Moon dreams

Late June

Golden firefly lights
and humming bird flights over
the storm soaked back lawn.

Sketchbookskool fun

Anticipating new moon on July 4th

A colorful finish

Welcome visitors

So happy to see
honey bee and humming bird
visiting garden.

From out night’s gray and cloudy sheath;
Softly and still it grows and grows,
Petal by petal, leaf by leaf...
~Susan Coolidge

Transitions

in honor of long dusk to twilight this time of year

Summer flurries

Solstice snow - blossoms
from tree of heaven in drifts
upon walk and bench.

Sun Salutation for the Solstice

Full Moon Mysteries

Called to rest

"Statio calls us to a sense of reverence for slowness, for mindfulness, and for the fertile dark spaces between our goals where we can pause and center ourselves, and listen."

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD The Online, Self-Study Retreat ~ Celtic Spirituality: Thresholds, Thin Places and Wandering for the Love of God

Morning painting

This is My Wish for You:

That the spirit of beauty
may continually hover about you
and fold you close within
the tenderness of her wings.

That each beautiful
and gracious thing in life
May be unto you as a symbol
of good for your soul’s delight.

That sun-glories
and star-glories,
Leaf-glories and bark-glories,
Flower-glories
and glories that lurk
in the grasses of the field . . . .
Glories of mountains and oceans,
of little streams of running waters
Glories of song
of poesy,
of all the arts. . .

May be to you as sweet
abiding influences
That will illumine your life
and make you glad.

That your soul may be
as an alabaster cup
Filled to overflowing
With the mystical wine
of beauty and love.

That happiness may
put her arms around you,
And wisdom make
your soul serene.

This is my wish for you. —Charles Livingston Snell

On a Sunday

Charles Kingsley wrote: "I am not fond, you know, of going into churches to pray. We must go up into the chase in the evenings, and pray there with nothing but God's cloud temple between us and His heaven! And His choir of small birds and night crickets and booming beetles, and all happy things who praise Him all night long! And in the still summer noon, too, with the lazy-paced clouds above, and the distant sheep-bell, and the bee humming in the beds of thyme, and one bird making the hollies ring a moment, and then all still — hushed — awe-bound, as the great thunderclouds slide up from the far south! Then, there to praise God!"

Dreamscapes

Inspired by landscape photos of Iceland

"Lost" [by David Wagoner]

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
-- David Wagoner
(1999)

Some of May's sketches

Done with the 31 Day Flower Drawing Challenge with Brittany Jepsen of The House That Lars Built.

Beginning of June

Wet, green, ferny woods -
mountain laurel blossoming
starbursts in shadows.

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted

"You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you."

- John O'Donahue

Thought for Wednesday

“Be. Here. This moment. Now is all there is, don’t go seeking another. Discover the sacred in your artist’s tools; they are the vessels of the altar of your own unfolding.”

 --- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom