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Posts tagged ‘Contemplation’

Aug 27

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Unfolding in Grace

“To be transformed implies letting go of control for a while in the hopeful expectation that something worthwhile may result.” ― Esther de Waal, Living On the Border: Reflections on the Experience of Threshold

“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

Rest to be filled back up again
Off leash to wander, explore
Step back to get a treetop view
Listen with rapt attention
Allow the unfolding and transformation of grace.

“When you start to feel like things should have been better this year, remember the mountains and valleys that got you here. They are not accidents, and those moments weren’t in vain. You are not the same. You have grown and you are growing. You are breathing, you are living, you are wrapped in endless, boundless grace. And things will get better. There is more to you than yesterday.”― Morgan Harper Nichols

Aug 9

Of Now

“The place on which you are standing is holy ground.” – Exodus 3:5

“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

In the pause, may you know holy ground on which you stand.
That of now, of presence, of yes!
Slow down to see time while it is happening.
The sacred space that surrounds.
The beauty abundant and overflowing.
Steep in it so the color washes off on you.
Glimpses of love woven through each day.
Spend your days well.
Each one a strand that weaves life together.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”― Annie Dillard

Aug 8

Out of the Nest

“The magic of each day lives in the unknown. It’s waking up as one person, and accepting that when night falls, we may be someone else entirely. So, when you ask what my story is, forgive me—-I’m not quite sure yet.”― J. Raymond

“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”― Pema Chödrön

In the ordinary, may you glimpse the expanse and depth of being alive.
In the doing, may you pause to see the being behind the doing.
In the slowing, may you be surprised and delighted by what already is present.
In the lingering, may you root in the necessary and untether the rest.
Out of the nest.
Find your wings.
Flight to the sky.

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”― Pema Chödrön

Jul 28

Entry Point

“Wherever you are is the entry point”― Kabir

“Slowly slowly O mind…
Everything in own pace happens,
Gardner may water a hundred buckets…
Fruit arrives only in its season.”― Kabir

Take up residence where you are right now.
No someday when.
No used to be.
Simply now.
Eyes on the road ahead, not too far.
A step at a time.
Aware, awake and in tune.
Slow, feel the beating of your heart.
Dance, let your spirit soar.
In ordinary days, extraordinary resides awaiting your arrival.

“For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits, But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom, and
Light!”― Hafez, The Gift

Jul 25

Presence in Silence

“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” – John Muir

“Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything . . . It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature but to each other. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you.” – Gordon Hempton

Sew silence into each day.
To reorient, discover, expand.
From nothing to something.
Listen. Observe. Wonder.

“Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something.” – Pooh

Jul 24

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New Storyline

“If you keep telling the same sad, small story, you will keep living the same sad, small life.”― Jean Houston

Open to newness.
Consider a fresh narrative.
Put aside opinion, assumption, judgment, measurement, comparison.
Explore connection, depth, expanse.
Your story is still being written.
By you or others?
Empty page waiting to have new words fall on to it.
Write and be written on with curiosity, forgiveness, forgetting, exploration, adventure, joy.
Space to allow a big life to unfold through wonder, beauty and awe hidden in ordinary days.
Emergence.

“The wounding becomes sacred when we are willing to release our old stories and to become the vehicles through which the new story may emerge into time.”― Jean Houston

Jul 23

Far Flung

“just as you would not neglect seeds that you planted with hope that they will bear vegetables and fruits and flowers so you must attend to nourish the garden of your becoming.”― Jean Houston

“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.”― Jean Houston

Walk lightly.
Look up, down, around.
Hold joy.
Embrace delight.
Entertain laughter.
Release angst.
Unchain spinning thoughts.
Height.
Depth.
Width.
Abundance
Leave linear and cannonball into dimension.
Malleable.
A kaleidoscope of new possibilities.
The extraordinary, waiting to be released.
A balm, a healing, a beacon.

“We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released”― Jean Houston

Jul 20

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Brush and Canvas

“It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.” – Eckhart Tolle

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”― Simone Weil

Be both brush and canvas.
Paint color on the day.
Allow the day to paint color on you.
An exchange, a conversation, a dance.
Participant and spectator.
Enter the mystery, the unfolding, the overflowing now.
Pause and take notice.
What do you need to hear?
What do you need to see?
Listen. Look.

“All serious daring starts from within.”― Eudora Welty, On Writing

Jul 18

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Most Recklessly

“Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Invite and allow inquiry, curiosity and listening to be yours today.
With gentleness in your heart, a yearning for perpetual bloom.
Summer reveals a thousand colors and shapes.
Surely, we have tenfold more within.

“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Jul 17

Unlearning and Reorder

“Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.”― Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

“As one man said, “I got a pretty good education. It took me years to get over it.” That’s what spirituality is all about, you know: unlearning. Unlearning all the rubbish they taught you.”― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

Unknowing, unlearning, unraveling.
Detachment, observation, understanding.
Sensing, wonder, curiosity.
Willingness to change and be changed.
Deeper, lingering, transformation.
Order, disorder, reorder.
May you travel well into new territory, unfamiliar land, unfolding mystery.
With patience, grace and love.

“We see people and things not as they are, but as we are.”― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

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