The Chambered Nautilus

 

 

Fragile beauty, super-glued back together

 

I have a lot of natural items on display around my house: ostrich eggs, peacock feathers, dried flowers, bundles of wheat, seashells and turtle shells, geodes and interesting stones. I have always been drawn to the beauty in nature and like to have reminders near me.

 

This is a section from one of my favorite poems from high school.

 

 

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

 

From "The Chambered Nautilus"

-Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr.

 

 

I love the idea of growing, exponentially, over time.

I love seeing the fingerprints of Creator God in nature...in things both delicate and infinite.

 

I love knowing that He lives within me because of Christ, and is helping me grow more into His image, one stage at a time, one season at a time. I love being a part of His order.

 

 

The inner ear

 

 

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