Gratefully Present in the Present

“If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present…Gratefully.”— Maya Angelou

“When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves.
The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over.
Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent.
When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.
This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there.
Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely.
Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached.
The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world.
Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.” – John O’Dononue, Beauty, The Invisible Embrace

Color
Nature
Flowers
Poetry
Roots and sky, and all the beauty in between to behold
Stillness
Rest
Wonder
To restore, root, release
Be filled back up
Not in doing but in being
Ever present in this day
Overflowing, abundance, ease
Curious, receptive, open to where the space, quiet, awe leads
Follow

“Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.”― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye