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Posts tagged ‘Beauty’

Jul 13

Endless Proper Work

“The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.”― Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red

“Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”― Susan Sontag

It’s Monday.
Stay here.
Not skipping to Friday.
To tasks.
To busy.
To rushing.
To the next thing.
Bypassing this thing, this day.
Abide and invite.
Be present and participate.
Inquire and listen.
There’s more.
So much more.
Right here.
Right now.
Endless and proper work.

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”― Mary Oliver

Jul 12

Begin, Repeat, Delight

“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began” – Mary Oliver

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”― Mary Oliver

Good morning sunshine
Begin
And keep beginning
Again and again
New paths
Travel lightly
Grounded on grace
Sunrise to sunset
Abundance and awe.

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

Jul 10

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Flower Dust Sprinkles

“The morning air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet… From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything.”― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Mystery is the essence of divinity”― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

Flower dust and divinity.
Color and delight.
Laughter spilling into joy.
Put on a new dress.
Breath in the morning air.
Peace, beauty, grace.
Journey of loving and living.
On the path of this day.

“There is two things everybody got to find out for theirselves. They got to find out about love and they got to find out about living.”― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Jul 5

Stay Here, Full Presence

“May I give the gift of talking less and listening more.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace

“Should we have stayed home and thought of here?”― Elizabeth Bishop

To be present in, on, through this very day.
Not to be somewhere else, someone else.
No counting, comparing, calculating.
Letting others be who they will be.
Self too.
Changing perspective rather than others and circumstances.
Responding with presence, inquiry, love.
In the here, in the now.
Open to delight.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Jul 2

Beeing

“Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind.” – Ashley Smith

“Mindfulness is not chasing the moment but sipping the nectar of the moment.”― Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment – Living in the Breath

Put on summer.
Soak in slow.
Put down doing.
Pick up ease.
Sit in being.

“Let July be July. Let August be August. And let yourself just be even in the uncertainty. You don’t have to fix everything. You don’t have to solve everything. And you can still find peace and grow in the wild of changing things.” — Morgan Harper Nichols

Jun 19

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Soft Centered Arrival

“Presence doesn’t need a grand arrival — only a willingness to begin again.” – Amit Ray

“Equanimity is not a path around. It is the courage to remain in the center until the center opens.” – G. Scott Graham, The Tao of Equanimity

The noise will get louder
The chaos ensue
Demands multiply

The invitation
To this moment
To walk the path

Of presence

No shortcuts
Already here
In the quiet
The noticing

Attention and admiration
Reverence and wonder
Peace in the pause, in the receiving.

“The chase feels like movement — but it leaves you farther from the moment.”― G. Scott Graham, The Tao of Equanimity

Jun 12

Poetry of Ordinary Moments

“To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.”― Mark Nepo

“Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment–where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels–this moment shows us that what is real is sacred”― Mark Nepo

The mysteries
To live
Not to solve
Unfolding and unfurling
In ordinary beautiful days
For fresh eyes to see
Open heart to allow
Wide arms to embrace
Sacred ground to walk with reverence.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

Jun 6

Sun In a Cup

“Bring me the sunset in a cup.”― Emily Dickinson

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Hope, light, joyTeaspoons and cups
Ordinary and abundant
For the taking
In the receiving
In the giving especially
Dwelling quietly in each day
Awaiting presence, noticing, participation

“I dwell in possibility…”― Emily Dickinson

Jun 5

Holy Brimming in Beauty

“Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.”― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

“My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

In naming and bucketing
We simplify, reduce, minimize
In judging and ordering
We miss nuance, depth, hue
In criticizing and complaining
We forgo joy, gratitude, delight
To notice holy woven through ordinary
Daily call.

“Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two.”― Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

Jun 4

Layers and Landscapes

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”― Henry David Thoreau

“Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.”― Tony Schwartz

Curiosity
Interest
Inquiry
Seeking
Discovery
Surprise
Spaciousness
Playground, open field, horizons
Fresh eyes, new landscapes.

“It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.― Pema Chodron

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