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Posts from the ‘Beauty’ Category

Nov 9

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Active Force of Renewal

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”― Leo Tolstoy

“The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.” – John O’Donohue

Pause
Perspective
Possibilities
Presence
Patience
Resilience
Love, kindness, connection
Hope too
See the beauty in this day
Bask in it
Transformation always in the works
Should we choose to reflect, grow, change
Time and patience

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”― Leo Tolstoy

Oct 19

Territories of Spirit

“To be human is to belong.
Belonging is a circle that embraces everything;
if we reject it, we damage our nature.
The word ‘belonging’ holds together the two fundamental aspects of life:
Being and Longing, the longing of our Being
and the being of our Longing.”
John O’Donohue

“A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.” – John O’Donohue

May you travel well today.
Awake to the sacred.
In awe in the ordinary.
Not wasting any invitations to delight and joy.
Being and longing.
Steeped in beauty.

Oct 4

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Approach, Stance, Encounter

“Take time to see the quiet miracles that
seek no attention”― 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

May I never be done.
Finished. Over. Unmovable.
Set like stone.
Choosing daily to start anew.
To approach with wonder and awe.
To take a stance of reverence and joy.
To encounter the embrace of beauty, kindness, love.
Ever changing, flourishing, unfolding, becoming.
May I never be done.

“It is a strange and wonderful fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said, ‘Being here is so much,’ and it is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free.”― John O’Donohue

Sep 29

Graced with Wonder

“When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see. Too often we squander the invitations extended to us because our looking has become repetitive and blind. The mystery and beauty is all around us but we never manage to see it. When the imagination awakens, the inner world illuminates. We begin to glimpse things that no-one speaks about, that the outer world seems to ignore.” – John O’Donohue

May your inner world illuminate each day.
Awakened and in awe.
Wonder and reverence.
Squandering nothing.
Casting bright light.

Sep 26

Demand Windows

“Joy is the serious business of heaven.” – C.S. Lewis

“We seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves…We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own…We demand windows.” – C.S. Lewis

Out the door
BIG sky
Wide open fields
Unfolding and unfurling
Abase and abound
Slowly born
Daily
Demand windows.

“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.”― Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Sep 21

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Excessively Gentle

“The reality is that it is in our little spaces, some outside, some inside, where eternity opens up to us. Little portals into immensity itself.”― Claire Dwyer, This Present Paradise

“You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.”

Be excessively gentle with yourself.” – John O’Donohue

Small miracles.
Well of color.
Peace, beauty, joy, gratitude and love.
Excessively gentle.
Soul work.
A daily practice.
Claimed by calmness of it all.

Sep 8

The Grace of the World

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.” –Mary Oliver

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief… For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” – Wendell Berry

Take Sunday back.
Not doing.
Slow.
Saunter.
Rest, ease.
Enter nature.
Pay attention.
Look broad and deep.
No figuring, fixing.
In the detail of the ordinary.
Abiding.
Beauty emerges.
The grace of the world.

“Fresh air is as good for the mind as for the body. Nature always seems trying to talk to us as if she had some great secret to tell. And so she has.” –John Lubbock

Aug 29

Wade and Leap

“I will wade out till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air” – e.e. cummings

“Settle in the here and now.
Reach down into the center
where the world is not spinning
and drink this holy peace.

Feel relief flood into every
cell. Nothing to do. Nothing
to be but what you are already.
Nothing to receive but what
flows effortlessly from the
mystery into form.

Nothing to run from or run
toward. Just this breath,
Awareness knowing itself as
embodiment. Just this breath,
awareness waking up to truth.”
― Danna Faulds

Breathe in the last days of summer.
Drink in the beauty of burning flowers, sun ablaze.
Fall harvest soon, but not yet.
Cusp of transition.
Summer still leading the dance.
Remain in this moment, aware and awake.
Steeped in gratitude.
Overflowing with ease.
Soft whisper of “Yes!”

“All you ever longed for is Before you in this moment If you dare draw in a Breath and whisper “Yes.”― Danna Faulds

Aug 26

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Color Your World

“Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.”― L.R. Knost

“Don’t make yourself small.
Not for anyone.
If someone tells you
you’re too much…
too loud, too sensitive,
too fierce, too caring,
too intellectual, too optimistic,
too realistic, too logical, too emotional…
just smile and move on, my friend.
Clearly, they aren’t enough for you.”
― L.R. Knost

To be yourself.
To allow others the same grace.
Bright, bold, soft, gentle.
Growing, changing, ever-blooming.
Breathtakingly beautiful.

“If you keep on thinking the way you’ve always been thinking, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always been getting!”
Is that enough?”― Bob Schultz

Aug 20

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Light and Beauty

“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” – Lou Holtz

“Most of us have two lives: the life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” – Steven Pressfield

Little by little.
Step by step.
Drop by drop.
Unfolding to unfurling.
Daily.
Time, effort, ease, flow.
The heart of the journey found in ordinary days.
In putting down to pick up what is ours to carry.
In pause, wonder, awe, and thin spaces.
Joy in the simple.
Kindness given freely.
A shift in perspective.
Light and beauty awaits our notice.
Partake.

“Tiny steps will get you to your goal months and months sooner. A little is better than a lot.” – Martha Beck

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