“Give the present the gift of your full attention.”― Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change
“Start making yourself at home in your life as it is.”― Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change
Anchored in this day, pay attention.
Make yourself at home with what is as it is.
Keep moving, unfolding, unfurling.
Doing the work of hope, the dance of joy, the song of awe and wonder.
Breaking ground to bloom.
An earnest smile.
The power of one hopeful person.
A choir even better.
“Today I think of myself as a ‘recovering pessimist.’ I know that optimism is not at odds with wisdom. It’s quite the opposite. I think of cynicism as cool but lazy, while hope is desperately uncool—it has sweaty palms and an earnest smile on its face. What I know to be true is that one hopeful person will accomplish more than a hundred cynics. Why? Because the hopeful person will try.”― Maggie Smith
“Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope.”― Alexandre Dumas
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”― Emily Dickinson
Hope is …
assurance that the buds will unfold to colorful bloom
that time brings clarity and meaning, even if no explanation
patience yielding harvest
one more step, then the next
carbonated joy on an ordinary day
the same landscape, new eyes
belonging and acceptance
a field trip with no permission slip required
an invitation to rest and renewal
a mystery and promise
an anchor and a kite
available and free
contagious, keep spreading it
a crowbar out of complacency
a wake up call
endures and carries
forward motion and momentum
necessary
powerful and transformative
light
Hope is this and so much more
Full bloom around the corner.
“Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”― Shel Silverstein
“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
“Hope is not about proving anything. It’s about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.”― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Love, hope, joy are actions, verbs, daily decisions.
A triple threat of power and strength.
Scatter kindness, faith and laughter, unstoppable.
The hem of heaven touching earth through you.
Rejoice and be glad in this day and your place in it.
“So be joyful. Use your sense of humor. And laugh with the God who smiles when seeing you, rejoices over your very existence, and takes delight in you, all the days of your life.”― James Martin, Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life
“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief… For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” – Wendell Berry
“Bless the poets, the workers for justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning—We will all make it through, despite politics and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only love.”― Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems
Underneath the busy, the noise, the fast, fresh meaning awaits harvest, celebration.
Beyond the past, the future, the momentary struggle, the now awaits attention, rest.
Above, below, all around, the peace of the wild things opens space and creates place to discover, uncover, rediscover love, that always remains whether we see it or not, steep.
Rest in the grace of the world.
“I need a song that will keep sky open in my mind. If I think behind me, I might break. If I think forward, I lose now.”― Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems
“The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.” – George Bernard Shaw
“Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.”― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
May hope, faith, peace be yours each day.
Pulling you forward, if but only a few steps.
Lifting to see broader and deeper than circumstances and temporal.
To discover the whole amongst the parts.
To sit with the small, finding beauty and ease in the ordinary.
May this day be extraordinary and may you have the gift of sight to see it.
Thread of hope, faith moving mountains.
Sacred space.
“Faith can reclaim deserts as well as move mountains.”― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
“to follow God does not often mean traveling with certainty about where God will lead us. Rather, following God propels us to be present to the place where we are, for this is the very place where God shows up.”― Jan L. Richardson, Through the Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas
Hope, joy, bliss, peace and light to you today.
Be a gardener of hope, tilling, weeding, feeding.
Hope of substance, muscle, bone, breath, hollering.
May we know hope, be hope and held by hope, each day.
BLESSING OF HOPE
“So may we know
the hope
that is not just
for someday
but for this day—
here, now,
in this moment
that opens to us:
hope not made
of wishes
but of substance,
hope made of sinew
and muscle
and bone,
hope that has breath
and a beating heart,
hope that will not
keep quiet
and be polite,
hope that knows
how to holler
when it is called for,
hope that knows
how to sing
when there seems
little cause,
hope that raises us
from the dead—
not someday
but this day,
every day,
again and
again and
again.”
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird, that cannot fly.” Langston Hughes
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” – Maya Angelou
The triple threat. Hope, prayers and action. Hope to see possibilities beyond circumstances and struggle, to find joy in each day amidst it all and to carry on. Prayers to quiet, invite discernment and resolve to prompt meaningful action. Accepting and changing what needs to be changed in self first and offering the same neighbor and the world.
“If you don’t die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young.” – Anne Lamott
“We do not need to wait for the Holy Spirit to come: he came on the day of Pentecost. He has never left the church.”— John R.W. Stott
“We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.”— John R.W. Stott
I’ve shared many blessing from Kate Bowler because they are honest, raw, real and remind us of our imperfection and beauty at the same time. We are not a multiple-choice question with one answer. We are all-of-the-above and more. An essay filled with contradiction, complexity, light, and deep capacity for joy, often hidden beneath the surface of fickle feelings.
If you get trapped in thoughts of scarcity and that no one understands, God does to be sure. Abundant, overflowing love with no condition or contracts. We get tangled up in our own stuff, missing those who are in need right in front of us. If you are feeling alone, reach out, move out of your own head, help another. We are on this journey together not to win but to walk with each other. Wait up, loop back around, and pick up another to carry on together.
“Bless us when we’re scared about having to face the hard things alone. A blessing for you. God, what if. What if I walk out on this ledge and feel only the taste of my fear? What if I discover that what I carry cannot be shouldered? What if I live too long without that feeling? That I can set this, this, this down. God, fill me with a love that staves off all the darkness. Comfort me when I can’t think another reasonable thought. And if I can’t, I mean, I just can’t feel your nearness, hear you telling me that I am loved, send your armies of do gooders, tuck my name inside their hearts. Give me people who love to hold more than this day can manage. And if you can’t send more than one because more than one would be nice, just send the nearest person to take things out of my hands and into theirs until I know again today that I should never be expected to walk this road alone.” – Kate Bowler
Joy, peace, love to you this day, and each day. Cast light.
“We live in the world when we love it.” – Rabindranath Tagore
“Do not say, ‘It is morning,’ and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.” – Rabindranath Tagore
To what and who will you give your time and attention to this day?
The past, the future, the present?
A mix of it all with no particular focus perhaps, no destination.
Each day, a fresh canvas ready to be painted.
A blank page to be written.
Pursue and be pursued.
Lightening up with play, laughter and joy.
The day the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it. – Psalm 118:24
A poem, a song, a sunrise to prompt delight, to invite adventure.
Live in the world by loving this day with your time and attention.
A new day.
“The burden of the self is lightened with I laugh at myself.” – Rabindranath Tagore
“Everything can be taken from a man or woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor E. Frankl
“Cast Light” is an invitation to release your inner light, your authentic self every day. Choose light and cast it to the world.
Featured Quotes
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”― Mary Oliver
“I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” — Anne Lamott
