life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the month “April, 2016”

06 Apr 2016

sometimes on a greyhound  

 

 A life without love is a waste. “Should I look for spiritual love, or material, or physical love?”, don’t ask yourself this question. Discrimination leads to discrimination. Love doesn’t need any name, category or definition. Love is a world itself. Either you are in, at the center…either you are out, yearning.
❤️

~ Shams

  
to learn to trust

we must be trustworthy. 

trust is a choice. 

not an easy choice. 

but the best choice. 

trust is not naive 

trust is 

brutal 

reckless

ruthless

courageous 

strong

brave

trust takes the teeth out of insanity 

trust allows us to make good choices 

trust gives us the ability to know wisdom

trust opens the door to love

trust brings healing to our lives

trust is a gift

that must start with yourself 

just trust yourself a little bit

learn to be trustworthy to your soul

soon you will be able to give some to others

then, maybe, even the world

💞

AL

  
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. The one who looks outside, dreams; the one who looks inside, awakens.  

❤️

    -Carl Jung

  
I want to both awaken and dream, to see all that is in my heart (and yes, that means the dark gunky stuff as well as the wonderful shiny stuff) and see the world in a way that helps me contribute to dreams of sustainable peace and justice. And here it is- the gift of another day to begin again. 

❤️

  – Oriah Mountain Dreamer

  

The surface is always blank.

The real, submerged. 
Look down into that sky,

where beneath a vague cloud flashes,
—is it above or below?—

created, given, waiting.
There is another way,

another side of your little boat.
Beneath your dreary, fruitless nights

something graced awaits,
abundance exceeding your capacity, blessing

at which you laugh in wonder and fright,
a gift that bears you to the breaking point,

a net swelled with light and glory,
and not by luck, but given in love: a presence, 

a companionship you hadn’t recognized.
Heaven is offered, hearts are restored

in something as simple as a broiled fish, shared.
But first you learn a new way,

another side, the unrecognized friend.
And then, after the gift, the revelation,

you learn a new way, another side.
The Mystery doesn’t leave you.

It leads.

__________________ 
Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

  
find photo sources at http://www.pinterest.com

Posted in awareness, balance, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, connection, courage, create, find art at pinterest, Life, Love | Leave a comment
04 Apr 2016

sweetness: honey, tangerines and black-faced sheep

 

On this bitter-sweet morning

I spot the jar, 

and slowly, 

deliberately,

lick the white-golden sticky. 

Spun honey directly from the spoon. 

Remembering…

my Grandma Duvall 

always had spun honey, 

and so many other beautiful treats,

at her house.

As a little girl,

I loved it…

I love it still –

tho it goes right to my head,

and makes me a bit dizzy. 

Buzzz…..Buzzzzz 
Mature tastebuds know…

there must be balance. 

Wisdom is learning to choose balance.

I think of how kind words are compared to honey. 

How important it is to choose the sweet,

right in the middle of the bitter,

the choice is all mine. 

I suck the last bit off the spoon,

and move along into my day,

carrying the smile,

the sticky, sweet, stolen glow,

of that moment with me. 
A bit of healing sweetness

right there in the kitchen. 

A bit of amazing grace 

right in the mess of my moments. 

A bit of heaven, 

right here and now, 

on a mixed – up Monday. 

🐝

AL

  
To love everything, not just parts … 

To love all of yourself, not just certain traits … 

To rest in not knowing … 
To carry the cross 

and to lay your burden down … 
To savor the medicine blue of moon, 

the fierce sugar of tangerine … 
To be a Christ unto others, 

a Christ unto one’s self … 
To laugh … 
To be shameless, wild, and silly … 
To know—fully, headlong, 

without compunction—the ordinary magic 

of our beautiful human bodies … 

these seem worthwhile pursuits, life-long tasks.   

All is grace. 

⚜

selected from/ A Poem for My Daughter by Teddy Macker

  
It is the work of feeling,

to undo expectation.

A black-faced sheep

looks back at you as you pass

and your heart is startled

as if by the shadow

of someone once loved.
Neither comforted by this

nor made lonely.

Only remembering

that a self in exile 

is still a self,

as a bell unstruck for years

is still a bell. 

🔔

Sheep by Jane Hirshfield

 

photo sources found at http://www.pinterest.com 

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, balance, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Change, Choice, find art at pinterest, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, moment, Passion, perceptions | Leave a comment
03 Apr 2016

easy for you to say…  

 

 
A word about Communication:
“In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibility, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affectations.

Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and veracious vivacity, without rhodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity, and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, prurient jocosity, and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent.

In other words, talk plainly, briefly, naturally, sensibly, truthfully, purely. Keep from slang; don’t put on airs; say what you mean; mean what you say.”
And DON’T USE BIG WORDS! 

         -Cybersalt

  
try reading this aloud! 🙂  
 

  

  

    

  

I love you wild –

like oceans, volcanoes, tsunamis and bees

I love you natural –

like seasons, rainbows, and falling leaves

I love you large –

like Grand Canyon’s,   

the mountains and sky

I love you small – 

like the atom, lady bugs, birds flying high 

I love you tender – 

like mamas with babies, 

and soft, falling rain

I love you strong – 

like soldiers with orders,

and wind on the plains

I love you like every cliche ever written

I love you with words that can never be spoken 

I love you in mystery I can’t understand

when hearing your voice

or seeing your hands

I love you deeper than knowledge

and wider than life

You fill me with beauty,

with music,

yes, 

you fill me with life. 

👫

AL

Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, Choice, find art at pinterest, laugh, Letting Go, People, Quotes, Reality | Leave a comment
02 Apr 2016

reborned

 

The days are cold and brown,

Brown fields,  no sign of green,
Brown twigs,  not even swelling,
And dirty snow in the woods.
But as the dark flows in

The tree frogs begin

Their shrill sweet singing,

And we lie on our beds

Through the ecstatic night,

Wide awake,  cracked open. 

There will be no going back.

✨

April in Maine by May Sarton

 

 Though I know better
the trees look dead.

Here and there a little prison 

of ice is forgiven.

Little green hands reach up through leafmold

and I can’t let go.

A door opens inside me
I didn’t know was there.

________________________

Weather Report
Possibility,

which only recently 

seems to have become possible

though it has been riding upper currents

from the other side of the world.

A clear front develops

as everything emerges from within.

Expect variable conditions,

and completely predictable

intermittent surprises.
__________________  

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

  
 It seems we have made pain 

some kind of mistake, 

like having it 

is somehow wrong. 
Don’t let them fool you— 

pain is a part of things. 
But remember, dear Ellie, 

the compost down in the field: 

if the rank and dank and dark 

are handled well, not merely discarded, 

but turned and known and honored, 

they one day come to beds of rich earth 

home even to the most delicate rose. 

🌹

selected from A Poem for My Daughter by Teddy Macker

 

 I am ready
when a voice has spoken,

a path opened its arms,

ready to resolve and to follow.

And if not I am ready to be still,

and more still yet, 

to wait,

to shed my wants and fears,

my wishes and words, and even 

the words I have for the silence

and for you, 

until not I but you speak

and I follow.

And when I have resolved,

and I am sure of myself, 

and my wishes reappear 

in the costume of devotion,

help me to return 

to be still and listen again.

Another Eve. Another Day. 

I yield to you fully,

and ask you only 

to help me to return

and to return

and to return,

to be still and ready

each day. 

__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Change, Choice, Encouragement, find art at pinterest, Growth, Happiness, mystery, nature, Patience, Poetry | Leave a comment

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