Tag: thoughts

Your Beliefs Make and Break You

It is surprising how certain core matters pop up in the most unexpected places. I was reading a marketing article, because I am sales challenged to a certain degree. Like what is probably true for the vast majority of people in my culture, I don’t like to sell. I feel forced to learn how, especially now that I am trying out different business avenues online (Zazzle, for instance). Plus I like reading marketing and social media articles. Throw in some pop psychology and you’ve got my attention.

This thought grabbed my eye:

Beliefs form a fundamental part of our psychological make up and are the building blocks of our personality. Our beliefs dictate how we see the world and therefore, every single decision we make while interacting with our world.

Beliefs start and end wars. Beliefs make and break relationships.

Sales Psychology

This has been my conviction for years, although I phrased it in a slightly different manner.

This is why I think ideology is so important. Francis Schaeffer articulated a lot of this for me when he explained that one of the reasons it matters to understand the art and innovative thinkers of your generation is because it is the seedbed of what your culture will reflect in the next generation (that is to say, ‘what they will believe”). With enough push in thought forming mediums, a culture will change… even in what once seemed to be an “unthinkable” way.

It explains to me why visionaries are so important, whether they are initially accepted or not.

We might be seeing this more clearly than ever when the accelerant of the internet made consensus change work in ways that are now described as “viral”.

What we believe not only influences everything around us, it creates a future.

I’m just going to let this sink in without further comment, until this very broad idea finds the specific application I want to think about. It applies on so many levels… like what we think of ourselves, what we choose for our families, how politically manipulated we become, all sorts of thing from business to what we think of our future.

Related to this is whether we believe something reality based, or we believe a lie… about any and all of these things, because not all beliefs are equal- or morally neutral!

Marry Your Actions, Motivations, and Goals

More often than not we leave out an important partner in our planning and dreaming. People write books on this fact, and we often buy those books. But we tend to look at the whole as a project list of bits and pieces. Maybe that is where a vision board comes in, to bring together a visual map of all the components, including the all important motivation for the entire goal we started out with at the year’s beginning.

As I piece together the good advice of many successful people, the challenge is to apply it to a resistant part of my life. For the first time in years I began some art projects, even though I had to change the media to computer graphics rather than hard copy paper and pencil. Although I still would like to manage some of those projects in the coming year.

Motivations

Those are the things we pinpointed in our planning and envisioning as primary reasons we wish to go forward in a particular direction with the life and resources ahead of us. It is a common failing to lose sight of a goal, to let the vision fade, and get distracted by so-called “lef”. “So-called” simply because it is not always the necessary that intervenes, but very often the unnecessary that we are slow to recognize as competition to the real life we want to have. Recording our motivation in some way , providing reminders of the motivation will aid in keeping the eye on the main road we decided to take in the year ahead.

Motivation memory will also keep us from getting stuck in ruts or outmoded schedules, or even to help us to be flexible with the demands that arise. Demands can be an important part of refining our plans, which often are focused on ourselves, when our bigger vision will include our relationship with others. If we remember our initial motivation for a goal, and its plans, we are capable of making the decision needed to address the demand and in what timetable is best. Our basic nature will tend to swing towards our internal compass of needing to please others, or wanting to meet our own wants and needs. It is easy to get in the habit of answering one or the other, when a balance is needed. Plugging back into a motivation will help us rebalance when necessary.

Record your motivation for making goals:
I want to be healthier because I want to be more active and hike ( or play tennis or whatever)
I want to be closer to God (more time for prayer,grow spiritually,etc)
I want to garden ( because it has always calmed and centered me, I love the way being outdoors makes me feel, etc)

Those are personal examples of how my goals, plans and motivations marry to create something bigger than the parts, and propel me to be the person I most would like to be in the coming year.

Hoep these notes to myself are of help in creating a successful year of accomplishing resolution from dreams in the life of others,too ( that is one of my motivations for blogging!)

Goals + Motivations = Actions and might just be a marriage made in heaven.

Reflections on Waiting

The inspiration for this post is from a new blog on the block. There are many, many blogs… but this one is a blog I think you will want to add to your reader, or your bookmarks. Only three posts in and it has made me feel calmer and more centered just reading the thoughts. Alicia’s Roses says, “I have often dreamed of writing a blog that would bring hope to the hurting and encouragement to the weary. May this be such a place.”.

You have succeeded well in your “New Beginnings“, Alicia.

Alicia’s thought for yesterday was upon the sense of waiting that winter brings for her.

Life is full of the dance of waiting and taking action. Balance comes from knowing which step in the dance the music of time is playing for us. God, the Great composer, desires for us to choreograph our steps into something originally creative and meaningful under His inspiration. It is a thing of joy to learn to dance in rhythm with God’s direction.

But the challenge for us is the same as the challenge that any dancer must face, and that is the discipline that one must pursue in training the body to respond to the music and choreography to give the desired resulting meld of music, imagination, and performance. When we are ambitious and determined we think that striving and work will best accomplish this effort, but in truth, without the rest and waiting performance fails and creativity dries up.

Sometimes waiting is difficult because it seems so useless and helpless to wait. We are reminded of our dependency or our limitations when waiting, and perhaps it is that rein upon our wills which is one of waiting’s richest lessons. We do not command nature, and we do not command the Creator, …. we work best when we “work with”.

Recently, I did a short lesson with my children on the concept of “deference”. Deference is waiting for our own desires, while giving other’s desires preeminence. That sort of deferring of our own will and pleasure is not a practice which finds much popularity in today’s world. I think “waiting” and “deference” have something of a connection. At times waiting is preparation, as Alicia noted, and sometimes it is cooperation. Often, it is accommodation. It helps us to rest, while incorporating a flow between us and others, and especially with God.

Jesus called us to come to Him and rest. God promised us results from our waiting.

In dance, and in every other demanding action upon our muscles and bodies, we need the resting period to repair and restore, in readiness for continued ability and greater strength of execution in performance. The dance of life is no different. This resting and waiting is not one of indolence or laziness, but a focused and mindful syncing with how God has set forth the realities of life. That is why I think Alicia’s observation rings so true:

Recently I realized that more happens while we wait than almost any other time.

Today, I am waiting on God for many things. I have confidence in His goodness and tirelessness to bring me into the dance in a whole new way. What do you find yourself waiting for at this time? Are we listening to the music? Are we mindful of the rhythms? Is it time to partner or to solo? What dance do we create today?

It’s Not About Tequila

At least not for me, it isn’t.
So, I was reading about the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle because the Third Tribe sent me there. (I joined them this year because of just what the tequila post was really about). It isn’t just because I would like to somehow turn my garden site into an itty business, but because I want my blogging to have meaning, and purpose. And I want to feel I am making headway with my writing and let it at least break even in paying for itself instead of borrowing from the family budget ( somewhat like the government “borrows” from the Social Security funds.)

So, yes, honestly… I would like the affiliate relationships with Amazon and Google, etc, to help me with the hosting for my garden site, the premium templates, and all the other things that were once free on the net, but have become more necessary to pay for in creating a better quality output.

I once did everything free, both on my side of it and other’s side of it. It isn’t that I don’t still, but the realities are that everyone has to make a living. Oh forget this detour- I really wanted to talk about avoidance.

What This Was Really About
The Worm Post began describing the trough I often find myself in, not just in blogging, but in life.

It goes like this:

sometimes people love what you’ve got, love you, and shower you with roses and orders and blog comments and 83% organic dark chocolate.

And sometimes? Sometimes, not so much.

Sometimes it’s dead quiet out there and you feel a tad exposed. You troll Twitter and everyone’s tweets are so peppy, all about how great their businesses are doing, you start to feel a tad bad. The story line, “What was I thinking?” starts sucking you in.

I get sucked into that dark pit more than I like to say. I get sucked into it as a Christian. Sometimes because of the type of Christian I am. I wonder how much of us is what we make ourselves, not because we are so powerful at it, but because of how helpless we are to really see facts. We labor under false assumptions and vague presumptions we pick up along the way of life. Not blaming anybody, it just seems that we humans are very prone to this.

So I followed the post through to the “assessment”. That is what I call the analysis + resolution of pinpointing these problems.

Like I said, I don’t have a history with tequila, but when we got to this point *__________ (fill in your favorite avoidance technique here), I knew we were talking about me and where I go ( I tend to do avoidance technique #Surfing the Internet until your butt goes numb and your heart grows stiff)

These avoidance techniques are what I call “Shadow Comforts,” things we turn to for fulfillment, but which don’t really fill us up.

Ouch. sounds like the Preacher talking to the Sinner, here, right? So how come I identify?
The “Nifty Tips” all sound like things that could work on any battle with depression, etc., but I reduce it down to get rest, develop awareness, get perspective.
I will be translating that into my lifestyle context, and leave it to to you take what you want for yourself.

More Thoughts About God

Continuing thoughts from the “About God” post.

You might want to read my thoughts on Deist ideas, “My Remarks To a Deist“. Many such posts I’ve written have been inspired by discussions which took place on internet forums in times past. Atheist Forums, Jewish Forums, Christian Forums, even forums for Ex-witches, Pagans, and other types of Online discussion platforms.

Those remarks to a self-professed Deist hold some of my thinking on why the Bible is a part of understanding and knowing God, but I think the biggest accusation that may be leveled against the thinking of both Agnostics and Deists is the quote from Elie Wiesel, and here it is again:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference…..And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference -Elie Wiesel”

If God just sets things in motion… and then leaves everything to its own devices, that is not loving. No more than a parent who brings forth a child, and then just leaves it lying on its own on the ground… That indifference guarantees that life does not flourish.

If God doesn’t care whether you interact with Him or not, then that is not love, it is indifference of epic proportions. Like a parent who ignores a child and cares nothing of its worth or relationship, perhaps taking care of the basic necessities, but no more. That is stultifying, life suffocating, indifference.

So if we believe that God cares, loves, gives life, and fathers… then we ought to intuit that He wants to have relationship and nurture His creation, His children.

Some of what I’ve said in the remarks to a Deist:

This would be my answer to all who hold liberal reconstructionist ideas on the Word of God. Let’s call it what it is: calling God a liar …. and then look to what this means for them: that they know nothing of God and cannot. It doesn’t matter, to that person, whether there is a God or not.

If scriptures cannot be trusted to give instruction of who God is and what He is like…. then what? What else is capable of standing the test of of time and culture? One would be left groping as a blind man. And that is what happens to many their whole lives through.

If there weren’t light the darkness would not hold such horror. And it is a horror to not have the life that light gives… everything would wither and die.

There are just not many answers to the big questions of Truth, Existence, and Meaning. Apathy is not an answer. It is giving up. It is the worst form of death, a slow withering death.

But we are left with this: we cannot prove God to anyone. We cannot prove that answer, because we are not given that. What we are given is faith, and faith will prove -against all odds- the truth in reality. We cannot prove that God’s Word is true in the past… we may only prove that it is true in the present and that requires faith for seeing it to the outcome on the continuum. I believe this is one reason He is described as the Living God.

There are no other choices. God is True or He is not.

Perhaps that is why John 3:33 says:
“He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true.”

Rules

But let’s talk a bit about what people do with this black and white, watershed forming, pinnacle of decision.
We don’t get to weasel out of deciding whether we judge God to be true or not, but then there are those who try to back-door God’s truth. And these are the people who make up rules… and those who love to have rulesheets to follow to excuse any real relationship to God… or for that matter to each other.

I would never say rules aren’t good, or that that they are bad. Like many things with man’s mark upon them, they are useful tools. That is, until they become weapons.

Rules have a God-given role. Real rules are what we call “law” and a succinct description given by St. Paul is as follows:

Galatians 3:24-26
Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

Rules have defined lines, which are for training purposes only. Eventually you want to grow up and have mastery enough to produce something of worth. A life worth living. You don’t love by the rules, Love is the rule, the only one that remains in force.

But one of the helpful things about rules that are found in the Law of the Bible is that they use history and principle to define what love is and is not.

And that is no small undertaking.

======
This is how I find out whether my idea of love, or of God, is healthy or not. I have had lots of very unhealthy ideas in my life, some which I foisted on others as well as myself. My views of myself, of God, of others, of motivations, of values, all have required ongoing adjustments, and some of the corrections were so painful that if I had to do it over again I think I would have taken any effort possible to have avoided the mistakes in those areas of life. I don’t have Pollyanna ideas that this is “what makes me what I am today” – I could have done without those parts. People around me could have done without them. But we don’t change our past history, we only learn from it… and try to give a better form to the future one.

This will wind up this part of the conversation…but you are more than welcome to continue it in the comments.

About God

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference…..And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference

Elie Wiesel said that. If you aren’t sure of who he is, Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor who came to terms with the horrible things that happened to him and those around him at the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp. And that quote says something that God wants us to understand about Him. I say God, because he also said some of the same in the teachings of the Bible. But we aren’t ready for that statement yet. Let me backtrack a bit. As usual in this sort of conversation I want to talk about us, because we understand ourselves somewhat more than we understand God.

First, A little About Us and this Conversation

Several things led here for me. Two are fairly recent, with input from two young women at very different places in their lives. One is just starting out, not yet out of High School, but questioning the things she was taught about God, Christianity, and though not calling it by name, Truth. The other is moving into that strange time of life as one approaches one’s thirties, a retrospective, an analysis of what one’s family of origin, teachings of the Church, and personal faith has actually returned in terms of that search for Truth. I capitalize it, because this sort of truth is the metaphysical, the elusive, great all encompassing sort of truth we seek in the final answers of who God is. Some give up on that, but not usually before they have spent some time in the search. So most of us have some experience with that.

I am not sure I am talking to either of them so much as to myself, because it is that underlying impetus that has always been a part of me, to know God, that occupies so much of my mental, and physical efforts. And that quest has been in company with many who are or have been atheists, or materialists, or religionists. The three are not so far apart as you might imagine. Much of what I have encountered and embraced has been “about God” and that is the core of this post, because you rarely come to know God unless you know something “about” God. Not that the information must all come from teachers,preachers, or tomes. Nature has plenty of puzzle pieces, enough to give us an inkling, but also enough information to make us dangerous. That is kind of a joke, but I’m going to let it stand with its grain of truth.

OK, about us. We learn that as little children we have a hard time seeing the world apart from ourselves, and in some ways, especially spiritual ways, I don’t think we manage to get very far from that subjectivity. We think “others” are like ourselves, and spend a lot of painful history finding out how much competition there is in the “selves” walking around. Not wanting to spend too much time on this, but how far are we –really– from two and three year old children? Just better quality masks.

Whether agreed on that, one thing that is quite clear anytime you talk to people about God is how sure they are that God is how they feel(in their own minds) He is. Or He is like what they are familiar with- or what they need Him to be. Invariably it starts with us. I can see one thing in which that is as it should be. We are individual persons, with our own personalities and characteristics, and our own experience of events and others, and all the rest of it that makes up our lives as sentient beings.

That ought to illumine us about something. If we have personal individuality and personalities, then a Creator God ( and all others are too small and inconsequential to bother with), at least has that much. And if God has His own personality and character, then it can not only be a possibility to be known, but it is also “other” than us. We don’t get to say we automatically can know who God is and accurately know things about Him…. not without His relating to us in some way.

Not anymore than someone would presume to know us, without relating to us and allowing us to express ourselves to them.

Now is the time to look at that beginning quote. Much of what we revolve around, indeed if you believe certain thinkers like Rollo May or ( as in the book I’m re-reading right now,Scott Peck) or even the Beatles, all that we center on.

So here is what I am going to say about all this:

We can’t possibly know anything about God, without Him revealing those things about Himself. He is very “other” than us, and we can’t project our emotions or thoughts on Him with any sort of accuracy. There are things we can presume, in the way the Bible puts it:

Psalm 94:9
He who planted the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not see?

If we are beings, we can see that God is a being. More of a logical sequence than a projection.

The truth of Wiesel’s statement about indifference as the opposite of life and love, both aspects of God, finds correlation in Revelation 3:16
“So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.”

What Type of Conclusions, Then?

One of the universals, and there are very few, is the response of all living things to love. God states that He is love, and that would all make sense. Jesus stated that He is life, so again, you can see the tandem existence of life and love, the only remaining problem with this becoming the definition of what love looks like. While that isn’t small in philosophical efforts to define, the 1 Corinthians 13 definition is not only sufficiently challenging, but realistically practical enough to merit consideration. And more than that, real attempts to live by it.

Thus far, though I haven’t said anything earth shaking or ground breaking. We can all pretty much reside peacefully on that page: God is loving, He is lifegiving, He cares.

Where the division often comes is in the validity of the information which more specifically outlines things about God.

Like the Bible.
But that is for you to chew on for awhile. Let me think more about where I’m going with these thoughts. In the meantime, I invite you to please express how you see this discussion going, or where you have gone with it yourself. Or just wait until we take it up again…. probably after I repost things that might add to the conversation.

I’m probably going to meander around this landscape for awhile.

How To Put Christ Back Into Christmas?

How, like a salmon swimming upstream, does a Christian move against the almost overwhelming flow of our materialistic culture as it indulges in one of the most consumer-oriented, commercially immersed holidays of the year?

We’ve been through the catchy phrase phase of “Jesus is the Reason for the Season”, but that didn’t help very much. We have steeled ourselves with good intentions, and organized lists. “This year” we will not get caught up in mad, irritable crowds of shoppers. Only to be faced with ungrateful store policies that outlaw the mention of “Merry Christmas”… because, well, you know… it might offend customers. Is the answer in putting a creche back in the capitol buildings? Singing the carols in the secular school plays? Wearing the red and the green? Will these things put Christ back into Christmas for us? What will?

I think I found the answer. And it is in the most obvious place: Advent.
…
Today was the first Sunday of Advent, and our family gathered around our own seasonal tradition of the Advent log. Ours is a little different than some in the details of how we celebrate Advent, but the fact that we do connects us with many likeminded Christians around the world.

Like no other time of year, as a family we make an effort to devote some minutes each day leading up to Christmas for a time of worship: saying a prayer, reading a scripture, sharing some religious songs- mostly Christmas carols, lighting candles. That is our core set of activities, with additions changing as our family matured, sometimes hit and miss with the competition of other Christmas hustle and bustle. It is an effort to settle in for the quietness and presence of such an act: sitting down together, centering thoughts on God and His wonderful gift. It is a well chosen effort and time given, that I can tell you. The story of our first Advent log.

The effect of it is to make a place for Christ, and find how perfect a fit He is for the center of Christmas celebration.

However, there was more for me to discover in Advent this year. In preparing devotional posts for the endeavor I started some years ago, of making a blog that functions like an Advent calender, I found myself renewing my acquaintance with the Savior in a deeper way. This year in contemplating God’s promises (the theme chosen for 2009), I was surprised how revived my soul felt after searching through the scriptures. How much it has impacted my focus during the season already!

Enter into the ancient Church tradition of observing Advent, whether with a Jesse tree, or an Advent wreath, or simply with daily devotional time centered on the holiness of the season. Let it be “set apart”, which is the meaning of “holy” for your consideration of the meaning of this beginning of the gospel story.

If you do not have your own Advent tradition I invite you to share mine. Advent Blog 2009
Continue reading How To Put Christ Back Into Christmas?

Me and My Walls

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down. … ”
Mending Wall, Robert Frost

I am of the group who finds expression in this poetic definition of negotiating life and its communications. I like less walls… but I find they are necessary at times to others if not to myself and that most people love their walls without thinking to whom they give offense. We construct them so easily and with so little forethought.

Then we wonder why we always have to repair them or … in worst cases… move them or watch them fall. Walls tell a boundary where mutual consideration does not exist. Walls are for shutting out the intruders and keeping insiders secure. Walls are building my castle and arming it well.
And then I think of that Sting song… another poetic expression which identifies the emotions I hold:
“As I returned across the fields Id known
I recognized the walls that I once made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines Id laid

And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire”

Life, Death, and Blogging

So much happens. we live our lives and take little time to reflect oftentimes, until some event sort of wakes us up and tells us that time is indeed passing on in continuum. Life events as milestones along the path of living.

“Are we there, yet?”

I visited my grandchildren, then came home to and promptly attended a friends funeral. She died much too young, at 55, after a difficult life. And, now, here I am blogging about it all. Wondering , “how does life pass by so quickly?” where do all the plans go, and the dreams … I often think of the Burn’s poem, ‘To A Mouse’:”The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, Gang aft agley”

…as I watch my children wrestle with what I did at their age, and the grandchildren starting their lives like a fresh clean slate awaiting the marks of their choices and circumstance.

The preacher said it best:

Ecclesiastes 11:8
However many years a man may live,
let him enjoy them all.
But let him remember the days of darkness,
for they will be many.
Everything to come is meaningless.

9 Be happy, young man, while you are young,
and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth.
Follow the ways of your heart
and whatever your eyes see,
but know that for all these things
God will bring you to judgment.
Ecclesiastes 12:13
Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.

So, now I am back to my home, blogging about the thoughts on my mind at the moment.

How predictable human beings are in some ways, but just when you think you have it all figured out …how very unpredictable it all becomes. We do pass through phases. The phase of youth that knows so little of mortality, the reflections later in life when we all in surprised tones remark how quickly time has passed and how soon we reached the stages of the sunset of life… these things are universally predictable. Why are we so surprised?

“Are we there, yet?”

Some of us are closer to the destination than we think.

Thoughts I Feel Like Thinking Upon

Pied Beauty

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

GLORY be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.

The Two Wisdoms

Wisdom does not mean what we would ordinarily think it to mean. It is not wise sayings, but more like a value system. As noted, the wisdom of the gods of this world is a system predicated on force, violence, threat, fear, ambition, lust, intimidation and the terror of men to preserve themselves and to make their own survival the first law of life. It is the unchallenged premise by which the world lives its life, namely, the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure. The world makes that the foremost principle of being. The ability to lay down one’s life and not to consider one’s life as dear to oneself is the wisdom of God and is predicated on contemptible weakness and foolishness. The one wisdom lives for itself, its own preservation and its own advantages, while Gods wisdom lives for another; it is selfless. It is the wisdom of the Son of God who never initiated anything in Himself, or for Himself, but lived entirely for the gratification of His Father.
This is contrary to human nature and how we think we have to live. Anything that is resolved through violence is the wisdom of this world. That is the way the world has lived its life throughout history. God’s wisdom is to relinquish, to give up, to yield and to believe that there is something greater than death and, by that, not to fear death. It is a wisdom that is centered in the Cross of Christ Jesus, namely, to serve and glorify Him. We will know that we have aligned ourselves with God when we constitute a threat to the realm of spirit Powers that brood over us. The overcomers of the end of the age are not those who avoid pain and pursue pleasure, but who overcome,
…because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death (Rev. 12:11b).
The world cannot bear this kind of wisdom. The only one who can live like that truly is one who does not think that this life is the whole story, and who realizes that there is a life beyond this life for which this life is preparation. There is an eternity, and it is the true appreciation of that reality that enables us to be fearless in this life. If we suffer the loss of our life, we are fully persuaded that it is not mere happenstance or accident, but ordained of God, and that there will be eternal reward for that sacrifice and suffering.

~Art Katz

The seasons, like greater tides, ebb and flow across the continents.
Spring advances up the United States at the average rate of about
fifteen miles a day. It ascends mountainsides at the rate of about a
hundred feet a day. It sweeps ahead like a flood of water, racing
down the long valleys, creeping up hillsides in a rising tide. Most
of us, like the man who lives on the bank of a river and watches the
stream flow by, see only one phase of the movement of spring. Each
year the season advances toward us out of the south, sweeps around
us, goes flooding away to the north.
– Edwin Way Teale, North With the Spring