The Missing Turtles

The Missing Turtles Where have the terrapins gone? They are the missing element. The others seem to be in place. The Robins returned at the appropriate time. The early flowers pushed above the chill ground, reaching for the sun. The leaves, the grass, the butterflies, the summer sounds of locust, the fireflies and the rabbits returned in due season. Everything was there -- including a fish or two borrowed briefly from a clear stream, and immediately set free. Even the squirrels have been present to bless (or irritate) the residents of these parts; but the lowly turtle I have missed. Perhaps, (The mind rushes there quickly doesn't it?), it is just that I have not seen them. I have not looked in the right place. Or my limited vision failed to penetrate the camouflage of country turtles. Were they there? Did I just miss them? Probably so.
But I have not forgotten them. In earlier days, days of fewer cars, you would see turtles crossing the roadways in the warmth of a late spring day. Occasionally one would wander in from the deep wood to see if those particularly hostile creatures called humans were still there. Children would play with them awhile before sending back to their homes in the endless forests of Missouri. We lived in a different world when we were young. We saw things in a broader scale, and in limited number. Ah, I'd like to see turtles again.
So let's say a good word for them, one of God's less pretentious creatures. And let us thank the Creator of all things for such a wondrous world still awaiting our child-like vision.
Light and Warmth,
Willard Spencer

after viewing an old church bell

Angel's song 

The bones of the ground would quake ever so slightly, the grass and leaves shiver, the hearts of the Saints would leap and sinners tremble at it's clarion call. Now it was silent. Held fast by disuse, lashed with the silk-silver of heedless spiders, the sound of the old bell had not echoed over the hills for times and half times, it would seem, an apocalypse ago.

Pity, to have so great a song to sing and no one to loose it . . . Angel's song wrapped human silence.

Are we singing our best song? Nay, not just "ours", for all good songs are but echoes of the one grand harmony. Does God's music sound clearly from our life and lips or is the song muted by disuse, lashed by the flimsiness of our own will and ways?

"Loose our best songs Father, on this land. Let the bones quake, the leaves shiver. May the hearts of the Saints rejoice and sinners tremble at its clarion call."

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Daisies in our summer garden
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Lavender in garden setting.
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