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Posts tagged ‘Nature’

Nov 26

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Braced for Joy

“Come on now! Come on now
Hold your breath while you say
It’s a long way back and I’m begging you please
To come home now. Come home now
I heard you’ve been out looking for something to love
Close your eyes, little world, and brace yourself.” – Nick Cave

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

How many times on holy ground and unaware?
How often going so fast the scenery a mere blur?
How often so close and still not seeing what is right there?
Too often I presume, I know.
May I be rooted in the sacred ground beneath my feet.
Blooming and bursting good fruit.
Braced for joy.
To live, to love, to right action, to gratitude and grace.

“Have I lived enough?
Have I loved enough?
Have I considered Right Action enough, have I
come to any conclusion?
Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?
Have I endured loneliness with grace? – Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings

Nov 24

To See Anew

“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”― Anne Lamott

“I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We’re here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don’t have time to carry grudges; you don’t have time to cling to the need to be right.”― Anne Lamott

Unforgiveness. Resentment. Perfection. Judgment.
They get heavier the longer we carry them.
The stories we tell ourselves, about the past, about others, about self.
Loosen the binds, the rules, the roles, the excuses, the assumptions, the misunderstandings.
You get to write the story of this day, of the future.
Change the narrative.
The past is already written.
The good and the struggle.
The future need not be a repeat.
There will be more good, more struggle.
Unload the baggage.
Free up your hands for praise, gratitude, a warm embrace.
Become light enough to dance, sing, play.
Time is swift, finite, measured.
Do not waste it staring in the rearview mirror.
Keep your eyes on the road ahead and the scenery on new paths, off-trail.
Joy, sweetness, kindness, forgiveness, moving on, letting go, compassion, love.
These transcend, free and root us in the beauty of the present and possibility of the future.
New day, blank page.

“Each time we make a small choice toward justice, or buy fair trade, or seek to share instead of hoard, or extend mercy to those around us and kindness to those with whom we disagree, or say “I forgive you,” we pass peace where we are in the ways that we can. And God can take these ordinary things and, like fish and bread, bless them and multiply them. He can make revolution stories out of smallness.”— Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

Nov 18

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A River Moving in You

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”― Rumi

“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”― Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

Downshift
Slow down
Feel the weight of time
The gravity of presence
The current of the river
In both joy and sorrow
Often woven together
Lean on joy, hope, love
Laughter and tears, more laughter please
You can hold it all
And put it down
Idle, accelerate, coast
Inquire, observe, hear
Remember to wonder and seek awe
Found in beauty
In other
In self
In ordinary days
Given freely and abundantly by God
A peace that passes understanding
Awaiting your awakening and attendance
Tend to joy
A river moving in you

“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”― Jonathan Swift

Nov 13

Gravity and Flight

“Hope is a verb with its shirtsleeves rolled up.”― David Orr

“Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”― Thich Nhat Hanh

May peace be your path today.
Hope the work.
Rigorous joy.
Earth the playground.
Feet anchored.
Eyes up and around.
Gravity and flight.

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

Nov 9

Peace Practice

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

“Let go once. And if it keeps coming up, let go again. Peace does not just happen, you have to practice it.” – Yung Pueblo

Commitment, repetition, action.
Daily walking it out.
Energy, pursuit, zeal.
Sticking with what matters.
Letting go of the unnecessary again and again.
Open to newness, possibility, change.
Making space and room for ease, flow, restoration.
In the practice, the commitment, the action lies the fruit.
May you find and be found by peace, light and joy today.
And pass it on to others too.

“Peace begins with a smile..”― Mother Teresa

Nov 6

Seekers of Sweetness

“Man’s main task is to give birth to himself. ”― Erich Fromm

“My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.” – Mary Oliver

To give birth again and again.
Daily. In moments. Amidst ordinary.
Unfolding slowly.
Unfurling intently.
Color, texture, flavor, vibrancy.
Life all around to love.
All the ingredients for a delicious day.
May you be struck by awe, rapt by delight, held in grace.
Do your work, love the world, as it is right now.
Shouts of joy.

“Tell me, at what velocity does joy travel?”― Clint Smith

Nov 4

The Numinous

“Great is the man who has not lost his childlike heart.”― Mencius

“In fact I think I prefer a strange tangle of both, an idea with porous boundaries that keeps me guessing. We are not offered any definite conclusions, only the continuing quest. Certainties harden us, and eventually we come to defend them as if the world can’t contain a multiplicity of views. We are better off staying soft. It gives us room to grow and absorb, to make space for all the other glorious notions that will keep coming at us across a lifetime.”― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Comma,
Period.
Pause…
Still point
Deliberate
Rapt
Attention
Of our own conjuring
Wander here often.
Weave awe into each day.

“I think I’m beginning to understand that the quest is the point. Our sense of enchantment is not triggered only by grand things; the sublime is note hiding in distant landscapes. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. It becomes valuable when we value it. It becomes meaningful when we invest in meaning. The magic is of our own conjuring. ”― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Nov 2

The Work of Balance

“One thing I’ve learned in the woods is that there is no such thing as random. Everything is steeped in meaning, colored by relationships, one thing with another.”― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

“Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.”― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

May you seek and find peace today.
Giving and receiving.
Found in the details.
Fueled by attention.
Single-tasking.
In the pause, the comma.
Listen deeper.
Look longer.
Open eyes, open heart.
Rhythm of breath.
Beauty abound and overflowing.
The work of balance.
Gift of gratitude.

“Balance is not a passive resting place—it takes work, balancing the giving and the taking, the raking out and the putting in.”― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Nov 1

Boundless Gift for Renewal

“World, world, forgive our ignorance and our foolish fears. Absolve us of our anger and our error. In your boundless gift for renewal, disregard our undeserving. For no reason but the hope that one day we will know the beauty of unloved things, accept our unuttered thanks.” – Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows

“Enchantment is small wonder magnified through meaning, fascination caught in the web of fable and memory. It relies on small doses of awe, almost homeopathic: those quiet traces of fascination that are found only when we look for them. It is the sense that we are joined together in one continuous thread of existence with the elements constituting this earth, and that there is a potency trapped in this interconnection, a tingle on the border of our perception.”― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Nature, flowers, dogs, children, music, art, prose.
Wellsprings that pull us from malaise and mechanics of daily duties into enchantment and wonder.
Don’t buy what the world is selling.
Be that crazy optimist, filled with hope, enthusiastic with anticipation, open to enchantment and awe.
Small doses everywhere,
Boundless gifts of renewal.
Seek. Keep seeking.

“But seeking is a kind of work. I don’t mean heading off on wild road trips just to see the stars that are shining above your own roof. I mean committing to a lifetime of engagement: to noticing the world around you, to actively looking for small distillations of beauty, to making time to contemplate and reflect. To learning the names of the plants and places that surround you, or training your mind in the rich pathways of the metaphorical. To finding a way to express your interconnectedness with the rest of humanity. To putting your feet on the ground, every now and then, and feeling the tingle of life that the earth offers in return. It’s all there, waiting for our attention. Take off your shoes, because you are always on holy ground.”― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Oct 29

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The Gift of Shedding

“Expectations are resentments under construction.” – Anne Lamott

“Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for who you were last week, last month, or last year. Forgive yourself for when you were exhausted and snapped at the people you love. Forgive yourself for not being able to do it all. Forgive yourself for your fears. Forgive yourself for your mistakes. Forgive yourself for eating one cookie too many. Forgive yourself for not being perfect. We often look at forgiveness as an intellectual act, but forgiveness is very spiritual. It is one of the most spiritual things we can do. When we forgive, we acknowledge that we are far bigger and greater than one individual moment. When we forgive, we are saying to the universe: I will not imprison myself or anyone else with anger, shame, judgment, or resentment. Gift yourself this freedom.”― Cleo Wade, Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life

Leaves falling off trees to branches alone.
Preparing for winter, seeds planted, slowing, new bloom ahead in due time.
The cycles and circles of seasons, roadmap for life.
Begin. Middle. End. Transition. Begin again and again.
Forgiveness, letting go, moving on.
Empathy, compassion, understanding.
Love, grace, joy.
Shed unforgiveness, ego, scarcity, othering, judgment, expectations, assumptions to make room for peace, growth, gratitude, joy, delight, generosity, abundance, kindness and light.
Set the prisoners free.
The gift of shedding.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” – Lewis B. Smedes

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