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Posts tagged ‘Reflection’

Nov 7

Garden Work

“When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. Beauty is mysterious, a slow presence who waits for the ready, expectant heart.” – John O’Donohue

“I’m tending to my garden, I’m making it my place,
Where I can spend my moments, in this nurturing space.
I too, am like a flower, needing sunshine and rain,
With gentle hands that guide me, I can flourish once again.

With every season changing, the blooms may come and go,
Yet in the quiet shadows, there’s beauty still to show.
For in the depths of winter, when all seems cold and bare,
New dreams begin their stirring, bringing hope beyond despair.

So as I sow my blessings, and patiently I wait,
I learn to trust the timing, and embrace my natural fate.
For reaching towards the sunlight, I find my truest spark,
In this garden of my making, I can leave my mark” – C.E. Coombes

Expectancy
Anticipation
Enthusiasm
Delight
Enchantment
Hope
Joy
Laughter
Light
Kindness
Generosity
Abundance
Reverence
Wonder

In the nurturing, tending to your garden
These are the fruits of labor, garden work
Tend, nurture, plant
Standing on sacred ground.

“When we devote some calm time to the heart and come off the treadmill of stress and distraction we can enter into the beauty within.  Each of us can prepare for that inner arrival: where ‘night holds sway’ and the inner forest becomes ‘free of strangers’.” – John O’Donohue

Oct 26

Finishing, Not Finished

“The thing about finishing a story is that finishing is really only the beginning.”― William Herring

There are days when it feels like we are finished.
It’s over, gone.
Some things are, they had their season.
Make space for new things, fresh seasons, for new buds to bloom.
Glancing back we see the path of finishing, becoming.
Change past tense to active present to witness and partake in the unfolding and finishing

“May you have the courage to begin; the patience to persist; and the strength to finish.”― Michael Bassey Johnson

Oct 20

Compass and Gravity

“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.”― Viktor E. Frankl

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

When I enter where I already am, fully
Temporal becomes transcendent
Beauty refreshes and restores
Presence deepens and delights
Partaking and embracing
Rooting and rising
In reflection, meaning takes shape
Compass and gravity
Yesterday bridge to today
No need to circle back to repeat
New path, fresh legs, freedom to choose
Grace and gratitude
Abase and abound

“Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.”― Victor Frankl

Oct 19

October Grace

“October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!”
― Rainbow Rowell , Attachments

“Let misty autumn be our part!
The twilight of the year is sweet:
Where shadow and the darkness meet
Our love, a twilight of the heart
Eludes a little time’s deceit.

Are we not better and at home
In dreamful Autumn, we who deem
No harvest joy is worth a dream?
A little while and night shall come,
A little while, then, let us dream.”
― Ernest Dowson, The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson

Harvest to be found in each season
Seeding and tending too
Invitation and attention
Abiding and presence
The path
Straight, winding, detours, delays
On ramps and rest stops
Slow and fast
Points of distance and reflection, where meaning is made
Grace for this day
May joy find you on today’s leg of the journey.

“For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Oct 13

Gravity of Spirit

“There is a gravity of spirit that pulls the essence of who we are into being. Our job, like all our sister creatures, is to find the abundance of air and water and light, and to unfold what is already within us.”― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

“Living is a conversation with no end, a dance with no steps, a song with no words, a reason too big for any mind.”― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

Keep your conversation with life going
Ask, listen, explore
Release, embrace, pursue
In the struggle, routine and rush
Pause, pay attention, notice
Gravity of spirit invites, draws forward
Different paths
Same journey home
To light, unfolding, becoming.

“To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.”― Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet

Sep 30

Deep Dive, Surface Anew

“A great ship asks deep water.”― George Herbert

“By all means use sometimes to be alone.
Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear.
Dare to look in thy chest; for ’tis thine own:
And tumble up and down what thou find’st there.
Who cannot rest till he good fellows find,
He breaks up house, turns out of doors his mind.”
― George Herbert, The Temple: The Poetry of George Herbert

Within
Inquiry and revelation
Deep waters
Surety of tide
Rhythm and rhyme
Surface anew, bouy
In and out
Like breath
Close up and pull back
Ground to horizon
Shift in view
Give and receive
Conductor of this day
What will you compose?

“Peace, prattler.”― George Herbert

Sep 27

Harvest Hues

“As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colours enough to paint the beautiful things I see.” – Vincent Van Gogh

“He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.” – Horace

Colors shifting, softening, glowing
Jewel tones
Depth, hues, nuance
Harvest time
Partake in the feast
Slow pace
Easy cadence
Light step
Beauty woven in each day, season
Hour of living, today.
Discover the gold in your pocket.

“Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.” – Jim Bishop

 

Aug 30

Wabi

“We exist with a wind whispering inside and our moon flexing. Amid the ducts, inside the basilica of bones.”― Jack Gilbert

“Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her.”― Jack Gilbert, Collected Poems

Notes falling into music.
Basilicas rising.
Valiant blossoming.
Fruition to flourishing to folding.
New bloom awaits its turn.
Breaking through fertile soil.
Hope ascends.

“The Japanese think it strange we paint our old wooden houses when it takes so long to find the wabi in them. They prefer the bonsai tree after the valiant blossoming is over, the leaves fallen. When bareness reveals a merit born in the vegetable struggling.”― Jack Gilbert, Collected Poems

Aug 17

The Great Silence, Soft Voice

“Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans—I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment,”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“May you listen to the voice within the beat even when you are tired. When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding, and leads you to freedom. If you are weary, may you be aroused by passion and purpose. If you are blameful and bitter, may you be sweetened by hope and humor. If you are frightened, may you be emboldened by a big consciousness far wiser than your fear. If you are lonely, may you find love, may you find friendship. If you are lost, may you understand that we are all lost, and still we are guided—by Strange Angels and Sleeping Giants, by our better and kinder natures, by the vibrant voice within the beat. May you follow that voice, for This is the way—the hero’s journey, the life worth living, the reason we are here.  ”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

Senses awakening
Slow over urgency
Soft over hard
Reflection over judgment
Yield over assumption
Praise over complaint
Pause over pass by
Sauntering over speed
Presence over past
Thriving over striving
Peace, praise, delight
Receive and cast light.

“Everything gets sorted out in the Great Silence.”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

Aug 15

Sweet Honey of Grace

“…when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.”― Henry Miller

“Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace.

To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.

When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness, moments of Satori as the Zen sages term it, moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full integrity of being, moments of complete Oneness. And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the restoration of that timeless spot of grace is the goal of all therapy and education.

Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God”― Mark Nepo, Unlearning Back to God: Essays on Inwardness, 1985-2005

Unlearning
Unencumbered
Becoming
Sweet honey of grace
Of awe, wonder, reverence
Presence and knowing
In the unknowing.

“I was operating on the unspoken assumption that my inner world would be filled with life, peace, and joy once my external world was perfect.”― John Ortberg, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You

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