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Posts tagged ‘Transformation’

Jun 16

Warrior Soul, Soft Heart

“In my family monarch butterflies are daughters of fire. They come from the sun carrying the souls of warriors who fought and died in battle, and return to feed on the nectar of flowers.”― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“The most beautiful of butterflies is nothing but a well-dressed caterpillar.”― Corina Abdulahm Negura

Signs and symbols.
Time and timing.
Cycles and seasons.
Beginnings and endings.
The path between and through.
Transition to transformation.
Remain present in each and all.
Trusting the process of unfolding, becoming, flight.
There’s beauty right here, right now.
Sweet nectar.

“If you want to fly, give up everything that weighs you down.” – Buddha

Jun 4

Layers and Landscapes

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”― Henry David Thoreau

“Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.”― Tony Schwartz

Curiosity
Interest
Inquiry
Seeking
Discovery
Surprise
Spaciousness
Playground, open field, horizons
Fresh eyes, new landscapes.

“It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.― Pema Chodron

May 25

Replete with Meaning

“Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.”― Madeleine L’Engle, Swiftly Tilting Planet

“Growing up is a process that never ends. It isn’t a point you attain so you can say, Hooray, I’m grown up. Some people never grow up. And nobody ever finishes growing. Or shouldn’t. If you stop you might as well quit. What I have to tell you is that it never gets any easier. It goes right on being rough forever. But nothing that’s easy is worth anything. You ought to have learned that by now. What happens as you keep on growing is that all of a sudden you realize that it’s more exciting and beautiful than scary and awful.”― Madeleine L’Engle

Eyes on the road ahead, not too far.
Feet anchored in path of this day.
Stop looking for a different ending in the rearview mirror.
Start where you are and carry on.
Time is moving.
Join the flow.
Transformation, ever unfolding.
Growing new, not old.
Stories yet to be written.
Canvas to paint.
Use all the colors.
Go outside the lines.
Bending, not breaking.
Stretching and reaching.
Stumble, trip, get up.
Laugh, alot.
Wander, wonder, delight.
Scattering, mattering, blooming.

“The everyday human gesture is always a heartbeat away from the miraculous — [remember] that ultimately we make things happen through our actions, way beyond our understanding or intention; that our seemingly small ordinary human acts have untold consequences; that what we do in this world means something; that we are not nothing; and that our most quotidian human actions by their nature burst the seams of our intent and spill meaningfully and radically through time and space, changing everything… Our deeds, no matter how insignificant they may feel, are replete with meaning, and of vast consequence, and… they constantly impact upon the unfolding story of the world, whether we know it or not.” – Nick Cave

May 23

Lilacs in Full Bloom

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

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”― Maya Angelou

Yield to joy
Make way for delight
Clear a path for laughter
Arrive full of hope
Shining bright
Lilacs are in full bloom
Slowly then suddenly
Senses ablaze
Transformation at work.

“Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.”― Maya Angelou

May 19

Poets of Possibilities

“We are, always, poets, exploring possibilities of meaning in a world which is also all the time exploring possibilities.”― Margaret J. Wheatley, A Simpler Way

“Life offers us this great gift of self-organization, how we can be held in the basin of shared meaning and, within that, exercise individual freedom. It is such a shame to waste it on fear and doubt. Or to seek to contain and control it.”― Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be?

Perspective
Possibilities
Breadth
Nuance
Expanse
Meaning
Response
Exploration
Invitation
Entering
Opening
Take the long cut
The path to growth, bloom, transformation.

“In this way, dissipative structures demonstrate that disorder can be a source of new order, and that growth appears from disequilibrium, not balance.”― Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science

Apr 21

Uprising to Light

“Like light, we can’t be broken, even when we bend.”― Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry

“The new dawn blooms as we free it,
For there is always light,
If only we’re brave enough to see it,
If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
― Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb

Spring calls us to join in
To green up, bud
To shed the old, make room for new
To take hold of fresh bloom
Join in the uprising
Let some string out
Take flight
See it
Be it
Cast light.

“The first bud of spring sings the other seeds into joining her uprising.”― Amanda Gorman

Apr 4

Grace. Love. Light

“As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance, may your imagination continue to evoke horizons.” – John O’Donohue

“Grace doesn’t add up
it sits with betrayers,
washes the feet of backstabbers,
breaks bread with the disloyal,
and shares a cup with double-dealers.

Blessed are you when guarantees slip,
as love shows becomes costly,
asking for everything and promising nothing.

May you see beauty in this sacrifice,
love that begs us to keep loving,
even as hearts are broken.

Blessed are you, remembering,
when forgetting feels easier,
that in this undoing,
the world is being remade.” – Kate Bowler

Hope. Grace. Love.
Horizons. Tomorrow. Light.
Redemption. Resurrection. Easter.

“In vain we search the heavens high above, The God of love is kneeling at our feet. Though we betray him, though it is the night, He meets us here and loves us into light.”― Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons

Apr 2

Root in Love, Bloom in Kindness

“Remember finally, that the ashes on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.” – Richard Rohr

“We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.” – John O’Donohue

Opening a door
Yielding in traffic
Sitting with a friend
Greeting a stranger
An encouraging word
Last suppers that we didn’t know would be last
A $20 to a soul on a corner
Playing hopscotch with a child
Asking, listening
Washing feet
Eucharist of the ordinary
Holy places
Without counting or conditions
Love

“In the humility of the washing of the feet, we find the greatest heights of love.”— Pope Francis

Mar 26

Benediction of Spring

“After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom. The sunlight was a benediction.” ― Dan Simmons, Drood

“And over walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays and tendrils the fair green veil of tender little leaves had crept, and in the grass under the trees and the gray urns in the alcoves and here and there everywhere were touches or splashes of gold and purple and white and the trees were showing pink and snow above his head and there were fluttering of wings and faint sweet pipes and humming and scents and scents.”― Frances Hodgson Burnett, Secret Garden

Cusp of spring.
Slivers and beams of things to come.
Of things already here.
Transition into transformation.
Close but not yet.
Bloom under construction.
Time and timing.
Confetti of color.
Souls of beautiful things.

“Surely the flowers of a hundred spring are simply the souls of beautiful things!”― L.M. Montgomery, The Watchman and Other Poems

Mar 21

Drawing the Luminous

as architect of choosing, I choose…
to disrupt the energy of the status quo,
to eclipse the realms of ordinary,
& to live–a life-well lived.
w/ spirit, substance & style.”
― LaShaun Middlebrooks Collier

The People Who Keep Lamps Lit by Jen Shoop

“There are those people who draw light to themselves, and almost can’t help it.
They just stand still and keep the lamps lit.

These are the people who pull out a chair for you when you approach the table: “please,” they say, gesturing you into it, earnest and unaware of their outsized generosity. It is instinctive, their pre-disposition to include.

These are also the people who say “atta girl!” to strangers who have just ridden a big wave, or run the bases, and they fill the hungry heart with pride, and they do it with such ease, and egolessness, having learned some time ago that there is no economy of compliments.

These, too, are the people who say “my pleasure” and mean it, who gamely forebear conversations with the lonely or unhappy, who are practiced in the art of “yes, and–” thinking. They teach us that a rising tide lifts all ships, and that there is enough good in the world to go around, and then some.

What made them this way?

Not the absence of pain, no. More often than not, heartbreak is the holy ground that anoints them.

The more of these light-gatherers I meet, the more I believe it’s will, and will forged anew each day. They wake up and they call forth an adamantine determination to resist the ease of despair, and to believe that reality is mainly possibility — even when the wicked comes knocking.

I would like to learn from them how to draw the luminous, too,
how to stand still and shine,
how to turn on every last light in the city,
flame to flame,
unbound luminescence.”

Light
In all forms
Soak in
Sop up
Take in
Inquire
Observe
Steep
Create
Beauty
Nature
Play
Flowers
Music
Art
Joy
Untethered
Pourous
Light
Luminescence
Fill up
To cast light back out

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

 

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