life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “attitude”
being alive
What is this hand in me, hanging on,
grabbing for what I do not need?
The clinging hand, white knuckled, fretting,
leads me and gets stuck in narrow places.
Grasping, be done. That yearning,
die in me. That whole hand, cut it off. Let it go.
The hand to possess, the foot to be elsewhere,
the eye to colonize, let them go. I am already myself.
Away with longing forever to be otherwise.
Better to enter life—yes, come in, come all the way in—
than stay in the grave the hand holds tight,
the unquenchable fire of always needing more.
Bend my wanting of trinkets, God. Give me thirst
for what is poured into me.
Unable to add to my infinite life,
I will only be this, alive.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
photos found at www.pinterest.com
giving thanks
Can I believe being thankful in all circumstances is important because it acknowledges that during the dark times of change, God is still covering me with His hand?
🔹
– Kristen Strong @ A Holy Experience
facebook/follow the art
When we descend all the way down to the bottom of loss, and dwell patiently, with an open heart, in the darkness and pain, we can bring back up with us the sweetness of life and the exhilaration of inner growth. When there is nothing left to lose, we find the true self – the self that is whole, the self that is enough, the self that no longer looks to others for definition, or completion, or anything but companionship on the journey.
– Elizabeth Lesser
bottom 2 photos found at www.pinterest.com
free to go…
Listen to Diana Ross sing Do You Know Where You’re Going To? http://youtu.be/gsA-Xc6gWDE
photo and sources found @ www.pinterest.com
what love looks like
Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word love, not meaning sentimentality, but a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.
-Maya Angelou
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. I John 4:18
top photo by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT
other photos found on facebook
💞
It’s hard to love someone really,
especially the annoying, the arrogant, the cruel—
because I want to be separate from them.
I don’t want to be one with them,
soiled by their sin, associated with their dirt.
I want to push their boat off in a good direction
but not be in their boat.
But to love someone
is to cease judging the cruel as more cruel than I.
To love someone is to go to heaven or hell with them,
to put my arm around them and go together.
To lay aside my private little self
and be part of our divine oneness.
God leaves the perfect halls of heaven
to be one of us, to be us,
mucked in our grime, weak as the weakest of us,
blamed with our worst, frail, faulty and failed.
It’s not the gracious, condescending gesture
to the needy that makes it love;
it’s the absence of distance, the common wound,
it’s the arm around one, walking the way with one,
the resurrecting grace of giving your whole self away,
changing someone’s life by giving them yours.
It’s hard to love really because you have to die.
You disappear. You stop being separate,
stop being a little “one” so far from the “other,”
and be One. Less than that is zero.
But it’s easy to love, really,
when finally in our failure we give up
and throw away our pretensions of virtue,
and dump out the cardboard box
of our our whole useless heart and all its little pieces,
and, becoming so emptied… wait,
and God fills us with God’s only love
that flows through us without our having to bother
with the work of getting in its way.
It’s hard to love really,
until we empty out
and shine.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
as in poetry, so in life
Poetry’s favourite moment is when one loses one’s footing because of a landslide or seismic shaking of thought — Michel Leiris
Night Owl Poetry
poem found on facebook/parker palmer
Nature is our greatest teacher. Storms are part of life. Change is good…
enough already
S)He is one of those who has had the wilderness for a pillow, and called a star his brother. Alone. But loneliness can be a communion. ~ Dag Hammarskjöld
listening to the silence
I hear you calling.
I could feel alone,
in reality, I never am.
the right path calls my name
as I listen, I know the way.
my body always knows
who to lay down with
to sleep in peace.
music melts our souls together –
crazy love changes things.
words cover the intentions of the heart –
turn them off
to hear the real.
anger covers the fear we didn’t understand
we have choices if we want them.
we all want to be known –
we all are.
there is always enough to share.
we are always enough.
love lies deep beneath the surface of things,
waiting to change our lives.
waiting to heal our hearts,
ready to bring joy,
ready to restore our very lives.
Grace meets us where we are…
then allows us to rest as the beloved,
until we are ready to pour out our gifts on the world.
AL
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
We have refused
Again and again
Until now.
Until now.
~ by David Whyte
Listen to The Sounds of Silence http://youtu.be/4zLfCnGVeL4
photos found at www.pinterest.com
You will learn by reading, but you will understand with love. – Rumi
does everything happen twice?
does anything come once and never show up again?
what happens if we pay attention to what comes to us in a day,
a week,
a year?
what about this morning?
will the sun ever shine quite this way again?
will I ever have another summer
where I actually love the heat of the dog days,
The Mets just keep winning,
I spend days waiting, and wanting, to be kissed by you,
and I am surrounded by fresh flowers every day?
AL
photo sources at www.pinterest.com
of mothering
“Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50).
My love, do you hear that music, the one where we dance and your steps are light and you swing?
You mother in the quiet places and in the moments when it is loud and it feels impossible to hear. You mother in the choices, the choices to love beyond yourself, the sacrifice that comes with friendship, the nurturing of an arm across a shoulder, the carrying of beauty within you, the permission for Me to care for you, to pour love into your heart so that the ripple of my love continues.
A waterfall begins with a drop, and then a cascade, a drifting through quiet places, a collection until the drops pour past, all together. Mothering happens in the combination of Me holding you in my hands and letting my fingers open a bit to let you pour out what I give.
You can only mother from what I give.
Mothering is a collection of hopes for the future, a belief in good things and the willingness to go to the hard places for those you love. It is the shepherding of children, the gathering of expectation for a future that is to come.
It is faith in possibility for people beyond yourself.
To mother is to press in and give out and never give up. It is to hold on tight and let go, all at once. It is to walk beside and listen close and not fall away, even though the pain comes and it is hard to stay.
To mother is to stay.
And the staying isn’t what you think it looks like sometimes. It is the supporting of the one you hold close while believing it isn’t always you who knows the way.
In mothering, without Me, you don’t know the way.
To mother is to trust and laugh and cry and wave good-bye. It is to come again, despite rejection. It is to provide, when you feel you have nothing to give. It is to look beyond yourself for strength and feel frail and helpless and fall and believe that you will be caught so that you can lift your knees and see what is before you, the Son.
Mothering is not just about bearing a child. It can be that but it is not just that. You mother through loving whom I bring your way. Come on, daughter, look whom I bring.
http://www.gatherministries.com/loop
So, I really didn’t want to do this blog today. It’s a hard one for me. I tried to do something easier, lighter…anything but this, but it was insistent…
The past few weeks I have found myself in conversations with 6 or 7 grieving mothers. Mothers grieving, angry, disappointed, hurting, ashamed over the loss of their children. All different stories, all the same feelings.
I know those feelings well. I wrote the following piece a few years ago about my own loss – I began the grieving process in 2006, 9 years into my loss of everything I ever loved, and that work continues every day. I am sharing this in hopes it may help someone going through similar pain.
💔
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 begins it’s healing work
And I become human
for the first time
❤️
AL
I have no quick fixes, or advice, here. Just a thought of hope, of choosing to stand strong in love and the blessings mothing brings. Go deep with your grief. Nurture yourself. Allow yourself to heal. Never forget:
Love always wins….
photo sources @ www.pinterest.com
sing on
What do you cling to when the waves roll over
your little boat of life?
When the sound drains out of your days,
what still echoes long into the night?
When you cross over the river
what do you still have in your pockets—
a key to something broken, foreign coins,
a medal on a ribbon, inscribed with silence?
What does it profit you— this world,
its flash and sparkle, to weigh yourself
with its precious coals,
and lose the light you are?
If you are God’s love song,
what is there to your life but singing?
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
We are given many gifts
over our lifetimes.
Gifts are heaped upon us.
Every day we receive.
The way we acknowledge these gifts,
the way we receive them,
the counting of the gifts,
awareness in each breath,
our most important choice.
One insight brings us life as
grace or prison.
Heaven or hell
is bound up in gratitude.
I have had many strange and wonderful gifts
received over my life,
so far.
Some took me a long time to recognize the gift within,
some I’m still searching.
Yet this knowledge,
this ability to see,
to choose to see,
the glory in the grey,
stars in the night sky,
there is good in all I receive,
has been the best gift
of all.
Life’s cup runs over.
The path is lined with glittering diamonds.
Even darkest skies are bright with twinkling stars.
AL
Listen to Billie Holiday sing Come Rain or Come Shine http://youtu.be/RL_P-gHxI3Y
photo sources at www.pinterest.com
life: acoustic & amplified 