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Apr 2

Root in Love, Bloom in Kindness

“Remember finally, that the ashes on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.” – Richard Rohr

“We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.” – John O’Donohue

Opening a door
Yielding in traffic
Sitting with a friend
Greeting a stranger
An encouraging word
Last suppers that we didn’t know would be last
A $20 to a soul on a corner
Playing hopscotch with a child
Asking, listening
Washing feet
Eucharist of the ordinary
Holy places
Without counting or conditions
Love

“In the humility of the washing of the feet, we find the greatest heights of love.”— Pope Francis

Apr 1

Irreverent Defiance of Despair

“Curiosity lights our way to compassion.”― Shannan Martin, Start with Hello

“Here, in this unfinishable life,
we bring our burdens (so heavy)
to hands strong enough to carry them.
Blessed are you,
walking the path of courage:
finding improbable ways to love,
offering creative acts of mercy,
and practicing irreverent defiance of despair.
Blessed are you, who create
beauty in this world.
May you carry this quiet revolution into
a world aching for signs of hope.
Blessed are we, trusting that somehow,
even now, today could be a sign
of good things to come.” – Kate Bowler

Step out of the noise, distraction, clamoring
Of judgment, complaint, busy, comparison, counting, keeping score, opinion, advice, criticism, pessimism
Take a detour, go off path, cut a new trail
Into kindness, compassion, showing up, staying, listening, serving, holding a hand
Quiet revolution
Look for the helpers
And when others look for “the helpers,” be one of them
Signs of hope
Acts of love
Create some beauty in your slice of the world today
Cast light.

“Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping” – Fred Rogers

Mar 31

Sweet Defiant Hope

“how shall there be redemption and resurrection unless there has been a great sorrow? And isn’t struggle and rising the real work of our lives? Maybe in ten more years I will have another idea. Meanwhile I know this: evil is one part of our beautiful world. And though my writing pays it small attention, I am not blinkered; I, too, have been forced to stand close to it, and have felt the almost muscular agony of impotence before it, unable to interfere or assuage or do anything effective. Though I do—oh yes I do—believe the soul is improvable. Oh sweet and defiant hope!”― Mary Oliver, Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems

“Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.”― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

Sweet defiant hope.
Gritty tough joy.
Struggle and rising.
Scaffolding and anchors.
Good bones.
Redemption and resurrection.
Light breaking through, again and again.
Love, the question and the answer, the journey and the destination.
Our daily work…
To make this place beautiful.

“Stop calling your heart broken; your heart works just fine. If you are feeling–love, anger, gratitude, grief–it is because your heart is doing its work. Let it.”― Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change

Mar 30

Desert Bloom, Spring Hope

“Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone but in every leaf of springtime.” – Martin Luther

“May we anchor ourselves to the now.
Not allowing our minds skip to what-ifs
or what-will-happen-whens.
Blessed are you trying to put aside
the “everything is possible” mentality.
You who know that sheer effort
will not put these pieces back together.
You who have lost perfection,
and found rest in “good enough” instead.
One small step,
one deep breath,
at a time.” – Kate Bowler

Amidst dried leaves and pine needles, softening ground
First buds push to light
Bloom breaks through, small but mighty
Spring, newness, resurrection
Winter to spring
One step, one breath at a time
Desert bloom.

“For no miracle disturbed them so much as that of Lazarus.” – St. John Chrysostom

Mar 29

Perpetual Revival

“Each of us experiences the perpetual revival of the self. We constantly recast our connate emotional index by perceiving each encounter in life as a marvel, impedance, problem, disaster, or nothing at all. Living in the moment allows us to escape the lonely landscape of self-interest and be part of a larger world filled with beauty, reverence, and adoration.”― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

Volume low.
Brilliant color.
Light bright.
Anchor and attune.
In the ordinary and small.
Transformed by attention and reverence.

“Mind the little things.
Appreciate them.
Revere them, too.”― Shellen Lubin

Mar 28

First Temples

“Forests were the first temples of God and in forests men grasped their first idea of architecture.”― James C. Snyder, Introduction to Architecture

“As we live and as we are, Simplicity – with a capital “S” – is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.”― Frank Lloyd Wright, The Natural House

Architecture
Convergence of science and art
Trees to forest
Bricks to buildings
Scaffolding to structure
Convergence, bridges, connectors
Cathedrals of beauty, nature, life
Simplicity, awe, wonder.

“the systems of mutual connections and influences of which we are generally unaware, but which we discover by chance, as surprising coincidences or convergences of fate, all those bridges, nuts, bolts, welded joints and connectors” – Olga Tokarczuk

Mar 27

Gathering Counterweights

“When we take ourselves too seriously, we are at the risk of taking other things, including God, too lightly,”― James J. Martin, Between Heaven and Mirth

“This is not a ‘silver lining’ situation, where pain and injustice are minimized for the sake of flimsy optimism or playing nice. It’s not even about hoarding our favorite things. We are not guaranteed to have those things within our reach. The practice of gathering counterweights is about creating moments of sustenance from the raw materials of what we’re given. It is about holding everything in honest tension. Both/and. Our counterweights help us move forward and breathe through the heaviness.” – Shannan Martin

Goodness
Kindness
Generosity
Delight
Laughter
Flowers
A smile
Asking
Listening
Art
Music
Movement
Joy
Frolic
Counterweights
To gather and hold
A sense of imperfect yet palpable balance, ease
Atune, awake, off autopilot
Run the race, marathon not sprint
To fight the good fight
Of love, gratitude, peace
Precisely and on purpose
In the middle of the mess, chaos, noise, uncertainty
Long game, resilience, grit, grace
Make the world a little softer today for yourself and others
Cast light.

“What on earth can we do to make this sad and beautiful world a little softer for everyone?”― Shannan Martin, The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God’s Goodness Around You

Mar 26

Benediction of Spring

“After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom. The sunlight was a benediction.” ― Dan Simmons, Drood

“And over walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays and tendrils the fair green veil of tender little leaves had crept, and in the grass under the trees and the gray urns in the alcoves and here and there everywhere were touches or splashes of gold and purple and white and the trees were showing pink and snow above his head and there were fluttering of wings and faint sweet pipes and humming and scents and scents.”― Frances Hodgson Burnett, Secret Garden

Cusp of spring.
Slivers and beams of things to come.
Of things already here.
Transition into transformation.
Close but not yet.
Bloom under construction.
Time and timing.
Confetti of color.
Souls of beautiful things.

“Surely the flowers of a hundred spring are simply the souls of beautiful things!”― L.M. Montgomery, The Watchman and Other Poems

Mar 25

Sacrament of Ploppage

“Stillness is a brilliant teacher.”― Shannan Martin, Start with Hello

“So how do you connect with the real person inside you… You just… stop. You do what I call the “sacrament of ploppage”—you sit down, and you start to realize that everything electronic will usually work again if you just unplug it. And that includes you, too.” — Anne Lamott, Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

Stop, sit, stay
From doing and speed to being and stillness
Unplugged and undone
Sensing, observing, absorbing
Small things in ordinary
Color, detail, beauty
Simple and plentiful
Strewn and scattered throughout each day
To gather and hold
Look up and around
In awe, reverence, wonder
Sacrament of ploppage

“Sometimes we get so hung up on doing something great, we forget the best thing is often the smallest.”― Shannan Martin, The Ministry of Ordinary Places

Mar 24

Further Shore

“Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.”― Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist

“So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.”
― Seamus Heaney

Poetry of this day.
What will you read?
What will you write?
The pen is in your hands.
Signatures of your own frequency.
Cures and healing wells, deep and wide.
Shores to reach.

“You lose more of yourself than you redeem
doing the decent thing. Keep at a tangent
When they make the circle wide, it’s time to swim
Out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency.”
― Seamus Heaney, Station Island

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