Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘Nature’

Jul 19

Holy Underachievement

“The universe is transformation.”― Louise Erdrich

“Blessed are you who are burned out, sun-drenched, and soul-beary.
You who long for rest, but feel pulled in a dozen good directions.
You who feel behind before the day even starts.
Whose group texts go unanswered, and whose sunscreen ran out, and who cannot remember what day of the week it is.
Blessed are you who are trying to care for others, when you barely have anything left to give.
You are blessed when you don’t volunteer to bring orange slices to the soccer match.
When you eat cheese and crackers for dinner again.
When you say, Sorry, I can’t make it.
You’re not lazy. You’re not failing. You are honoring your humanity.
May you find pockets of rest when your body says no more.
May you find something that you can sit down when your calendar begs for margin.
You find a friend who helps shoulder it with you when you are spread too thin.
And may you remember you are not a project to be optimized.
You are a person, a beloved one.
You don’t have to earn rest.
You just have to receive it.”
Kate Bowler: The Summer of Too Much: Practicing Holy Underachievement,

Pockets of rest
No permission needed
Earning not required
Slow down
Savor and soak in this day
Wide margins
Blank canvas
Space to let awe and wonder find you
Receive it
Amazing grace
Peace. Be still.

“NO” for me now is all about making room for more “YES.”― Abbi Jacobson, I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

Jul 18

Summer’s Work of Presence and Ease

“I drifted into a summer-nap under the hot shade of July, serenaded by a cicada lullaby, to drowsy-warm dreams of distant thunder.”― Terri Guillemets

“The silence in me propels me to fully feel the majesty of nature, to connect to my aliveness in the presence of trees, water, mountains, soft earth.” – John O’Donohue

Summer
A season
A flow
A whisper
A way of being
An ease inviting pause and restoration
Relax and witness the beauty abound
Warm sun
Blue skies
Flowers in bloom
Birds in song
Trees swaying
Soft breeze waltzing
Let summer do its work in you
Majesty and rapt presence
Sweet, slow time

“The beauty of nature insists on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of true arrival.” – John O’Donohue

Jul 14

Today’s Path

“The willingness to consider possibility requires a tolerance of uncertainty.”― Rachel Naomi Remen

“Surrendering the need for an explanation represents a profound act of personal transformation.”― Caroline Myss, Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason

Expand by contracting
Grow by pruning
Awaken by tilling
Clear the clutter
Tune out the noise
Space
Wide margins
Blank page
Fill with fresh color, texture, beauty
New day, new beginning
Walk today’s path.

“Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know. Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in new ways. ”― Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings : Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging

Jul 12

How Luminous, This Day

“All things look good from far away and it is man’s eternally persistent childlike faith in the reality of that illusion that has made him the triumphant restless being he is.”― Rockwell Kent, Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan

“The bright sun shone upon us; the lake was blue under the westerly breeze, and luminous, how luminous! the whole far world of our imagination. How like a colored lens the colored present! through it we see the forward vista of our lives. Here, in the measure that the water widened in our wake and heart strings stretched to almost breaking, the golden future neared us and enfolded us, made us at last — how soon! — oblivious to all things but the glamour of adventure. And while one world diminished, narrowed and then disappeared, before us a new world unrolled and neared us to display itself. Who can deny the human soul its everlasting need to make the unknown known; not for the sake of knowing, not to inform itself or be informed or wise, but for the need to exercise the need to know? What is that need but the imagination’s hunger for the new and raw materials of its creative trade? Of things and facts assured to us and known we’ve got to make the best, and live with it. That humdrum is the price of living. We live for those fantastic and unreal moments of beauty which our thoughts may build upon the passing panorama of experience.”― Rockwell Kent, N by E

Colored lens
Colored presence
Attention
Wonder
Awe
Cup full, overflowing
Witness, partake, allow
Let peace in

“Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived.”― Shane Claiborne

Jul 11

Grace of Fresh Eyes

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”― Confucious

“Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day’s chalking.”― Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace

Another day’s chalking.
Canvas to paint.
Beauty to be seen, to be made.
Grace in this day, a plenty.
It’s there.
Inside and out.
Fresh eyes required.

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson’s Essays

Jul 9

1 Comment

Simple Beautiful Joy

“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.” – Henry David Thoreau

“All good things are wild and free.” – Henry David Thoreau

Joy
Beauty
Gratitude
Every
Single
Day
On the ground you stand
In the air you breathe
Wild. Free. Simplify

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.” – Henry David Thoreau

Jul 2

Irreplaceable Aliveness

“we think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it is experiencing life that will.”― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

“there is a great choice that awaits us every day: whether we go around carving holes in others because we have been so painfully carved ourselves, or whether we let spirit play its song through our tender experience, enabling us to listen, as well, to the miraculous music coming through others.”― Mark Nepo, Finding Inner Courage

Alive and awake in this day.
Each step along the way.
The path unfolding.
Walk it out.
Lean in.
Take hold.
Be held.
In joy, awe, laughter, delight.
Woven in ordinary days.
Extraordinary grace.

“We work so hard to get somewhere, to realize a dream, to arrive at some destination, that we often forget that though some satisfaction may be waiting at the end of our endurance and effort, there is great and irreplaceable aliveness in the steps along the way.”― Mark Nepo

Jun 30

Constant Attention

“The heart that
breaks open can
contain the
whole universe.”
― Joanna Macy

“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

To explore, get away, wander
To return, anchor, deepen
Ebb and flow
In and out
Exhale and inhale
The dance of being
The song of presence
The gift of gratitude
Porous heart
Open arms
Fresh eyes
Attune ears
Rapt attention
To the space, place, sacred, expansive ground of now.

“To name a place requires us to be in a place. It requires us to resist dreaming of where we should be and look around where we are.”― Pádraig Ó Tuama, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World

Jun 29

Overflowing Beauty of Being

“Beauty is the harvest of presence.”― David Whyte, Consolations

“The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.”— Thich Nhat Hanh

What can I do?
So often, the best thing we can do, is be.
Be present.
Be aware.
Be awake.
Be connected.
Be kind.
Be alive.
Moving from mind to heart and spirit.
In a beautiful, brilliant. lovely, glorious world.
Inside and out.
Awaiting our arrival to awe, wonder, gratitude.
Daily.

“What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.”
― David Whyte

Jun 28

2 Comments

Otherness in the World

“we have so many allies in this world, including just the color blue in the sky,”― David Whyte

“Life can find you only if you are paying real attention to something other than you own concerns, if you can hear and see the essence of otherness in the world, if you can treat the world as if it is not just a backdrop to your own journey, if you can have a relationship with the world that isn’t based on triumphing over it or complaining about it.”― David Whyte, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship

Attention and reverence.
Beauty and peace.
Grace and light.
Love and gratitude.
Enter into the conversation, dance, communion.
Find and be found.

“Love is the conversation between possible, searing disappointment and a profoundly imagined sense of arrival and fulfillment; how we shape that conversation is the touchstone of our ability to love in the real inhabited world.”― David Whyte

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »