Monday, September 19, 2016

As imperceptibly as grief
The summer lapsed away,--
Too imperceptible, at last,
To seem like perfidy.

A quietness distilled,
As twilight long begun,
Or Nature, spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon.

The dusk drew earlier in,
The morning foreign shone,--
A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
As guest who would be gone.

And thus, without a wing,
Or service of a keel,
Our summer made her light escape
Into the beautiful.

(~Emily Dickinson)

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness. 
(~Pearl S. Buck)
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. 
(~J.R.R. Tolkien)
She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. 
(~Michael Ondaatje)
I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to. 
(~Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. 
(~Kate Chopin)

Friday, September 9, 2016

“Is it not ourselves that cry? Yes, assuredly; and yet the Spirit cries also. The expressions are both correct. The Holy Spirit prompts and inspires the cry. He puts the cry into the heart and mouth of the believer. It is his cry because he suggests it, approves of it, and educates us to it. We should never have cried thus if he had not first taught us the way. . . . There are times when we cannot cry at all, and then he cries in us. There are seasons when doubts and fears abound, and so suffocate us with their fumes that we cannot even raise a cry, and then the indwelling Spirit represents us, and speaks for us, and makes intercession for us, crying in our name.”
(~C. H. Spurgeon, “Adoption –The Spirit and the Cry” (MTP 24, Sermon 1435, p. 537))