accepting grace
Prayer is simply giving God his breathe back.
– Lou Giglio
There are prayers that God hears
That may not even be noticed as prayer
by the one praying –
The eyes lifted in awe to a sunset.
The beach comber picking up rocks as she grieves huge losses.
The deep breath before entering the office of the abusive, power-hungry boss.
The smell of your first cup of coffee.
The watery laughter through brimming tears of the overwhelmed new mother.
The patience of the store clerk doing his best with the impatient standing in line.
The smiles of the people who know the secret of choosing to live life well.
The accomplished weariness at the end of a good days work.
The ride to home after 17 years of waiting.
The beautiful silence of a couple sitting together holding hands.
Candles burning in the darkness their shadows dancing on the walls.
The smell of an old library.
The many tastes of freedom.
Sharing gifts with others because you know there is ALWAYS enough.
Finding something special on the sidewalk.
The list never ends –
It’s why we are told to pray continually –
Keep naming.
Stay aware.
Living as if everything is the miracle that it truly is –
Everything is grace.
Our world is the spoken word of God,
we breathe the very breath of God which brought us to life,
and, as God said,
It is very good.
🙏🏻
Amy Lloyd
You breathe in.
You breathe out.
You breathe fire,
the making of stars,
the winds of creation.
You breathe a Word
that goes out
and lays hands on people
to heal and bless.
You breathe God in.
and God out.
You speak grace
in tongues you can’t know.
Look at us,
walking around,
glowing embers.
___________________
Weather Report
Fire,
in the atmosphere
and in your heart,
which is to be expected
when you live
in the heart of a star.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
HOW TO BREATHE WHEN YOU CANNOT BREATHE
And then there are the days
where you cannot breathe
because
everything has turned to beauty
and iridescence.
Because
you are a witness to this ordinary world.
This ordinary burning world
that lays itself out for you effortlessly,
in all its absurdity and sanctity,
in its sorrow and its light,
in its compassion and its terror.
All One. All Art.
And you are a Doorway today.
You are a Magic Theatre
where the heart plays
its paupers and its princesses
and pretends to fluff its lines.
Do you remember.
Do you remember.
His first day at school?
How he slipped through your fingers then?
So eager to leave, and did he know?
The frosted spider webs
clinging to the office bins
when you went out for a quick cigarette
and how they cracked you open
without warning and how they broke you open
without warning and how you couldn’t
tell a soul.
You had a secret with the spiders.
And then mother’s courage.
Her snow white hair tumbling out in your hands.
Her translucence in the last light.
Where you held her.
She had become see-through.
Some days.
Some days.
You try to form words but none will come.
You try to write but the pen won’t move.
You try to speak but the silence silences.
Some days are see-through too.
It matters not how much money you have.
Your status in this world.
The strength of your immune system.
The number of weeks you have left.
It matters how completely you inhabit this life.
How deeply you let the days penetrate.
And crack you.
And make you beg
for more
for less
for more
for less
for more.
Don’t be ashamed to break down today!
To weep. To laugh. To snort. To dribble.
To not know. To admit all your mistakes.
All your damn mistakes.
To begin again.
To be a puddle of nothing on the ground.
To be translucent and soft.
Awakening is not a hobby, friend.
It’s a radical reframing of your entire existence.
It’s the devastation of the dreamer.
And in the rubble,
such intensity.
Such ferocity.
Such light.
In the devastation
we can truly meet.
And knit with the spiders at dawn.
Giggle with the afternoon crows.
Play hide-and-seek
with the grown ups;
make them forget their melancholy,
if only for a moment.
Sing star-mantras with the wolves.
And live the days.
Somehow live through the days.
Where the beauty is just too relentless.
Where we haven’t got the strength to stand.
Where we cannot breathe ourselves.
And so Love breathes us instead.
And warms us from the inside.
And fills us with new hope
under an iridescent sky.
❤️
– Jeff Foster
Listen to Say a Little Prayer by Diana King
You breathe different in a room when you know it’s not about the good you can accomplish but about the grace you can accept.
– Ann Voskamp
life: acoustic & amplified 