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Posts tagged ‘Nature’

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

Jun 23

Today’s Sky

“This sky
Where we live
Is no place to lose your wings
So love, love
Love.”
― Hafez, The Gift

“Now that your worry has proved such an unlucrative business,
Why not find a better job?”
― Hafez, The Poetry Pharmacy Returns

Above the noise.
Amidst the busy.
Beyond the doing.
Thin spaces.
Of slowing, pause, margin.
Listen, look, gaze.
Stop. Sit. Savor.
Grace and gratitude are at play.
The Real Fun of this day.
Full presence, active participation, wings in motion.
Cast light and love.

“Zero
Is where the Real Fun starts.
There’s too much counting
Everywhere else!”
― Hafez, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy

Jun 18

Grace of Wonder, Beauty, Light

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

“May the beauty of your life become more visible to you, that you may glimpse your wild divinity.
May the wonders of the earth call you forth from all your small, secret prisons and set your feet free in the pastures of possibilities.
May the light of dawn anoint your eyes that you may behold what a miracle a day is.
May the liturgy of twilight shelter all your fears and darkness within the circle of ease.
May the angel of memory surprise you in bleak times with new gifts from the harvest of your vanished days.
May you allow no dark hand to quench the candle of hope in your heart.
May you discover a new generosity towards yourself, and encourage yourself to engage your life as a great adventure.
May the outside voices of fear and despair find no echo in you.
May you always trust the urgency and wisdom of your own spirit.
May the shelter and nourishment of all the good you have done, the love you have shown, the suffering you have carried, awaken around you to bless your life a thousand times.
And when love finds the path to your door may you open like the earth to the dawn, and trust your every hidden color towards its nourishment of light.
May you find enough stillness and silence to savor the kiss of God on your soul and delight in the eternity that shaped you, that holds you and calls you.
And may you know that despite confusion, anxiety and emptiness, your name is written in Heaven.
And may you come to see your life as a quiet sacrament of service, which awakens around you a rhythm where doubt gives way to the grace of wonder, where what is awkward and strained can find elegance, and where crippled hope can find wings, and torment enter at last unto the grace of serenity.
May Divine Beauty bless you.” – John O’Donohue, Beauty – The Invisible Embrace

Beauty, imagination, kindness, hope, wonder, beauty, joy, enthusiasm, awe, generosity, love.
Ignite, fan the flames, stoke the fire.
“May the outside voices of fear and despair find no echo in you”
Grace of wonder, wings of hope, urgency of spirit.
Thoughts, words, actions.
Cast light.

“Hope is a waking dream.”― Aristotle

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