Lake Break

Little Blessings~

For all grand flings that man may boast

It's little things that charm us most...

...for nothing makes us feel like kings

Like life's best wealth; its little things!

Janet~

Like a Tap-Dancer (on a Leaf Xylophone)

Blushes on dawn’s yawning tarmac

Rouses bird-song, melts the veil

That soft-blanketed the landscape

Where the surging skylines pale

Tumbling, teeming, tick-tock thunder

Coursing through youth’s precious prime

Leaving in its wake fresh wonder

For the ancient ways of Time

Draws the laws of human-nature

Stalwart though its stance may be

To the place where face and stature

Proves mankind’s mortality

Leaping, steeping, sweeping torrent

Ever-ebbing in its surge

Meeting, melting in a moment

Where the past and future merge

Bathes the birth of day in Beauty

Earth and its fullness thereof

Tempers bonds of dream and duty

With the First Command; to love

Tests the best of bold bravado

And its jest, with gathered sheaves

Prancing, dancing like sun-shadow

On a xylophone of leaves

© Janet Martin

To Know...

My sister-in-law now waits to see her dear mom again in 'land that is fairer than day'...
after they laid her to rest last week.

To live well is...

To know we did the best we could with kind humility

To know God works for our good no matter what may be

To know that soon we too will follow those whose footsteps cease

Into the faithful arms of God…to know this kind of peace

Brings courage to the harder parts that we are called to bear

Brings comfort to our heart of hearts and sweetness to the tear

Brings purpose to the passage that runs through the great unknown

Until we all will gather before God around His throne

© Janet Martin

2 Tim. 1: 12

…for I know whom I have believed, 

and am persuaded that he is able 

to keep that which I have committed 

unto him against that day.

Because We Can Only Be In One Place At One Time...

My hearts strings are wrapped around a teeny little apartment in Toronto where our daughter lives.

 (not near as far as Nova Scotia!!) 

but oh, because of this I know a little of the tug that Love feels as it hugs and holds and lets go...

 (my heart is in this little nook on the Bay of Fundy this morning)💕

Big hugs and prayers for our 'east family' as our son-in-law and daughter and family bid good-bye to parents/grandparents/siblings/aunts/uncles/cousins until the next 'till we meet'!

Because we can only be

In one place at one time

Love hungers and hurts and stings

And misses the kisses

And face-to-face blisses

That being together brings

Because we can only be

In one place at one time

Love cherishes with its whole heart

The moments of being

Together to cheer

The moments of being apart

Because we can only be

In one place at one time

Love holds near and dear, then oh

Because we can only be

In one place at one time

Love hungers and hurts and lets go

© Janet Martin

Almost Eden Garden Retreat

Don't have a front or back-yard garden?

... take to the country roads and see God's wild-flower gardens in full bloom!

Linger a little longer than you were going to and be surprised!

And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day:...

Gen.3:8

Retreat to Gardens; earthy glimpse of Eden’s Paradise

Where sweat and toil earns bread and spoil rich with wonder’s surprise

Work hard for what you take; give thanks to He who doth provide

And fill your place ‘mongst human race with kind and humble pride

...and if the load on living’s road gets long and hard to bear

Then Retreat to a Garden (methinks God still walketh there)

Where in the cool of day and in the hush of green-spun things

There’s something ‘bout a garden from which hope eternal springs

After the push of planting as dirt-dreams start to take shape

Then retreat to the garden for little Grand Escape

And listen to the fiddler of sun-shadows play on leaf

And let the lilies of the field heal love’s heart-gnawing grief

When common care becomes the colour of Melancholy

Then retreat to a garden for some flower-therapy/there-happy

Let worry take a break where breezes sigh and tendrils wind

And let the Voice of God speak through bloom-bowers He designed

© Janet Martin

Intro to Summer from the book Shape of a Year ...
 
Oh, I wish I could share the whole July chapter with you!

It's Summertime

We are past July's half-way mark...doesn't that make your summer-heart lurch a little?!!

It’s summertime; 'neath lilt of vine we leap from day to day

Like steppingstones laid through a sparkling, swirling waterway

And try to find in daily grind a little of the joy

We knew in days long left behind, of carefree girl and boy

So we ease up the reins and chains that bind us to the plow

Say, whoa, Nellie, slow down Nellie, easy, easy now

For somehow time takes to full gallop over misty morn

Where wheat fields toss their glossy manes until their flow is shorn

Where flowers hoist their choicest plume while we, with mouths agape

Are overcome with worship where bud-miracles take shape

And we long for the longer days we knew when we were young

For days that stretched into the blue through meadows heaven-hung

With nothing more to do than peer into each butter-cup

And tip the dew from chalices where midnight-fairies sup

And kick the dust into a storm of wanderlust at large

And climb like lusty sailors onto a green-garden barge

To sail beneath the willow-tree that sighed with sheer content

Whilst shadowing the grassy sea with lacy filament

Where now the wings we spread are feathered with matters of fact

So much to weigh us down if we have no plan of attack

To help us make the merry most of days, now half-the-length

(a faith-plan of attack offers a sure tower of strength)

And in the middle of the muddle we learn how to pause

How to find beauty in a world so full of glaring flaws

How to savour fond flavours, clover-petal’s sugar-tips

Re-tasting childhood’s summer in our hearts and on our lips

And how to hold a moment like a fragile butterfly

Because we’ve learned how swift and suave summer can flutter by

And so we stop to listen to the toll of flower-bells

And fold our weathered wings to listen to the soulful knell

Of twilight tumbling through pink palisades propped on the west

To gather up another summer day into Past’s nest

And tug at tender chords tied to the rhythm and the rhyme

Of ebb and flow and high and low of dear, old summer-time

© Janet Martin