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Posts tagged ‘Transformation’

Sep 18

Leaves in Bloom

“Mindfulness arises when you allow your attention to fall effortlessly on the breathing point like an autumn leaf falling on a lake of still water”― Amit Ray, Beautify your Breath – Beautify your Life

“Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.” – Henry David Thoreau

Enter fall.
Let summer fade to memory.
Fresh eyes to see new colors burning brightly.
Fall is spring to leaves ablaze in their own bloom.
Each season, each change, each transition.
Filled with waiting, anticipation and transformation.
Starting again and again.
Never in the same place.
Unfolding into fullness.

“In every change, in every falling leaf there is some pain, some beauty. And that’s the way new leaves grow.”― Amit Ray

Aug 25

The Stuff of Butterflies

“How does one become a butterfly? They have to want to learn to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”― Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers

“‎”Tell me, sir, what is a butterfly?”

“It’s what you are meant to become. It flies with beautiful wings and joins the earth to heaven. It drinks only nectar from the flowers and carries the seeds of love from one flower to another. Without butterflies, the world would soon have few flowers.”― Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers

In the cocoon, on the threshold, butterfly in flight.
The stages of becoming, unfolding, refolding.
From start to finish.
Starts, stops, detours.
No shortcuts.
Do the work.
Let the work be done in you.
Be present where you are, knowing change is certain.
About the only thing that is certain, along with grace and love.
Stuff to make cocoons and butterflies.
Start and keep spinning your own.
On the right track, even if feelings haven’t caught up.
Stick with it.
Be willing to give up being a caterpillar.
The beautiful stuff of butterflies.

“Yellow decided to risk for a butterfly.

For courage she hung right beside the other cocoon and began to spin her own.

‘Imagine, I didn’t even know I could do this. That’s some encouragement that i’mon the right track. If I have the stuff inside me to make cocoons—maybe the stuff of butterflies is there too.”― Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers

Aug 14

Threshold Moments

“At the threshold moment, when the True Self within is demanding emergence, things can go either way. We can let the crisis thrust us into the heart of transformation or we can regress into our same old patterns.”— Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

“Yet there’s a third way to have a crisis: the way of waiting. That way means creating a painfully honest and contemplative relationship with one’s own depths, with God in the deep center of one’s soul. People who choose this way aren’t so much after peace of mind or justice as wholeness and transformation. They’re after soulmaking.” — Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

Thresholds and precipices.
Mountains and valleys.
Waiting and moving.
Mystery and clarity.
The makings of growing from one thing to the next.
Change, transition, transformation.
The circles, cycles, rhythms of living.
Soul molding, shaping and making.
Seeing our true reflection.
Round with pleasure.
Light with laughter, even, especially here.

“In the crisis we need to hang onto God’s little jokes, to those priceless moments when something round with pleasure bounces upon us. We need to hold onto the celebration of becoming, to the bliss that wells up from the deeper places we’re tapping.” — Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

Aug 10

Flowers Bloom, When Ready

“Regardless of when the flower blooms, the flower blooms… and completes its cycle. Enjoy every inch of your ride when you begin.”― Adaora O., Waves Aligning

“So called ‘late-bloomers’ get a bad rap. Sometimes the people with the greatest potential often take the longest to find their path because their sensitivity is a double edged sword- it lives at the heart of their brilliance, but it also makes them more susceptible to life’s pains. Good thing we aren’t being penalized for handing in our purpose late. The soul doesn’t know a thing about deadlines.”― Jeff Brown, Love It Forward

Bloom, whether May or August.
Do not be concerned whether early or late.
Just bloom.
Yearning, the whisper of the call.
The ache of stasis.
Change, transformation, blooming.
This is the journey and circle of life.
Do not settle.
Keep growing.
Soul work.
Keep blooming.

“The most beautiful thing is that despite the shallow life we sometimes succumb to – the soul has no timeline and it knows what it wants and will yearn within until it seeks the journey.”― Malebo Sephodi

Aug 1

2 Comments

Listen and Leap

“Like billowing clouds,
Like the incessant gurgle of the brook,
The longing of the spirit can never be stilled.”― Hildegard von Bingen

“Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap.”― St. Hildegard of Bingen

Not long, but deep.
Shores to boundaries.
Not walk, leap.
Inquire, listen, intuit.
Beneath and beyond the noise.
A knowing in the unknowing.
A calling in the wilderness.
Answer, respond, act.
See and cast your own light.

“We cannot live in a world interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.”― Hildegard of Bingen

Jul 27

Terrain of Ordinary Time

“Fear is the glue that keeps you stuck. Faith is the solvent that sets you free.”― Shannon L. Alder

“We think that the “real thing” is concentrated in the next moment, the next month, the next year. We can go on and on, waiting for the next “happening” of life, hurrying toward it, trying to make it happen. We live from peak event to peak event, from brightness to brightness, resisting the flat terrain of ordinary time—the in-between time. Waiting is the in-between time. It calls us to be in this moment, this season, without leaning so far into the future that we tear our roots from the present. When we learn to wait, we experience where we are as what is truly substantial and precious in life.”— Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

I am rereading Sue Monk Kidd’s book When the Heart Waits. I read it 8 years ago. It’s like reading the book for the first time because I am different and in a new place of waiting. Do not forgo the waiting times. Travel the contours and terrain of ordinary time. We spend a lot of our life here. Stay, stick and discover what is “truly substantial and precious in life” for it resides in this place. Life and each of us continues to unfold and unfurl, to become again and again. It’s worth the wait.

“So what if discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.” – Alan Watts

 

Jul 23

Disturb the Universe

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartet

“Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”― T.S. Eliot

Bridges crossed.
Bridges bypassed.
Transition to transformation.
Waiting in between.
Exploration and avoidance.
Lost and found.
Floundering and flourishing.
Slow yet still moving.
Disturb the universe.
In a minute.
In a change of heart and mind.
In an instance.
See the same differently.
Invite new, embrace change.
The visible and invisible light.
Before, around and within

“Light
Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.”― T.S. Eliot

May 13

In a New Way

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“i do not wish
to change the past
it made me
who i am today
i only want
to learn from it
and live in a new way”
― yung pueblo, Inward

Circling the same mountains.
Doing the same things, getting the same results.
When the horse is dead, dismount.
Pick new mountains to climb, not circle.
Do new things.
Keep going.
Live well in a new way.
Color. Beauty. Bloom.
Seasons. Cycles. Transformation.

“Become who you want to be while you can enjoy it. Don’t put off doing the work of becoming who you want to be. Waiting will not make it easier, and time is short.”― Kerry Egan, On Living

Apr 17

Eastertide

“The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created spring.”— Bernard Williams

“The very first Easter taught us this: that life never ends and love never dies.” – Kate McGahan

Easter is the culmination and completion of the Lenten season and the beginning of Eastertide, the seven Sundays following referred to the “Season of the Spirit.” Beginnings and endings and all that resides in between, where we live daily, often looking backward and forward, missing the extraordinary in ordinary days.

The transition from winter to spring, with winter windchills returning yesterday to remind us that she’s not done yet. Transition and transformation are not done in one day but in a series of days held together, in seasons. The cusp of ending falling into beginning. Again and again.

Thresholds, waiting, hoping, dawn, resurrection. May you remain present and senses ablaze through each day of each season, passing through the doors to newness of life.

“Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.”— Victor Hugo

Mar 1

The Promise of March

“Spring drew on…and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland of moonshine.”― L.M. Montgomery

March 1st.
The snow is softly falling.
And it’s March,
Threshold month.
One foot in winter.
One foot tipping into spring.
Not before.
Not after.
In between but tilting to the promise of spring.
The harvest of wintering, of preparation to fruition.
Bloom coming soon.
Colors to burst.
Sun to linger longer.
The power of transformation, and of seeing it unfold.

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”― Rainer Maria Rilke

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