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Posts tagged ‘Contemplation’

Aug 7

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Cusping

“Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life.” – Buddha

You do not always have to be producing, creating, harvesting. Learn to be idle. Learn to rest.”― Joyce Rupp, The Circle Of Life: The Heart’s Journey Through The Seasons

Making space, creating margins
Ordinary days, simple joys, laughter, color, hue
Flow and ease of being present, on the ground of this day
Cusping and leaping
Free falling
Trusting and seeking
Slow and deliberate
Idle and rest
Intention and direction
Honing and glistening
Choosing “and” rather than “or”
Present over perfect
Gratitude over comparison, calculation, counting
Essay rather than equation
All of these things and more
No “to do” lists or bucket list but one
To be fully alive both in reflection, projection and real time.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”― Søren Kierkegaard

Jul 19

Holy Underachievement

“The universe is transformation.”― Louise Erdrich

“Blessed are you who are burned out, sun-drenched, and soul-beary.
You who long for rest, but feel pulled in a dozen good directions.
You who feel behind before the day even starts.
Whose group texts go unanswered, and whose sunscreen ran out, and who cannot remember what day of the week it is.
Blessed are you who are trying to care for others, when you barely have anything left to give.
You are blessed when you don’t volunteer to bring orange slices to the soccer match.
When you eat cheese and crackers for dinner again.
When you say, Sorry, I can’t make it.
You’re not lazy. You’re not failing. You are honoring your humanity.
May you find pockets of rest when your body says no more.
May you find something that you can sit down when your calendar begs for margin.
You find a friend who helps shoulder it with you when you are spread too thin.
And may you remember you are not a project to be optimized.
You are a person, a beloved one.
You don’t have to earn rest.
You just have to receive it.”
Kate Bowler: The Summer of Too Much: Practicing Holy Underachievement,

Pockets of rest
No permission needed
Earning not required
Slow down
Savor and soak in this day
Wide margins
Blank canvas
Space to let awe and wonder find you
Receive it
Amazing grace
Peace. Be still.

“NO” for me now is all about making room for more “YES.”― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

Jun 26

Window on the World

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”― Alan Alda

“Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.” – William Arthur Ward

What am I missing that’s right in front of me?
What don’t I know?
What’s beneath the surface?
Ask good questions
Give space and margins for the answers to rise up
To take shape and form
Unlearning, relearning, discovery
Inquiry, curiosity, imagination
Listening, hearing, receptivity
Crack the door
Open the window
Let fresh air of unknowing and mystery in
Get out of your own way to find the way
May you see the delight, wonder and awe that cross your path today
Let the light in.

“Dreams don’t die.
They move on to the next available dreamer.”― Michael Bassey Johnson

May 20

As Though I Had Wings

“The day I understood everything, was the day I stopped trying to figure everything out. The day I knew peace was the day I let everything go.”― C. JoyBell C.

“When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”― Fred Rogers

Framing
Thinking
Perspective
A shift
A tilt
A turn
Same becomes new
Familiar becomes fresh
Telescope to kaleidoscope
As though I had wings.

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.” – Mary Oliver

Mar 21

Steadfast and Still

“…smile first, then speak.”― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

“Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.” – Mary Oliver

Become slow.
Stop.
What we take up
What we put down
Choose
Inflection point
A-ha moment
The pivot
Emergence in the pause
The gift has been given
Accept and embrace

“Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.” – Mark Nepo

Mar 11

Width and Depth

“You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”― H. L. Mencken

“Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.”― Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation

Revelation rather than rules
Peace rather than pursuit
Slow over speed
Direction rather than precision
Pause rather than push
Settling rather than spiraling
Space and margins
Contemplation and reflection
Grace and gratitude
Width and depth
Fresh legs, clear eyes, quiet spirit, soul awakening
Leisure is not a luxury rather a necessity, daily
Rest, root, re-enter

“… the greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.”― Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation

Feb 18

All Things Counter

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” – Emily Levine

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things–
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.”

Winter to spring
Bloom bootcamp
Certain, brilliant, true
In the waiting
Colors plan
Fragrance plots
Hope roots deep
Inscape into order and purpose
Winter to spring.

“All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose.”― Gerard Manley Hopkins

Jan 26

Prayer of Presence

“God’s love isn’t based on me. It’s simply placed on me. And it’s the place from which I should live . . . loved.”― Lysa TerKeurst, Uninvited

“Give yourself time to make a prayer that will become the prayer of your soul.
Listen to the voices of longing in your soul. Listen to your hungers.
Give attention to the unexpected that lives around the rim of your life.
Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future, to the voices of those near you and those you have lost.
Out of all of that attention to your soul, make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul, yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability; that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigor to challenge your blindness and complacency; enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty.
Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called.” – John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

The gift of pause, time, attention
Soft whispers and echoes
Still small voice
Prayer of presence, beauty, love
Write your prayer of today.

“The way we can allow ourselves to do what we need to, no matter what others may say or do, is to choose love and defy fear.” – Martha Beck

Jan 11

Slow Ride, Long Cut

“The glory of God is the human person fully alive.”― Irenaeus of Lyons

“In Buddhism, the concept of “being busy as a form of laziness” refers to the idea that constantly filling one’s time with activities, often superficial or distracting, can be a way of avoiding deeper self-reflection and spiritual practice, essentially acting as a form of mental laziness, even if outwardly appearing very busy; this is often called “Kausīdya” in Sanskrit, meaning ‘spiritual sloth.’”- AI search

Slow, pause, stop.
Look up and in to see expanse, depth, width.
Anchor, root, reach, imagine.
Less busy, more reflection.
Shorten the list to the essentials, discard the rest.
Recalibrate, reroute, carry on.
Intuition of inner compass.
Fully alive, enjoying the journey.
Travel lightly, with awe, wonder and gratitude.
The long cut.

“I was wise enough never to grow up,
while fooling people into believing I had.”― Margaret Mead

Dec 9

Atmosphere of Possibility

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

“Desire demands only a constant attention to the unknown gravitational field which surrounds us and from which we can recharge ourselves every moment, as if breathing from the atmosphere of possibility itself. A life’s work is not a series of stepping-stones onto which we calmly place our feet, but more like an ocean crossing where there is no path, only a heading, a direction, which, of itself, is in conversation with the elements.”― David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity

Same place.
Fresh eyes.
Open heart.
Fertile ground.
Till. Seed. Feed. Wait.
Discovery. Attention. Awe. Wonder.
Rooted and rising in love.
A life’s work.

“Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.”― Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

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