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Posts from the ‘Beauty’ Category

Feb 18

All Things Counter

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” – Emily Levine

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things–
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.”

Winter to spring
Bloom bootcamp
Certain, brilliant, true
In the waiting
Colors plan
Fragrance plots
Hope roots deep
Inscape into order and purpose
Winter to spring.

“All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose.”― Gerard Manley Hopkins

Feb 15

Encounter and Awe

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” – Christopher McCandless

Soft snow falling
Invitation to the woods
To cut fresh trails
Put down the week
Re-enter the world
Slow dance with nature
Conversation with quiet
The power of wonder and beauty
At your feet
Simple, accessible, overflowing
From doing to being
From activity to encounter
To be made new again, daily
Invite, seek, engage with peace, joy, delight
Start with in first, then spill over into the world

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”― Albert Einstein

Jan 26

Prayer of Presence

“God’s love isn’t based on me. It’s simply placed on me. And it’s the place from which I should live . . . loved.”― Lysa TerKeurst, Uninvited

“Give yourself time to make a prayer that will become the prayer of your soul.
Listen to the voices of longing in your soul. Listen to your hungers.
Give attention to the unexpected that lives around the rim of your life.
Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future, to the voices of those near you and those you have lost.
Out of all of that attention to your soul, make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul, yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability; that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigor to challenge your blindness and complacency; enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty.
Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called.” – John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

The gift of pause, time, attention
Soft whispers and echoes
Still small voice
Prayer of presence, beauty, love
Write your prayer of today.

“The way we can allow ourselves to do what we need to, no matter what others may say or do, is to choose love and defy fear.” – Martha Beck

Jan 19

1 Comment

Daily Bread of Attention

“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay. Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as they could from paying attention to scripture. What is true is what happens, even if what happens is not always right. People can learn as much about the ways of God from business deals gone bad or sparrows falling to the ground as they can from reciting the books of the Bible in order. They can learn as much from a love affair or a wildflower as they can from knowing the Ten Commandments by heart.”― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

Skies ablaze with color and hue
Flowers in bloom
A song that moves you to dance
A long embrace
Smiles to laughter
A text or call to say “hi”
Daily bread of attention and gratitude
Overflowing, abundant, enough, imperfect
From what’s missing or what was to what is
Finding nourishment on the ground we stand
To change our view and be changed
To love well today.

“People are not hurdles on the road to God. They are the road.”—Martin Buber, Between Man and Man

Dec 22

2 Comments

Room at the Inn

“An artist’s concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.”― Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World

“At Christmas, time deepens. The Celtic imagination knew that time is eternity in disguise. They embraced the day as a sacred space. Christmas reminds us to glory in the simplicity and wonder of one day; it unveils the extraordinary that our hurried lives conceal and neglect. We have been given such immense possibilities. We desperately need to make clearances in our entangled lives to let our souls breathe. We must take care of ourselves and especially of our suffering brothers and sisters.” – John O’Donohue

To make clearances.
Sacred space, brilliant sky, wide-open fields.
Time still, steeping, deepening.
To witness and partake.
Awe, wonder, beauty woven in this very day.
Make room at the inn of your heart.
Invite, open, welcome.
Let it find you.

“Our task is not to somehow inject God into our work but to join God in the work he is already doing in and through our vocational lives.”― Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

Dec 15

Answer the Call

“What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.”― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.”
― Robinson Jeffers, The Selected Poetry

Root
Anchor
Ground
Fundamentals
Basics
Simplicity
Pay attention
Awake and in awe
The power of wonder
The resilience of hope
Beauty calls each day
Answer

“Hope,’ he said. ‘Damn thing never leaves you alone.”― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

Dec 4

Yield to Silence

“Sometimes it’s the quiet currents that tell the deepest truths.” – Stephanie Duncan Smith, Even After Everything

“A day of Silence
Can be a pilgrimage in itself.

A day of Silence
Can help you listen
To the Soul play
Its marvelous lute and drum.

Is not most talking
A crazed defense of a crumbling fort?

I thought we came here
To surrender in Silence,

To yield to Light and Happiness,

To Dance within,
In celebration of Love’s Victory”
― Hafez, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy

Pilgrimage of silence.
A day, an hour, a few minutes.
Woven through the day.
Beams, chards, threads.
Peace awaits.
Yield.

“The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before… .What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God’s [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon.”– Jan L. Richardson, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas

Nov 15

Largeness and Light

“Shine like the whole universe is yours.” – Rumi

“Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up. All we need to do is stop pounding on the door that just closed, turn around-and welcome the largeness of life that now lies open to our soul.”― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Breathe in and out.
Look up and around.
Fresh air, open mind, soft heart.
May peace find you today.
On the ground of the present.

“Open the window of your mind. Allow fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter.” – Amit Ray

Nov 9

2 Comments

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.

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