RAIN SWEPT...

RAIN in the COUNTRY by Margaret E. Sangster (1828-1912)

The rain fell like a song of hope on fields that had been dying.

It was a mother's loving kiss upon a wistful face.

                                

Tall trees that had been parched and dry 

broke into gentle sighing

And happiness lay like a smile upon the garden place
The house was very snug and sweet; the rain's kind slender fingers

Made magic on the sloping roof and smoothed the streaming pane.

                               

We lighted candles, slim and white, 

and, like a dream that lingers,

                               

They painted paths of drifting light 

against the silver rain.

The house was very sweet and snug.. its shadows caressing.

Yet for a moment we were swept away with sudden aching                              
For folk who do not understand....

that rain may be a blessing, who wander, shelterless, and sad,

                                 

across the rain-swept city.

Photographs 2026 Campbell River, B.C.

                      

 

HOLDING HOPE...

"In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, HOPE to despair..." -Howard Thurman (1899-1981) 

"There is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before....

                                                             

So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold..."-Jan L. Richardson ( artist)

"When you have ears to hear and eyes to see... 

                                              

...you will recognize Him at any moment in your life..." -Henri Nouen

"While we wait for God....

                                                      

...we are with God all along, that while we need to be reassured of God's arrival, or the arrival of our homecoming...

...we are already at home..." -Michelle Blake

"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light...

...on those living in a land of deep darkness a light has dawned..."

                                                                                                                                       - Isaiah 9:2-6

"Advent is the art of holding HOPE gently, until it becomes light..."

                    - unknown

"When the song of the angels is stilled...

...when the star in the sky is gone, the work of Christmas begins...." 

-Howard Thurman (author, theologian, civil rights leader)

Photographs 2025. First Advent of Hope.

FROM DUSK ....

"The whisper of the dusk is night shedding its husk..." -Dean Koontz

"Shrouded in silence, the branches wrapped me in their peace. When the boundaries were erased, once again the wonder: that "I " exist....." - Dag Hammarskjold

                                "Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk..." -Stephen King

"All day, the colours had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains, possessed of ocean shadows  and depths.." -Kiran Desai

"It is light that reveals, light that obscures, light that communicates. It is light I listen to...." -John Sexton

"He closed his eyes and sank into the warm dusk that separates consciousness and sleep, where reality bends and sways to the wind of thought, and where creativity blossoms in its freedom from boundaries and all things are possible.."

                                                           - Christopher Paolini

"Change , like sunshine, can be a friend or a foe, a blessing or a curse, a dawn or a dusk..." - William Arthur Ward

"And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east..." - John Steinbeck

"Every moment of this strange and lovely life from dawn to dusk, is a miracle..."- Beverley Nichols

"There is no dusk to be, there is no dawn that was, only there's now, and now, and the wind in the grass...." -Archibald MacLeish

"Willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver..." - Tennyson

"Spring seems off, impossible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; already hope is stirring at the edges of the day..." - Kathleen Norris

"Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow..." -Khalil Gibran

"It is the sky that makes the earth so lovely at sunrise, and so splendid at sunset. In the one it breathes over the earth the crystal-like ether, in the other the liquid gold..." - Thomas Cole

"Out of the dusk a shadow, then a spark, out of the cloud a silence, out of the heart a rapture..." -John B. Tabb

"I came home at dusk with my ears ringing from the quiet...." -Tim Winston

 Photographs 2025