Jul 12
“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began” – Mary Oliver
“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
Good morning sunshine
Begin
And keep beginning
Again and again
New paths
Travel lightly
Grounded on grace
Sunrise to sunset
Abundance and awe.
“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems
“Let us live like flowers—wild and beautiful and drenched in sun.” — Ellen Everett
“Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”― Mary Oliver
Drenched in sun.
Bursting with colors.
Overflowing with amazement.
One with the world.
Bound by beauty.
Woven in simple.
Hidden in ordinary.
Attentiveness the path.
Grounded in gratitude.
Transformation, one bud at a time.
Cast light.
“The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.” John O’Donohue, Benedictus, To Bless the Space Between Us
Jun 28
“Why struggle to open a door between us when the whole wall is an illusion?”― Rumi
“These small moments of gentleness offer mercy and grace that we can touch, taste, and feel. And they recall the great hope underneath each moment of our lives: the hope that beauty will indeed save the world, that God, by his grace, will finally reestablish us and all things. Creation speaks its comfortable words over us.”— Tish Harrison Warren, What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience
Slightly gentler.
Oneness spilling into peace.
Layers and nuance.
Of beauty, grace, hope.
Abase and abound.
Duty of delight.
“We have many responsibilities in this life, but among them we must recall that we also have the blessed responsibility to take up those things that make life ever so slightly gentler.”— Tish Harrison Warren, What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience
“Such weight, on the earth, is on our shoulders: gravity keeping us at home. But on the water we shake off the harness of weight; we glide; we are passengers of a sleek ocean bird with its single white wing filled with wind.”― Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings
“What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?”― Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings
What to put down.
Thoughts to rethink.
Assumptions to discard.
Kindness to offer.
Delight to bear.
To glide with grace.
Dance with light.
Dabble with joy.
Defy gravity.
Shake off the harness of weight.
“That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”― Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings
“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.”― Jelaluddin Rumi , The Essential Rumi
“A balanced inner calmness radiates from a peaceful centre. It neither craves others’ approval nor rejects others’ presence. It neither pulls towards nor pushes away. It has a reverent attitude towards life and all its inhabitants.”― Donna Goddard, The Love of Devotion
Water
Stillness
Flow
Buoyancy
Waves
Rhythm
Tides
Contracting and expanding
Deep breath in
Full breath out
Deep presence
Fullness of attention
Radiating peace.
“This is the messiness of life – that we all carry multitudes, so must sit with the shifts. We are complicated creatures, and ultimately, the balance comes from this understanding. Be water. Flowing, flexible and soft. Subtly powerful and open. Wild and serene. Able to accept all changes, yet still led by the pull of steady tides. It is enough.”― Victoria Erickson
“Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything. God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait.”― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change.
God
is Change.”― Octavia E. Butler
What will bloom in you today?
To what will you tend?
Hold, embrace, release
Kindness, peace, love woven through it all.
For eyes to see, open hands to receive.
“Kindness eases change
Love quiets fear”― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
“Would there be a little space, she wondered, a little time, some way to hold off eventfulness, to push busyness into the corners of the room and just stand there a minute or two.”― Toni Morrison, Beloved
“Suddenly I feel I am in the space between two breaths, in the moment of time it takes to stretch out a hand to another person, in the second when the heart beats and braces itself to beat again. I stand and wait with nothing to wait for. Am I on board a ship at sea, in a house in a park, in a town in a country? Is nothing changed, can everything be swept away as a dream is swept out of the conscious mind in the morning?”― Sven Holm, Termush
Space and margin.
Float and ease.
Grace and gentleness
Rhythm and flow.
Breadth and dimension
Kindness and care.
Take the pause, often.
“Life is not what we’re chasing. Life is what we’re leaving behind in the chasing.”― Craig D. Lounsbrough
Jun 19
“Presence doesn’t need a grand arrival — only a willingness to begin again.” – Amit Ray
“Equanimity is not a path around. It is the courage to remain in the center until the center opens.” – G. Scott Graham, The Tao of Equanimity
The noise will get louder
The chaos ensue
Demands multiply
The invitation
To this moment
To walk the path
Of presence
No shortcuts
Already here
In the quiet
The noticing
Attention and admiration
Reverence and wonder
Peace in the pause, in the receiving.
“The chase feels like movement — but it leaves you farther from the moment.”― G. Scott Graham, The Tao of Equanimity
“The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods
“A single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”― Henry David Thoreau
Summer sun, rain
Blooming bountiful
Shades of green
Kaleidoscope of brilliant colors
Be made newDaily harvest of fresh thoughts, words, actions.
“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees”― Henry David Thoreau
“To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.”― Mark Nepo
“Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment–where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels–this moment shows us that what is real is sacred”― Mark Nepo
The mysteries
To live
Not to solve
Unfolding and unfurling
In ordinary beautiful days
For fresh eyes to see
Open heart to allow
Wide arms to embrace
Sacred ground to walk with reverence.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
