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Posts from the ‘Grace’ Category

Dec 1

Climate of Grace

“TO COME HOME TO YOURSELF May all that is unforgiven in you Be released. May your fears yield Their deepest tranquilities. May all that is unlived in you Blossom into a future Graced with love.”― John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

“We seldom notice how each day is a holy place Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens, Transforming our broken fragments Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.”― John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Homecoming, each day
Space, place, self
A warm embrace
Familiar and safe
Holy, sacred, grace
May this be the journey each day
Blossoming with color, beauty, light
Never stop pursuing
Awakening all that is unlived
Ready to be cast into the world.

“Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness; the perennial infusion of springtime into the winter of bleakness.”― John O’Donohue, Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

Sep 10

The Currency of Grace

“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.”― Rabindranath Tagore

“The new life into which we are baptized is lived out in days, hours, and minutes. God is forming us into a new people. And the place of that formation is in the small moments of today.”― Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

Passing moments unnoticed.
Daily tasks repeated.
Nuance.
Hue.
Hint.
Layers.
Flavor.
Delicate.
Wisp.
Ordinary days.
Unseen and bypassed for other and next.
Put the map down.
Pin where you are and enter the space of today.
This is the place of your life before you in plain and beautiful sight.
Calling softly to enter, dance, delight in.

“Ordinary love, anonymous and unnoticed as it is, is the substance of peace on earth, the currency of God’s grace in our daily life.”― Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

Aug 27

Luminescence

“Beauty surrounds us.”― Rumi

“All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.”― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

Luminescence leaps from the hearts of flowers.
Interrupting, stopping us in our tracks.
If we allow.
Grace, not of our making.
Offered to all, if we choose to tune into it.
May beauty find you today.
And wake you up to the present moment.
With an intensity, a light and an embrace.
Assurance of both gravity and grace at work in our days.
Grounded and flying.
Held and set free.

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”― Confucious

Jul 27

Terrain of Ordinary Time

“Fear is the glue that keeps you stuck. Faith is the solvent that sets you free.”― Shannon L. Alder

“We think that the “real thing” is concentrated in the next moment, the next month, the next year. We can go on and on, waiting for the next “happening” of life, hurrying toward it, trying to make it happen. We live from peak event to peak event, from brightness to brightness, resisting the flat terrain of ordinary time—the in-between time. Waiting is the in-between time. It calls us to be in this moment, this season, without leaning so far into the future that we tear our roots from the present. When we learn to wait, we experience where we are as what is truly substantial and precious in life.”— Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

I am rereading Sue Monk Kidd’s book When the Heart Waits. I read it 8 years ago. It’s like reading the book for the first time because I am different and in a new place of waiting. Do not forgo the waiting times. Travel the contours and terrain of ordinary time. We spend a lot of our life here. Stay, stick and discover what is “truly substantial and precious in life” for it resides in this place. Life and each of us continues to unfold and unfurl, to become again and again. It’s worth the wait.

“So what if discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.” – Alan Watts

 

Jun 21

Lifted

“Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God.” – Karl Rahner

“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

When I woke up yesterday morning, I heard, “go to yoga.” I wasn’t planning on it, but I followed the clear prompt. It’s offered twice a week during the summer outside overlooking Como Lake. The instructor combines yoga for all levels with a good dose of mindfulness.

After I was done, an immediate lift, a gust of wind, an ease that remains still. Intuition. Grace. Signs and wonders. Whatever you call it, when we quiet long enough, stop talking and start listening, we can hear the soft whisper that guides and directs us to new places.

Create space each day to heed the call, to throw yourself back into life in different ways, to discover new places just outside your door. Wander, wonder, inquire and quiet enough to hear. The lift of grace in ordinary days through simple acts.

“All stories are, in some form, prayers.”― Brian Doyle, The Wet Engine: Exploring Mad Wild Miracle of Heart

Jun 8

Trust and Patience

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”― Aristotle

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the wings.
Waiting.
Bound up tight.
Ready to bloom.
But not quite yet.
Timing and time.
Bud to bloom.
The in between space where we reside.
Waiting to cross the threshold.
Trust. Grace. Patience.
Seasons. Cycles. Transitions.

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” – Corrie Ten Boom

Mar 9

2 Comments

Cup of Life

“We must dare to pray even as we doubt… True faith is like a light that begins to flicker, however faintly, in the darkness that beckons us to pray even when we can hardly find the faith to pray.”― Jerry Sittser

“Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.”― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life

In grief and loss, light remains.
A destination.
A lighthouse.
May we all be angels for each other.
Cup full, both sorrow and joy.
Angels for each other.
Grace. Peace. Light.

“We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.”― Henri J.M. Nouwen

Feb 25

Wide Margins

“Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.” – Wendell Berry

“Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined.” – Toni Morrison

May I define less and be open to spaciousness, wide margins, grace.
Offering kindness without reserve or measure.
To not reduce others, the world, our view to fit on the size of a bumper sticker or yard sign.
May love be the first and last answer, the go-to, a natural reflex and response.
Nuance, complexity, hues, depth, unknowing, mystery, breadth.
May these be the brushes to paint, shape, define and contain, rather than rules and regulations.
To not other, minimize, box, assume, judge, bucket, confine.
Frameworks rather than quick answers to dismiss and distill.
Hope, empathy, compassion, laughter, peace, joy, redemption and resurrection.
Each and every day.
Wide margins, big sky and open fields to make tracks on in all directions.

“Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.” – Wendell Berry

Feb 14

A Good Universe

“No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.” – William Blake

“listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go”― E.E. Cummings

A pause.
A respite.
A recess.
A time-out.
A thin space.
A wide-open field.
A playground.
A field trip.
A corner.
A crevice.
A turn around.
A wander off trail.
To see from a different angle.
To crack a window with a smile.
To clear the lungs with laughter.
To be refreshed by beauty, color and light.
To be made new.
May all of these be yours today.

“Let the wild rumpus start!”― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Dec 17

Profound

“Gratitude is, however, more than just an emotion. It is also a disposition that can be chosen and cultivated, an outlook toward life that manifests itself in actions—it is an ethic.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“On each threshold,
wisdom; at every doorway,
love; through every entry,
grace; with each beginning, peace.”
— Jan Richardson, In the Sanctuary of Women: A Companion for Reflection & Prayer

Thresholds, doorways, entries, beginnings, endings
The edge, the tipping point, the before to after
Transitions that lead to transformations
A blessing of courage to cross over, again and again
Overflowing grace that can never be explained or understood, merely accepted
Hope that runs deep, a current that pulls and pushes you forward
Joy that transcends conditions and circumstances
And gratitude to see it all with clarity, awe and praise.

“Offering a blessing is an act of profound hope. In blessing one another, we recognize and ally ourselves with the presence of God who ever works to bring about the healing of the world.” — Jan Richardson, In the Sanctuary of Women: A Companion for Reflection & Prayer

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