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Posts tagged ‘Simplicity’

Mar 4

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Kiss the Joy

“Kiss the joy as it flies.” – William Blake

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”― Alan Alda

A slight adjustment
Break in routine
Intentional interruption
Play hooky
No grand gestures, perfect circumstances
Putting aside “should” and “someday when”
Releasing false sense of control and order
No fixing, just allowing, inviting
Get out of your head, to do list, expectations, demands
Into play, wandering, inquiry, blank canvas
To immerse self into this day, each day
Slivers of 10 minutes scattered throughout will do
On the hunt for beauty, delight, wonder
Opening the door, cross the threshold into awe
Clean and clear windows into the world to see the same anew
Let surprise, serendipity, light in
Kiss joy, embrace presence, sit a while.

“To insist on a certain outcome–one outcome–is to deny yourself the surprise experiences life was going to give you–the things you didn’t know you wanted until they came knocking and you were daring enough to let them in. By tying yourself to an ending, you’re making arrangements to be miserable if you don’t get exactly what you want. Or worse, you get exactly what you want and it doesn’t make you as supremely happy as you thought it was going to.”― Samara O’Shea

Dec 30

Stunning

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.” – John Keats

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper” – W.B. Yeats

Stunning
Gorgeous
Magical
Jaw dropping
Breath taking
Spectacular
May each day be filled with these encounters
Places
Spaces
Outside your door
Front and center
Joy, delight, awe, wonder, gratitude
Ordinary days, senses ablaze
Get out and play.

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” – Aristotle

Aug 7

1 Comment

Cusping

“Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life.” – Buddha

You do not always have to be producing, creating, harvesting. Learn to be idle. Learn to rest.”― Joyce Rupp, The Circle Of Life: The Heart’s Journey Through The Seasons

Making space, creating margins
Ordinary days, simple joys, laughter, color, hue
Flow and ease of being present, on the ground of this day
Cusping and leaping
Free falling
Trusting and seeking
Slow and deliberate
Idle and rest
Intention and direction
Honing and glistening
Choosing “and” rather than “or”
Present over perfect
Gratitude over comparison, calculation, counting
Essay rather than equation
All of these things and more
No “to do” lists or bucket list but one
To be fully alive both in reflection, projection and real time.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”― Søren Kierkegaard

May 18

Abide. Delight. Dwell

“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”― W.H. Auden, New Year Letter

“You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come, to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.”
– John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

Abide. Delight. Dwell.
Silence of stone.
Habit of twilight.
Brightness of day.
Abide. Delight. Dwell.

“Jesus doesn’t participate in the rat race. He’s into the slower rhythms of life, like abiding, delighting, and dwelling—all words that require us to trust Him with our place and our pace.”― Lysa TerKeurst, Uninvited

Apr 24

Silky Attention

“Poetry’s work is the clarification and magnification of being.”― Jane Hirshfield

“Much of beauty, both in art and in life, is a balancing of the lines of forward-flowing desire with those of resistance — a gnarled tree, the flow of a statue’s draped cloth. Through such tensions, physical or mental, the world in which we exist becomes itself. Great art, we might say, is thought that has been concentrated in just this way: honed and shaped by a silky attention brought to bear on the recalcitrant matter of earth and of life. We seek in art the elusive intensity by which it knows.”― Jane Hirschfield

Connection
Meshing
Weaving
Binding
Unraveling
Putting down
Picking up
Bypassing
The dance of being
The song of the day
The poetry of clarity
Silky attention to see beauty in all
Magnified.

“Do not follow the ancient masters, seek what they sought.”― Jane Hirshfield, The Heart of Haiku

Jan 12

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Play Date

“Creativity is always a leap of faith. You’re faced with a blank page, blank easel, or an empty stage.” – Julia Cameron

“Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.” – Wayne Dyer

Play date.
A few hours painting pottery.
Choosing the piece.
The colors.
The pattern.
Trying something new.
No expectations, formulas, rules.
No score, measurement, counting, comparing, producing.
No checklists or transactions.
Entering flow.
Time suspended.
Exploration.
Allowing.
Simple acts of getting out of your head.
Into your heart.
Slowing to the fullness of time.
Creating, emergence, stillness.
The gift of play to renew and refresh.
May we be wise enough as children to weave into each day.

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” – Charles Mingus

Jul 28

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Summer’s Invitation

“I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument
while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”― Rabindranath Tagore

“Rest is not for weaklings. Hollowing out space for rest is work. Finding time for rest is the hands and feet of the promises we long to claim. It means saying no. It means having limits with ourselves. It means having limits with others. It takes courage to rest in the midst of an outcome-driven society. It takes strength to walk away from good in the pursuit of better.”― Saundra Dalton-Smith, Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity

Busy work, checklists, transactions, speed, efficiency on hold.
Renewal in the pause.
Space to wander.
Not doing to create capacity for doing better.
Quiet your mind.
Enter rest.
Accept the invitation.
Welcome renewal.
Summer shows the way for all seasons, each day.
Follow her lead.

“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.”― Rabindranath Tagore

Sep 2

Let In

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”― Rumi

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
― Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Complete Poems

Let quiet in.
To settle and awaken.
Let beauty in.
To see the same for the first time.
Let joy in.
To delight in what already is.
Let awe in.
To be made new.

“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

Nov 3

Rooted and Reaching

“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” – John Muir

Rooted and reaching;
Grounded and in praise;
Go amidst the trees to observe and absorb;
To wash your spirit clean;
Sing the song;
Dance the dance;
Become the poem of ordinary days made extraordinary by simply taking notice;
God’s canvas, creation and poetry to partake in;
Keep reaching for the sky, rooted firmly in deep rich soil;
Sacred ground, holy place;
Pause here a bit and rest;
And then softly carry it forward into each day.

Trees by Joyce Kilmer

“I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.”

 

Jan 11

Clear the Deck, Burn the Ships

“It’s never too late in life to have a genuine adventure.” – Robert Kurson

“Adventure is not outside man; it is within.” – George Eliot

When I got new floors in Spring, I donated a lot of items and only put back what I really wanted into my house, leaving space, organizing and eliminating piles. My goal is to have my basement and garage fully decluttered and organized by spring.

Each day, I organize a shelf, create a file rather than a pile and chip away one step at a time. I’ve collected a lot through the years plus items from my parent’s and Aunt’s house after my Dad and Aunt passed. At the time, I couldn’t part with the items, but now realize that they are not required for me to remember them since they remain in my heart, voice and stories.

As I am decluttering physical spaces, I am noticing that it creates a sense of order in my mind. I can find things easier and am not filling space with new stuff recreating clutter. Not fully a minimalist but on the path to deeper meaning which equates to more with less.

Clearing spaces naturally leads to the clearing of the mind. If we are willing to clear the shelves in our thoughts and narratives, we expose old thinking, limiting beliefs, “should” lists, “others expectations of me” lists, people pleasing habits that no longer and never served our becoming and coming home to ourselves.  It isn’t as easy as cleaning a shelf, but the journey is worth the destination. As you unravel trappings of ego, vulnerability and fear, you create space for expectation, joy, creativity, renewal, light and freedom.

And the journey both ends and begins when you arrive in a “new world” and “burn the ships.” In 1519 when Spanish Conquistador Hernando Cortez landed in the New World, he ordered the burning of the ships signaling that there was no turning back. For King and Country has a song called Burn the Ships:

“Burn the ships, cut the ties
Send a flare into the night
Say a prayer, turn the tide
Dry your tears and wave goodbye

Step into a new day
We can rise up from the dust and walk away
We can dance upon our heartache, yeah
So light a match, leave the past, burn the ships
And don’t you look back”

Until we are willing to “burn the ships,” we will keep returning to the past, assuming the future is a continuation and replay of what was. Clear the deck in all spaces, keep the lessons and burn the ships.

Cling to nothing so you can embrace everything.

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