Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘Gratitude’

Dec 23

Deep Peace, Profound Wholeness

“You have the most beautiful things surrounding you. Give your mind the breather it deserves.”― Hiral Nagda

“When there is nothing to prove to anyone in the world, there is a deep peace and a profound wholeness which cannot be touched or pierced.”― Hiral Nagda

Expectations, assumptions, demands, control, ego, proving, counting, comparing, performance
Blinders to the beauty, abundance, blessings, contentment, joy, peace
Let go
Of all of it
Put it down
Drink in this day
Full presence
Sips and sprinkles
Drops and waves
Invite, allow, welcome
Newness poured into you
Nothing to do
But open, accept, receive
Mystery, serendipity, grace
Blinders off
Get out of your own way
Yield
Awe and wonder await your arrival, your participation
Deep peace, profound wholeness.

“Drink life one sip at a time. This moment is brand new. Let it pour its newness into you.”― Hiral Nagda

Dec 22

Gentle Break

“Birds chirping around you is a beautiful realisation that life in incredibly good. Let this sound be a gentle break in your routine.”― Hiral Nagda

“There’s nothing like
the fecund beauty of calmness.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya, Our Nepal, Our Pride

Carve space into this day
Step away
Break the busy routine
Field trip
Conservatory, art museum, park
30 minutes will do
Reset, retreat, refocus
In the pause, awareness
In the noticing, gratitude
In the slowing, peace
Beauty of calmness
Spilling into the world.

“As you slow down, you instantly enter into a brand new world.”― Hiral Nagda

Dec 20

Making Clearances

“One who has hope lives differently.”– Pope Benedict XVI

“It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.”– Pope Benedict XVI

Advent to Christmas doorstep.
Threshold to cross.
New space to create.
Slowing to presence.
Making clearances for soul breathing.
Hope, joy, peace.
Cross the threshold.
Open all of the gifts.

“At Christmas, time deepens. The Celtic imagination knew that time is eternity in disguise. They embraced the day as a sacred space. Christmas reminds us to glory in the simplicity and wonder of one day; it unveils the extraordinary that our hurried lives conceal and neglect. We have been given such immense possibilities. We desperately need to make clearances in our entangled lives to let our souls breathe.” – John O’Donohue

Dec 18

Shore of this Day

“This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“All that is eternal in me
Welcomes the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.

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.” – John O’Donohue

Blank canvas of a new day
Fresh beginning
Joy to be had
White space and margin for slowing
Color, shape, hue for meaning
Beauty unfolding into gratitude, grace, beholding
Invitation, welcoming, belonging
May we see the gifts on the shore of each new day.

“The chief beauty about time
is that you cannot waste it in advance.
The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you,
as perfect, as unspoiled,
as if you had never wasted or misapplied
a single moment in all your life.
You can turn over a new leaf every hour
if you choose.”― Arnold Bennett

Dec 14

Rooted, Bright, Joy

“Indeed, frequent positive emotions—feelings of joy, delight, contentment, serenity, curiosity, interest, vitality, enthusiasm, vigor, thrill, and pride—are the very hallmark of happiness.”― Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness

“we habitually fail to enjoy, savor, and live in the present, as our minds are often someplace else. However, when you think about it, the present moment is all we are really guaranteed.”― Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness

Tilling, seeding, tending
Grounding, rooting, anchoring
Gratitude, beauty, joy
Smack in the middle of imperfection, incompleteness
Slowing to notice
Harnessing thoughts, moving to intentions, spilling into small actions
Daily process
Deliberate practice
Savoring the simple in the ordinary
Rapt presence in this day

“Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present oriented.”― Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness

Dec 13

Lurking Close at Hand

“In the stillness of quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.”― Howard Thurman

“There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful.”― Howard Thurman

Slow time.
Blank canvas.
Stillness.
Close at hand.
Joy and Peace.
Remembered in real time.

“Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.”― Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart

Dec 12

Wide, Wide Awake

“How, then, to find the courage to speak with such authenticity, with words muscular enough to ring the doorbell of the listener’s mind, admitting the rigor and the glory of the holy through the open door of the down-to-earth, the commonplace, the very ordinary.”― Luci Shaw, An Incremental Life: Poems

“Blessed are we when we yearn, yearn for connection and love and touch. Blessed are we when we hunger for the beauty of life itself and the people to fill it. Blessed are we when we are unable to say I’m letting it go because we feel like we will be washed away into an ocean of nothingness. Teach us to hold on to the truths that enliven our spirits and fill our souls and loosen our grip on the painful untruths like that we are alone or unlovable or that desire itself is the enemy. Teach us to hunger for what is good and be filled. There will be no easy addition or subtraction, we will lose and we will gain and almost none of it will make much sense at the time. And it forces our hands open in the ebb and flow of wins and losses, comings and goings we will look for divine love in the mystery of it all. The stubbornness of flowers that still smile at us, at the grocery store and the need for endless small reminders that the pain of it all, the comedy of it all, keeps us wide, wide awake.” – Kate Bowler

In the hurry and hustle
Rush and self-imposed demands
May beauty interrupt you
Stop you in your tracks
Blue skies
Flowers smiling
Sunlight on snow
Listening and connection
Treasure woven in everyday life
Noticed in stillness, inquiry
Deep breath
Ebb and flow
Senses atune
Wide, wide awake
Blessed are we in the mix and muddle of it all.

“The people you meet in your life, you meet them for a specific purpose: To help them and to be helped by them. So, try to spot the treasure in your everyday life, because one day you may realize you had the treasure and you lost it.”― Maria Karvouni

Dec 11

Encounter and Reverence

“Awe, you see, is what moves us forward.”― Joseph Campbell

“We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Encounter
Majesty
Reverence
Gazing
Beholding
Noticing
In slowing, awe, wonder
Hidden in plain sight
Ordinary places and spaces
Awaiting our senses to tend, participate, awaken
Begin anew each day
Hearty yes

“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure ”― Joseph Campbell

Dec 9

Carpentry of Exquisite Beauty

“In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase.”― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power…Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”― Abraham Heschel

What pen shall you write with today?
What brush and colors will you swirl on the canvas?
What song to sing loudly and proudly?
What dance will bring you gliding across the floor?

We create our days and our days become our life, one at a time.
Plant seeds of kindness, laughter, joy, compassion, attention, inquiry.
String syllables of poetry and prose.
Weave gratitude, grace, goodness.
Bloom love, peace, light.
Exquisite carpentry.

“As a carpenter can make a gibbet as well as an altar, a writer can describe the world as trivial or exquisite, as material or as idea, as senseless or as purposeful. Words are wood.”― Mary Oliver, Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poem

Dec 7

Rush of Stillness

“The whole world is beautiful, the art is in the seeing.”― Camille Pissarro

“The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man

Winter sunrise
Crisp air
Delayed by awe
Soft whisper, warm light
Invitation of wonder, pause, attention
Rush of stillness
Urgency of slowness
To see and hear anew
With clarity, gratitude, wonder

“TO LISTEN, TO LOOK Is it all sewn up—my life? Is it at this point so predictable, so orderly, so neat, so arranged, so right, that I don’t have time or space for listening for the rustle of angels’ wings or running to stables to see a baby? Could this be what he meant when he said Listen, those who have ears to hear… Look, those who have eyes to see? O God, give me the humbleness of those shepherds who saw in the cold December darkness the Coming of Light the Advent of Love!”— Ann Weems, Kneeling in Bethlehem

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »