Happy Independence Day to every American.
by Henry Van Dyke
I love thine inland seas,
Thy groves of giant trees,
Thy rolling plains;
Thy rivers' mighty sweep,
Thy mystic canyons deep,
Thy mountains wild and steep,
All thy domains;
Thy silver Eastern strands,
Thy Golden Gate that stands
Wide to the West;
Thy flowery Southland fair,
Thy sweet and crystal air, --
O land beyond compare,
Thee I love best!
Additional verses for the
National Hymn,
March, 1906.
Blessings…
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”
― Maya Angelou
Blessings…
How many times have you heard, “ You cannot do that! It is impossible!” And, then, you have gone forward and done it. You can do anything.
The other part of the poster is also correct. If you try to do everything, it is not possible to complete everything, or even do a good job on what you are doing. I know, from observation, that I cannot be a hair stylist, nurse, doctor, or physicist. I have no interest. Therefore, I will not do those tasks or related tasks. And, if you do have an interest, then you will need to choose what you do because we all have time constraints.
What do you want to do?
Blessings.
Happy Canada Day! It is a blessing to live in a country that has such a wide diversity of beauty from the Atlantic Ocean through the Maritimes, over the Canadian Shield, into the prairies, rising up the foothills to the Rocky Mountains, and sliding down to the Pacific Oceans.
Looking forward and backward is a common practice. How often do you look upward, towards the sky, the clouds, the Sun, the Heavens? When you look up, do you see where you want to be? Do you see the vision of you in one or two or five years?
It is exciting to have a dream. Let yourself dream now. Plant the picture firmly in your mind.
Blessings.
Have you ever thought that your day was going from bad to worse? The Angels tell us that they can help… all we need to do is give them the “go ahead and help me” words, and they can pitch right in.
Many times, the problem over whelms us so that we do not see the easy solution. That is where the Angels come in. They know how to help us do things easily, in the flow, so that the sense of doom can go.
Ask them.
Blessings.
