amorem rapiamur."
"Because by the mystery of the Incarnate Word the new light of Thy brightness hath shone upon the eyes of our mind: that we, knowing God seen of the eyes, by Him may be snatched up into the love of that which eye hath not seen." Missale Romanum via Evelyn Underhill "The task of adding new lines and sentences and paragraphs to one's collection can become an ever tempting substitute for reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting what is already there. And wisdom that is not frequently revisited is wisdom wasted." - Alan Jacobs
"Poems are not read like novels. There is much pleasure to be had in taking the same fourteen-line sonnet to bed with you and reading it many times over for a week. Savor, taste, enjoy. Poetry is not made to be sucked up like a child's milkshake, it is much better sipped like a precious malt whiskey. Verse is one of our last stands against the instant and infantile." Stephen Frye "When we are spiritually deaf, we are not aware that anything important is happening in our lives. We keep running away from the present moment, and we try to create experiences that make our lives worthwhile. So we fill up our time to avoid the emptiness we otherwise would feel. When we are truly listening, we come to know that God is speaking to us, pointing the way, showing the direction. WE simply need to learn to keep our ears open. Discernment is a life of listening to a deeper sound and marching to a different beat, a life in which we become 'all ears.'" Henri Nouwen
"Into the fabric of miracles he interwove even greater miracles."
-Saint Proclus, Bishop of Constantinople "An [art] exhibit is powerful because it brings us face to face with the actual object that hosts the traces of master-hands. Yet we want to take this experience of the original home with us by buying some kind of a replica. So, while the gift of the experience is in the encounter with the original, many still walk away with two credit card hits. We buy because we want to concretize what has moved us even while wonder cannot be bought and surprise cannot be orchestrated. They are grace-filled: unbidden and to be received with open hands, hearts and minds. And while we await them, we live with the expectation that the Holy One will hold forth what we need precisely when we need it and in fitting manner: abundantly, surprisingly and evocatively."
–from "Things That Cannot Be Bought" by Allen G. Jorgensen, on his blog, stillvoicing. "Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality which surrounds us." -Thoreau
God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-- Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. Gerard Manley Hopkins "It seems to me appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great Imagination which in the beginning, for the delight of men and angels and (in their proper mode) of beasts, had invented and formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to express Itself in human speech, that speech should sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible. "
~ C.S.Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms |
"Ideas
|
A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life. The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.
All
Book Of Centuries
Book Of Firsts
Church Year
Commonplace
Copywork
Enquire Within
Fortitude Journal
Gratitude Journal
Keeping
Music Notebook
Nature Notebook
Notebooks
Picture File
Poetry
Prayer Journal
Recipes
Zeitgeist