Sep 10
“Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.” – Anne Lamott
“Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.” – Anne Lamott
Fresh start
Subtle shif
New approach
Play, laughter, rest
Gratitude, grace, love
Delight in ordinary days
“Love was life’s secret purpose.”― Martine Murray, How To Make A Bird
“Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans—I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment,”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
“May you listen to the voice within the beat even when you are tired. When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding, and leads you to freedom. If you are weary, may you be aroused by passion and purpose. If you are blameful and bitter, may you be sweetened by hope and humor. If you are frightened, may you be emboldened by a big consciousness far wiser than your fear. If you are lonely, may you find love, may you find friendship. If you are lost, may you understand that we are all lost, and still we are guided—by Strange Angels and Sleeping Giants, by our better and kinder natures, by the vibrant voice within the beat. May you follow that voice, for This is the way—the hero’s journey, the life worth living, the reason we are here. ”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
Senses awakening
Slow over urgency
Soft over hard
Reflection over judgment
Yield over assumption
Praise over complaint
Pause over pass by
Sauntering over speed
Presence over past
Thriving over striving
Peace, praise, delight
Receive and cast light.
“Everything gets sorted out in the Great Silence.”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
“…when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.”― Henry Miller
“Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace.
To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.
When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness, moments of Satori as the Zen sages term it, moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full integrity of being, moments of complete Oneness. And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the restoration of that timeless spot of grace is the goal of all therapy and education.
Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God”― Mark Nepo, Unlearning Back to God: Essays on Inwardness, 1985-2005
Unlearning
Unencumbered
Becoming
Sweet honey of grace
Of awe, wonder, reverence
Presence and knowing
In the unknowing.
“I was operating on the unspoken assumption that my inner world would be filled with life, peace, and joy once my external world was perfect.”― John Ortberg, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You
“Sabbath is the time set aside to do nothing so that we can receive everything, to set aside our anxious attempts to make ourselves useful, to set aside our tense restlessness, to set aside our media-satiated boredom. Sabbath is the time to receive silence and let it deepen into gratitude, to receive quiet into which forgotten faces and voices unobtrusively make themselves present, to receive the days of the just completed week and absorb the wonder and miracle still reverberating from each one, to receive our Lord’s amazing grace.”― Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers
“I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one’s inner life. And that too is a deed.”― Etty Hillesum
Unplug
Shut down
Reboot
Sit in and with silence
Breathe in beauty
Soak up calm
Steep for flavor
Salt and light.
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”― Anne Lamott
“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”― Rainer Maria Rilke
“Many different strands of your past experience begin to weave together until gradually the new direction announces itself. Its voice is sure with the inevitability of the truth. When your life-decisions emerge in this way from the matrix of your experience, they warrant your trust and commitment. When you can choose in this way, you move gracefully within the deeper rhythm of your soul. The geography of your destiny is always clearer to the eye of your soul than to the intentions and needs of your surface mind.” – John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes
Deep waters.
Flowing with ease.
No forcing.
Nor turning back.
Rhythm of your soul.
Enter the waters.
Already in.
“Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.”― Richard Rohr
“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.” — Saint Francis de Sales
“Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!”― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
For the past three mornings, the girls have been barking with intensity in the backyard.
Each time, going to get them in, a deer standing on the other side of the fence.
Gentle gaze, unmoved by the commotion, undistracted by the noise, rooted in calm ease.
Across traditions and cultures, deer symbolize gentleness, intuition, spiritual renewal.
The ability to navigate life’s challenges with quiet grace.
God enters our days in a million little ways.
Often through nature, children, dogs, deer, other people.
Encounters, distractions, delays, long cuts.
Unseen, bypassed, not on our checklist, sped by on the way to somewhere else.
Make somewhere else this day.
Reset the pace, the cadence.
Someday is this day.
Saunter.
Easy spirit.
Quiet grace.
Just outside your door.
Woven in your heart.
Peace.
“I choose gentleness… Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself.”― Max Lucado
“Gentleness is strength under control. It is the ability to stay calm, no matter what happens.” — Elizabeth George
“A walk in nature walks the soul back home.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace
“In a silent morning moment, with a silent voice I pray, to lift a silent sunrise offering on silent wings of grace.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace
Tending rather than mere attendance
Showing up
Leaning in
To what matters
Leaning back
Foregoing worry
Picking up joy, curiosity, delight
Traveling light, casting light.
“Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary.” – Hermann Hesse
“The world is in need of our peace today.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace
“Sometimes when we just stand still, the grace finds us.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace
In the spaces of pause
Of not doing
Of letting it be
Of slow
Of inquiry
Of curiosity
Of gazing
Grace and gratitude
Clarity, calm, discernment
Pullover, often
Peace resides here
In the allowing, inviting, quieting
Reset, refreshment, renewal
Second, third, fourth chances
Daily abundant grace.
“Not many of us will get to witness a resurrection but most of us will find, over and over again, that our worst fears never materialize. Life has a beautiful way of continuing to give us mornings and second chances. Just when we think the story is over, we get surprise endings and miracles.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace
“Make friends with the shifting sands deep within you; you are opening, changing. Let the air that needs to be released release when and how it comes. Love these bubbles of grace. Curl the corners of your mouth into a small smile as they leave.”― Sarah Blondin, Heart Minded: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love
“I know how scary or intimidating it can be to disconnect, to walk in the opposite direction of all that bright, shiny, noisy distraction. I have faced that fear again and again as I have answered my own call to stillness. But no matter the size of aversion or fear, you must trust me when I say that all that will matter, all that will ever amount to anything, is the relationship you have with the world you carry around inside of you.”― Sarah Blondin, Heart Minded: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love
Call to stillness
Embrace of pause
Grace rising
Quieting, abiding, tending
Peace, flow, exhale.
“You are in charge of how much space a thought takes up in your life. Take the time to carefully consider what you let be a part of your being and your spirit.”― Cleo Wade, Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life
Mar 7
“…
May I live this day
Compassionate of heart,
Clear in word,
Gracious in awareness,
Courageous in thought,
Generous in love.”― John O’Donohue, Benedictus: A Book of Blessings
“I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.
A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own.
I am throwing arms open
to the whole of myself—especially the fearful,
fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing
every seed and weed, every drop
of rain, has made the soil richer.
I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather
around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl
if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through
any perceived problem, any prescribed perfectionism,
any lying limitation, every heavy thing.
I am making a home inside myself
where grace blooms in grand and glorious
abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows
all the truest things.
I whisper hallelujah to the friendly
sky. Watch now as I burst into blossom.” – Julia Fehrenbacher
Grace, grief, gratitude.
All at once.
In memories, in this moment
To be present.
To yield to joy.
To be at home.
On the ground of this day.
Abby and Sasha sitting by Mom’s chair.
Three years gone, yet everpresent in each day.
Grace, grief, gratitude.
“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” – Anne Lamott
