Utterly Worth Every While

My friend gave me the Larkrise to Candleford Collection for Christmas. 

Yesterday, with popcorn bowl between and journal close by to snare some of its golden one-liners Victoria and I became part of their villages for a while.

As we chuckled, and o-o-o-hed and a-a-a-a-hed I knew 

...I would never trade Now for Then

Sometimes I think I miss those days

When kiss-and-cuddle healed your woes

But then I think about the ways

The bond of love just grows and grows

From what we had to what we have

And I would not go back because

I realize I could not save

And trade what is for what once was

Some things about a mother’s love

Are not so easy to explain

Still, no matter what it behooves

Oh, I would do it all again

For the friendship of smile to smile

And what we hope is yet to come

Made utterly worth every while

With these four words, I love you, Mom

© Janet Martin

...a few lines from Larkrise to Candleford I captured to keep in a journal gifted to me from Victoria for Christmas...

You are young. Young people do young things and make young mistakes.

It takes time and sorrow and experience to learn the worth of things in life

that really matter.

Why close the doors and keep summer out

when we can open them and let it in?

Heaven's Wing...is losing feathers!

Buses cancelled far and wide as we thank our wonderful Great Lakes for their winter-gift...snow-days!

Earth is a feather-bed bedecked in heavens eiderdown

Gone is its lumpy mattress, bare threaded, bedraggled brown

Now city, town and countryside with seamless sweep are wed

Beneath heaven’s eiderdown throw earth is a feather-bed

Time is a thing of feathers twirling, swirling, soundless, soft

It gathers beneath heaven’s wing, sky-scraper, street and croft

Where boulevard, bluff and backyard are swathed in winter’s gown

Soundless and soft, time is a thing of feathers falling down

Home is a happy haven warmed by more than flaming hearth

Where smiles and laughter deem its humble hold heaven on earth

Hot soup is like a feast fit for finest of lord or king

Where ‘round the flaming hearth we gather in earth’s heaven-wing

© Janet Martin

Sight Seered and Sound-bound

A powerfully moving story; one of my all-time favorite movies by one of my all time favorite actors,

Sidney Poitier
(when I told Victoria this she chuckled and said, Mom, you sure have a lot of 'all-time favorite movies';

Most of my favorites were made before I was born;-)
They don't make them like that anymore.

Prejudice is dark with lies

And its world so small

To see with nothing but eyes

Is not to see at all

He who hears with ears alone

Misses every word

Listening begins, my love

When the heart is stirred

I have seen a prison cell

Not of bars and stone

But a cold and lonesome shell

Made of skin and bone

Who can teach us how to hear?

Who can help us see?

Who can break the bars of fear

And set prisoners free?

Pity those with only eyes

And ears to hear and see

Confined behind their disguise

Because they lost love’s key

© Janet Martin

Fullness of Joy

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

Ps.16:11 

Night, full of darkness

Day, full of light

Man, full of his weakness

God, full of might

Hope, full of heartache

Want, full of days

Life, full of man’s mistakes

God, full of grace

Sight, full of wonder

Fear, full of prayer

Time, full of circumstance

God, full of care

Air, full of myst’ry

Where ages move

To Past full of history

In God’s faithful love

© Janet Martin

Wishing you a Worship-full Sunday

Pray We Never Outgrow Wonder...

Oh, pray we never grow too old to wonder at the common world

Or marvel at the sundry ways that only nature can amaze

And, pray we never weary of God’s testaments beneath, above

Where eye and ear bears witness to the Handwork only He can do

The workmanship of One so great ought to confound and captivate

The brooding discontent of we who, born with growling bellies see

Full proof of He in every leaf; His mercy lent to seed and sheaf

Each like a wide-flung window to wonders that only God can do

The worries of this world can bind and blind the aptness of the mind

Where faithful through the wooing years the hand of Heaven commandeers

Dark bark that cradles in its womb the nucleus of bud and bloom

Ah, pray we never grow blind to the wonder of what God can do

© Janet Martin