Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘Life’

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

Oct 26

Birthday Reflections and Gratitude

“Now is the time to free the heart,
Let all intentions and worries stop,
Free the joy inside the self,
Awaken to the wonder of your life.
Open your eyes and see the friends,
Whose hearts recognize your face as kin,
Those whose kindness watchful and near,
Encouraging you to live everything here.
See the gifts the years have given,
Things your effort could never earn,
The health to enjoy who you want to be
And the mind to mirror mystery.” – John O’Donohue

“Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life.” – Mary Oliver

Happy Birthday to me and 9th Birthday to Abby, my birthday buddy.
Blessed with family, friends, love.
Sharing a few of my favorite things … poetry, quotes, reflections.
“What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
And to stay in the arena, striving, coming up short, with great enthusiasm, devotion daring greatly.
Awaken to the wonder of life.
To stay awake each day with inquiry and curiosity.
To keep unlearning, relearning, growing, becoming, no matter age.
Reflection and presence.
Kindness and generosity of spirit.
Hope, resilience and peace that passes understanding.
Grace, gratitude, laughter, slowing, savoring,  joy, delight.
Deepening faith and trust in God’s plan, not my own.
With reverence, wonder, awe.
Seeking wisdom rather than knowledge.
Joy on the journey wherever it leads.
To celebrate each day.
And most of all, cast light.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”― Theodore Roosevelt

Oct 8

All the Things, and More

“Long have you timidly waded
Holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea,
Rise again, nod to me, shout,
And laughingly dash with your hair.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

“Half of me is filled with bursting words and half of me is painfully shy. I crave solitude yet also crave people. I want to pour life and love into everything yet also nurture my self-care and go gently. I want to live within the rush of primal, intuitive decision, yet also wish to sit and contemplate. 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

With grace, compassion, kindness
To be where you are at
Nowhere else
Present, awake, like water
Ebb, flow, still
Multitudes, complexities, messiness
Watching and wondering
Anchoring and rooting
Hope and resilience
Gratitude and grief
Static, in motion, changing, staying the same
All of the things
And so much more
The dance of becoming, unfolding, unknowing, being, emergence.

“Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Aug 22

2 Comments

Breadcrumbs and Shards

“The whole universe is based on rhythms. Everything happens in circles, in spirals.” – John Hartford

“Kintsugi is based on the belief that something broken is stronger and more beautiful because of its imperfections, the history attached to it, and its altered state. Instead of hiding what’s been damaged, the shards are mended with a special resin mixed with gold dust. The bonded seams become an intrinsic part of the ceramic and add a personalized, one-of-a-kind beauty through its imperfections.”― Jo Ann V. Glim, Begotten with Love: Every Family Has Its Story

Follow the breadcrumbs
Shards woven, stitched, melded back together again new
Bound in gold, restored to beauty
Purposed and repurposed
Seasons, circles, transformation
Follow the breadcrumbs, find the gold.

“Life does not belong to you. It is the apartment you rent. Love without fear, for love is an airplane that carries you to new lands. There is a universe in silence. A tunnel to peace in a scream. Get a good night’s sleep. Laugh when you can. You are more magical than you know. Take your advice from the elderly and children. None of it as crucial as you think, but that makes it no less vital. Our lives go on, and on. Look for the breadcrumbs.”― Marisha Pessl, Neverworld Wake

Jun 2

Real Time

“Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.”― Simone Weil, Lectures on Philosophy

“EMILY: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?”

STAGE MANAGER: “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”

― Thornton Wilder, Our Town

Manna for this day alone.
Taste and see.
Salt and light.
Hands and feet.
To walk awake and aware.
Through this day alone.
Realizing life while living it.
My prayer, call, intention.
To stay the course of presence, gratitude, joy.
Every, every minute.
Real time abundance.
Cup overflowing.

“There is no wealth but life.”― John Ruskin, The King of the Golden River

Oct 26

Function of Focus

“There’s a calm in every sunrise, every sunset…
a dazzling display of creation, and rest.
Come, soak in the moment.
It’s like the pause at the end of every breath,
A space where time touches eternity,
and in that moment, we are renewed.
Like an eternal reset for the soul.” – Bob Holmes

“Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any of that guidance, how pertinent any of that wisdom, in the end you discover that you make the path of life only by walking it with your own two feet under the overstory of your own consciousness — that singular miracle never repeated in all the history and future of the universe, never fully articulable to another.” – Maria Popova

On a decade birthday today, a deep gratitude for the journey.
Connections.
With God, self, others.
Unfolding, becoming, unfurling.
Relationships.
Laughter.
Wonder.
Awe.
Self-awareness.
Getting lost.
Resilience.
Grit.
Unexpected twists and turns.
Bridges and tunnels.
Detours.
Disappointments.
Delays.
Learning.
Unlearning.
Forgiving.
Remembering.
Forgetting.
Changing my mind.
Reflection.
Releasing.
Awakening.
Grief.
Appreciation.
Kindness.
Generosity.
Optimism despite the “facts.”
Trust.
Faith.
Grace.
Empathy.
Understanding.
Discernment.
Growth.
Beauty.
Joy.
All woven together with love.
Yes to life, every single day.
The weight and gravity of joy.

“Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course; until it becomes an inner law of nature. If Viktor Frankl can exclaim “yes to life, in spite of everything — and what an everything he lived through — then so can any one of us amid the rubble of our plans, so trifling by comparison. Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus — an inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice.” – Maria Popova

 

Apr 17

Path Making

The Path by Lynn Ungar

“Life, the saying goes, is a journey,
and who could argue with that?
We’ve all experienced the surprising turns,
the nearly-impassible swamp, the meadow
of flowers that turned out not to be quite
so blissful and benign as we first thought,
the crest of the hill where the road
smoothed out and sloped toward home.

Our job, we say, is to remain faithful
to the path before us. Which is an assumption
as common as it is absurd.
Really? Look ahead. What do you see?
If there is a path marked out in front of you
it was almost certainly laid down for someone else.
The path only unfolds behind us,
our steps themselves laying down the road.
You can look back and see the sign posts—
the ones you followed and the ones you missed—
but there are no markers for what lies ahead.

You can tell the story of how
you forded the stream or got lost
on the short cut that wasn’t,
how you trekked your way to courage or a heart,
but all of that comes after the fact.

There is no road ahead.
There is only the walking,
the tales we weave of our adventures,
and the songs we sing
to call our companions on.”

Look back.
Progress, overcoming, grief, gratitude, clarity, weaving, connecting, growth.
Paths we didn’t choose yet took and arrived to this day.
Keep paving, laying the bricks down going forward.
Glance behind but forge ahead.
You are in the road construction business.
New paths to cut, smooth, travel.
Create your path, expect detours, delays, rerouting.
And keep going.
Bricks in the steps.

Mar 28

No Greater Love

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” – John 13:34

“No greater love has anyone than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” – John 15:13

Sacrifice.
Suffering.
Friendship.
Service.
Yielding.
Kindness.
Humility.
Companionship.
Generosity.
Compassion.
Redemption.
Unconditional.
Love.
All alive this day and each day.
Available to everyone.
Holy Thursday, the threshold to the Easter journey.
No greater love.

“If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” – John 13:14

Mar 14

Lens of Attention

“Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.” – Epicurus

“The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees
To learn something by being nothing
A little while
But the rich
Lens of attention.”
– Mary Oliver, Entering the Kingdom

Leave yourself behind.
Not your true self.
The layers that have built with time.
The dust of opinion.
The notion of knowing.
The residue of certainty.
The buildup of hesitation.
The folly of calculation.
The exhaustion of foreboding.
The futility of comparison.
The weathering of dragging extra.
The stagnancy of hibernating.
A reset, restart, reignition.
To see new again but not the same, yet softly familiar.
Focusing on what is most true, beautifully imperfect, filled with delicious wonder.
A crisp lens of attention.
To be made new again.

“Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.”― John Donne, The Poems of John Donne

Jan 7

2 Comments

Butterfly-Speak

“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors.”― William Blake

“The messy middle is all about what happens when we’re in the state of in between. It involves a complicated alchemy of giving up old ways and experimenting with new ones, moving beyond what’s past and beginning to define what’s coming. In butterfly-speak, it’s cocooning; in hero-speak, it’s getting lost.”― Bruce Feiler, Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age

In the messy middle.
The winters.
The dry seasons.
This is where the work is being done.
Not the work we do but the work that’s being done within us.
Getting lost to be found.
From cocoon to butterfly.
Doors, thresholds, transformational ground.
Walk it with fresh eyes, open heart and ease.
Trust the journey.

“Primed to expect that our lives will follow a predictable path, we’re thrown when they don’t. We have linear expectations but nonlinear realities… We’re all comparing ourselves to an ideal that no longer exists and beating ourselves up for not achieving it.”― Bruce Feiler, Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age

« Older Entries