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Posts from the ‘Grace’ Category

Jan 16

Flow of Grace

“May grace be a waterfall in the wild of your mind; as you travel forth with courage, even when you don’t know what you’ll find.” – Morgan Harper Nichols

Grace by Morgan Harper Nichols

“You have never shamed the waves
For not arriving on the ocean shore
Any sooner than they were meant to,

And you have never looked above you
To guilt the cloud for taking her time
As she crosses the noonday sky,

You simply accept
That she must travel
At the pace
She needs to,

Oh,
What a difference
It would make
If you gave yourself
That same grace.” – Morgan Harper Nichols

Stop lighting the match
Stoking the fire
Fanning the flames
Of busy, multitasking, over functioning, rushing, grinding
The path of productivity, performing, burnout, exhaustion
Set the pace, carve space, margins
Time, patience, joy, slow, easy, pause, wander, wonder, delight, kindness
In one word
Grace

“I cared too much about the wrong things.”― Kendra Adachi, The Lazy Genius Way

Aug 17

Grace Overflowing

“Grace is finding a waterfall when you were only looking for a stream.” ― Vanessa Hunt

“As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.” – John Muir

Peace, awe and joy.
A flow and ease.
Beauty and grace.
Flow and fall.
Open to receive.
Ready to pursue.
Generous to give.
Enter the river.

“Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes, and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.” ― William Stafford

May 3

In Grace

“Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish.”― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“I want first of all… to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact–to borrow from the language of the saints–to live “in grace” as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony. I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus when he said, “May the outward and inward man be one.” I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.”― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

A wider view.
To see the big picture.
The complexities, uncertainties, and possibilities woven throughout.
Eagle view.
A deeper view.
The details, proximity, and possibilities woven throughout.
Mouse view.
When too close and stuck, pulling up.
When too far and distant, zooming in.
Ebb and flow of perspective, of meaning making, of substance and texture.
Inward and outward.
The bridge between.
Open to growth, curiosity, not needing to be right nor demanding certainty.
Willing to be changed and to be an instrument of change.
The undeserved, overflowing, no strings attached gift of grace, rooted in love.
Giving and receiving.

“Don’t wish me happiness
I don’t expect to be happy all the time…
It’s gotten beyond that somehow.
Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.
I will need them all.”― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Feb 26

Welcoming

“We can only learn to love by loving.”― Iris Murdock

The Welcoming Prayer by Father Thomas Keating

“Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today, because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.”

May I not get in my own way.
May the doors and windows all be open to what will come despite worry, planning, assumptions.
To see the blessings in detours, delays and interruptions.
To broaden my view of the world beyond my small view, old stories, expectations.
To love without measure.
To delight without delay.
To steep in joy of the ordinary.
Allowing a different way, a new path, a space where words fall short and awe enters.
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.”

“God gives grace in so many ways. He gives us humor when it’s hard to laugh. He gives us a new perspective when life feels suffocating. And He gives us friends to help us get through.”― Emily Ley, Grace, Not Perfection: Celebrating Simplicity, Embracing Joy

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

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