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Posts tagged ‘Nature’

Jul 3

Bound by Beauty

“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

Jul 2

Beeing

“Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind.” – Ashley Smith

“Mindfulness is not chasing the moment but sipping the nectar of the moment.”― Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment – Living in the Breath

Put on summer.
Soak in slow.
Put down doing.
Pick up ease.
Sit in being.

“Let July be July. Let August be August. And let yourself just be even in the uncertainty. You don’t have to fix everything. You don’t have to solve everything. And you can still find peace and grow in the wild of changing things.” — Morgan Harper Nichols

Jul 1

Lavishly Scattered

“There is poetry among the wildflowers.”― Rachel Irene Stevenson

“How lavishly are the flowers scattered over the face of the earth! One of the most perfect and delightful works of the Creation, there is yet no other form of beauty so very common. Abounding in different climates, upon varying soils -not a few here to cheer the sad, a few there to reward the good but countless in their throngs, infinite in their variety, the gift of measureless beneficence wherever man may live, there grow the flowers.”― Susan Fenimore Cooper

The daily call of noticing
Practice of wonder
Rigor of reverence
Discipline of awe
All the beauty lavishly scattered
At our feet, in, on, throughout this very day
Sacred ground
Common, ordinary hours
Alive and flourishing
Pay attention
Linger and loaf
Soft heart
Open arms
Awake and aware
Poetry and prose
Lens of love

“But to live is to be conscious. To walk through a field of flowers and stop to feel the softness of each petal, to inhale the perfume of each blossom.”― Terah Shelton Harris, Where the Wildflowers Grow

Jun 29

The Blessedness of Things

“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”― Blaise Pascal

“Now I will do nothing but listen.” – Walt Whitman

Summer calls us again and again.
Pause.
Sit.
Look. Listen. Linger.
Longer. Often. Rigorously.
There is a blessedness woven through each day.
To partake requires attention, reverence, yielding.

“the blessedness lying at the heart of things.” – Aldous Huxley

Jun 28

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Creation Speaks, Listen

“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

Jun 26

Nectar of Peace

“Over and over in the butterfly we see the idea of transcendence. In the forest we see not the inert but the aspiring. In water that departs forever and forever returns, we experience eternity.”― Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings

“On the windless days, when the maples have put forth their deep canopies, and the sky is wearing its new blue immensities, and the wind has dusted itself not an hour ago in some spicy field and hardly touches us as it passes by, what is it we do? We lie down and rest upon the generous earth. Very likely we fall asleep.”― Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings

Beauty and grace aplenty.
Pay attention.
Gaze.
Wander.
Lie down.
Transcend.
Flow with the river.
Floating with delight like the butterfly.
Peace.
Seek, offer, receive.

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Jun 24

Radiating Peace

“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

Jun 17

True Harvest

“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

Jun 11

In Stillness, Sanctuary

“A walk in nature walks the soul back home.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace

“In a silent morning moment, with a silent voice I pray, to lift a silent sunrise offering on silent wings of grace.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace

Tending rather than mere attendance
Showing up
Leaning in
To what matters
Leaning back
Foregoing worry
Picking up joy, curiosity, delight
Traveling light, casting light.

“Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary.” – Hermann Hesse

Jun 7

In Stillness, Revelation and Delight

“Stillness reveals what hurry hides.” – Pico Iyer

“Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.”― Emily Dickinson

In stillness, revelation
In hovering, awe
In abiding, emergence
Soft whisper
Deep stirring
Exquisite beauty
Peace that passes understanding
On the altars of this day
Kneel
Become new, again and again.

“We turn not older with years but newer every day.”― Emily Dickinson

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