Birth Of Spring ...

  “I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”

                ~ James M. Barrie

                 ~ 1860-1937

             ~ from “Peter Pan & Wendy”

                   ~ published 1911

This beautiful blue robin’s egg nestled in the warmth of a May evening at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania was once the home of a sweet robin who has broken out of the egg to soar into life, as new life is the heart of the birth of spring.

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers ...

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without words –

And never stops at all.”

    ~ “Hope Is The Thing With Feathers”

       ~ Emily Dickinson

         ~ 1830-1886

Spring – and the hope it brings – was just around the corner when I captured this white feather that landed softly among the brown winter branches on a mid-March afternoon at Lehigh Parkway, Allentown, Pennsylvania, a reminder that hope is always in the wind and appears where you least expect it.

Steeped In Faith ...

“God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on the trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.”

      ~ Martin Luther

         ~ 1843-1546

Steeped in history and faith, St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church stands majestically in downtown Allentown, Pennsylvania on an early November afternoon.

As Allentown’s first Lutheran Church, it was founded in 1762.

St. Paul’s was one of two original churches in Allentown, first founded in a log structure in the 1760s. The current location was donated by the Allen family in the 1790s.

The remains of Margaret Elizabeth Allen Tilghman (April 21, 1772 - September 9, 1798), who died in childbirth, are in a special crypt located underneath the church tower of St. Paul’s. It was written that when the remains of Margaret were exhumed in 1903, after 105 years of interment, strands of her auburn hair that charmed the beaus of Philadelphia were still recognizable. 

A plaque located near the crypt honoring her reads: “Endowed with warm affection and an excellent understanding, she enjoyed the flattering prospect of a useful and happy life, but it pleased Almighty God Whose Providence tho' unsearchable is all wise, that she should be cut off, in the flower of her youth from this transitory world. She died surrounded by friends.” 

Margaret’s grandfather William Allen and her husband William Tilghman were both Chief Justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The Tilghman Family is a famous Maryland family. According to a WFMZ article, “No less a figure than John Adams’s wife Abigail had hailed the three Allen girls as part of the “constellation of beauty” that brightened the national capital of Philadelphia. But now an early death had darkened one of those beautiful auburn-haired stars.”