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Posts tagged ‘optimism’

Jun 10

More Presence

“I will not be distracted by noise, chatter, or setbacks. Patience, commitment, grace, and purpose will guide me.”― Louise Hay

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

To be here fully now
To see flowers woven with the weeds
To choose beauty and color, light
So much right and good
May I stay here, and not be moved
To past or future
To complaint and ungratefulness
Accepting, delighting, praising
Today is what is before me to partake in
Eyes, effort, ease in the now.

“See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

May 14

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Light Calling

“The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing.”― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician’s Elephant

“You are not too old
and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out
its own secret.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

Order. Disorder. Reorder.
Learn. Apply. Unlearn. Apply. Grow.
Doing. Undoing. Starting anew.
In stillness, depth, breadth, listen.
It’s not over.
The past is not the end, only to road to this day.
New paths to cut.
Life invites, calls, shouts.
You belong here.
Come out.
Light calling.

“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”― Rainer Maria Rilke

May 10

Bloom Recklessly

“Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.”― Rainer Maria Rilke

“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Look not too far ahead nor back and miss the show.
The one of reckless bloom of the present.
The dance of seasons woven together.
Winter rest to spring burst, summer in the wings.
On the cusp, tipping points, transitions, transformation.
Do not skip your turn.
What’s in your foreground?
Arms reach awaiting noticing and attention?
Reach.
Bloom recklessly, with great abandon.
In this very day.

“Let your beauty manifest itself
without talking and calculation.​
You are silent. It says for you: I am.
And comes in meaning thousandfold​,
comes at long last over everyone.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

Apr 30

Joy Seeker

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”― Robert Frost

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don’t Hesitate)”― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

The other shoe to drop.
Worst case scenario.
What next?
Peeking around the corner.
Hesitation awaiting the now what.
Foreboding joy.
As if we could prepare.
We waste time lulled, dull, muted.

Make room, a house full of rooms, for the best-case scenario.
For possibilities, wonder, awe, delight, and surprise.
Find joy on the path today, even if it’s not one you choose.
Make room for good.
We find what we seek, the lens we look through.
Beauty, flowers, laughter, music, poetry, nature, human connection.
Pathways, bridges, thresholds to joy.
Do not hesitate.
Plentiful joy woven in an ordinary day.

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver

Apr 28

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Fortunate Hours

“There are those fortunate hours when the world consents to be made into a poem.”― Mark Doty

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”― Alan Wilson Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture: Edited Transcripts

Moments of stillness.
Quiet symphony.
Awake to beauty.
Drawn to light.
Pause here.
To root, anchor, steep.
Ordinary days.
Fortunate hours.

“Hoping to live days of greater happiness, I forget that days of less happiness are passing by.”― Elizabeth Bishop

Apr 21

Be Unreasonable

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances. ”― Maya Angelou

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”— George Bernard Shaw

When you fall down, get up;
When others disappoint, offer grace;
When you have a hard day, keep going;
When others show what’s wrong, find what’s right;
May you see good in yourself, amplify;
May you see good in your neighbor, connect;
May you see good in the world, participate;
Optimism, action, love, generosity, joy, resilience, forgiveness, laughter, kindness, beauty, faith, imperfection, action, effort, compassion, hope, grit;
These transform self, others and the world.
Go change the world, one small thought, word, act at a time.

“What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do.”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

Apr 17

Path Making

The Path by Lynn Ungar

“Life, the saying goes, is a journey,
and who could argue with that?
We’ve all experienced the surprising turns,
the nearly-impassible swamp, the meadow
of flowers that turned out not to be quite
so blissful and benign as we first thought,
the crest of the hill where the road
smoothed out and sloped toward home.

Our job, we say, is to remain faithful
to the path before us. Which is an assumption
as common as it is absurd.
Really? Look ahead. What do you see?
If there is a path marked out in front of you
it was almost certainly laid down for someone else.
The path only unfolds behind us,
our steps themselves laying down the road.
You can look back and see the sign posts—
the ones you followed and the ones you missed—
but there are no markers for what lies ahead.

You can tell the story of how
you forded the stream or got lost
on the short cut that wasn’t,
how you trekked your way to courage or a heart,
but all of that comes after the fact.

There is no road ahead.
There is only the walking,
the tales we weave of our adventures,
and the songs we sing
to call our companions on.”

Look back.
Progress, overcoming, grief, gratitude, clarity, weaving, connecting, growth.
Paths we didn’t choose yet took and arrived to this day.
Keep paving, laying the bricks down going forward.
Glance behind but forge ahead.
You are in the road construction business.
New paths to cut, smooth, travel.
Create your path, expect detours, delays, rerouting.
And keep going.
Bricks in the steps.

Apr 14

2 Comments

The Daffodil

“Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party’!” – Robin Williams.

“Hope is not naive, and hope is not an opiate. Hope may be the single greatest act of defiance against a politics of pessimism and against a culture of despair.”― Sharon Brous

The heroism of the daffodil.
Pushing through dry weathered ground, old leaves.
To pop its head up first.
Risking too soon.
Perhaps one more snow.
The kid that jumps when others hesitate.
Defiant rebel.
Shouting praise and let’s party.
Spring is here.
Brillant color, showing off.
Soul rising to meet the sun.
Hope fulfilled.

“Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards or measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God.”― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe

Mar 20

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All That Returns

“That our lives are not defined by what we’ve lost but by all that returns, fresh and new.”― Christie Purifoy, Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons

“We must plant our dreams in real earth. We must dirty our hands. It’s the only way. Whether we dream of planting flower gardens or churches, every dream needs a place in which to take root and grow. Every dream needs a home.”― Christie Purifoy, Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons

Wherever you are today.
Whatever path you are on.
Pull over.
Rest stop.
Pause. Gaze. Imagine.
Longer than you think you should.
Then merge back in.
Carry on with a newness grounded in gratitude, imperfection, ease.
Do the work, followed by rest, reflection.
Farther than you think.
Not there yet.
Keep growing.
And dreaming.
Delight too.

“When we pause, we don’t know what will happen next. But by disrupting our habitual behaviors, we open to the possibility of new and creative ways of responding to our wants and fears.”― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha

Mar 16

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The Necessity of Fun

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney

“We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

We find how tight we are wound when we pause long enough to unwind.
Vacation, five days away from daily duties, efficiency and task completion.
Fun, play, laughter, reset, rest.
To re-enter the world fresh.
And to put the practice of pause and refreshment into each day.
To carry what is necessary.
To lay down the rest.
To let fun do its work.
Tend to daily joy, delight found in the pause.

“Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.” – Barbara Kingsolver

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