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Posts tagged ‘Hope’

Feb 5

Walking Out Love

“For it is from love that we are born. And to love that we must return. This is the journey of the soul we call Life.”― Michael J. Tamura, You Are the Answer

a blessing for everyday empathy (because, hey, SENSITIVITY ISN’T A BAD THING) by Kate Bowler

“Blessed are you, the sensitive one,
attuned to the feelings of others.
You couldn’t turn it off if you tried.

Blessed are you with the
emotional bandwidth to hear hard things,
without fixing or minimizing or deflecting,
You know the gift of presence.

Blessed are you who
chooses to show up without judgment
with little gifts or small acts of practical help.
You know the gift of compassion.

Blessed are you, too,
when you are utterly exhausted by
other people’s problems.
(And actually now that we’re talking about it
it’s getting even more annoying.)
Your empathy is a precious gift
that deserves to be protected too.

Today, help me stand ready to hear
those divine whispers nudging me
to give compassion away.
Naturally. Freely.

And help me find those who,
to my surprise, want to pour back into me.
(Which, fine, you know I hate receiving.)

Love given and received,
without shame or embarrassment.
Because what else can a big-hearted person”
do but learn to give and get?”

Be kind
Love well
Cast light.

“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”― Anne Frank

Feb 4

Opened to Air, Carrying Love

“Likewise, every disturbance, whether resolved or not, is making space for an inner engagement. As a shovel digs up and displaces earth, in a way that must seem violent to the earth, an interior space is revealed for the digging. In just this way, when experience opens us, it often feels violent and the urge, quite naturally, is to refill that opening, to make it the way it was. But every experience excavates a depth, which reveals its wisdom once opened to air.”― Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred

“Hope is the hardest love we carry.”― Jane Hirshfield, The Lives of the Heart

Beneath the surface
Above the noise
Beyond the chaos
Quiet and calm
Soft whisper
Invitation
Pause, abide, engage
Breaking ground
Open to air
Carrying hope, light, love.

“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”― Thomas Paine

Jan 30

Add Joy with a Side of Hope

“If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy,
If a blade of grass springing up in the fields has the power to move you,
If the simple things of nature have a message that you understand,
Rejoice, for your soul is alive.” – Eleonora Duse

“I Am
I Know not whence I came,
I know not whither I go;
But the fact stands clear that I am here
In this world of pleasure and woe.
And out of the mist and murk
Another truth shines plain –
It is my power each day and hour
To add to its joy or its pain.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Time out, away
Pause, pullover
Look up, around
Restore, refill
From grinding to grounding
Myopia to horizon
Chaos to calm
Hope, joy, laughter
Woven through each day
Teaspoons, cups, buckets
If we choose to pay attention
Enter the dance
Carrying and casting light.

“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

Jan 28

Dappled with Light and Love

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.”― Kate DiCamillo

Love
Not the surface greeting card stuff
The kind that sticks and stays
That accompanies and sits quietly in grief
That leaps with joy in the wins
And all of the ordinary days in between
Tough, resilient, soft, kind
Sees humanity in others
That does not diminish in disagreement
Nor demand agreement
No lectures, shame, othering, pontificating, I told you so, I was right
Found in small acts
Yielding
Conversation and connection
May you find this kind of love today
And offer it first without condition
Be a helper, a door opener, a homecoming
Cast light, love well

“Do you know what hurts so very much? It’s love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.”― Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Jan 26

Part the Veil

“Be the lighthouse in the ocean.”― Delphanie Frank

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
– Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (Prayer for Peace)

In rupture, seeds of repair.
In grief, roots of love.
In hope, the path forward.
Be kind.
Be present.
Be help.
Be the lighthouse.
Peace. Hope. Love.
Cast light.

“My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other’s presence, each other’s wonder, each other’s human plight.”― Eudora Welty

Jan 24

Awash in Hope

“And hope is like love…a ridiculous, wonderful, powerful thing.”― Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux

“Nothing is more terrifying to evil than joy.”― Kate DiCamillo, The Beatryce Prophecy

Joy. Hope. Expectancy.
Not fluffy, naïve, futile.
Powerful, practical, transformative.
Fight the good fight.
Radical love.
Ridiculous wonder.
Bold delight.
Beauty, light, color.
Fuel for the journey.

“You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next.”― Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Jan 23

Poetry of Pause and Presence

“We look about the world, by the light we have made, and realise it’s all vulnerable, and all worth saving, and no one can do it but us.”― Kathleen Jamie, Findings

“The way we are living,
timorous or bold,
will have been our life.”
― Seamus Heaney

Hope and grace
Kindness and laughter
Light and joy
Love

All present in this day, within
Amidst chaos, noise, busy
May we have sense and boldness
To choose these again and again
Over worry, fear, apathy

To love the live we’re shown
For this day will not come again
Poetry of pause and presence
To be made new.

“How perilous is it to choose not to love the life we’re shown?”― Seamus Heaney, Opened Ground

Jan 19

Faith, Hope, Love

“This is the urgency: Live!
And have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.”― Gwendolyn Brooks, The World of Gwendolyn Brooks

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Faith, hope, love
The greatest is love
Unconditional or it’s not real
The resilient, gritty, tough, stick and stay, fight the good fight kind
Jumping hurdles, leaping fences, knocking down walls
Cast light, with a side of hope, and an extra helping of joy and peace.

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” – Maya Angelou

Jan 18

At Any Time, All the Time, Light

“I don’t believe there is one great thing I was made to do in this world. I believe there is one great God I was made to glorify. And there will be many ways, even a million little ways, I will declare his glory with my life.”― Emily P. Freeman, A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live

“At any time you can ask yourself:
At which threshold am I now standing?
At this time in my life, what am I leaving?
Where am I about to enter?
What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold?
What gift would enable me to do it?
A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres.
Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.
At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward.
The time has come to cross.” – John O’Donohue

Varieties of presence
Close up
Far away
Big
Small
Busy, over busy, distractions
Mostly in-between, a mix and muddle
Where sweetness lies, right next to grief, beside gratitude
Cloaked in grace, awe, wonder
For the taking and receiving
If we choose
Someday is now
Ordinary days
Steps leading to thresholds
Rarely aware walking it out
Slowly then suddenly
Breathe, witness, partake
Wherever you are on this leg of the journey
Slow, pause, stop
Look up and around
Beauty, light, hope, love
On the ground you stand
This very day.

“Poetry is life distilled.”― Gwendolyn Brooks

Jan 17

Making Music Each Day

“Life’ wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.”― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.”― E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

Life is life-ing
As it does
To not take it too lightly
To not take too heavily
To allow, invite, experience
So much we think we know but don’t
Assumptions and judgments to simplify and feel in control
False narratives for false comfort
To be awake, aware, at attention
Gratitude, grief, grace
In small things
Big too
Keep asking, growing, softening
Porous heart
Generous spirit
Curious mind
Plant seeds
Play often
Offer love, laughter, joy
Music in the making, written in the playing
Enjoy and participate in life in all of it’s life-ing
Cast light

“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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