Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Pause’ Category

Feb 11

The Pause…to Peace

“Practice the pause. Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you’re about to react harshly and you’ll avoid doing and saying things you’ll later regret.”― Lori Deschene

“Regardless of our circumstances, we always have a choice. We can choose more of the same; or we can recognize this moment is different and that we can be different, too.”― Lori Deschene, Tiny Wisdom: On Mindfulness

Turn off autopilot
Disrupt habit
Resist busy
Interrupt spiraling
Ground in gratitude
Wait in wonder
Rest in stillness
Pause, peace, presence.

“If we can observe and understand how our thoughts are impacting us, we can change who we’re being and how we’re experiencing the world.”― Lori Deschene, Tiny Wisdom: On Mindfulness

Aug 28

1 Comment

Pause, Peace

“It’s not so much knowing when to speak, when to pause.” – Jack Benny

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

Offer peace, love, pardon, faith, hope, light, joy
Change the world
One person at a time
Pause, yield, pursue
Be kind

Aug 4

Power of Rest

“Rest and be thankful.”― William Wordsworth

“RESTING IS DOING

If only we could see the power in rest.
If only we could attach to it, the worth it so deserves.
If only we could open our minds to the idea, that everything in nature has its time to rise and its time to descend.
That each of these acts is just a important as the other.
And that is exactly as it must be.
If only we could see the courage it takes to lay aside the worries, the fears and the comparison, just for a few hours, to let the mind, spirit and body come together again.
Doing the one thing they all require so much… nothing.
If only we could see the power in rest.
Because resting is very much doing.” – Donna Ashworth

Pause, sit, rest
Look up at the sky
Often
Margins and white space
Time to rise
Time to descend.
The doing and work of rest.

“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.”― Alan Cohen

May 26

1 Comment

Warrior’s World

“When we’re mainly filtering our experience through the ego, constantly trying to improve or maintain our high self-esteem, we’re denying ourselves the thing we actually want most. To be accepted as we are, an integral part of something much greater than our small selves. Unbounded. Immeasurable. Free.”― Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself

“Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.” – Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey

A day off.
Even God did that.
Surely, we can.
May you Sabbath well.
To pause, rest, renew.
Rejoicing in ordinary things.
Wide open spaces.
Unbound. Immeasurable. Free.

“Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.”― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You

Mar 21

2 Comments

The Habit of Pause

“What is God doing in my life? In the mornings, I wake to find that he has traced the world in silver. Every blade of grass. Each pumpkin on the porch. In the afternoons, I find him washing these fields with the mellow sunlight of autumn. He has gilded every rail in the fence and the sheet metal roof of the old red barn. He has transformed familiar trees into something otherworldly.”― Christie Purifoy, Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons

“Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal. . . . The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life. . . . We may pause in the midst of meditation to let go of thoughts and reawaken our attention to the breath. We may pause by stepping out of daily life to go on a retreat or to spend time in nature or to take a sabbatical. . . . You might try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing “no thing,” and simply notice what you are experiencing.”― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

Pause, pray, reflect, meditate, sit.
Whatever you want to call it.
The necessity to stop, to create space, to look at beauty, blessings, light.
Amidst struggle, worry, rush.
In the slowing.
In the witnessing.
In the quiet.
A soft clear reminder of what always has been true.
You are loved.
Love is the call on all our lives.
The power of the pause.

“You must try to pray so that, in your prayer, you open yourself in such a way that sometime—perhaps not today, but sometime—you are able to hear God say to you, “I love you!” These words, addressed to you by God, are the most important words you will ever hear because, before you hear them, nothing is ever completely right with you, but after you hear them, something will be right in your life at a very deep level.”― Ronald Rolheiser, Prayer: Our Deepest Longing