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Posts tagged ‘Golden Retriever’

Apr 13

Joy Seeking and Finding

“Today, seek out one small moment of joy. Just one. Maybe it’s a raindrop on your window, a flower blooming against all odds, an unexpected smile, a hot mug warming your hands.” – Diane Shiffer

“Play is the complete absorption in something that doesn’t matter to the external world, but which matters completely to you. It’s an immersion in your own interests that becomes a feeling in itself, a potent emotion. Play is a disappearance into a space of our choosing, invisible to those outside the game. It is the pursuit of pure flow, a sandbox mind in which we can test new thoughts, new selves. It’s a form of symbolic living, a way to transpose one reality onto another and mine it for meaning. Play is a form of enchantment.”― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

One small moment of joy
Perhaps two too
Play, laughter, exploration
Full presence in this day
In the details
A tea bag steeping, full flavor
Mining for meaning
In slivers and slices
Windows open
Fresh air, soft breeze
Enchantment, grace, light
Paint the blank canvas of this day
One slow stroke at a time.

“I don’t want to sit like a brooding hen on the nest of my past achievements. I want to keep on going deep into the uncertain act of making, to see the unknown world stretch out before me and to devote myself to exploring it.”― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Apr 8

Breathing Resurrection Air

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

“True restfulness, though, is a form of awareness, a way of being in life. It is living ordinary life with a sense of ease, gratitude, appreciation, peace and prayer. We are restful when ordinary life is enough.”― Ronald Rolheiser, The Shattered Lantern

We’re good at “lent”-ing, lamenting, foreboding.
Not short on reasons.
And yet.
Easter, spring, bloom arrive.
Never skipping their turn.
Renewal, refreshment, restoration.
Showing up.
Right in the middle of the mess.
Where it will always be.
Calling us to breath resurrection air.
To succumb to joy.
In our ordinary, imperfect, abundant, overflowing, limited days.
Fresh eyes, light heart, trusting soul required.
Make tracks, practice resurrection.

“The resurrection tells us it is never too late. Every so often we will be surprised. We must believe that the stone will be rolled back, and we must be ready to poke out our timid heads, take off the linen bindings of death, and walk free for a time, breathing resurrection air.”― Ronald Rolheiser, Prayer: Our Deepest Longing

Feb 25

Hello Sunshine

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”― Mary Oliver

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.” – Mary Oliver

Loosen your grip.
Put it down.
Lighten up.
Make way.
Give into joy.
Smile spilling into laughter.
Song to dance.
Gratitude, grace, goodness.
May you bask here awhile.
Be made new.

“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, Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

Jan 22

Altars in the Ordinary

“Walk on air against your better judgement.”― Seamus Heaney

“Isn’t that a kind of prayer? The care and maintenance of the web of our noticing, the paying heed?”― Kathleen Jamie, Findings

Walking on air
Better yet, running with abandon, delight, ease
Attention, witnessing, partaking
Overflowing, abundant, intricate
Altars in the ordinary
Found in pause, quiet, noticing
Invitation and homecoming
To kneel in reverence, awe, wonder
With gratitude, gravity, grace
Woven in the beautiful mess, imperfected, unfinished, unfolding
Awaiting our care and maintenance
Reciprocating the same and so very much more.

“It’s poetry’s job, isn’t it, to keep making sense of the world in language, to keep the negotiation going? We can’t relinquish that.”― Kathleen Jamie, Findings

Nov 24

A Way, Not a Day

“We would worry less if we praised more. Thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and dissatisfaction.”― Harry A. Ironside

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite – only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand years, and exhaust it. How sweet to think of! my extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.”― Henry David Thoreau

Not a day
A long weekend
The start of holiday flurry and hurry
An approach
Foundation
Perspective
Attitude
Commitment
Deliberate practice
Daily habit
Noticing and simple joys
Toys and fresh dug holes
May thanksgiving be a way, not a day.

“Eucharisteo—thanksgiving—always precedes the miracle.”― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts


“A has one aim in life… to bestow his heart.”― J. R. Ackerley

Nov 12

Unraveling Magic

“In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.”― W. H. Auden

“This is a reminder to let you know that you are not here just to do stuff, just to perform duties and complete tasks.
You are here also to feel happy, and content, and inspired and well within yourself.
You are here to have some fun, create meaningful moments and find the sparkle in your eyes again.
You are here to unravel the magic of being alive, the magic of being you. To heal, to feel whole again.
Do something today that lights you up. That activates your joy. That brings about a genuine smile from your heart.
You are worth the effort.” – S.C. Lourie

Permission granted
To pause
To not crowbar everything into a day
To have fun, the tail wagging kind
A call to joy
Answer the call
Unravel some magic today.

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”― Steven Pressfield

Jul 13

Embrace of Presence

“As all mountains stand on the ground,
As all trees root in the soil,
As all rivers flow to the sea,
there’s a substance under all life
that joins us and holds us up.” – Mark Nepo

“When learning how to swim, we feel that we’re sinking, and yet we don’t. In just this way, there’s something that holds us up, a mystical buoyancy under all our problems. Of course, a stone will sink and a heart turned to stone will keep dropping. But not all things sink. So our job is to stay light enough to stay afloat, and to trust amid the turbulence that there’s some element of being that will sustain us, if we surrender to it. This buoyancy of existence doesn’t eliminate the turbulence of the surface where we have to live. But as the air that makes up the sky also fills our lungs, what holds us up is around us and within us. It lifts us when we least expect it, with a wave of being that will carry us, when we’re still enough to receive it. Yet living on the surface, we never know what will round our edges or touch us in a way that will stop our chatter. It might be when our eyes meet at the farmers market in the bright sun. Or after a movie in the night parking lot when we realize that we’ve been looking at the same star. Like roots growing a mile apart in the stream, we’re touched by the same current of life, though we may never know each other. Despite our complaints, the friction of the world slows us down till we receive everything. Though we often feel alone, we’re never alone. And when we feel a sense of being held, we’re coming alive. This is where we’re really going, into the embrace of where we are.” – Mark Nepo, Things That Join the Sea and the Sky

Put down your don’ts
Your shoulds
Your musts
Your have tos
Your can’ts
Your rules
Open and embrace
Dive beneath the surface
Better yet, cannonball
Free falling into fun, frolic, delight
Ease of being
Receive everything
Hidden in right in front of you
Woven into the fabric of this day.

“Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns.”― Rachel Naomi Remen

Jun 20

Insert Summer, Delight and Savor

“Summertime, and the living is easy.” – Ella Fitzgerald

“In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.” – John Steinbeck

Wild air.
Blue skies.
Long slow days of the sun and delight.
Sit.
Savor.
Summer.
Soak it in.
Joy and fun at work.

“Summer has a flavor like no other. Always fresh and simmered in sunshine.” – Oprah Winfrey

“Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink in the wild air.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jun 11

Bits and Pieces

“The path to a greater life is not “suffering until you achieve something,” but letting bits and pieces of joy and gratitude and meaning and purpose gradually build, bit by bit.”― Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

“The key to finding happiness in this life is realizing that the only way to overcome is to transcend; to find happiness in the simple pleasures, to master the art of just being.”― Brianna Wiest

May today be enough.
Overflowing.
Ebb and flow.
Fun, laughter, play.
Delight in the art of being.
Space, margins, pause, praise.
For what already is.
Fresh eyes.
Grateful heart.
Chasing joy.
Being caught by it too.
Bits and pieces.
Abundance of presence.
Spectator and participant in this day.
Simple delicious pleasures.

“It’s not about getting over things, it’s about making room for them. It’s about painting the picture with contrast.”― Brianna Wiest

May 17

Accept the Invitation to Joy, Daily

“Life is filled with invitations to experience joy and goodness.”― Laurie E. Smith, Leap With Me

Invitation by Mary Oliver

“Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude—
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.”

For sheer delight and gratitude
Walk lightly with rapt attention
Your path this day
Accept the invitation to joy whenever and wherever offered, without delay
To pause, praise, savor
And, of course, chase a tennis ball or two.

“if you see for yourself, hear for yourself, and enter deeply enough this seeing and hearing, all things will speak with and through you.”― Jane Hirshfield, The Heart of Haiku

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