“This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.”
— from LEAP by Terry Tempest Williams
With Leap, Terry Tempest Williams, award-winning author of Refuge, offers a sustained meditation on passion, faith, and creativity-based upon her transcendental encounter with Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval masterpiece The Garden of Delights. Williams examines this vibrant landscape with unprecedented acuity, recognizing parallels between the artist’s prophetic vision and her own personal experiences as a Mormon and a naturalist. Searing in its spiritual, intellectual, and emotional courage, Williams’s divine journey enables her to realize the full extent of her faith and through her exquisite imagination opens our eyes to the splendor of the world. READ an excerpt: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/191447/leap/
Everyone is having a hard time. Everyone is insecure. Everyone is hassled. Everyone is tired–we all need more sleep. Everyone wishes he had more courage, more money, and better social skills. Everyone wants more glamour in his life, and we all desperately need more laughter. Few can figure out how they ended up living the life they lead. Don’t be misled by flippant talk; it’s a battle for everyone.
🔥
– Joshua Halberstam
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.
there’s no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.
the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill
nothing else
fills.
—
Alone With Everybody by Charles Bukowski
in the world between worlds
where the shimmering abstract
holds all the secrets within us
words are absent
no scripture exists
there are no definitions
as there is no need for such things
in our eternal knowing
we are ever-being known
the mystic colors of God fill us
unseeable in this earthly realms obscured vision
they hold us there
where we don’t need to be understood
or understand anything
we are simply
all we could ever hope to be
we are the lover and the beloved
eternal love
eternally loved
complete
You in I
I in you
one
until the scab scraping
demand of this waking earth
this illusion glazed moment we choose to serve
pulls us completely blinded
into a day in a life
pushes us ass-backward
into the harsh reality
of jaded time
of hard-earned, hard-learned experience
of continually disappointed expectation
of broken hearts, once tender
of broken dreams, once beautiful
broken everything, once whole and healthy
and instead of fighting for our very lives,
we put away our dreaming space,
as if it were somehow the wrong
we decide we’ve learned the truth –
that love hurts –
though what we’ve learned is trickery –
because true love sets us free
and so we surrender to
the soul-sucking zombie apocalypse of our addictions,
our chosen favored forms of slavery
as the children of chattel always do
not knowing our vast worth
our royal bloodline
our supreme destiny
we clothe ourselves in useless, flimsy armor
our only known defense.
we use fools gold
cheap drug store variety,
Madison avenue, false-advertisement protection,
these rabbits feet of proclaimed luck,
these traps of anger, arrogance and pride,
against the barbarian onslaught
of what we have been brainwashed to accept
as important
the carnivorous eating of our flesh
by the demands of our own complex making
focused only on our foolish collecting of silly objects,
overrated treasures and pleasures
as we ignore our need for love
choosing instead to battle
the cannibals salivating at every corner
waiting for us to stumble and weaken
so they can take our place at the top of the illusive list
of whatever sort
we have entered into
as our arena of competition
eventually they will toast to their victories over us
with our own fresh, falling blood
pouring from the golden goblets we ourselves had taken from another
we accept it as normal
as we attend to the business of forgetting
who we are
pretending to be full
as we starve to death
in order to get just a little bit more than those waiting
for what will never satisfy any of us
lusting for salt
even as we faint from dehydration
we live, lonely, in empty mansions
forgetting all that makes a house glow
is the home light burning inside of our other to warm our bones
in order to impress those who will never truly know us, love us, or want our best to be honored
in order to arrive at the end of our hourglass
dragging what we will not be able take with us…
we trade our chance to be truly remarkable
to create singular intimacy
we see our chance to find gardens of happiness,
to build something as mind boggling as the seven wonders,
and we choose to ignore it
as we continue on.
too busy, too consumed,
to stop for a moment,
just one moment,
to take off our shoes,
fall down and worship…
to allow the lover into our heart –
as though love isn’t important enough for the likes of us
why do we go about wasting our opportunity here?
how can we awaken to the highest and best within ourselves?
how can we choose to lay our hearts bare in vulnerability?
how can we empty the deepest motes of fear and isolation?
why do we trade love for ash?
why would we ever do such a thing?
why?
Let us return again to where we began…
the joyous place of our belonging
to the passion and wild danger inside our freedom loving hearts
children on Christmas morning
full of sheer wonder and excitement
at the beauty of who we are
passionately in love with our created uniqueness
the fullest colors of our self unleashed
living worship eternally under vast blue skies
shining from our highest place,
with the extreme audacity,
the sheer wonder and glory
of our calling as love
pure love
I in you
You in I
as we
the many
become
the one
💞
Amy Lloyd (AL)
Many of us seek that which we will flee if we find it. I have seen this time and again, both in myself and in others. We seek, we search, and then we find a calling or a relationship that is a perfect reflection of our yearning and we turn away and go back to seeking, almost as though the light of our true-path was too bright for us, too vulnerable for us, too real for us. This is a pattern that we have to recognize and heal or else we will never stop looking for what is already there. True-path is not always around the next corner. Sometimes it’s right under our feet…
🛤
Jeff Brown
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
So I woke up and was going to do a post about grief and heartbreak…but then this came to me from Jen Lemen and changed my mind! Enjoy!!! More Soul Snacks could be on the way! You will get lots of crazy good stuff!!! Sign up now! xo
Empty-handed, no explanation.
After three nights of not sleeping,
Three nights of listening for
His footsteps, His mules sliding
Deftly under my bed, I stand
At the stove, giving him my back,
Wearing the same tight, tacky dress, same slip,
Same seamed stockings I’d put on before He left.
He leans on the kitchen table, waiting
For me to make him His coffee.
I watch the water boil,
Refuse to turn around,
Wonder how to leave Him.
Woman, He slurs, when have I ever done
What you wanted me to do?
❓❓❓❓
Reason by Robin Coste Lewis
Get off my back, God.
Take your claws out of my shoulder.
I’d like to throw you off
like I would brush off some particularly repellent insect!
Sometimes I get the feeling that if I could turn round
quick enough
I would see you
grinning at me,
full of glee, plotting, scheming, devious, challenging
The hell with all this stuff about fire and storm
and still, quiet waters.
I’ve got your number.
I’ve unmasked you.
I’d like to throw you off
like I would brush off some
particularly repellent insect.
You’re a daemon!
Unfortunately, you seem to have this great attachment
to me.
Actually, being honest, I know in my heart
I’d miss you if you weren’t there,
leering at me, reminding me of death and dread and destiny,
winding me up and puncturing
my pretensions.
I know, with a sinking feeling in my gut
that all the best of me
– the fire and storm,
and even, now and then, still waters,
are born out of the death-defying struggle
that we wage,
my dearest daemon.
💪🏻
Wresting With God by Kathy Galloway
I didn’t ask for this,
did I?
in fact, I believe I tried to block it,
avoid it at all costs.
But here I am feeling
outta sorts,
facing my bittersweet days.
Wondering where the hell
this is gonna take me?
What is my purpose here?
here,
where I lived my experiment for 5 years?
here,
what was taken
now returns,
and I am not sure what to do with it…
light it up
or
burn it down?
all I know is this is the place
I have been called to
at this moment
for only God knows what,
and He’s not talking,
hasn’t shown his face in weeks.
I must rely on this silly sliver of a promise,
that it is meant for my good
– somehow,
someway.
Any-hoo,
Trust is a ruthless business,
an extreme proposition to live.
I am not leaning to my own understanding,
or natural desires,
even a bitty-bit,
or I definitely wouldn’t be right here
– right now
or anytime in the future.
Yet here I am,
standing on this holiest of my profane grounds,
way out in the back forty
of thecomfort zone,
knowing beyond knowing,
I’m in the only place
I’m supposed to be
right now.
This is where the magic happens.
🌎
Amy Lloyd (AL)
God wants to encounter you with His love, so you can become a light everywhere you go, your life will shout to the world, ‘I’ve seen Him, I’ve felt Him. I’ve heard His voice. He is alive. He is here with us. In us. For us.’
The best advice ever, beautifully written, by Fred LaMotte:
‘Smart’ people believe in their thoughts, especially the thought of ‘me.’ How can a thought discriminate between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ideas? Only the silence beyond ideas, who watches without thought, can discriminate.
Don’t be so smart. Be a little stupid. Watch thoughts come and go without grasping them. Even the thought of ‘me.’ Rest beyond mind as self-radiant emptiness.
You are not an idea, ceaselessly arguing with other ideas. You are sparkling omnipresent free space, where all ideas arise and dissolve without conflict.
The way to peace is awakening the Witness.
Oh Infinite Intelligence, I ask not for more blessings,
but more wisdom with which to make better use of
the greatest of all blessings with which I was endowed
at birth – the right to embrace and direct to ends of my
own choice the powers of my mind.
———-
Napoleon Hill’s Greatest Speeches. Sound Wisdom. Pennsylvania. 2016. Pgs. 161-162
life: acoustic & amplified 