Sunflower at Aunt Willie’s Wildflowers
“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.”
Michelangelo, 1475-1564
Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer
Monthly Archives: August 2012
The Next Word
Tulip in Walled Garden, Biltmore Estate, NC
“Lord, help me find the next word,
And the next. And the next…”
Father Tim, Mitford series
by Jan Karon
Help Somebody Else
“Lay hold of something that will help you,
and then use it to help somebody else.”
Booker T. Washington, 1856-1915
American educator, author, and leader
of the African American community
Patches of godlight
Rocky Fork, Unicoi County, TN
“We — or at least I — shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions
if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason
will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so,
not have ‘tasted and seen.’ Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you
something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy.
These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of godlight’ in the woods of experience.”
C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963, Irish author and scholar
“Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer”
“Patches of Godlight: Father Tim’s Favorite Quotes”
by Jan Karon, author of the bestselling Mitford Years Series
Too many legs to love?
Ichneumon Wasp, Bass Lake, Blowing Rock, NC
“Two-legged creatures we are supposed to love as we love ourselves.
The four-legged, also, can come to seem pretty important.
But six legs are too many from the human standpoint.”
Joseph W. Krutch, 1893-1970
American ecology writer and naturalist
from Knoxville, Tennessee
Endless Forgiveness
Millstone Creek Falls, Washington Co., TN
“Love is an act of endless forgiveness.”
Peter Ustinov, 1921-2004
Academy Award-winning British actor
Because This God Exists
“We trust, not because a god exists,
but because this God exists.”
C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963
Inferiority Complex
Aunt Willie’s Wildflowers, Sullivan Co., TN
“Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior,
but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex
every time he looks at a flower.”
Alan C. Kay, American computer scientist
It is Solved by Walking
“Solviture ambulando”
(It is solved by walking)
St. Augustine, 354-430
Theologian and important figure in the development of Western Christianity
Less Alone
Poppy field at Farmhouse Gallery, Unicoi, TN
“That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone,
that we are more deeply inserted into existence than
the course of a single life would lead us to believe.”
John Berger, 1926-
“The Sense of Sight”
art critic, novelist, painter
When You Don’t Have To
Sunset at Horseback Ridge, Unicoi County, TN
“What you do when you don’t have to,
determines what you will be when you can no longer help it.”
Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936
English author and poet born in India
Outside Good for the Inside
View from Round Bald, Roan Mountain, TN
“Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man.”
George Wherry, 1852-1928
Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot
Me and My Shadow
An Insect View
“Nature will bear the closest inspection.
She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf,
and take an insect view of its plain.”
Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862
American author, naturalist, philosopher
Best known for “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience”
Advantages?
River Otter, Grandfather Mountain, NC
“Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike,
they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them,
their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies,
their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.”
Voltaire, 1694-1778
French Enlightenment writer and philosopher
letter to Count Schomberg, 31 August 1769
Never Alone or Weary
“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries
of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”
Rachel Carson, 1907-1964
American marine biologist and nature writer
My Symphony
Aunt Willie’s Wildflowers, Blountville, TN
“To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart;
to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly,
talk gently, await occasions, hurry never;
in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common — this is my symphony.”
William Henry Channing, 1810-1884
clergyman, reformer
Open the Door
Doe River near Roan Mountain State Park, TN
“As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest,
or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream,
the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.”
Stephen Graham, 1884-1975, The Gentle Art of Tramping
English novelist and travel writer
Helpful Boundaries
Amish country, Holmes County, Ohio
“You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.”
Robert Frost, 1874-1963
Pulitzer Prize winning American poet
The Simple Life
“To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating;
to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter;
to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest
or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.”
John Burroughs, 1837-1921,
American naturalist and essayist
How Can I Find You, God?
“How can I find you, God? How can I claim your strength?
I am tired, so tired…tense, so tense. And my nerves are screaming.
Now, if ever, I need you. I need your reassurance and your peace.
Yet there is only this raw trembling vacancy inside me.
This sense of emptiness and futility. Come back to me, Lord.
Calm me, quiet me, for I am indeed weary
and heavy-laden and I need your promised rest.”
Marjorie Holmes, 1910-2002
Inspirational writer
Blessed Release
”I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me — I am happy.”
Hamlin Garland, 1860-1940,
American novelist, poet, essayist
The Prayer that Never Fails
Blue Ridge Parkway, NC
“The prayer that never fails: ‘Thy will be done.’”
Father Tim, Mitford Series
by Jan Karon
Dividends of the Seasons
Tulip
“Good heavens, of what uncostly material is our earthly happiness composed…
if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower,
and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.”
James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891
American Romantic poet, satirist, abolitionist
Loving and Praying
“There is nothing that makes us love someone so much as praying for them.”
William Law, 1686-1761
English theologian and author
