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Posts tagged ‘Contemplation’

May 31

Off Course, Rerouting

“The act of meditation is being spacious.”― Sogyal Rinpoche

“Welcome the life that takes you off course. A plan derailed, a life surrendered, a broken bondage”― Rebekah Lyons

Plans change, never happen, go in a different direction.
Lean in. Move through. Keep going.
You never know what is just around the corner.
Create space and margins for new places.
Ever unfolding and becoming.
Make new plans.
Keep dreaming.
Taking action, expend effort.
Accepting different endings.
Always beginning again and again.

“Act, and God will act.” – Joan of Arc

Apr 23

Rhythms of Rest

“God’s creation is a life-giving inhale for all of us, and Sabbath is the exhale.”― Shelly Miller, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World

“A life built upon Sabbath is contented because in rhythms of rest we discover our time is full of the holiness of God.”― Shelly Miller, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World

Put down busy for one day.
Whether the traditional Sabbath of Saturday or Sunday, pause, rest, take an extended break.
Weave breaks through each day too, however brief, to carry forward.
In the slowing, we see what is actually before us, the full picture not mere struggle and ordinary.
The beauty, blessings, joy, awe, wonder, peace, delight, play.
In the slowing, we hear what’s in us.
A soft whisper guiding, holding, reassuring.
In the slowing, we enter ebb and flow, rhythm and current.
Holy. Sacred. Wide-open spaces.
Exhale.

“Rest provides fine-tuning for hearing God’s messages amidst the static of life.”― Shelly Miller, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World

Apr 19

Transcend to Understand

“Why, when God’s world is so big, did you fall asleep in a prison of all places?”— Rumi

“There are too many people in the world today who decide to live disappointed rather than risk feeling disappointment. This can take the shape of numbing, foreboding joy, being cynical or critical, or just never really fully engaging.”― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

Allow feelings to come, go and pass as they will.
Feel, do not deny.
A full spectrum of emotions without numbing.
Witness them flowing through and by.
The control is not in stopping feelings or circumstances, but not becoming them.
Pause, create space and distance to respond rather than react.
Off autopilot, awake and aware.
In the world, not of the world.
Step back, breathe, transcend, if but only for a few minutes of clarity, of reset.
Accept grace, love, light and a peace that passes all understanding.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” – Philippians 4:6-8

Mar 5

Travel Well

“There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing.”― G.K. Chesterton

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw

Create
Unfold
Invite
Explore and wander
Paint, write, compose
Blank canvas each day
Try, experiment, do
Not divided listening but rapt hearing
Clarity found in steps taken, not in certain knowing
The journey is the call to answer
Travel well.

“We come to know the will of God as a life calling through experience itself. We discover what our calling is in the same way an artist paints on a canvas or a person falls in love. We learn by trying, by experimenting, by doing. Our calling is inseparable from the journey. In one sense, it is the journey.”― Jerry Sittser, The Will of God as a Way of Life: How to Make Every Decision with Peace and Confidence

Feb 26

A Listening, One Inch at a Time

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”― Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge

“A LISTENING: Going through Lent is a listening. When we listen to the word, we hear where we are so blatantly unliving. If we listen to the word, and hallow it into our lives, we hear how we can so abundantly live again.” – Ann Weems, Kneeling in Jerusalem

Listening and hearing.
Watching and seeing.
Witnessing and awe.
A journey rather than race.
Being over doing.
Sabbath. Lent. Dailyness. Sacred.
Baffled to employment of the mind.
To wonder, wander, seek, ponder.
An essay not a math problem to be solved.
A question to be lived, often unanswered, the seeking continues.
Abundantly living each day, again and again.
One inch at a time.
What will this day reveal to you?
Listen.

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”― Wendell Berry

Feb 25

Wide Margins

“Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.” – Wendell Berry

“Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined.” – Toni Morrison

May I define less and be open to spaciousness, wide margins, grace.
Offering kindness without reserve or measure.
To not reduce others, the world, our view to fit on the size of a bumper sticker or yard sign.
May love be the first and last answer, the go-to, a natural reflex and response.
Nuance, complexity, hues, depth, unknowing, mystery, breadth.
May these be the brushes to paint, shape, define and contain, rather than rules and regulations.
To not other, minimize, box, assume, judge, bucket, confine.
Frameworks rather than quick answers to dismiss and distill.
Hope, empathy, compassion, laughter, peace, joy, redemption and resurrection.
Each and every day.
Wide margins, big sky and open fields to make tracks on in all directions.

“Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.” – Wendell Berry

Feb 11

Perception Reboot

“Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.”― Walt Whitman

“To change one’s life:

  1. Start immediately.
  2. Do it flamboyantly.
  3. No exceptions.” ― William James

To what, who, when are you clinging to?
What hinges and holds?
Binding or freeing.
Tangling or unwinding.
And, or, all of the above, everything in between.
Create a foundation, a framework, principles.
Less rules, regulations, assumptions, limiting beliefs.
More wonder, awe, inquiry, opening.

Listen, examine, assess, dismiss, remove, replace, reboot.
We have a capacity and agency to change, transition and transform.
Choose and keep choosing each day.
One step, then the next, putting fear in its place, the sideline.
Present yet ignored.

Embrace, expand, step out.
Create, unfold, unfurl.
Clear your cache.
Perception reboot.

“To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds,”― William James

Jan 25

1 Comment

In the Pauses

“Only in the pauses between things, in the brief contemplative spaces of just being, can we catch a glimpse of love itself.”― Gerald G. May, The Awakened Heart: Opening Yourself to the Love You Need

“Life is not a matter of reaching a stagnant end point, but is rather an ongoing process in which one, hopefully and with grace, grows ever more deeply in love.”― Gerald G. May, The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth

Enter the flow of life and let it enter you.
A dialogue.
A conversation.
A deepening and lightening.
To see the same anew.
The familiar as if for the first time.
Beauty, wonder, awe to guide and lead.
Lay down the unnecessary, freeing your arms to catch and embrace glimpses of love, peace and joy.
To be moved from stagnancy to grace.
In the pauses, abundance overflows.

“Joy is the reaction one has to the full appreciation of Being. It is one’s response to finding one’s rightful, rooted place in life, and it can happen only when one knows through and through that absolutely nothing is being denied or otherwise shut out of awareness.”― Gerald G. May, Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology

Jan 21

Within Time

“Meditation is not about what’s happening, it is about how we’re relating to what’s happening.”
― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace

“Order us, that we may stand within time holding your hand. That we may know we are enough, not because what we make of these hours, but because within these hours – with you – we are being made.”― Micha Boyett

More is here, unnoticed.
Enough, more than enough overflowing.
Ease, woven in slowing.
Delight, in the rising of the sun.
Brilliance, in the color and curve of a flower.
Joy, in a smile that breaks into laughter.
All of it, prayer.
When we recognize what already is present for our savoring.
An invitation and welcoming, the messy and beauty.
A returning to wonder, a response of praise and awe.
We are being made, written, painted, created each day.
Witness the work of the Author, Artist, Creator.

“Prayer is not an act I perform, words I recite, a behavior I strive to maintain. It is a returning. It is a broken life finding healing, a misplaced soul recognizing home.”― Micha Boyett, Found: A Story of Questions, Grace & Everyday Prayer

Jan 15

lOOk and listen

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

“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.” – Marcus Aurelius

A painted rock on a snowbank on a morning walk
A prompt
A clue
A calling
To notice
To awaken
To observe
Listen
Look
Slow enough to see the detail in the moment
The gravity of now
Time held still to reveal and rejoice in what already is overflowing
Even God rested on Sunday
And it was and is good.

“By letting go it all gets done.”― Lao-Tzu

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