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Posts tagged ‘Faith’

Held and Hemmed

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” – Saint Augustine

Most days are ordinary.
One after another.
To dos, commitments, activities.
Daily living.
Often going unnoticed and unseen.
And then there are those thresholds, doors, bridges crossed.
One ways.
“Befores” to definitive “afters”.
No going back.
Foreign land we didn’t choose.
A diagnosis, death, relationship fractures, job loss.
The big things that make the small things that trip us up insignificant.
It is here where we relearn to walk again.
To breathe.
To carry on different and never the same.
Wear a helmet time.
No detours or shortcuts, just right up the middle.
So a blessing for all who are in the midst of before and after time.
You are held, hemmed in love and not alone.

for the life you didn’t choose by Kate Bowler, Jessica Richie, The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days

“Blessed are you when the shock subsides, when vaguely, you see a line appear that divides before and after. You didn’t draw it, and can barely even make it out. But as surely as minutes add up to hours and days, here you are, forced into a story you never would have written.

Blessed are you in the tender place of awe and dread, wondering how to be whole when dreams have disappeared and part of you with them, where mastery, control, determination, bootstrapping, and grit are consigned to the realm of Before (where most of the world lives), in the fever dream that promises infinite choices, unlimited progress, best life now.

Blessed are we in the After zone, loudly shouting: Is there anybody here? We hear the echo, the shuffle of feet, the murmur of others asking the same question, together in the knowledge that we are far beyond what we know.

God, show us a glimmer of possibility in this new constraint, that small truths will be given back to us.

We are held.
We are safe.
We are loved.
We are loved.
We are loved.”

One More Time

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”― Robert Frost

“When Medieval Monks were asked how they practiced their faith, they said, “By falling down and getting up.” This is the human journey from which no one is exempt. We are constantly challenged to get up one more time than we fall, to open one more time than we close, and to put things together one more time than we take them apart.”— Mark Nepo, Falling Down and Getting Up: Discovering Your Inner Resilience and Strength

Transitions of seasons.
External and internal.
Thresholds and openings.
Starts and stops.
Betweenness.
Trips and stumbles.
Overcoming and ease.
Emergence.
Trust the journey that flowers and butterflies know by heart.
Seed in the dark. Bloom in the light.
Weight of the cocoon. Lift of flight.
Time. Waiting. Anticipation.
Getting up again and again.
Seeing beauty along the way.

“In a modern age that commodifies everything, our challenge is to grow from the inside out, letting every holy calling find its own expression within us and between us. After decades of listening to the stories and struggles of others, I can bear witness that teaching, in its most profound form, is not moving a life from here to there, or from effort to achievement, or even from chaos to order. Rather, teaching is creating the enduring environment in which the seed of the soul can know itself and blossom.” — Mark Nepo, Falling Down and Getting Up: Discovering Your Inner Resilience and Strength

Top Heavy

“Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.” – Stewart Udall

“Tell me a story of deep delight.”― Robert Penn Warren

Allow joy and delight to lift you up.
Top heavy with ease.
Awed by beauty.
Present and open to possibilities.
In giving.
In receiving.
Some days glide.
Some days bumpy.
Each day, the only place to be.
In both being and doing, more being.
Fertile, sacred, holy ground of becoming.
In ordinary days.
The crucible of our formation, fruition, transformation.

“The crucible of our formation is in the monotony of our daily routines.”― Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

Emergence Under Construction

“Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others’ faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.”― Rumi

“Everything must break open in order to live. The seed must break open in order for the tree to grow. The egg must break open in order for life to emerge. The Earth must be turned and the cloud must burst. You were never meant to stay in your shell.”― Thomas Lloyd Qualls, Painted Oxen

In the ordinary.
In the daily.
A river runs deep within.
An ocean, ebb and flow, rhythm and raging.
Grounding and transformation.
Sharpen your senses to go within and reach out.
Surface and deep.
One song.
Emergence under construction.

“This is a uni-verse (”one song’). There’s one song playing everywhere and we are all notes in it. There are no “special” or “better” notes. Every note is necessary and contains the whole essence of the music. All the power and substance of the universe is seeking to sing its song through you as magnificently as it has ever been sung before.”― Derek Rydall

Appointed Hour

“The Sun will rise and set regardless. What we choose to do with the light while it’s here is up to us. Journey wisely.”― Alexandra Elle

“Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.”― David G. Allen

Time. Allowing it to unfold and unfurl.
Timing. Moving and staying with precision and clarity.
Patience and trust in the waiting. Ugh.
Accepting and taking a path we didn’t choose. Sigh.
From sunrise to sunset, journey wisely the path you are on. Embrace.
Awake and aware. Joy.
Watchful and in inquiry. Imagination.
The appointed hour shall come.
Time and timing.

“Everything comes gradually and at its appointed hour.”― Ovid

Grounded and Reaching

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?” – Robert Browning

“That we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”― Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

In struggles and ease.
The blending of both.
In all the in between.
Earth and sky.
Grounded and reaching.
Allow joy in.
Moments of bliss woven through the weight of being.
Rest too.
Imagination a must.
Look up and around.
Out and within.
Expanse and immensity.
Eyes on today, glancing at the road ahead, not behind.
A step at a time.
Breath in and out.
Give and take, give more.
Be present to it all.
Absorb light, cast it back out.

“Blessed are those who give without remembering and take without forgetting.” – Elizabeth Bibesco

Aperture

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.” – Alan Watts

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” – Alan Watts

Wide lens to microscope.
Details to whole.
In and out.
Focus then blur.
Clarity and questioning.
In the waiting, the middle.
Slow then fast, mostly slow.
Bud to bloom.
Cocoon to butterfly.
Plunge into the waiting and the change it births.
In due time.
Join the dance.
Invite joy into the chaos and boredom.
Relax and float.
No place to be but here.
Being finished in moments, slivers and slices.
The gift of grace, growth, transformation.

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.” – Alan Watts

The Useful Thing

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.”― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

“Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.”― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

There are still passages to take, doors to open, flowers to gaze upon.
Learn from regrets but don’t keep carrying them, missing the present.
Beginnings, endings, seasons, cycles, circles.
Time is passing.
Do not waste it.
Be present in today alone and do the work.
Play, delight, find joy in the ordinary moments before you.
Do the useful thing.

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”― T.S. Eliot

Nearer, Beside, Within

“Try pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action, even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door. Such pauses take a brief moment, yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you.”― David Steindl-Rast

“He does not ask much of us, merely a thought of Him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, at other times to thank Him for the graces, past and present, He has bestowed on you, in the midst of your troubles to take solace in Him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to Him during your meals and in company; the least little remembrance will always be the most pleasing to Him. One need not cry out very loudly; He is nearer to us than we think.”― Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

Pause. Look. Listen.
Taste. Savor. Be still.
Drink in beauty.
Be held in grace.
Believe. Hope. Love.
Crossroads. Intersections. Connections.
Temporal. Spatial. Spiritual.
Centering. Anchoring. Easing.
All things are possible.

“That all things are possible to him who believes, that they are less difficult to him who hopes, they are more easy to him who loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of these three virtues.” – Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

Vital Awareness

“Any place is sacred ground, for it can become a place of encounter with the divine Presence.”― David Steindl-Rast, A Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness

Life keeps happening.
Giving, taking, rerouting.
Circumstances, difficulties, challenges.
Alongside laughter, contentment, awe.
It’s all of it.
Threads weaving together, especially the frayed ones.
Expectations rooted in someday when or remember when.
Rules, counting and comparison.
Foreboding rather than forbearing.
Be in today alone.
It is enough and filled to the brim.
Find imperfect, beautiful joy on sacred ground of the ordinary.
In the present moment.
Put down expectations, the narrow view.
Broaden and deepen.
Vital awareness.
Come alive.

“Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate department of life, the penthouse of existence. But rightly understood, it is a vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being… Wherever we may come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual.”― David Steindl-Rast

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