Ozark Oddments: Flying gumdrop...

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Flying gumdrop...

A flash of orange caught my eye as I was pounding away on the computer keyboard, and I looked up and saw this fellow land on the bird feeder outside the window. It just took my breath way. I was very excited: I haven't seen a Baltimore Oriole at the house for several years now. So I scurried and found the oriole feeder, which is so old its color has nearly faded away, and replaced the hummingbird feeder (they didn't care, orange works fine for them too). I cut a slice of orange and put it on the bird feeder. And sure enough, within a few minutes he was back. He ate some orange and then landed on the oriole feeder and R showed up with the camera. To paraphrase an e-mail a friend sent in response to a picture I sent her of the oriole... "how important it is to stop and notice the signs of new life around or else we miss it, for sure. Thanks for sending this cheerful little orange gumdrop." Amen. Sarah Ban Breathnach, the author of Simple Abundance, writes about the importance letting our eyes "drink in the beauty that surrounds you" as we journey on the path to find order and balance in our lives. Amen to that too.

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Thoughts to ponder

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course, we think that we do; indeed, we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them. so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?--Domenica Macdonald

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall
Smith

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Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering -- because you can't take it in all at once. --Audrey Hepburn

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I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.--Agatha Christie

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Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.--Katharine Hepburn

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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Two people... told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thoughness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another"?--Madeline L'Engle, "A Circle of Quiet"