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Posts tagged ‘Grace’

Oct 12

Rhythm, Light, Grace

“You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it. ”― Mary Oliver

“If you allow yourself to be the person that you are, then everything will come into rhythm.
If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings.
Sometimes the great famine of blessing in and around us derives from the fact that we are not living the life we love, rather we are living the life that is expected of us.
We have fallen out of rhythm with the secret signature and light of our own nature.”
– John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

May you hear your own voice
Allow others too
Conversation, exchange, dance
Inquiry, quieting, listening
Allowing, inviting, welcoming
To not know everything
Creating space for unlearning, relearning, growth
Standing on this ground, blessed and blessing
Grace, light, homecoming.

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

Sep 4

Blooming with Grace

“To the ones that bloomed when the world expected them to wither.”― Lisina Coney, The Brightest Light of Sunshine

“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly our whole life would change.” — Buddha

Wherever planted this day, this week, this season
Bloom
With color
Hope
Resilience
Gratitude
Wonder
Joy
Grit
Curiosity
Awe
Grace
Most of all.

“Wherever life plants you, bloom with grace”― Lisina Coney, The Brightest Light of Sunshine

Aug 21

Anchor and Kite

“Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness; the perennial infusion of springtime into the winter of bleakness.”― John O’Donohue, Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

“The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”― William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads

Look longer.
Listen intently.
Breathe deeper.
Move out in love.
Anchor and kite.
A smile, laughter, enthusiasm, delight, generosity, gratitude, presence.
Infuse this day with joy.
Cast peace and light.

“It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.”― Germany Kent

May 31

Altar of this Day

“Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.”― Roman Payne

“I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.”
– John O’Donohue, A Morning Offering, To Bless the Space Between Us

Interrupted by beauty.
Delayed by awe.
Tripped up by wonder.
Distracted by gratitude.
Detoured by grace.
Disturbed and changed.
To be made new.
And never go back.
Holy, reverent, sacred ground.
Beneath our feet.
On this and each day.
To fear no more.
Awakened soul.
Grateful heart.
Love alive and well.
Attention required.

“Dawn opens as the sky in spring and sunset as the banquet in heaven. But only the awakened souls can sense the feast.”― Jayita Bhattacharjee

May 9

Cheerful Beams

“Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?”― Augustine of Hippo

“Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.” – Saint Augustine

Luminous
Above, abound, within
Wonder, beauty, nature’s canvas
Painting cheerful beams
May the spring that is unfolding outside, cascade within
Peace, awe, light

“O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.” – Saint Augustine

May 7

Fecund

“I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” – Anne Lamott

“Grace is one of the most majestic words in theology. It suggests the sublime spontaneity of the divine which no theory or category could ever capture. Grace has its own elegance. It is above the mechanics of agenda or operation. No one can set limits to the flow of grace. Its presence and force remain unmeasurable and unpredictable. Grace also suggests how fluent and seamless the divine presence is. There are no compartments, corners or breakages imaginable in the flow of grace. Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness. It suggests a compassion and understanding for all the ambivalent and contradictory dimensions of the human experience and pain. This climate of kindness nurtures the sore landscape of the human heart and urges torn ground to heal and become fecund.” .. John O’Donohue

Beneath the chaos
Above the noise
Beyond the hustle
A whisper
A soft breeze
Sacred ground
Thin spaces
Detached from effort or earning
Unforced rhythm of grace
Awaiting reception without explanation
Partaking without delay
Partake

“You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it. ”― Mary Oliver

Apr 18

Heavy Love

“Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it…It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?”― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“Hate can be helpful to certain causes. It unites a group quickly, it gives a person identity—even if it is a negative one—and, most of all, it takes away doubt and all free-floating anxiety. It gives us a place to stand that feels superior and in control. Hate settles the dust and ambiguity that none of us like. Hate is much more common, and more immediately effective, than love. Hate, as we will sadly see below, makes the world go ’round.”― Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder

Fear
Anger
Hate

Denied
Abandoned
Emptied

Love poured out
Overflowing to this very day
For all and each, not only some

Companion who says “I know”
Death defeated by love
Heavy heavy love

“But simple as the Sign of the Cross is, it carries a brave weight: it names the Trinity, celebrates the Creator, and brings home all the power of faith to the brush of fingers on skin and bone and belly. So do we, sometimes well and sometimes ill, labor to bring home our belief in God’s love to the stuff of our daily lives, the skin and bone of this world — and the Sign of the Cross helps us to remember that we have a Companion on the road.”― Brian Doyle, Credo

Mar 2

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Tender Hope, Sweet Grace

 

“We should always allow some time to elapse, for time discloses the truth.” – Seneca

“Hope has holes in its pockets. It leaves little crumb trails so that we, when anxious, can follow it. Hope’s secret: it doesn’t know the destination-it knows only that all roads begin with one foot in front of the other.” – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

One foot then the next
To walk in joy
To plant seeds of kindness, peace, compassion
To keep our power, resilience, wonder, awe
Steady, consistent, small acts
One foot then the next
Tender hope, sweet grace
Love well, cast light
The long cut.

“There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.”
― Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, The Poets Project at Casa Grande

Jul 14

1 Comment

Between the Lines

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

“The reward is a full human experience, complete with all the emotions at maximum dosage, where we have been put to great use and found an other-centric love that is complete in its expression and its transmission. The reward is to end up soft and humble, empty and in awe, knowing that of all the magnificence we have beheld from cradle to grave, the most eye-popping was interpersonal.

So here’s to anyone who notices and reads between the lines, who asks the right questions, but not too many, who takes notes at the doctor’s office and wipes butts, young and old, who listens, holds and stays. We, who, untrained and always a little off-guard, still dare to do love. To be love. That’s brave.” – Kelly Corrigan, To Love is to Be Brave, TedTalk 2024

May I read between the lines.
Ask more questions to understand.
To never assume first impressions are true.
To dig deeper to reveal complexities and nuances.
To hold and be held.
Awake in the middle.
Soft and humble.
Emptied of the futile to make room for the truly important.
In awe of the magnificence of love woven in ordinary days.
Often overlooked and sped by on the way to what’s next.
Amplifying now, tending to what’s next when it arrives.
Full human experience, maximum dosage of the present beautiful day.
Brave love in action.

“Behind all the stories we tell ourselves and the conditioning and beliefs we’ve adopted, there is a voice that is constantly whispering our truth. An internal GPS that knows our ‘yes’s’, and ‘no’s’ our ‘this way’s’ or ‘that way’s’, our core intent.”― Shayne Traviss, Your Vivid Life

Jan 24

Marvelous Promise

“When I looked, I knew I might never again see so much of the earth so beautiful, the beautiful being something you know added to something you see, in a whole that is different from the sum of its parts. What I saw might have been just another winter scene, although an impressive one. But what I knew was that the earth underneath was alive and that by tomorrow, certainly by the day after, it would be all green again. So what I saw because of what I knew was a kind of death with the marvelous promise of less than a three-day resurrection.”― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“We find that, all along, we had what we needed from the beginning and that in the end we have returned to its essence, an essence we could not understand until we had experienced the actual heartbreak of the journey.”― David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

Pausing
Slowing
Looking
Listening
Quiet
Reflection
Time unfolding
Threads weaving together to tapestry
Discovery
Renewal
Pieces to pattern
Wholeness
Thresholds to cross
Transformation
Thin spaces of discernment and clarity
Grace unfolding and holding
Trust, unwavering
Rising up again and again
Knowing wherever, whatever, all is well
May lucidity, understanding, and peace come to you on your journey
To lighten the load, widen your view, and welcome you home.

“For it is not knowing much, but realising and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul.”― Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises

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