Monday, September 28, 2009

Inhale Autumn



http://www.pacificnurseries.co.uk/plants/images/heather5_000.jpg


It's a glorious September day.
Cool and it brings to the heart
gratitude. How could it not?!!

I read in Letters on Cezanne
by Rilke a wonderful description
of heather. To take something
so ordinary and start to praise
God for what He has done or made:

"Never have I been so touched and
almost moved by the sight of heather
as the other day, when I found these
three branches in your dear letter.
Since then they have been in my
Book of Images, penetrating it with
their strong and serious smell, which
is really the fragrance of autumn earth.
But how glorious it is, this fragrance.
At no other time, it seems to me, does
the earth let itself be inhaled in one
smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that
is in no way inferior to the smell of the
sea, bitter where it borders on taste,
and more than honeysweet where you
feel it is close to the touching of first
sounds.....

And the way they look: like embroidery,

splendid; like three cypresses woven into
a Persian rug with violet silk ( a violet
of such vehement moistness, as if it were
the complimentary color of the sun.)

...I don't believe these little twigs could
have been as beautiful when you sent them:
otherwise you would have expressed some
astonishment about them. Right now one of
them happens to be lying on dark-blue velvet
in an old pen-and -pencil box .
It's like a firework: well, no. it's really like a
Persian rug. Are all these millioins of little
branches so wonderfully wrought?

One lives so badly, because one always comes
into the present unfinished, unable,
distracted.


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517FASH9YDL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg




All this from looking at heather.
Be still, the Lord says.
Know that I am God.


holy experience



3 comments:

Sara at Come Away With Me said...

Beautiful. It's good to know others feel this way about things like sprigs of heather or the scent or a rose.....

So, this looks like another book I would love to investigate.

To your question, yes, I just finished The Dean's Watch yesterday. And since then I've read Henri Nouwen's The Way of the Heart, and just this evening I finished Anne Rice's story of her return to faith, Called Out of Darkness. Amazing stuff, all three of these, and they each seem to echo each other and the Scriptures in wonderful ways.

Linda said...

Creation shows forth the glory of God ... if we would only look and see! How wonderful to glean so much from Heather.

Bonnie said...

Sara ~~~ good books. I forgot about
Anne Rice. I'm sure her story is amazing.

Linda ~~ HI! Oh to have those eyes
that see. Indeed. May the Lord gives us glimpses of such beauty!