Susan’s Thursday Morning Note August 13, 2015
Quotes from Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery
Good morning! Nature seems to be playing a trick this morning sneaking in a preview of a fall morning with the crisp breeze and coolness outside. The sight of daisies and roses show me it’s all a trick; that summer still is on stage. But the curtains are barely moving in the background…I know that fall is getting ready to make it’s debut soon enough. My angel of dawn has arrived and peers through my window again today. She hands me a little white rose with her gentle smile. Encouraging me to enter this day. To keep perspective. Encouraging me to notice the gifts right in front of me. Shadows on the grass moving as if they are water. Branches swinging just for the fun of swinging. A little baby frog pretending to have more nerve than it actually has peering into the pool. Gifts in front of me. Showing me my Creator thought of me this morning as he planned His world.
This week I have pulled my “Anne of Green Gables” books out again, along with journals from L.M. Montgomery, creator of this dear character that is one of my closest friends in my soul. I spend a lot of my life imagining and pretending in my mind. The scene that plays from the movie shows Anne asking Marilla if she ever imagines and being astonished finding Marilla does not. Anne exclaims, “Oh, Marilla, how much you miss!” As I picture her looking out over the fields and imagining herself in different scenarios I also find myself hearing hear speaking other lines. Below are a few of my favorite lines from the books by L.M. Montgomery and from her private journals. I hope you picture her bright eyes as she speaks and find her smile encouraging you to notice what is around you today. Beauty. Everywhere.
“You may tire of reality but you never tire of dreams.”
“After all,” Anne had said to Marilla once, “I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.”
“Night is beautiful when you are happy–comforting when you are in grief–terrible when you are lonely and unhappy.”
“Don’t you ever imagine things differently from what they are?” “No.” “Oh, Marilla, how much you miss.”
“I grew up out of that strange, dreamy childhood of mine and went into the world of reality. I met with experiences that bruised my spirit – but they never harmed my ideal world. That was always mine to retreat into at will. I learned that that world and the real world clashed hopelessly and irreconcilably; and I learned to keep them apart so that the former might remain for me unspoiled. I learned to meet other people on their own ground since there seemed to be no meeting place on mine. I learned to hide the thoughts and dreams and fancies that had no place in the strife and clash of the market place. I found that it was useless to look for kindred souls in the multitude; one might stumble on such here and there, but as a rule it seemed to me that the majority of people lived for the things of time and sense alone and could not understand my other life. So I piped and danced to other people’s piping – and held fast to my own soul as best I could.”
“I love to smell flowers in the dark,” she said. “You get hold of their soul then.”
“I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return.”
“There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so interesting.”
“There is such a place as fairyland – but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.”
“Can’t you even imagine you’re in the depths of despair?” “No, I cannot. To despair is to turn your back on God.”
“God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world’, whispered Anne softly.”
“My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes. That’s a sentence I read once and I say it over to comfort myself in these times that try the soul.”
“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer.”
“It’s all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it’s not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?”
“There might be some hours of loneliness. But there was something wonderful even in loneliness. At least you belonged to yourself when you were lonely.”
“The woods call to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one only — a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is of the company of the archangels.”
“I’d like to add some beauty to life,” said Anne dreamily. “I don’t exactly want to make people know more… though I know that is the noblest ambition… but I’d love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me… to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn’t been born.”
“I doubt if I shall ever have time to read the book again — there are too many new ones coming out all the time which I want to read. Yet an old book has something for me which no new book can ever have — for at every reading the memories and atmosphere of other readings come back and I am reading old years as well as an old book.”
“I’m really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart.”
“I don’t know, I don’t want to talk as much…It’s nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures. I don’t like to have them laughed at or wondered over.”
“If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you’ll never be and you need not waste time in trying.”
“I do know my own mind,’ protested Anne. ‘The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.”
“Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it.”
Another Thursday morning. Another week of sand passing so quickly through our timers in this fast life. Our little ones will continue to race, letting the bird’s song be their starting sound. Blessed are the children; for they see God. They see God because they hear the bird songs. They see the little hiding frogs. Their eyes are bright. They see God. Will we take the time to look at the little children and learn from them? Learn to keep our perspective of what matters. Look to see what they are noticing. That will give us a glimpse of who they are seeing. Their creator. Our creator. The one who though through all of these details to show us that life is beautiful if we can stop the sands in our minds as they travel through our timers. To stop and watch the trees swaying and seeming to speak to us. To laugh. To look to the heavens. Where the promise of peace is waiting.
Have a beautiful rest of the week. Thank you for letting me enter your world again this morning. Tonight we will all have a chance to chisel in stone moments from our day. Moments we will never relive. Can we make decisions of what to think about, who to talk to, what to look at, and what to cherish to make the moments worthy of inscription? Thank you for coming to our store for your gifts and books. I hope you can come soon and let me watch you take home a book that may change the rest of your life. Susan
Latin for this week: confictura – imagination pulchritudine m natura – beauty in nature filios deus – children see God