Nov 10
“In the hush beyond hurry, beauty begins”― AshRawArt
“Peace is not found by silencing the noise, but by remembering you don’t have to answer every echo.”― Ajmal, The Border of a Mind
Enter slow
Ease the pace
Space, stillness, clarity
“In stillness, the soul sketches it’s truest lines.”― AshRawArt
“Long have you timidly waded
Holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea,
Rise again, nod to me, shout,
And laughingly dash with your hair.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
“Half of me is filled with bursting words and half of me is painfully shy. I crave solitude yet also crave people. I want to pour life and love into everything yet also nurture my self-care and go gently. I want to live within the rush of primal, intuitive decision, yet also wish to sit and contemplate. This is the messiness of life – that we all carry multitudes, so must sit with the shifts. We are complicated creatures, and ultimately, the balance comes from this understanding. Be water. Flowing, flexible and soft. Subtly powerful and open. Wild and serene. Able to accept all changes, yet still led by the pull of steady tides. It is enough.”― Victoria Erickson
With grace, compassion, kindness
To be where you are at
Nowhere else
Present, awake, like water
Ebb, flow, still
Multitudes, complexities, messiness
Watching and wondering
Anchoring and rooting
Hope and resilience
Gratitude and grief
Static, in motion, changing, staying the same
All of the things
And so much more
The dance of becoming, unfolding, unknowing, being, emergence.
“Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
“The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.”― William Edgar Stafford
“I embrace emerging experience.
I participate in discovery.
I am a butterfly.
I am not a butterfly collector.
I want the experience of the butterfly.”
― William Stafford
A butterfly dropped before me, arms length
Waking me out of a walking trance
Dancing, following, abiding
Then resting on the tip of a branch
Overseeing, witnessing, participating
To be the butterfly
Drop in ocean
Ocean in drop
Glance and gaze
Big beautiful guiding world all around
To understand and be understood.
“All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.”― Kabir
“…smile first, then speak.”― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone
“Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.
So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.” – Mary Oliver
Become slow.
Stop.
What we take up
What we put down
Choose
Inflection point
A-ha moment
The pivot
Emergence in the pause
The gift has been given
Accept and embrace
“Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.” – Mark Nepo
“Life is a kaleidoscope of colors; a myriad hues and shades that form patterns and pictures in constant motion.” – Ellen Hopkins
“The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colours, which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts.” – James Allen
Take a field trip from …
Black, white, grey to bold color, hues, shades
Striving to restoration, sit down!
Speed to slow, a pause to reset
Complaining to gratitude, even a sliver
My way or the way, walk it out one step at a time
Judgement to empathy, a smile will do
Worst case scenario to best, better even
Doing to being, check nothing off the list for a bit
Serious to laughter, joy does wonders
Scarcity to abundance, knee deep in a river dying from thirst
Adjust your view, twist the kaleidoscope
Shift the narrative, write the next chapter
Wander off the old beaten path, get muddy
Open the windows, fresh air
Skip out the door, don’t trip
New possibilities brimming, overflowing, bursting
Blank canvas, use all of the colors
Paint your day anew, even an hour will do
“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.” – Jean Houston
“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.”― George Eliot
“Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor.
With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats.
I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them.
Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness.
Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity.
May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful.
May I stay forever in the stream.
May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.”– Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays
Upstream where the river is but a trickle
Fertile soil readied for planting
Beauty ever present
What will I plant, nurture, feed today?
Paying rapt attention to what is mine to hold
Tiny but useful
In the flow of life everchanging
Longing, wishing, waiting, abiding, tending, pursuing
Planting trees we’ll never see
Sense of ever-ness overflowing
“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion–a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.”― George Eliot, Middlemarch
Oct 25
“The world is alive, blinking and clicking, winking at us slyly, inviting us to get up and dance to the music that’s been playing since the beginning of time, if you bend all the way down and put your ear to the ground and listen for it.”― Shauna Niequist
“Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull of the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted.
Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is.
You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural.
You are more than dust and bones.
You are spirit and power and image of God.
And you have been given Today.”― Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life
Delight in this day.
Steep in beauty.
Let joy in.
She’s on your doorstep.
Present and awake.
Unfolding and unfurling.
Ordinary moments, extraordinary grace, deep awe, sweet wonder.
Life woven in today.
Show up.
“Present is living with your feet firmly grounded in reality, pale and uncertain as it may seem. Present is choosing to believe that your own life is worth investing deeply in, instead of waiting for some rare miracle or fairytale. Present means we understand that the here and now is sacred, sacramental, threaded through with divinity even in its plainness. Especially in its plainness.”― Shauna Niequist, Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living
Oct 23
“The connection you are creating here is like a flower. It requires soil and sun, things that, thanks to God, are given freely. But it is you, all of us, who has to water the flower to make it grow. Without water, all relations remain small.”― Tembi Locke, From Scratch
“Anthropologists have coded liminal spaces as the transition between the before and the after of a defining rite of passage. For the rest of us, it may be defined more simply as living in the ellipsis, the unsettled in between where there are no maps. Liminality is a place where contingencies and counterfactuals haunt every hope. On such a quaking threshold, our illusions of control are shaken loose. Liminality can be a profoundly disempowering place to find one’s self. When fear menaces our hope, when we have no knowledge or control over what happens next, all we have is the now, frame by frame, breath by breath, beat by beat.” – Stephanie Duncan Smith, Even After All
Emergence, growth, flourishing in the waiting and wandering
In the middles
Not quite yets
Hallways
Bridges
Detours
Bypasses
Tunnels
Unknowns
Unfolding and unfurling
The in betweens
To be in these spaces
Walking with joy
Rooting and tending
To love deeply
Right on the ground you stand
Remain ever present to beauty, light, wonder of this day
Frame by frame
Breath by breath
Beat by beat
“Love is perhaps what’s left of us when we are no longer all the things we’d primped and planned.”― Heather Lanier, Raising a Rare Girl: A Memoir
Sep 1
“Every flower blooms at a different pace.” – Suzy Kassem
“Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.” – Rumi
Expand, narrow.
Inhale, exhale.
Ebb, flow.
Expansion, contraction.
Rhythm, flow.
Ever blooming, slowly, suddenly, on time.
Seasons, cycles, circles.
Seed, root, bloom.
Divergence, convergence, emergence.
The song of a blooming flower.
Listen closely.
“If I listen closely, I can feel and hear the song of a blooming flower.” – Debasish Mridha
Aug 3
“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” – Rumi
“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” – Rumi
Intuition.
Knowing.
Sensing.
Trust.
Observe.
Listen.
Enjoy.
Wonder.
Wander.
Still small voice.
Heed the call.
Step by step.
“Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.” – Rumi
