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Posts tagged ‘joy’

Jan 12

Grounding and Grace

“Children, like animals use all their senses to discover the world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way…Or now and then we’ll hear from an artist who’s never lost it.”― Eudora Welty

“I go fishing in my mind. I put out bait, the bait of my own longing, my desire, and my hunger for connection, for a tug of something alive at the end of a line. Something that I may have to struggle with to pull in, but that will be wild and important to me, whether I keep it or let it go.”― Pat Schneider, How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice

Crisp air
Deep breath
Awakening senses
Calm and wonder
Delight and awe
Grounding and grace
What to keep
What to let go
Choose well

“Be led by your joy.”― Pat Schneider, How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice

Jan 8

Rituals of Approach

“When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere.”― John O’Donohue

“What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation.

When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”― John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace – A Spiritual Homecoming Through Celtic Traditions, Art, Music, and Divine Grace

Morning, stepping off point
Slow entry
Reflection, meditation, prayer
Call it what you will
Getting out of your own way
Soft whisper
Discernment and clarity
Setting the tone
Framing the door
Crossing the threshold
Anticipation, reverence, curiosity
Spilling into awe, wonder, delight
Spring smack dab in winter
Ordinary days, sacred gifts woven throughout
Concealed beauty surfaces
Blooming joy in noticing, partaking, generosity
Enter the embrace of a new day.

“May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.”― John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong

Jan 6

Liquid Architecture

“Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.”― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.”― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Peace, light, color
In the midst of winter
Gratitude, grace, delight
In the midst of struggle
May these be yours on ordinary days
Receptivity, generosity, joy
Stay soft in a hard world
Liquid architecture.

“Remember to live.”― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Jan 5

To Be Wild

“I no longer want more. I want to be wild.” – Emma Tynan

“May you find the singular pathway within—the one that leads you back to the places that never asked you to strive.

And when the world asks you to chase, when it tells you that “more” is the answer, may you remember there is another way. A way to root deeply. A way to belong to yourself. A way to listen for the answers buried in the clay of your own heart.

May you come to know yourself in all the wild places, and may they guide you home.” – Emma Tynan

Slow entry
Soft step
Senses atune
Rooted and reaching
Anchored and in flight
Deeper, mattering, emergence
Clay of your own heart
Whisper of soul
Listen, explore the wilderness within
Welcome home.

“This wildness is not “more.” It’s not another ladder, another stretch, another version of self-betterment. It’s remembered. It’s a movement toward what remembers you: ancestry, instinct, soul, native language, the wisdom carried quietly in your bones.

Wildness doesn’t ask for performance or destruction. It invites you deeper, beneath the polished edges and the well-rehearsed roles, into the place where your truest nature lives. It asks you to let yourself be held by the places your soul recognizes. It is the feeling of being met by a landscape and knowing, in some wordless way, that you are not separate from it.” – Emma Tynan

Jan 3

1 Comment

Gardening

“The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden.”― Sir Thomas More

“I have learned that
everything has its own language and that
if I listen carefully to the birds and the creatures,
and even the grasses,
I will hear the sound of God
in the music of the silence.” – Catherine Garland, Learning Life poem

The gift of pause, reflection
Music of silence
Of thresholds
Bridges
Blank canvases
Fresh beginnings
New day, new month, new year
Plant seeds
Tend your garden
Ever blooming, becoming, arriving
Cast light, color, gratitude, kindness, joy

“I did not know that I could only get the most out of life by giving myself up to it.”― Marion Milner, A Life of One’s Own

Jan 2

Bask and Steep

“Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.”― Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well

“Comparison is the thief of joy” – Theodore Roosevelt

Something else
Somewhere else
Someone else
Someday when
The grass is greener on the other side of the fence

Look longer
In the eyes of what you have right now
All of it
Imperfect, irritating, incomplete, becoming, unfolding, blooming, beautiful
Not merely at what’s missing, changed, different
Be present and awake

Bask and steep in this day
Find the good, it’s there
Give good away, it compounds
Deep abiding hope, optimism, gratitude
Joy – guard it, receive it, offer it.

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”― Socrates

Dec 31

New Year’s Path, One Step at a Time

“Let the wild rumpus start!”― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

“What the New Year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the New Year.” – Vern McLellan

Intentions spilling into action, inaction too
What to do and what not to do
Daily steps
Consistency
Walking it out
Gentleness
Kindness
Connection
Co-creation
Collaboration
Engaging with forethought
Joy, an act of resistance
Offering peace first
Wandering and rest stops
Deep work
Light play
Unknowing
Learning
Growing
Twists and turns
Acceptance
Generosity
Awe and wonder
Reflection then motion
From divergence to convergence to emergence
Narrowing
Deepening
Laughter, lots of it
Dancing, art, music, nature
Slowing and inviting
Abiding faith, trust, love
Gratitude in, through, with all of it
All of these and more for the new year
Not resolutions as much as ways of living daily

“I think in terms of the day’s resolutions, not the years’.” – Henry Moore

Dec 30

Stunning

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.” – John Keats

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper” – W.B. Yeats

Stunning
Gorgeous
Magical
Jaw dropping
Breath taking
Spectacular
May each day be filled with these encounters
Places
Spaces
Outside your door
Front and center
Joy, delight, awe, wonder, gratitude
Ordinary days, senses ablaze
Get out and play.

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” – Aristotle

Dec 29

Fresh Coat, Bright Color

“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.”― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910

Fresh coat
Bright color
Refresh
Reset
New beginnings
Each moment, day, week, year
Perspectives, approaches, frameworks
Widening the lens when too small
Narrowing the lens when too big
Inquiry, curiosity, exploration, discovery
Beauty, joy, delight woven in ordinary
For eyes to see anew.

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Dec 28

Roam Unfettered

“Let us be certain of who we want to be. Let us choose for ourselves our path in life, and let us try to strew that path with flowers.”― Émilie Du Châtelet

“If just looking could be so satisfying, why was I always striving to have things or to get things done? Certainly I had never suspected that the key to my private reality might lie in so apparently simple a skill as the ability to let the senses roam unfettered by purposes. I began to wonder whether eyes and ears might not have a wisdom of their own.”― Marion Milner, A Life of One’s Own

Enter with anticipation, not defined expectation
Cross with curiosity, not certainty
Traverse with enthusiasm, not guarded steps
Roam unfettered
Let your senses drive
Strew the path with flowers
Enjoy the journey, wherever it leads.

“The secret door to peace is to discard all the busyness.”― Hiral Nagda

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