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Posts tagged ‘Waiting’

Apr 10

Wing Building

“If you are falling….dive.”― Joseph Campbell

“I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.”― Anais Nin

To be never done.
Yet content.
Unfolding.
Unfurling.
Waiting.
Slow then sudden.
Tipping points.
Becoming.
Thresholds and transitions.
Masterpieces in the making, never finished.
Trust the still small voice.
Doing the next right thing.
The stuff of transformation.
Of wing building.

“When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.”― Dean Jackson

Mar 30

Resurrection Air

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”― Leo Tolstoy

“On Holy Saturday I do my best to live in that place, that wax-crayon place of trust and waiting. Of accepting what I cannot know. Of mourning what needs to be mourned. Of accepting what needs to be accepted. Of hoping for what seems impossible.”― Jerusalem Jackson Greer

The aftermath of grief.
The lingering.
The numbness.
We all have walked this when a loved one dies.
The threshold of never going back to the way it was.
And yet.
Hope.
Gently pulls and then carries you forward.
Day by day, little by little.
From empty heart to empty tomb.
The middle place.
Resurrection air coming soon.
Wait.
Hope.
Trust.
Breathe.

“The resurrection tells us it is never too late. Every so often we will be surprised. We must believe that the stone will be rolled back, and we must be ready to poke out our timid heads, take off the linen bindings of death, and walk free for a time, breathing resurrection air.”― Ronald Rolheiser, Prayer: Our Deepest Longing

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

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 25

Aperture

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.” – Alan Watts

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” – Alan Watts

Wide lens to microscope.
Details to whole.
In and out.
Focus then blur.
Clarity and questioning.
In the waiting, the middle.
Slow then fast, mostly slow.
Bud to bloom.
Cocoon to butterfly.
Plunge into the waiting and the change it births.
In due time.
Join the dance.
Invite joy into the chaos and boredom.
Relax and float.
No place to be but here.
Being finished in moments, slivers and slices.
The gift of grace, growth, transformation.

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.” – 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

Jul 21

Sacred Intent

“The imagination should be allowed a certain amount of time to browse around.”― Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

“That’s the sacred intent of life, of God–to move us continuously toward growth, toward recovering all that is lost and orphaned within us and restoring the divine image imprinted on our soul.”― Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions

The path often unclear.
Revealed in the taking of steps.
Into the fog, the brush, the unknowing.
Going off path to wander.
Into the wilderness to find clarity.
Waiting and moving, the dance.
Sacred ground.
Browse, linger, look, listen.

“O God, is there anything you’ve made that can’t pour life and healing into me? When I think of the simplicity and extravagance of creation, I want to bend down and write the word yes across the earth so that you can see it.”― Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions