Of Unfinished Perhapses

‘Special Family moments’ was my sister’s title to a photo collage on Facebook…

Oh, isn’t that the best treasure of life?

Let’s make today’s moments as special as we can!

(below, a photo-collage with some of our family on vacation)

Whether it’s a walk in the garden

Or *filling a crock with flowers

Whether it’s a book ‘neath a tree by a brook

Where summer spills its remnant hours

Whether its taking or leaving

Let’s make the most of Now’s glance

Whether we choose to sit for a bit

Or kick off our shoes and dance

Whether its warm bread and honey

Or September's blue-gold afternoon

Let’s never waste what none can re-taste

After the licking of spoon

Whether its laughter or sorrow

(for where there is love, both exist)

Whether its Must is a trial of trust

Or Love, gently rocked-cradled-kissed

Whether its nothing but Being

Fully wherever we be

Of work, play and pray, let’s make today

A beautiful memory

© Janet Martin

 *In this area, if one does not have a garden to pick flowers to fill crocks,

 many roadside stands offer bloom-bouquets ready to brighten anywhere you place them!

Today's memories hopefully will include pears and tomatoes joining jarred peaches!

Of Unmined Splendor...

It's the last day before back-to-school in Canada. 

Social media is filled with pics of first-year college and university students setting up their away-from-home homes for the first time while mother's/parents learn just how far heart-strings can stretch and not break! hugs all around:)

As moms/parents(I can only speak as a mom), we tend to be reluctant to learn lessons we must

Because the answers to these lessons are in a book entitled 'Trust'

Oh my, that part of us that none but God can fully know

Braves the fine art of holding while the ache of reach lets go

How soft and swift the common sift of moment-mites estrange

Where nothing stays the same for long yet some things never change

We feel our faces for a smile though eyes betray the heart

No shrewd collusion can beguile the While that clocks impart

Where each of us is at the mercy of day’s rise and set

And none of us can sway the course that force of it begets

We teach and are taught by what seems like quotidian dues

While caught up in a tide of toys, noise, crumbs and running shoes

Then, once upon a slamming door and quest for peace so kind

The story of a little house leaves child’s carouse behind

No flower lasts forever, no delight keeps its first thrill

No hour has an appetite that moments can quite fill

Where on the doorstep of a season we hail its veneer

Before we turn to watch the tail-ends of Then disappear

Darling, I didn’t know, though, oh, They told us it was so

How quick the tick and tock of clocks melds Now to a slideshow

Where pictures play on a projector held in tender sighs

While we return to till the place where unmined splendor lies

© Janet Martin

The Best We Have...

The best is not yet left to come

The best we have is now

Ah, who knows what in morrow’s sum

Will fill its who-where-how

For what has passed will not return

And what waits, none can tell

Then pray with what we have we learn

To treat its treasure well

...and with the gift swift time allots

Of Now we have and hold

We ought to cherish ticks and tocks

Like jots of precious gold

And ever for the joy of love

Live today, kind and glad

For it could be the tally of

The Best we ever had

© Janet Martin

Treasure-measure....

Yesterday was the last day of 'School-kids daycare'.

Next week it's back to preschoolers as their teacher mommies and daddies return to the classroom

...another summer sealed in echo-land.

 

Days, hued with expectation roll, cajoling hands and feet

Like mighty waves surging to naught where sea and shoreline meet

Then all that we have left of hours as seasons bloom and fade

Are treasures culled and garnered from Time’s common promenade

This push and shove of live-laugh-love can stun our eager will

Where what we thought was ‘time enough’ teased touch and such until

The tete-a-tete of hold-let-go and moments yet to feel

Evolve and then dissolve like oceans splayed on sands surreal

Oh, spinning spiel of silk and steel, what wonder-worlds you weave

The ilk of day-to-day a prize we celebrate yet grieve

For always in the hello we learn, hovers its farewell

Where no one can return to clasp what past cannot quite quell

The taunt of what yet waits to be makes want a virile Thing

That leaves within its wake what we make of its rendering

Slow down, slow down oh, hurried feet with nowhere left to be

But here and now, where wow and how spills hollows in its spree

…and summer, like a tumbleweed rolls to the setting sun

Where in its sprawling shadows children laugh and call and run

Quite unaware of how the air of carefree days spills rife

With teeny tick-tock treasures meting the measure of life

© Janet Martin

 'My favorite color of outside is snow', remarked a picnic-ing little boy dreamily 

as he stared over stubble-gold fields with peach juice dripping from his chin... 

Here is a video that my daughter Emily sent me to remind us to 'slow down'! 

This Also Know....Perilous Days

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers,

disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce,

despisers of those that are good,

Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

For of this sort are they which creep into houses,

and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,

Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

2 Tim. 3:1-7

 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
The LORD is trustworthy in all he promises
 and faithful in all he does.
Psalm 145:13

Above prayer from Sermons and Prayers by Peter Marshall

These perilous days are here

Of Ignorance without fear

A world of youth blind to the Truth

And ears that do not hear

These perilous days have come

Of hearts haughty and numb

So cold to God, bold to applaud

 Evil’s appalling sum

These perilous days will pass

But oh, alas, alas

To those who think that they can wink

At death and die as grass

These perilous days are grim

Still, all who trust in Him

Can know for sure, Hope is secure

Though hope seems dark and dim

These perilous days are here

Of doubt, hate, godless fear

Still, God of grace will help us face

These days…He remains near

These perilous, perilous days

Cannot annul the praise

To Holy God from sky, sea, sod

Attuned to mercy’s gaze

Then pray, before the toll  

That severs skin and soul

We have believed and thus received

Through  grace, the Victor’s goal

© Janet Martin