Finally my friends the Pussywillows are "at home." Surely every child begins their Book of Firsts with this delight:
I KNOW A LITTLE PUSSY I know a little pussy Her coat is silver gray She lives down in the meadow Not very far away. Though she is a pussy She’ll never be a cat. She is a pussy willow. Now what do you think of that! Traditional PUSSY WILLOWS Tune: “Frère Jacques” Pussy willows, Pussy willows, Soft and gray, Soft and gray. They are really so much fun, As I count them one by one, Soft and gray, Spring’s on it’s way! Jean Warren
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The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe
Gerard Manley Hopkins (go ahead, read it out loud) WILD air, world-mothering air, Nestling me everywhere, That each eyelash or hair Girdles; goes home betwixt The fleeciest, frailest-flixed Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed With, riddles, and is rife In every least thing’s life; This needful, never spent, And nursing element; My more than meat and drink, My meal at every wink; This air, which, by life’s law, My lung must draw and draw Now but to breathe its praise, Minds me in many ways Of her who not only Gave God’s infinity Dwindled to infancy Welcome in womb and breast, Birth, milk, and all the rest But mothers each new grace That does now reach our race-- Mary Immaculate, Merely a woman, yet Whose presence, power is Great as no goddess’s Was deemèd, dreamèd; who This one work has to do-- Let all God’s glory through, God’s glory which would go Through her and from her flow Off, and no way but so. I say that we are wound With mercy round and round As if with air: the same Is Mary, more by name. She, wild web, wondrous robe, Mantles the guilty globe, Since God has let dispense Her prayers his providence: Nay, more than almoner, The sweet alms’ self is her And men are meant to share Her life as life does air. If I have understood, She holds high motherhood Towards all our ghostly good And plays in grace her part About man’s beating heart, Laying, like air’s fine flood, The deathdance in his blood; Yet no part but what will Be Christ our Saviour still. Of her flesh he took flesh: He does take fresh and fresh, Though much the mystery how, Not flesh but spirit now And makes, O marvellous! New Nazareths in us, Where she shall yet conceive Him, morning, noon, and eve; New Bethlems, and he born There, evening, noon, and morn-- Bethlem or Nazareth, Men here may draw like breath More Christ and baffle death; Who, born so, comes to be New self and nobler me In each one and each one More makes, when all is done, Both God’s and Mary’s Son. Again, look overhead How air is azurèd; O how! nay do but stand Where you can lift your hand Skywards: rich, rich it laps Round the four fingergaps. Yet such a sapphire-shot, Charged, steepèd sky will not Stain light. Yea, mark you this: It does no prejudice. The glass-blue days are those When every colour glows, Each shape and shadow shows. Blue be it: this blue heaven The seven or seven times seven Hued sunbeam will transmit Perfect, not alter it. Or if there does some soft, On things aloof, aloft, Bloom breathe, that one breath more Earth is the fairer for. Whereas did air not make This bath of blue and slake His fire, the sun would shake, A blear and blinding ball With blackness bound, and all The thick stars round him roll Flashing like flecks of coal, Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt, In grimy vasty vault. So God was god of old: A mother came to mould Those limbs like ours which are What must make our daystar Much dearer to mankind; Whose glory bare would blind Or less would win man’s mind. Through her we may see him Made sweeter, not made dim, And her hand leaves his light Sifted to suit our sight. Be thou then, O thou dear Mother, my atmosphere; My happier world, wherein To wend and meet no sin; Above me, round me lie Fronting my froward eye With sweet and scarless sky; Stir in my ears, speak there Of God’s love, O live air, Of patience, penance, prayer: World-mothering air, air wild, Wound with thee, in thee is led, Fold home, fast fold thy child. "Here's how to get things done: begin at once and do the best you can." -Jim Bellows
& this encore Do The Next Thing From an old English parsonage, Down by the sea, There came in the twilight, A message to me; Its quaint Saxon legend, Deeply engraven, Hath, as it seems to me, Teaching from Heaven. And on through the hours The quiet words ring Like a low inspiration- DO THE NEXT THING Many a questioning, many a fear, Many a doubt, hath its quieting here. Moment by moment, Let down from Heaven, Time, opportunity, Guidance, are given. Fear not tomorrows, Child of the King, Trust them with Jesus, DO THE NEXT THING Do it immediately; Do it with prayer; Do it reliantly, casting all care; Do it with reverence, Tracing His Hand, Who placed it before thee with Earnest command. Stayed on Omnipotence, Safe 'neath His wing, Leave all resultings, DO THE NEXT THING Looking to Jesus, ever serener, (Working or suffering) Be thy demeanor, In His dear presence, The rest of His calm, The light of His countenance Be thy psalm, Strong in His faithfulness, Praise and sing, Then, as He beckons thee, DO THE NEXT THING -Author unknown "Wind's in the east, mist coming in.
Like somethin' is brewin' and bout to begin. Can't put me finger on what lies in store, But I fear what's to happen all happened before." --Mary Poppins Assurances
I fortify myself with these: The calm assurances of trees That girdle with their sheltering boughs The shelving rooftree of my house-- The friendly maple, and the pine Whose pungence is an anodyne; The ermined birch, the poplar slim, The graceful ash, erect and trim. By night my waking ear receives The soothing gossip of their leaves; By the warm light of day I see Their elemental bravery. They are my prop, they are my stay Against all doubting and dismay; They are my inspiration, these, The stanch, the skyward-lifting trees! Clinton Scollard “I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought, In time’s great period shall return to nought. I know that all the muse’s heavenly lays, With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought, As idle sounds, of few or none are sought, That there is nothing lighter than mere praise.” DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN. THE WORLD OF WORK AS A POET WOULD LIKE IT TO BE
There is no point in work unless it absorbs you like an absorbing game. If it doesn’t absorb you if it’s never any fun, don’t do it. When a man goes out to work he is alive like a tree in spring, he is living, not merely working. When the hindus weave thin wool into long, long lengths of stuff with their thin dark hands and their wide dark eyes and their still souls absorbed they are like slender trees putting forth leaves, a long white web of living leaf, the tissue they weave, and they clothe themselves in white as a tree clothes itself in its own foliage, As with cloth, so with houses, ships, shoes, wagons or cups or loaves. Men might put them forth as a snail its shell, as a bird that leans its breast against its nest, to make it round, As the turnip models its round root, as the bush makes its own flowers and gooseberries, putting them forth, not manufacturing them, And cities might be as once they were, bowers grown out from the busy bodies of people’ And so it will be again, men will smash the machines. At last, for the sake of clothing himself in his own leaf-like cloth tissued from his life, and dwelling in his own bowery house, like a beaver’s nibbled mansion And drinking from cups that came off his fingers like flowers off their five-fold stem, he will cancel the machines we have got. D H Lawrence 1885-1930 Amazed by Love by Luci Shaw
The kinship of woman with man, of water with stone, is a mystery—the biting of rocks into the river’s body—the lotion of water like silk on rough granite—a touch tender and feral, like the wind combing a green field of oats. A storm—all the earth trembles, and then is still. This astonishment, with its sudden thunder, will shake the breath in your body the way oil and water shiver together, and when they settle-- a strange new thing, with its pearly light. To enter the breadth in the joining of two is to be dazzled—there is so much space in it-- such endless possibility makes you feel smaller than the ants on a petal, and as wide and rich as heaven at noon. And the ocean wrapping the world in its sapphire scarf—at water’s edge, right at your feet, you will see stones you have never seen and never will again. To be amazed by love is not to be blinded but to let the flare of wonder fill you like air filling a sail. Isn’t this the voice of God at work? Even his silence breathes life into you, a golden sigh as fresh as Eden. To love someone is not to lose anything, but to gain it in giving it all away. (for Jen) 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 Happiness
John had Great Big Waterproof Boots on; John had a Great Big Waterproof Hat; John had a Great Big Waterproof Mackintosh-- And that (Said John) Is That. --A.A.Milne |
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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.
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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