Tall Grass Prarie Flowers

Upper Midwest, United States   

Mixed assortment with grasses

[Jesus said], " 'For if God thus clothes the grass of the filed, which today is here and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more shall He clothe you, O you of little faith.' " Matthew 6:30; own translation

Purple coneflower (Echinacea)

Day-lilies

Queen Anne's Lace (Wild Carrot)

Note one deep scarlet bloom, center

Butterfly Weed (Pleurisy Root)

Used by Native Americans for various respiratory illnesses

Black-Eyed Susans

God of Our Fathers, Whose Almighty Hand

(for Independence and other days)

1. God of our Fathers, Whose Almighty Hand

Leads forth in beauty all the starry band.

Of Shining worlds in splendor through the skies

Our grateful songs, before thy throne arise.

2. Thy Love divine hath led us in the past.

In this free land by thee our lot is cast.

Be Thou our ruler, guardian, guide, and stay.

Thy Word Our Law^, thy Paths our chosen ways*.

3. From wars alarms, from deadly pestilence,

Be thy Strong arm our ever sure defense*;

Thy true religion in our hearts increase,

Thy Bounteous goodness, nourish us in peace.

4. Refresh thy people on their toilsome way;

Lead us from night, to never ending day;

Fill all our lives, with love and grace^ divine*,

And glory, laud, and praise be ever Thine.

  ----Fr. Daniel C. Roberts, 1876; a priest in the Episcopal church, honoring our nation's centennial.

*I don't believe in trying to create "a Christian nation" here in America. We weren't told to create a theocracy in the New Testament.  But I am grateful that we live in a country where we can freely practice and share our faith.  I am hopeful and prayerful that neither the foolishness nor extremism on either the Right or the Left will ruin that for us here.

^While a nice enough hymn in its way, this hymn speaks nothing about grace & love actually coming from the suffering and death of Christ for our sins.

More Desert Beauty

Prickly Pear Cactus in Bloom

Another Spring

May Day comes again and goes
Reminder of those pagan ways--
Hopeful for more "sacred" sun,
Wishing for more golden rays.

O, my skinclad German forbears
Seeking Woden* in the skies

Lay aside your pagan fears--
Look to Christ and so arise.

Ah, Woden, Balder, Frigga, Thor*
"Hearing" prayers in days of yore,
If you had eyes to truly see
Faraway things that came to be:

Children now across the ocean,
First to follow Jesus' creed
Now have found a new religion:
"Gods" of lust and "gods" of greed.

May Day comes again and goes...
No longer balm for winter's woes.   
                         ---c.m.b. 2018

*Woden (Odin)- Wikipedia

The Right Mind

[see also Isaiah 52: 13-15]

Let this mind also be in you, which was in Christ Jesus:
Who, subsisting in the form of God
Did not [consider this] to be grasped; 
He did not esteem it to be equal with God.
But He emptied Himself into the form of a servant,
Having taken the likeness of humanity*
Having been made and having been found
In appearance as a human,
He humbled Himself, 
Having become obedient unto death,
Even death on the cross.

Christ of St. John of the Cross, 1951
Salvador Dali; Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow

Therefore God has also highly exalted Him
And granted to Him 
The NAME above every name,**
So that at the NAME of JESUS,
Every knee should bow,
In heaven and earth and under the earth,
And every tongue should confess 
That KURIOS JESUS CHRISTOS
["that JESUS CHRIST is LORD"
                   or
"that THE LORD is JESUS CHRIST"]
To the glory of God the Father.
              --St. Paul, Philippians 2:5-13
                (translated c.m.b. April, 2018)

*Not a stab at gender inclusiveness, but more faithful to the Greek. ["Anthropos", humanity vs. "aner", a male man.]
**see Revelations 19:12

Jesus, Refuge of the Weary

Jesus, Refuge of the weary,
Blest Redeemer Whom we love.
Fountain in life's desert dreary,
Savior from the world above.
Oh, how oft Thine eyes, offended
Gaze upon the sinner's fall;
Yet upon the cross extended,
You have born the pain of all.

Do we pass that cross unheeding,
Breathing no repentant vow,
Though we see Thee wounded, bleeding,
See Thy thorn encircled brow?
Yet Thy sinless death has brought us
Life eternal, peace, and rest;
Only what your grace has taught us
Calms the sinner’s deep distress.

Jesus, may our hearts be burning

With more fervent love for Thee;
May our eyes be ever turning
To Thy cross of agony
Till in glory, parted never
From the blessed Savior’s side,
Carved into our hearts forever,
Dwell the cross, the Crucified.

By Girolamo Savonarola; translated by Lady Jane Wilde, adapted

Girolamo Savonarola was an Italian Dominican friar and preacher.  (In his zeal to reform the Roman Catholic Church, before Luther came along, he unfortunately destroyed some secular art in Italy.) He called for Christian renewal and expressed skepticism towards the culture of his day.

Good Friday

(Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday arrive on the same day this year. This poem is an early preview for both.  It deals with the "heart" in the most important way.  It is a nice Lenten reflection, of course.)

Am I a stone, and not a sheep*,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved**;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.**

Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses***, turn and look once more
And smite a rock*.   

--Christina Rossetti, 1866

*She's saying her heart is like a stone because she's not moved to tears over Christ's crucifixion like a "sheep", a "true follower" (John 10) would be.  She picks up the idea again at the end, asking Christ to break her heart of stone.

**The women at the cross, the repentant Peter, even one of the thieves crucified with Jesus were moved to sorrow.  Even the Sun was somehow darkened from about noon to 3 pm, at a time when it could NOT have been a solar eclipse (full Moon).  Nature itself expresses sadness, but the poetess indicates she feels strangely unmoved.

***Deuteronomy 18:  Christ was prophesied as the New Prophet, greater than Moses.  He is also the Shepherd (John 10; Psalm 23).   Moses broke open a rock to get water out of it (Numbers 20), but Christ does a greater thing by breaking open hearts of stone.

Winter Wakenth All My Care*

Winter wakeneth all my care,
Now these leaves waxeth** bare;
Oft I sigh and mournfully stare
When it cometh in my thought
Of this world's joy, how it goeth all to naught.

Now it is, now not seen***,
As though it hath never been;
That many sayeth, and so is still:
All goeth by God's will:
All we shall die, though we like it ill****.

All that green which groweth green,
Now it fadeth which has been***:
Jesu, help that it be seen
And shield us from Hell!
For I know not how long I go, nor how long here I dwell.

----Anonymous

*Paraphrased in slightly more modern English.  It is one of the earliest surviving winter poems in English literature, original written in Middle English spelling.

**"Wax", an old word for "to grow", from the German "wachsen."  Now used only to speak of the "waxing moon", when the lit part of the moon appears to be growing, all the way to full moon.

**See Psalm 90, which speaks of the grass quickly fading and compares this to the short lives of people.  Also, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 and Luke 12, how God clothes the grass of the field, which quickly dies, with beautiful flowers.

***Though we don't like it at all

Psalm 90: Original Translation

On Christmas Night All Christians Sing*

On Christmas night all Christians sing
To hear the news the angels bring:
News of great joy, news of great mirth,
News of our merciful King’s birth.

Angels with joy sing in the air,
No music may with theirs compare;
While prisoners in their chains rejoice
To hear the echoes of that voice.

So how on earth can men be sad,
When Jesus comes to make us glad;
From sin and hell to set us free,
And buy for us our liberty?

When sin departs before His grace,
Then life and health come in its place;
Angels and men with joy may sing,
All to see our newborn King.

Then out of darkness we see light,
Which makes the angels sing this night
“Glory to God and peace to men
Now and forevermore. Amen.”

---A folk carol of rural England & Ireland, 
         *known in some versons as "The Sussex Carol"

Fall Gardener

These are evidence of my Labor Day (early September) planting.  Here, the growing seasons are different than what most people in the northern hemisphere expect. 

This is a "scatter garden", where there are not organized beds.  In fact, vegetable & flowers grow among "volunteer grasses", which serve as "nursery plants" while the others get going.

This is a bee haven, something our world needs. The bees even like the grass heads.  (We have to let it grow longer because of our other plants.  Then we have to literally whack it off with clippers. We can't mow because there's always some other interesting plant coming up in the midst.)

(For your other November & Thanksgiving Day enjoyment, please select the "autumn" or "seasons" tag in the sidebar.)

Green bean flowers

Carrot plants

Pumpkin & flower

Black-eye Susans or purple coneflowers sprouting

October in Northern Arizona

Creations

(October 31, 2017 is the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran/Protestant Reformation.  It is said that on this date, Dr. Martin Luther posted 95 Theses, statements of discussion, on a church door. At any rate, we do know that these 95 Theses, first written in Latin, were quickly distributed among the populace in German.  Luther wrote a lot of hymns. This one, while not as well-known as "A Might Fortress", makes suitable poetry on a nature-lover's, creation-oriented page.) 


We all believe in one true God,
Who created earth and heaven,
The Father, who to us in love
Hath the right of children given.
He both soul and body feedeth,
All we need He doth provide us;
He through snares and perils leadeth,
Watching that no harm betide us.
He careth for us day and night,
All things are governed by His might.

We all believe in Jesus Christ,
His own Son, our Lord, possessing
An equal Godhead, throne, and might,
Source of every grace and blessing.
Born of Mary, virgin mother,
By the power of the Spirit,
Made true man, our elder Brother,
That the lost might life inherit;
Was crucified for sinful men
And raised by God to life again.

Luther's Rose*

We all confess the Holy Ghost,
Who sweet grace and comfort giveth
And with the Father and the Son
In eternal glory liveth;
Who the Church, His own creation,
Keeps in unity of spirit.
Here forgiveness and salvation
Daily come through Jesus' merit.
All flesh shall rise, and we shall be
In bliss with God eternally. Amen.

--by Martin Luther, 1525

A Secular Take on Luther & Viral Trends
*Luther's Rose Explained

Fountain of Life

These pictures are from Fossil Creek in Northern Arizona.  The waterfall and pool make me think of "Cauldron Pool" in The Last Battle, Book 7 of "The Chronicles of Narnia."

(An original translation of Psalm 36 is below.)

from Psalm 36

Your love, O Yahweh, reaches to the heavens,
Your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mountains of God,
Your judgements are like the great deep.
You, O Yahweh, preserve both people and animals.
How priceless is your unfailing love, O God!
Humanity's children take refuge in the shadow of Your wings...
You give them drink from Your river of delights.
For with You is the fountain of life;
    in Your light we see light.

Oh, continue Your love to those who know You,
Your righteousness to the upright in heart.

(BTW, here is a picture of an interesting rock type I've never seen before:  thin sheets of granite "frozen" in lava!  All over the place at Fossil Creek, but no one who'd visited ever told me about this.)

North Rim Grand Canyon

[July 2017 vacation]

Some things are poetry without words!

Angel's Window, on of the few places to see the Colorado River from the North Rim.  

(Look closely through the window on the close-up.)

There is also the escaped buffalo herd from a failed cattle-buffalo crossing experiment over 100 years ago.  (They have some cattle DNA.)

October 2010 South Rim Visit

"In His hand are the depths of the earth;

The peaks of the mountains are His also." (Psalm 95:4)

"...He who was seated on the throne said,

'See, I am making all things new...

  To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.'

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more,

neither shall there be mourning,

nor crying, nor pain anymore,

for the former things have passed away.”

(Revelation 21:5,6b,4)