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Posts tagged ‘God’

Aug 24

Blown Away by Beauty

“I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We’re here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don’t have time to carry grudges; you don’t have time to cling to the need to be right.”― Anne Lamott

“Expectations are resentments under construction.”― Anne Lamott

Enter today with fresh thoughts, renewed hopes, bursting energy.
Without explanation, permission or approval.
Flip the story, change the narrative.
Put down the old and put on the new.
A shift in perspective.
An opening to allow possibility to root and bloom.
No shoulds, have tos, why nots, whens – the ingredients of limiting expectations.
Full presence in now, in today.
A path of joy, sweetness and affection.

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”― Anne Lamott

Jun 17

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

Jun 3

Faith into Deed

“The test of faith is whether I can make space for difference. Can I recognize God’s image in someone who is not in my image, who language, faith, ideal, are different from mine? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake me in his.”― Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations

May understanding be my first and last act.
Clearing the path for all.
Inviting and allowing difference.
A potpourri of belonging and hospitality.
Love well without rules or restrictions.
Love has none.
Gentle, kind, gritty and enduring.
It sticks.
A real Presence.
An anchoring.
Faith and truth into deed.
No more fear.
Still small voice that is never silenced.
Listen.
The answer will always be love.

“So meaning is made, not just discovered. That is what religion for the most part is: the constant making and remaking of meaning, by the stories we tell, the rituals we perform and the prayers we say. The stories are sacred, the rituals divine commands, and prayer a genuine dialogue with the divine. Religion is an authentic response to a real Presence, but it is also a way of making that presence real by constantly living in response to it. It is truth translated into deed.”― Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning

“In an age of fear, moderation is hard to find and harder to sustain. Who wants to listen to a nuanced argument, when what we want is someone to relieve us from the burden of thought and convince us that we were right all along? So people mock. They blame. They caricature. They demonize. In an age of anxiety, few can hear the still small voice that the Bible tells us is the voice of God.”― Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

Jun 4

Spaciousness

“Salvation is a word for the divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places where their lives are at risk, regardless of how they got there or whether they know God’s name. Sometimes it comes as an extended human hand and sometimes as a bolt from the blue, but either way it opens a door in what looked for all the world like a wall. This is the way of life, and God alone knows how it works.” – Barbara Brown Taylor

“Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.” – Barbara Brown Taylor

May you feel the touch, the embrace, the anchoring of the divine already present
Kneel at the altars that are real rather than false ones we fall too readily on
Notice the sacred and holiness in the ordinary moments of each and every single day
Hidden in plain sight, in reach, awaiting our attention and care
Walls into doors
Light amidst darkness
Blue lingering with clouds
Thick with possibility
Ripe for the receiving, taking and giving
Abundant and available.

“Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.” – Barbara Brown Taylor

Mar 9

Ordinary Altars

“We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.” – Thomas Browne

“When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.” – Mahatma Gandhi

A run at the end of the day as the clouds roll in and temperature starts to drop. The finish in sight, the sun breaks through the clouds, kissing the frozen lake. A cross take shape but for a moment before fading behind again. An altar, an awakening, a whisper to deepen, widen, open, prompt awe. Signs and wonders woven in the ordinary to carry, hold and embrace. Choose well to what and for who you kneel to and for. God or gods.

“God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.” – William Cowper

Oct 20

Harvest Moon

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.” – Mother Teresa

“When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Bright, brilliant night sun, holding off the dark a bit longer to harvest summer’s bounty.
Pause long enough to be awestruck by the rising of the moon and sun.
Pulling us out of ourselves long enough to see the expanse and bigness of life.
Beyond circumstances and swirling thoughts, anchoring us in beauty and light.
The Author of life created the moon, sun and each of us.
We are held.
Magnificent wonders within and all around.
Harvest the bounty.

“The magnificent cosmos is a palace that has the sun and the moon as its lamps and the stars as its candles; time is like a rope or ribbon hung within it, on to which the Glorious Creator each year threads a new world.” – Said Nursi

Sep 10

Small, Tall and Everything in Between

“God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” – Martin Luther

“Life is God’s novel. Let him write it.” – Isaac Bashevis Singer

God is in the small and tall and all that’s woven between
On the mountain
In the valley
Along side the crooked and straight roads
Smooth and bumpy
Rain and shine

Notice
Embrace
Hold
Be held
Revel
Glory in it all
Praise without ceasing
Joy ever flowing
Grace, light and gratitude.

“People see God every day, they just don’t recognize him.” – Pearl Bailey

“For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.” – Saint Teresa of Avila

Apr 6

6 Comments

Never Alone

Dinner with friends
Washing their feet to model service and love
The Garden
Betrayed by a kiss
Denied three times by His best friend
Alienation, rejection, desertion
Beaten
Mocked
Spat on
The Cross
Excrutiating, indescribable, painful, slow death

In our struggles, crosses, pain, we are never alone. Never.

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