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Posts tagged ‘Nature’

Dec 17

Stay Alive, Very

“Silence is like white space in design, it surrounds what’s important!”― Kate Murphy, You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters

“Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine. – Mary Oliver

Keep caring, choose well.
Keep engaging, choose well.
Keep participating, choose well.
In choosing where we put our time, attention and love, we amplify, deepen and expand.
More on less, the important.
Nothing wasted.
Gratitude, grace, clarity.
Alive with joy, bright with hope, filled and overflowing with light.
Choose well.

“Whatever happens, stay alive. Don’t die before you’re dead. Don’t lose yourself, don’t lose hope, don’t lose direction.
Stay alive, with yourself, with every cell of your body, with every fiber of your skin.
Stay alive, learn, study, think, read, build, invent, create, speak, write, dream, design.
Stay alive, stay alive inside you, stay alive also outside, fill yourself with colors of the world, fill yourself with peace, fill yourself with hope.
Stay alive with joy.
There is only one thing you should not waste in life, and that’s life itself.” – Virginia Woolf

Dec 14

Repeated Refrains

“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

“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

Nothing before
Nothing after
Today alone
To be here
Fully
Awake and aware
Walking lightly and softly
Fresh eyes, open arms, beating heart
Into knowing and unknowing
Discovery and delight
To witness, participate, observe
Driver and passenger
Journey of the ordinary
Transformation in the making

“Whimsy doesn’t care if you are the driver or the passenger; all that matters is that you are on your way.”― Bob Goff, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World

Dec 12

To Dash Against and For

“I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes to dash against darkness”
― E.E. Cummings, Poems, 1923-1954

“listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go”― E.E. Cummings

To see one thing new in an ordinary day
Maybe even two
Chest rising and falling
Crisp air in and out
Awe, wonder, delight
On the very ground you stand
In the sky above
Woven in a heart open wide
Not behind
Not ahead
At your feet
Steep in beauty, mystery, abundance
Of the present moment
Think again
Better yet, think less, love more.

“Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star…”― E.E. Cummings

Dec 11

2 Comments

To the Earth Below

“You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest? … The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.”― David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea

Winter Snow
Lyrics by Chris Tomlin, sung by Audrey Assad

“You could’ve come like a mighty storm
With all the strength of a hurricane
You could’ve come like a forest fire
With the power of heaven in Your flame

But You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the Earth below

Oh, You could’ve swept in like a tidal wave
Or a big ocean to ravish our hearts
You could have come through like a roaring flood
To wipe away the things that we’ve scarred

Oh, but He came like a winter snow
So quiet, so soft, so slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the Earth below”

Waking to a coating of fresh snow.
First real one of the season.
A surprise.
Quiet. Soft. Slow.
Still. Small. Hidden.
Present.
Beautiful.
Advent summed up.
Let it unfold in your heart.
In the waiting.
In the winding roads.
In the delays and detours.
Spring blooming in winter.

“But what would that be like
feeling the tide rise
out of the numbness inside”― David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet

Dec 9

Atmosphere of Possibility

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking out new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

“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

Same place.
Fresh eyes.
Open heart.
Fertile ground.
Till. Seed. Feed. Wait.
Discovery. Attention. Awe. Wonder.
Rooted and rising in love.
A life’s work.

“Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.”― Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

Dec 8

Wrists of Idleness

“So very many silences, and kinds of silence: chapels and churches and confessionals, glades and gorges, pregnant pauses and searing lovemaking; the stifling stifled brooding silence just before a thunderstorm unleashes itself wild on the world; the silence of space, the vast of vista; the crucial silences between notes, without which there could be no music;”― Brian Doyle, The Plover

“Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another—why don’t you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.”― Mary Oliver, Devotions: A Read with Jenna Pick: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

Slow to pause.
Hard stops woven throughout.
To put it all down for a spell.
To not do, multitask, grind.
Space to reflect.
Whitespace to create.
Recalibrate, reconsider, refresh.
Crucial silences to compose.
To be made new.

“As long as you live, you will be subject to change, whether you will it or not – now glad, now sorrowful; now pleased, now displeased; now devout, now undevout; now vigorous, now slothful; now gloomy, now merry. But a wise man who is well taught in spiritual labor stands unshaken in all such things, and heeds little what he feels, or from what side the wind of instability blows.”― Thomas à Kempis

Dec 7

North Side of a Mountain

“You see, you are not so soft after all; you are rock and wave and the peeling barks of trees, you are ladybirds and the smell of a garden after the rain. When you put your best foot forward, you are taking the north side of a mountain with you.”― Ella Frances Sanders, Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe

“For what it’s worth… it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.”― F. Scott Fitzgerald

May you root and rise in possibilities
Step by step
Day by day
Always unfolding and unfurling
Climbing and loving
Never done.

“There is only one question; how to love this world.”― Mary Oliver, Devotions: A Read with Jenna Pick: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

Dec 4

Yield to Silence

“Sometimes it’s the quiet currents that tell the deepest truths.” – Stephanie Duncan Smith, Even After Everything

“A day of Silence
Can be a pilgrimage in itself.

A day of Silence
Can help you listen
To the Soul play
Its marvelous lute and drum.

Is not most talking
A crazed defense of a crumbling fort?

I thought we came here
To surrender in Silence,

To yield to Light and Happiness,

To Dance within,
In celebration of Love’s Victory”
― Hafez, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy

Pilgrimage of silence.
A day, an hour, a few minutes.
Woven through the day.
Beams, chards, threads.
Peace awaits.
Yield.

“The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before… .What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God’s [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon.”– Jan L. Richardson, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas

Nov 30

Geography of Seasons

“May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.” – John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

“There are no manuals for the construction of the individual you would like to become. You are the only one who can decide this and take up the lifetime of work that it demands. This is a wonderful privilege and such an exciting adventure. To grow into the person that your deepest longing desires is a great blessing. If you can find a creative harmony between your soul and your life, you will have found something infinitely precious. You may not be able to do much about the great problems of the world or to change the situation you are in, but if you can awaken the eternal beauty and light of your soul, you will bring light wherever you go. The gift of life is given to us for ourselves and also to bring peace, courage, and compassion to others.” – John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

Changing seasons.
Without and within.
Parallel, alignment, rhythm.
Transitions, thresholds, crossings.
Stillness, pause, restoration.
Invisible geography.
Territory to travel.
Daily.
The path of becoming, unfolding, unfurling.
Awaken.
Bring light wherever you go.

Nov 28

Blessings Common in Our Sight

“Love is the story and the prayer that matters the most.”― Brian Doyle, The Wet Engine: Exploring Mad Wild Miracle of Heart

Thanksgiving by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.

Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
And conquers if we let it.

There’s not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past’s wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.

Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.

We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o’er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus.”

Happy Thanksgiving.
This day.
And each day.
To noticing, savoring, kindness, joy, love.

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