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Insert Summer, Delight and Savor

“Summertime, and the living is easy.” – Ella Fitzgerald

“In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.” – John Steinbeck

Wild air.
Blue skies.
Long slow days of the sun and delight.
Sit.
Savor.
Summer.
Soak it in.
Joy and fun at work.

“Summer has a flavor like no other. Always fresh and simmered in sunshine.” – Oprah Winfrey

“Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink in the wild air.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take In and Give Out Good

“Taking in the good, whenever and wherever we find it, gives us new eyes for seeing and living.”― Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

“But if I’ve learned anything, it is that goodness prevails, not in the absence of reasons to despair, but in spite of them. If we wait for clean heroes and clear choices and evidence on our side to act, we will wait forever, and my radio conversations teach me that people who bring light into the world wrench it out of darkness, and contend openly with darkness all of their days. […] They were flawed human beings, who wrestled with demons in themselves as in the world outside. For me, their goodness is more interesting, more genuinely inspiring because of that reality. The spiritual geniuses of the ages and of the everyday simply don’t let despair have the last word, nor do they close their eyes to its pictures or deny the enormity of its facts. They say, “Yes, and …,” and they wake up the next day, and the day after that, to live accordingly.” – Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith

Fight the good fight.
Do not back down.
Do not despair.
Work to do.
Get to it.
Daily.
Love wins.
Long hard haul, worth the trip.
Journey and destination,
Till dry soil.
Dig deep to fertile soil.
Plant seeds.
Tend, nourish, feed.
Bloom love, kindness, curiosity, enthusiasm, resolve, joy, freedom, resilience, hope.
Cast light.

“Generous listening is powered by curiosity, a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive. It involves a kind of vulnerability – a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one’s own best self and one’s own best words and questions.”― Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

Grace of Wonder, Beauty, Light

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

“May the beauty of your life become more visible to you, that you may glimpse your wild divinity.
May the wonders of the earth call you forth from all your small, secret prisons and set your feet free in the pastures of possibilities.
May the light of dawn anoint your eyes that you may behold what a miracle a day is.
May the liturgy of twilight shelter all your fears and darkness within the circle of ease.
May the angel of memory surprise you in bleak times with new gifts from the harvest of your vanished days.
May you allow no dark hand to quench the candle of hope in your heart.
May you discover a new generosity towards yourself, and encourage yourself to engage your life as a great adventure.
May the outside voices of fear and despair find no echo in you.
May you always trust the urgency and wisdom of your own spirit.
May the shelter and nourishment of all the good you have done, the love you have shown, the suffering you have carried, awaken around you to bless your life a thousand times.
And when love finds the path to your door may you open like the earth to the dawn, and trust your every hidden color towards its nourishment of light.
May you find enough stillness and silence to savor the kiss of God on your soul and delight in the eternity that shaped you, that holds you and calls you.
And may you know that despite confusion, anxiety and emptiness, your name is written in Heaven.
And may you come to see your life as a quiet sacrament of service, which awakens around you a rhythm where doubt gives way to the grace of wonder, where what is awkward and strained can find elegance, and where crippled hope can find wings, and torment enter at last unto the grace of serenity.
May Divine Beauty bless you.” – John O’Donohue, Beauty – The Invisible Embrace

Beauty, imagination, kindness, hope, wonder, beauty, joy, enthusiasm, awe, generosity, love.
Ignite, fan the flames, stoke the fire.
“May the outside voices of fear and despair find no echo in you”
Grace of wonder, wings of hope, urgency of spirit.
Thoughts, words, actions.
Cast light.

“Hope is a waking dream.”― Aristotle

Daily Work of Love

“Be calm. God awaits you at the door.”― Gabriel García Márquez

“Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.”― Lao Tzu

Grief, joy, laughter, tears, compassion, kindness, exhausted, enthusiastic, generosity, rejection, empathy, acceptance, detachment, grace, hopeful.
All of it.
May I move through, experience all of it.
To cry with a friend or stranger.
To listen and not solve.
To be calm in the storms.
Peace in chaos.
Quiet in noise.
Salt and light.
Hands and feet.
Do the work.
The daily work of love.
Knowing and trusting God is doing his work through each and all of us.

“Stillness is the wellspring of insight.”― Aloo Denish Obiero

The way…peace

“It is my conviction that there is no way to peace – peace is the way.”― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power

“Peace is not something you wish for,
it is something you make, something you are, something you do,
and something you give away. ”― Robert Fulghum

Drop in the ocean.
To a ripple, to a wave.
May I be a drop of peace.
Do my part.
Calm in the storm.

“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.”― Etty Hillesum

Peace on Earth

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least
sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s
lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the
great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with
forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still
water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am
free.”

“Lord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy” – St. Francis

May we be conquered by peace.
Overwhelmed with kindness.
Overflowing with love.
May I do my part to make the world a better place.
Peace, love, pardon, faith, hope, light, joy.

“Peace begins with a smile.” – Mother Teresa

Enchantment in, through, with this Day

“Every day is filled with opportunities to be amazed, surprised, enthralled—to experience the enchanting everyday. To stay eager. To be, in a word, alive.”― Rob Walker, The Art of Noticing

“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, The Inner History of a Day, To Bless the Space Between Us

To shape and be shaped.
To hold and release.
To root and reach.
To be present and awake.
Receiving the eucharist of this moment.
Communion with all that is, was and will be.
Woven in ordinary days with extraordinary grace, gratitude and most of all love.
Quiet mind.
Soft heart.
Knowing soul amidst the unknown.
The form a day takes when we enter with awe, wonder, wisdom.
Overflowing with possibility, promise, delight.
To shape and be shaped.
Each day, a holy place.

“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind”― Caroline Myss

Waiting in Anticipation

“Happiness is not how many things you do, but how well you do them. More is not better. Happiness is not experiencing something else; it’s continually experiencing what you already have in new and different ways.”― Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

Same in new and different ways.
Attention honed.
Awake, receptive.
Open the gifts of this day.

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.”― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Full-Blown Beauty

“Grace is a power that comes in and transforms a moment into something better.”― Caroline Myss

“That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.”― Rumi

Lightness of spirit.
Laughter in full-blown beauty.
Beneath your feet.
Above, below, all around.
Mostly within.
Awaiting your arrival.
Attention and noticing.
Pausing and rooting.
Grace, peace, joy.

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.”― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Bits and Pieces

“The path to a greater life is not “suffering until you achieve something,” but letting bits and pieces of joy and gratitude and meaning and purpose gradually build, bit by bit.”― Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

“The key to finding happiness in this life is realizing that the only way to overcome is to transcend; to find happiness in the simple pleasures, to master the art of just being.”― Brianna Wiest

May today be enough.
Overflowing.
Ebb and flow.
Fun, laughter, play.
Delight in the art of being.
Space, margins, pause, praise.
For what already is.
Fresh eyes.
Grateful heart.
Chasing joy.
Being caught by it too.
Bits and pieces.
Abundance of presence.
Spectator and participant in this day.
Simple delicious pleasures.

“It’s not about getting over things, it’s about making room for them. It’s about painting the picture with contrast.”― Brianna Wiest