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Posts from the ‘Beauty’ Category

Jan 8

Rituals of Approach

“When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere.”― John O’Donohue

“What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation.

When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”― John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace – A Spiritual Homecoming Through Celtic Traditions, Art, Music, and Divine Grace

Morning, stepping off point
Slow entry
Reflection, meditation, prayer
Call it what you will
Getting out of your own way
Soft whisper
Discernment and clarity
Setting the tone
Framing the door
Crossing the threshold
Anticipation, reverence, curiosity
Spilling into awe, wonder, delight
Spring smack dab in winter
Ordinary days, sacred gifts woven throughout
Concealed beauty surfaces
Blooming joy in noticing, partaking, generosity
Enter the embrace of a new day.

“May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.”― John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong

Dec 9

Carpentry of Exquisite Beauty

“In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase.”― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power…Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”― Abraham Heschel

What pen shall you write with today?
What brush and colors will you swirl on the canvas?
What song to sing loudly and proudly?
What dance will bring you gliding across the floor?

We create our days and our days become our life, one at a time.
Plant seeds of kindness, laughter, joy, compassion, attention, inquiry.
String syllables of poetry and prose.
Weave gratitude, grace, goodness.
Bloom love, peace, light.
Exquisite carpentry.

“As a carpenter can make a gibbet as well as an altar, a writer can describe the world as trivial or exquisite, as material or as idea, as senseless or as purposeful. Words are wood.”― Mary Oliver, Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poem

Dec 5

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Power of Beauty, Out and In

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.”― Louisa May Alcott

Put beauty in your path every day.
It’s not hard to be found.
Pause, look up and around.
Buy yourself flowers.
Take a walk in the woods.
Drive a different way.
Read poetry.
Turn off auto-pilot.
Turn up the music and sing.
Look within and find it too.
Kindness, compassion, humor.
Celebrate this day.
On the very ground you stand.
Imperfection and all.
This day shall not pass again.
Do not pass it by.

“The greatest illusion is that life should be perfect”― Charlie Mackesy

Nov 15

Poetry of Presence

“Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.”― Naomi Shihab Nye

“only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye

From doing to being
Swift to slow
Pausing to notice, partake
Kindness of gratitude, awe, wonder
Shimmer of this day
Poetry of presence
Interrupted by beauty

“Every day is a poetry day.”― Naomi Shihab Nye

Oct 29

Walking Home

“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are …
… lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”- Ram Dass

“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.”― The Dalai Lama

Find the beauty.
Daily.
It’s there.
Look longer.
Dive in, both feet.
Expand your heart.
Open your mind.
Curiosity. Joy. Kindness.
Love well.
Transform the world.
Walk each other home.

“Our work is to call each other home, to call to one another’s spirits and say, “This is for you. This is what it means to be human, to love and be loved. Let’s learn from one another as we go.”― Kaitlin B. Curtice, Native

Oct 9

Eyes of the Heart

“We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.”― William Hazlitt

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”― Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

May wonder, beauty and joy be on your path today.
As it always is.
And may each of us have the heart to see it, stop and dance.
Poetry and prose of this day.
Awaiting to be written.

“The journey of each life is a pilgrimage through unforeseen sacred places that enlarge and enrich the soul.” – John O’Donohue

Aug 31

For the Beauty of the Earth

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”― Alan Watts

“For the beauty of the earth
For the beauty of the skies
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies.” – Folliott S. Pierpoint

Earth, skies, all around us that lies
For the beauty of it
Calm the waters
Pause, look, reflect
Move softly and lightly, with reverence
Sacred ground of the present, of full presence in it
Drink in every ounce of beauty, wonder and awe
Abundant and overflowing.

“For the wonder of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale and tree and flower,
sun and moon and stars of light.”– Folliott S. Pierpoint

Aug 24

Soil and Sky

“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”― Alan Watts

“In the name of the air,
The breeze,
And the wind,
May our souls
Stay in rhythm
With eternal
Breath.” – John O’Donohue

Blue skies
Clouds hue
Fields of flowers
Kites soaring
Fresh air
Rich soil
Stay in rhythm
Breathe in beauty

“Your heart is the soil of your life.”― Anita Phillips, The Garden Within

Aug 14

Lens of Reverence

“There’s a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them.”― Jo Walton

“What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation.

When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”― John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

Embrace and grace
Woven
Thread
Sown
Knit
Stitched
Into each day
Beauty, light, wonder
Lens of reverence
Ordinary days transformed.

“Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.”― Thomas de Quincey

Aug 2

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Emerging Fullness

“When an incidental color or a random fragrance takes possession of our imagination, we can unexpectedly blossom into a new entity as it gives us wings and enlightens our horizon, just like canary birds that feel stimulated and start singing as soon as they sense the radiance of the sun through the reflection of the skylight.”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming. So I think beauty in that sense is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.” – John O’Donohue

Captured by radiance
Stunned by beauty
Pollinating in sweetness
Rising yeast to warm bread
Work of waiting, gazing, reverence
Discipline of restoration
Ebb and flow, cup filled, emptied to be filled again
Unfolding life in ordinary days
Mother of presence
Thin spaces and places
Of joy, awe, wonder

“if you take time not as calendar product but as actually the parent or mother of presence, then you see that, in the world of spirit, time behaves differently” – John O’Donohue

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