Dec 30
“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
“Our mindsets shape our attention: by influencing what we believe winter fundamentally is–dreadful or delightful, boring or fascination–and what we expect winter to be like, our mindsets subconsciously orient us to one version of reality or another.”― Kari Leibowitz, How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days
“It is easy to mistake the fallowness of winter for wasted time and space. But this view obscures the necessity of winter for sustaining the whole cycle, dismissing how crucial dormant times are for the growth and beauty that comes later. It ignores the critical work being done under the surface. It pretends that we can all go nonstop, all the time, working and living and loving at full capacity, unceasingly. But we can’t, and there is much to be gained by not trying, and by gifting ourselves a season to restore.”― Kari Leibowitz, How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days
First snow, more on the way.
Invitation to slow.
To partake in wintering.
Pause and restoration.
Reflection and being still.
Unseen seen.
Remain in fully the present season.
Find and unwrap the gifts in each one.
Rush to this day, not through it.
“Those who appreciate winter generally orient toward the season’s wonders: coziness and gathering around a fire, crisp air and starry skies, slowed-down rituals and chance for rest. For people with this mindset, winter is not a limiting time of year to dread but a time full of opportunity to anticipate. In Norway, I learned that we are not condemned to waste the winter months, throwing away the season, wishing for spring. We can change our mindsets and, as a result, change our experience of winter–and of our lives.”― Kari Leibowitz, How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Day
“We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom”― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
“The physical reinvention of the world is endless, relentless, fascinating, exhaustive; nothing that seems solid is. If you could stand at just a little distance in time, how fluid and shape-shifting physical reality would be, everything hurrying into some other form, even concrete, even stone.”― Mark Doty
The world opens or closes to the aperture of your heart.
Soften, let light in.
Receptivity and allowing.
Water through, around and over rocks.
Weaving, wandering, with ease.
Mystery, unknowing, curiosity.
Paths to discovery, wonder, transformation.
Ebb and flow.
Reinvention and regeneration.
Fluidity and flow.
“It is best to live in a state of perplexity and fluidity, like water, than to live in a hardened and doctrinal state of believing one knows everything.”― Laurence Galian, The Sun at Midnight
“Could it be that we are so worn and desperate for ways to better ourselves because we’ve missed the power, inherent in the grace of God, that eradicates self-improvement altogether? Is it possible that we keep trying to answer the wrong question— “Am I enough?” —when we’re really wanting to know: “Is God Enough?”
― Ruth Chou Simons, When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life-Transforming Grace
“It’s a grace that enables the hope that sustains us in times of uncertainty, pain, and when our lives don’t look the way we hoped or expected. God’s grace isn’t an afterthought for a believer walking through unexpected circumstances; it’s the anchor.”― Ruth Chou Simons, When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life-Transforming Grace
Anchor of grace
Given freely
Tethered by hope
Imagination widening the view
More than enough, overflowing
Presence and trust, without explanation
Even here, wherever here is for you
Keep walking, story unfolding, transformation at work
Peace, love, joy
“I walked through times and seasons that felt like exile, God was always writing a story in my life that was more than I could imagine.”― Ruth Chou Simons, When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life-Transforming Grace
“Long have you timidly waded
Holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea,
Rise again, nod to me, shout,
And laughingly dash with your hair.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
“Half of me is filled with bursting words and half of me is painfully shy. I crave solitude yet also crave people. I want to pour life and love into everything yet also nurture my self-care and go gently. I want to live within the rush of primal, intuitive decision, yet also wish to sit and contemplate. This is the messiness of life – that we all carry multitudes, so must sit with the shifts. We are complicated creatures, and ultimately, the balance comes from this understanding. Be water. Flowing, flexible and soft. Subtly powerful and open. Wild and serene. Able to accept all changes, yet still led by the pull of steady tides. It is enough.”― Victoria Erickson
With grace, compassion, kindness
To be where you are at
Nowhere else
Present, awake, like water
Ebb, flow, still
Multitudes, complexities, messiness
Watching and wondering
Anchoring and rooting
Hope and resilience
Gratitude and grief
Static, in motion, changing, staying the same
All of the things
And so much more
The dance of becoming, unfolding, unknowing, being, emergence.
“Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” – Theodore Roethke
“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Beginning, ending, beginning, ending
Woven together in ordinary days
Extraordinary ways
Last blooms of summer
First blooms of fall
Choreography of transitions to transformations
Join the dance
From darkness and dirt to light and glory
In all seasons. blooming.
“One day you will look back and see that all along, you were blooming.”- Morgan Harper Nichols
“September is the culmination of the harvest and the storing of earth’s abundance.”― Joan Borysenko, Pocketful of Miracles
“You do not just wake up and become the butterfly
Growth is a process.”― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers
“bloom beautifully
dangerously
loudly
bloom softly
however you need
just bloom”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey
Unfold
Unfurl
Unravel
Break ground
Start again, repeat
Imperfectly
Brilliantly
Authentically
Blooming in all seasons
Joy in the little things, ordinary days
Catching and casting light
Just bloom, right where you are planted.
“May you always be the one
who notices the little things
that make the light pour
through, and may they always
remind you: There is more to
life and there is more to you.”
― Morgan Harper Nichols
Sep 7
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower” – Albert Camus
Song for Autumn by Mary Oliver
“In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.”
Green to gold
Swift to slow
Beauty woven into each season
To savor
Hold briefly
Unfolding to something new to sing.
“Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don’t have to go looking for it.”― Richard Russo
“The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force.
And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together.
Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter.
Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on.
When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it.
When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world.
In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world.
There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.”
– John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
Gratitude more than platitude
Observer rather absorber
Outlook shaping and shifting
Patterns from pieces
Wholeness woven from parts
Up and all around, at our feet
Contentment, steady flow
Force field opening to possibilities, light
The work of transformation
Seen and unseen.
“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.”― Erich Fromm
“And the sun took a step back, the leaves lulled themselves to sleep and autumn was awakened.”― Raquel Franco
“Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.”― Sharon Kay Penman, Time and Chance
Spring of autumn
Buds of scarlet, saffron, russet
Bloom in the harvest
Trees soon to be ablaze
Cool mornings
Crisp air
Take it in, fully
Awaken in each season
Gifts to open
Transition to transformation.
“…autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness…”― Jane Austen, Persuasion
