So True

I bought a journal today. Not just any journal, but one that has a bit of vintage flair, yellowed pages, with drawings and quotes on each page. I love being inspired to write. John mandated that each of us take along a journal to write down our memories during our time in the Philippines, and I am already filling up the empty pages with scribbles. For that is what I am, a scribbler.

I was excited to find a lovely quote on the inside cover of the journal. So enthralled that I am copying it so you too can read the words:

This is my journey, but I'm not alone
Courage is my companion.
Peace is my guide.
God is my refuge.
Friends are my fortress.
It is along the road
to where I'm going
that I discover who I am...
and I find to be
So True

The Knowing

A dear friend of mine, another literature lover, posted this passage. And I have read it, and re-read it, for I was struck by it. I have not yet had the pleasure of reading this book, but after allowing the words to sink in, I may have to hunt down a copy and explore it's pages myself. Out of All the King's Men:

It was always that way. There was the bulge and the glitter, and there was the cold grip way down in the stomach as though somebody had laid hold of something in there, in the dark which is you, with a cold hand in a rubber glove. It was like the second when you come home late at night and see the yellow envelope of the telegram sticking out from under your door and you lean to pick it up, but don't open it yet, not for a second. While you stand there in the hall, with the envelope in your hand, you feel there's an eye on you, a great big eye looking straight at you and dark and through walls and houses and through your coat and vest and hide and sees you huddled up way inside, in the dark which is you, inside yourself, like a clammy, sad little foetus you carry around inside yourself. The eye knows what's in the envelope, and it is watching you to see you when you open it and know, too. But the clammy little foetus which is you way down in the dark which is you too lifts up its sad little face and its eyes are blind, and it shivers cold inside you for it doesn't want to know what is in that envelope. It wants to lie in the dark and not know, and be warm in its not-knowing. The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him. There's the cold in your stomach, but you open the envelope, you have to open the envelope, for the end of man is to know.

~Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

Like Adam and Eve, like Pandora and her box, we want to know, even if it kills us. I thought it poignant piece.

Take Me Into the Beautiful

I can't get enough of this song. Each time I hear it, I long to hear it again and again...I have only just heard of the group, Cloverton, and I love the rich melody. The lead singer's voice reminds me of ThirdDay's Mac Powell, and the emotion expressed through his voice is wonderful. So now I'm sharing my find with all of you readers. Tell me what you think! Enjoy the music:

April Showers

It is that time of year again, when the earth is shaking off the effects of winter's chill and spreading greenery and blooms across it's face. Spring always seemed like a time of renewal to me. So fresh, so beautiful. Out of the crevices of tree stumps pop tiny, delicate flowers with upturned faces basking in the sunlight. I enjoy finding these beauties in my camera lens, and decided to post a few of my favorites here for your viewing pleasure {the upload quality is not very good, so I apologize...}

Flower Girl

Close My Eyes

Love this song. Absolutely. Such talent and passion flowing from the voices making the melody. Simply had to share this with all of you.

Glorious Pages

I have embarked into another tale. The Thirteenth Tale, to be precise. And it is pulling me in, hook, line, and sinker. The words are washing over me, and I am giving them ample time to settle into my mind. The thoughts inside these pages are profound. Take, for example, this exerpt:

"I shall start at the beginning. Though of course the beginning is never where you think it is. Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born....Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole."

Magnificent. So deep, and so true. Who we are is intertwined and entangled with the lives of those in our family. Their decisions affect us, sometimes directly, other times indirectly. Almost as though our lives are woven together.

I am enjoying this book, so much so that I am attempting to read it slowly that I may savour the words and the story. It is so wonderful to be able to love what one reads...