life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “attitude”

goodness runs wild everywhere 


Too bad you weren’t here six months ago,

was a lament I heard on my visit to Nebraska.

You could have seen the astonishing spectacle

of the sandhill cranes,

thousands of them

feeding and even dancing

on the shores of the Platte River.

There was no point in pointing out

the impossibility of my being there then

because I happened to be somewhere else,

so I nodded and put on a look of mild disappointment

if only to be part of the commiseration.

 

It was the same look I remember wearing

about six months ago in Georgia

when I was told that I had just missed

the spectacular annual outburst of azaleas,

brilliant against the green backdrop of spring

 

and the same in Vermont six months before that

when I arrived shortly after

the magnificent foliage had gloriously peaked,

Mother Nature,

as she is called,

having touched the hills with her many-colored brush,

a phenomenon that occurs,

like the others,

around the same time every year when I am apparently off

in another state,

stuck in a motel lobby

with the local paper and a styrofoam cup of coffee,

busily missing God knows what.

☕️
The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska by Billy Collins

On vacation I witnessed
birds and whales

that had traveled farther than I.
They take with them

their memories, their songs

and the sacred longing
that guides their migrations,

that leads me

in all my rambling,
the silent knowing

that seems like hunger,

seems like not knowing,
the sure desultory path

that is life, the way

that is the blessing,
the holy wandering

to life that awaits,

always toward you.
__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

go your own way

 

 a thousand miles
in silence 

a thousand miles 

alone

a thousand miles

to get here

a thousand miles

to go

a thousand smiles

to cheer me 

a thousand more

to know

a thousand miles

of learning 

a thousand more

I’m home

🏡

AL

 

 The path of the spiritual warrior is not soft and sweet. It is not artificially blissful and feigned forgiving. It is not fearful of divisiveness. It is not afraid of its own shadow. It is not afraid of losing popularity when it speaks its truth. It will not beat around the bush where directness is essential. It has no regard for vested interests that cause suffering. It is benevolent and it is fiery and it is cuttingly honest in its efforts to liberate itself and humanity from the egoic ties that bind. Shunning strong opinions in the name of spirituality is anti-spiritual. Spirituality that is only floaty-soft is a recipe for disaster, allowing all manner of manipulation to run amok. Real spirituality is a quest for truth, in all its forms. Sometimes we find the truth on the meditation cushion, and sometimes we find it in the heart of legitimate conflict. May all spiritual warriors rise into fullness. This planet is lost without them.
    – Jeff Brown

  

 

 

again and again

  
This world doesn’t improve by demanding perfection. It improves when we reach through our armor and touch another with tenderness. It improves when we bust through the walls of our conditioning, and try a new way of being on for size. It improves when we work through our unresolved shadow and share what little light we can find. It is the small, positive steps that we take when we are at war with ourselves that change the world.

   – Jeff Brown 

awe…

examination…

it keeps appearing 

again…

I delete…

and again…

I delete…

and again

haven’t I already written this poem?

haven’t I already done that before?

What is left…

that I don’t know…

that I haven’t taken out…

haven’t examined properly?

There are always more layers

An onion…revealing more onion

layers…

upon layers…

illusions,

shadows,

truth left to excavate,

healing to be won,

motivations to uncover,

mystery to be discovered,

always more. 

God keeps getting bigger

as I examine,

I reduce,

I open. 

help me to stay in this mode of learning…

growth…

humble me…

soften me…

my best self emerges within this process

send it again…

remind me again…

💞

AL

   
 
  

watch & pray

 

HIDING is a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light. Even hiding the truth from ourselves can be a way to come to what we need in our own necessary time. Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose, the snow bound internal pulse of the hibernating bear.
Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother’s womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world; to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.
Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence, as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often in ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named.
We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with too easily articulated ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.

Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others, especially in the enclosing world of oppressive secret government and private entities, attempting to name us, to anticipate us, to leave us with no place to hide and grow in ways unmanaged by a creeping necessity for absolute naming, absolute tracking and absolute control. Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about our selves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed.
Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control. Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.

☺️💞☺️
HIDING by David Whyte

   
All the things hidden in my heart

Like Mary, the mother,

Watching and observing Jesus. 

Being the witness of the unseen miracles 

The keeper of all I have seen. 

My faith is real,

because I have experienced great acts of God,

faithfulness

on the inside, and outside, of my life,

In the daily progression of my journey.  

You can’t take any of it away from me. 

I know what I have seen.

This is not my daddy’s faith

This is not my momma’s relationship. 

This is all mine. 

Intimacy 

Walking together. 

Miracles. 

Clouds and colors, 

falling stars and pillars of fire,

pointing the way. 

Falling in love. 

Commitment. 

Yes, the words of Jesus changed my life,

When I began to live them daily. 

When I stepped into the great unknown. 

Became an observer of my own soul. 

Became open to the door of the unknown. 

Became comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

Fell in passionate love with grace. 

Walked through the unlocked door into freedom 

All the hidden things will be revealed

All the hidden things will be proclaimed

All the hidden things will be shouted from the rooftops. 

All the hidden things will be joyfully sung at the top of my lungs. 

All the hidden things will remain hidden no more. 

💖

AL

    

words become words

 
If you believe in the magic of language,
then Elvis really Lives
and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.

If you believe the letters themselves
contain a power within them,
then you understand
what makes outside tedious,
how desperation becomes a rope ends it.

The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,
and treason to become atoners.

That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,
and an admirer is also married.

That if you could just rearrange things the right way
you’d find your true life,
the right path, the answer to your questions:
you’d understand how the Titanic
turns into that ice tin,
and debit card becomes bad credit.

How listen is the same as silent,
and not one letter separates stained from sainted.

🐝

Anagrammer by Peter Pereira

  
GOB 2728

go be 

Two’s Heaven 

Two Wait

  

oasis 

  

On this day of your life I believe God wants you to know…

 

…that when we do the best we can, we never know what miracle

is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

 

Helen Keller said that, and she was right. There is a situation

in your life right now where you are being asked to do your best,

your very best. Maybe it is in finding forgiveness for another.

Or is understanding something that you just haven’t been able to understand.

Or in accepting what has to this point felt unacceptable.

 

Whatever that situation (and you know exactly what it is right now)…

are you doing the best that you can? If you are, so be it, and good. Yet if you think you might do better,

allow this little nudge today to be your gift from the soul.

A miracle awaits if you will reach back now

and do your very, very, very best in this.

     – Neale  Donald Walsh

  
   

 

   

  
 

  

find photos at http://www.pinterest.com 

pieces & parts 

 

The teacher asks a question.

You know the answer, 

you suspect

you are the only one in the classroom

who knows the answer, 

because the person

in question is yourself, 

and on that

you are the greatest living authority,

but you don’t raise your hand.

You raise the top of your desk

and take out an apple.

You look out the window.

You don’t raise your hand and there is

some essential beauty in your fingers,

which aren’t even drumming,

 but lie

flat and peaceful.

🙏🏻

The Hand by Mary Ruefle

 

 I try to clean up
pick up pieces of myself

from all over the frozen ground

Who knew hearts can turn into

Slivers of glass

dangerous to handle

Slice my fingers

I rub tears from my eyes

and find toxic rivers

Red flows 

Staining all of life

Small killing shards everywhere

Thousands

Maybe millions

They stick to the inside of my chest

My throat

Puncture my lungs

Settle in my stomach 

as I try to eat breakfast 

It’s getting harder and harder to speak

To breathe

To stand

I fall face first into a pool 

Of freezing water

The glass becomes ice 

Eventually I crawl out of the water

but the ice remains 

a solid block I live with

for 9 years 

Containment my highest priority

Walking dead 

until that box breaks open

I begin to grieve

and begin slowly melting 

Fusing shattered pieces

absorbing them into 

the fabric of my living

Im still working on it

Still looking for the fire of love

to refine the gold

Scars show the hearts broken places

for glimmers of light to shine through

As grieving does it’s healing work

And I become human 

Once again

❤️

AL

   

   
  
  

 

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 

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

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

Post Navigation