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Posts tagged ‘Mindfulness’

Mar 23

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Shed the Nonessential

“No one is so advanced in prayer that they do not have to return to the beginning.— St. Teresa of Avila

“the only way to survive the storms of the world is to shed all that is not essential, …the only way to survive inner storms is to let everything through.” – Mark Nepo, Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity

Some will run.
Some will stay.
Some will wait.
Some will not.
No rules or regulations.
No counting or keeping track.
Gratitude and reverence for those who remain, reside, wait.
The journey is individual first.
Communal and universal next.
No map, signposts, or markers, nothing exact, predictable or precise.
One step at a time journey, each day new.
Grief is not a “fun” topic but each will go through it many times in a lifetime.
Called to be here now.
Awake and aware.
Writing and sharing is a vulnerable space.
Honesty is my only response.
Perhaps, it could be a gift, a foretelling, an invitation to communion, community, belonging.
Be present to the gifts that you are steeped in right now.
Life is both slow and fast.
Before to after in a beat.
Shed the nonessential.
Grief does not reside alone though.
Laughter, memories, tears, wonder, joy all woven through.
No shortcuts or bypasses, right up the middle.
Unfolding a step at a time.
Underlayment, grounded in hope, love and grace.
Cast light, especially now, when it means even more.
Unlacing and weaving something new.
In due time, a step at a time too.

“The great moments of living reside, not in banishing what goes wrong, but in unlacing trouble and weaving tapestries with the laces.” – Mark Nepo, Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity

Mar 5

Travel Well

“There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing.”― G.K. Chesterton

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw

Create
Unfold
Invite
Explore and wander
Paint, write, compose
Blank canvas each day
Try, experiment, do
Not divided listening but rapt hearing
Clarity found in steps taken, not in certain knowing
The journey is the call to answer
Travel well.

“We come to know the will of God as a life calling through experience itself. We discover what our calling is in the same way an artist paints on a canvas or a person falls in love. We learn by trying, by experimenting, by doing. Our calling is inseparable from the journey. In one sense, it is the journey.”― Jerry Sittser, The Will of God as a Way of Life: How to Make Every Decision with Peace and Confidence

Mar 2

Exquisite Attention

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain

“No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.” – Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

An adjustment.
A slight shift.
A new angle.
To get your imagination out of atrophy, revived and pumping.
To see the same in a different way.
Merging of the sacred and secular.
Finding the red X beneath our feet.
Standing in awe, wonder and gratitude.
May you experience even an ounce of this today.
And be changed.

“What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”— Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

Feb 26

A Listening, One Inch at a Time

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”― Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge

“A LISTENING: Going through Lent is a listening. When we listen to the word, we hear where we are so blatantly unliving. If we listen to the word, and hallow it into our lives, we hear how we can so abundantly live again.” – Ann Weems, Kneeling in Jerusalem

Listening and hearing.
Watching and seeing.
Witnessing and awe.
A journey rather than race.
Being over doing.
Sabbath. Lent. Dailyness. Sacred.
Baffled to employment of the mind.
To wonder, wander, seek, ponder.
An essay not a math problem to be solved.
A question to be lived, often unanswered, the seeking continues.
Abundantly living each day, again and again.
One inch at a time.
What will this day reveal to you?
Listen.

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”― Wendell Berry

Feb 23

Break Out

“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”― John Muir

“Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.”― G.K. Chesterton

Under the door.
Through the cracks and crevices.
Out through the slit window.
When the doors are locked.
When staring at the same walls.
When stuck in sameness and habitual reaction.
May I stop fumbling at the handle.
Pause to see the same for the first time, anew.
Breaking out into expanse, joy, laughter, beauty, abundance in all seasons, each day.
A playground, the forest, a maze, a wide open field of grace and wonder.
Losing mind, finding soul.
I’ll meet you there.

“The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.”― G.K. Chesterton

Feb 21

Deep Breath, Repeat

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”― Henry David Thoreau

“You were not just born to center your entire existence on work and labor. You were born to heal, to grow, to be of service to yourself and community, to practice, to experiment, to create, to have space, to dream, and to connect.”― Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

You need not travel a thousand miles.
Nor attain more speed.
A slowing, a pause.
Deep breath, repeat.
In this space and place, a journey within.
Unplug, unwind, undo.
Rest, restore, reimagine.
Let quiet, reflection, observation do their work in you each day.
From doing to being.
Sit here a while.
With love and reverence.
Holy, fertile ground.

“Treating each other and ourselves with care isn’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity if we’re going to thrive. Resting isn’t an afterthought, but a basic part of being human.”― Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

Feb 15

In Conversation

“You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest? … The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.”― David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity

“Desire demands only a constant attention to the unknown gravitational field which surrounds us and from which we can recharge ourselves every moment, as if breathing from the atmosphere of possibility itself. A life’s work is not a series of stepping-stones onto which we calmly place our feet, but more like an ocean crossing where there is no path, only a heading, a direction, which, of itself, is in conversation with the elements.”― David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity

Move past the surface of change aversion, the threshold resistance and transition freeze into the depth, dimension, height and width of transformation and transcendence.
Creating meaning, fostering understanding amidst the mystery and unknowing.
In conversation with self and the world.
Opening new doors.
Leaping through thresholds.
Blooming vibrant color.
Shining brilliant light.
Free and alive wholeheartedly.
In the one world which you belong.

“You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
Except the one in which you belong.”― David Whyte

Feb 11

Perception Reboot

“Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.”― Walt Whitman

“To change one’s life:

  1. Start immediately.
  2. Do it flamboyantly.
  3. No exceptions.” ― William James

To what, who, when are you clinging to?
What hinges and holds?
Binding or freeing.
Tangling or unwinding.
And, or, all of the above, everything in between.
Create a foundation, a framework, principles.
Less rules, regulations, assumptions, limiting beliefs.
More wonder, awe, inquiry, opening.

Listen, examine, assess, dismiss, remove, replace, reboot.
We have a capacity and agency to change, transition and transform.
Choose and keep choosing each day.
One step, then the next, putting fear in its place, the sideline.
Present yet ignored.

Embrace, expand, step out.
Create, unfold, unfurl.
Clear your cache.
Perception reboot.

“To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds,”― William James

Feb 4

Noticing

“keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve.”― Howard Thurman

“Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is right at their heels.” – Bertolt Brecht

From winter solstice to now, light is lingering longer.
Now seen, felt, noticed.
Sunset in December: 4:39 pm.
Sunset today: 5:22 pm.
Slow start – four minutes total between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Steady increase – after New Year’s, exponential jump to two minute per day.
Growth zone – gaining three minutes per day by February 20.

Light, always there, returning in its own time, awaiting our attention.
Our noticing.
Beauty, color, joy woven throughout each day.
Our noticing.
In slivers, slices, thin spaces, overflowing and abundant with wonder and awe.
Our noticing.
Threads to fabric to cloth to tapestry, pieces to patterns.
Our noticing.

Hone your senses, your noticing skills.
Pull back, zoom in.
Savor, delight, steep.
A shift, a tilt, a different angle.
Seeing the same in a new way.
In the pause, in the lingering, in the noticing.
Moments of high resolve.

“Silence is the eloquence of the wise.”― Augusto Branco

Feb 1

A Hundred Spring

“I must have flowers, always, and always.”― Claude Monet

“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

Change the scenery.
Go a different direction.
Wander and wonder.
Off trail for a bit.
No doing, completing, checklists.
Substance over transaction.
A clearing, an open field.
Colors pop and burst.
Fresh air clears the residue.
Pause and dwell.
A slowing, softening, deepening.
Reset, recalibrate in rest, in pondering not pining.
Allow, invite, welcome.
A hundred spring unfolding.
Witness and participate.

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Surely the flowers of a hundred spring are simply the souls of beautiful things!”― L.M. Montgomery, The Watchman and Other Poems

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