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Posts tagged ‘Beauty’

Dec 22

Gentle Break

“Birds chirping around you is a beautiful realisation that life in incredibly good. Let this sound be a gentle break in your routine.”― Hiral Nagda

“There’s nothing like
the fecund beauty of calmness.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya, Our Nepal, Our Pride

Carve space into this day
Step away
Break the busy routine
Field trip
Conservatory, art museum, park
30 minutes will do
Reset, retreat, refocus
In the pause, awareness
In the noticing, gratitude
In the slowing, peace
Beauty of calmness
Spilling into the world.

“As you slow down, you instantly enter into a brand new world.”― Hiral Nagda

Dec 20

Making Clearances

“One who has hope lives differently.”– Pope Benedict XVI

“It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.”– Pope Benedict XVI

Advent to Christmas doorstep.
Threshold to cross.
New space to create.
Slowing to presence.
Making clearances for soul breathing.
Hope, joy, peace.
Cross the threshold.
Open all of the gifts.

“At Christmas, time deepens. The Celtic imagination knew that time is eternity in disguise. They embraced the day as a sacred space. Christmas reminds us to glory in the simplicity and wonder of one day; it unveils the extraordinary that our hurried lives conceal and neglect. We have been given such immense possibilities. We desperately need to make clearances in our entangled lives to let our souls breathe.” – John O’Donohue

Dec 19

Altars of this Day

“…salvation is not something that happens only at the end of a person’s life. Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.”― Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith

“Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.”― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

May a sense of holy, sacred wonder
Trip you up, slow the hurry, bended knee
On the altars of this day, this season
Open door
Love, peace, joy
In the stable of your heart

“To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays

Dec 14

Rooted, Bright, Joy

“Indeed, frequent positive emotions—feelings of joy, delight, contentment, serenity, curiosity, interest, vitality, enthusiasm, vigor, thrill, and pride—are the very hallmark of happiness.”― Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness

“we habitually fail to enjoy, savor, and live in the present, as our minds are often someplace else. However, when you think about it, the present moment is all we are really guaranteed.”― Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness

Tilling, seeding, tending
Grounding, rooting, anchoring
Gratitude, beauty, joy
Smack in the middle of imperfection, incompleteness
Slowing to notice
Harnessing thoughts, moving to intentions, spilling into small actions
Daily process
Deliberate practice
Savoring the simple in the ordinary
Rapt presence in this day

“Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present oriented.”― Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness

Dec 13

Lurking Close at Hand

“In the stillness of quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.”― Howard Thurman

“There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful.”― Howard Thurman

Slow time.
Blank canvas.
Stillness.
Close at hand.
Joy and Peace.
Remembered in real time.

“Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.”― Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart

Dec 12

Wide, Wide Awake

“How, then, to find the courage to speak with such authenticity, with words muscular enough to ring the doorbell of the listener’s mind, admitting the rigor and the glory of the holy through the open door of the down-to-earth, the commonplace, the very ordinary.”― Luci Shaw, An Incremental Life: Poems

“Blessed are we when we yearn, yearn for connection and love and touch. Blessed are we when we hunger for the beauty of life itself and the people to fill it. Blessed are we when we are unable to say I’m letting it go because we feel like we will be washed away into an ocean of nothingness. Teach us to hold on to the truths that enliven our spirits and fill our souls and loosen our grip on the painful untruths like that we are alone or unlovable or that desire itself is the enemy. Teach us to hunger for what is good and be filled. There will be no easy addition or subtraction, we will lose and we will gain and almost none of it will make much sense at the time. And it forces our hands open in the ebb and flow of wins and losses, comings and goings we will look for divine love in the mystery of it all. The stubbornness of flowers that still smile at us, at the grocery store and the need for endless small reminders that the pain of it all, the comedy of it all, keeps us wide, wide awake.” – Kate Bowler

In the hurry and hustle
Rush and self-imposed demands
May beauty interrupt you
Stop you in your tracks
Blue skies
Flowers smiling
Sunlight on snow
Listening and connection
Treasure woven in everyday life
Noticed in stillness, inquiry
Deep breath
Ebb and flow
Senses atune
Wide, wide awake
Blessed are we in the mix and muddle of it all.

“The people you meet in your life, you meet them for a specific purpose: To help them and to be helped by them. So, try to spot the treasure in your everyday life, because one day you may realize you had the treasure and you lost it.”― Maria Karvouni

Dec 10

Shapes of Water

“my dear,
we are all made of water.
it’s okay to rage. sometimes
it’s okay to rest. to recede.”
― Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos

“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.”― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Moving effortlessly through, over, around rocks
Frozen, suspended in air
Shape and form
Rhythm and ease
Current of flowing waters
Peace, beauty, stillness
Invitation of icicles

“Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.” – Lao Tzu

Dec 7

Rush of Stillness

“The whole world is beautiful, the art is in the seeing.”― Camille Pissarro

“The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man

Winter sunrise
Crisp air
Delayed by awe
Soft whisper, warm light
Invitation of wonder, pause, attention
Rush of stillness
Urgency of slowness
To see and hear anew
With clarity, gratitude, wonder

“TO LISTEN, TO LOOK Is it all sewn up—my life? Is it at this point so predictable, so orderly, so neat, so arranged, so right, that I don’t have time or space for listening for the rustle of angels’ wings or running to stables to see a baby? Could this be what he meant when he said Listen, those who have ears to hear… Look, those who have eyes to see? O God, give me the humbleness of those shepherds who saw in the cold December darkness the Coming of Light the Advent of Love!”— Ann Weems, Kneeling in Bethlehem

Dec 6

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Daily Radical Amazement

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing”― Camille Pissarro

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ….get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”― Abraham Joshua Heschel

Struck by…
Wonder
Beauty
Awe
Kindness
Reverence
Laughter
Gratitude
Delight
Frolic
Grace
Radical amazement woven into ordinary days.

“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state–it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle…. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.”― Abraham Joshua Heschel

Dec 5

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Power of Beauty, Out and In

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.”― Louisa May Alcott

Put beauty in your path every day.
It’s not hard to be found.
Pause, look up and around.
Buy yourself flowers.
Take a walk in the woods.
Drive a different way.
Read poetry.
Turn off auto-pilot.
Turn up the music and sing.
Look within and find it too.
Kindness, compassion, humor.
Celebrate this day.
On the very ground you stand.
Imperfection and all.
This day shall not pass again.
Do not pass it by.

“The greatest illusion is that life should be perfect”― Charlie Mackesy

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