Measuring My Days

February 2006
Home Christmas, 2009 November 2009 October 2009 Blank page September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 Ad Dei Gloria February 2009 January 2009 Christmas 2008 A Christmas Story November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 The Coming of Jesus Christmas 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 Keepers July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 What Matters April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 Book Reviews Journals Favorite Links Contact Blank page

 

“ Perhaps the most profound question asked by life is the question of significance and meaning.  All of us have to find some purpose or mission in life that will confer upon us a sense of personal distinction and worth.  We need to believe that our lives will make a difference for someone or for something."   John Powell

 

 Chalet L’Abri, February, 2006

….Measuring My Days….acg        

          So we write “finis”(-31-) to the first chapter of a new year and now begin chapter two.  February in Virginia witnesses the essential end of winter and the first evidence of resurrection.  I shall welcome the warmer days as they tease their way into blustery March, tiptoeing over the upstart crocus and daffodils.  In recent days, I have watched hosts of resident winter birds (titmice, nuthatches, chickadees, finches, sparrows, and cardinals) at my feeders and upside-down woodpeckers at the suet boxes each morning soon after daybreak and again in late afternoons.  Providence has ordained that they take their fill and in my imagination I see these richly adorned actors and divas at dusk finding their own L’Abris [sheltered places] and settling in for the coming night with blissful sleep and dreams of cherry trees, hayfields, and God’s great big beautiful world.  “Imitate our carefree life”, they tell me.  Come late February, the migration north will begin with a whole new company of opera stars requiring my greater attention to the feeders and their moments on the stage.  So with me great anticipation and hope abound, knowing that spring’s production has a Master Director prompting all entrances and exists precisely each tick of the clock, my own included!  As the curtain goes up, Aida’s grand entrance march fades to pale in comparison. 

          “One month is past, another is begun, Since merry bells rang out the dying year, And buds of rarest green began to peer,” rhymed Hartley Coleridge {Feb 1, 1842}.  The second month derives its name from februare (to purify) and the Roman festival of atonement (Februa).  In Victorian times, poet George Meredith saw February this way:  “Now the North wind ceases; the warm South-west awakes, The heavens are out in fleeces, And earth’s green banner shakes.”  February’s theme of love (ala St. Valentine) offers this paraphrased wisdom from Hannah Whitehall Smith (1887) : If you take all the love you have ever known, dreamed of or imagined;  all the love that ever existed in all the world, in all of human history, and multiply it by infinity, you would still only just begin to comprehend the love God has for you.”