life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “attitude”
love is the only future God offers – Victor Hugo
This is my commandment,
that you love one another as I have loved you.
—John 15.12
that is,
with tender attention
and stout resilience,
that is,
despite your blame and fear,
your betrayal yet to come,
your lack of repentance,
as I have loved you
when you were determined
not to deserve it,
that you love as I have,
withholding nothing,
excusing no one,
that you pour yourself out
for everyone,
as I have
pour yourself out
of your life
into eternal love
and as I have
rise
new,
perfected
in love.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
Listen to John Legend We Were Made to Love http://youtu.be/HLu819Q5USs
💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
live‼️
She stopped offering excuses, justifications, explanations.
She said yes or no with her whole being,
Letting her heart and gut guide her
Knowing neither were infallible
Claiming her right to change her choice
When new information- inner or outer- arose.
There were consequences.
There always are.
She let herself learn, flourish,
Blaze like the sun,
And rest in the sweet, cool darkness.
She offered what she could to her people,
She followed the blood red thread of her own life.
~Oriah
‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️
Listen to Maroon 5 Maps http://youtu.be/NmugSMBh_iI 
Listen to Van the Man sing Crazy Love http://youtu.be/oeE7BOLB8Jc
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
so much potential…(and I quote)
“One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” ~Maya Angelou
Listen to Eric Clapton sing Let it Grow http://youtu.be/V069wWEnCys
💣💣💣💣💣💣💣💣💣
photo sources at www.pinterest.com/al513
bullfrogs and writing poems
There are no creatures you cannot love.
A frog calling at God
From the moon-filled ditch
As you stand on the country road in the June night.
The sound is enough to make the stars weep
With happiness.
In the morning the landscape green
Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.
The day is carried across its hours
Without any effort by the shining insects
That are living their secret lives.
The space between the prairie horizons
Makes us ache with its beauty.
Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue
To the farthest cold dark in the universe.
The cottonwood also talks to you
Of breeze and speckled sunlight.
You are at home in these
great empty places
along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.
You are comfortable in this spot
so full of grace and being
that it sparkles like jewels
spilled on water.
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
From a Country Overlooked by Tom Hennen
Some days the words flow
all day
pouring
smooth and beautiful
words dancing
in streams
like fish in a pond
jumping in the sun
while bullfrogs
talk –
their amazing
deep bass voices
croaking conversations
vibrating through the air
and grasshoppers
scrape their legs
like bows on violin strings
in that cool raspy sound
free form jazz
only they can make.
these are sounds
that define summer
for all of us
southern girls and boys
who grew up in the country
where our entertainment
was driving through town
waving to each other
playing country music
or Lynyrd Skynyrd
loud
on truck radios
while coke-a-cola
and kick-a-boo joy juice
keeps us cool
as we hold hands
and sneak kisses
yes, some days
words flow like a
hot summer night
in the south
and some days
all the words fly north
and I am bare naked bones
searching
bereft
trying to light
wild fires in wet fields
trees with bare branches
scrape the grey sky
nothing is beautiful
no birds sing
the flow
is frozen
in time
I sit
like a Bronte novel heroine
in my moldy wedding dress
alone
in silence
waiting
for my lover
to return to me
AL 🐸
Listen to Ella & Louis sing Summetime http://youtu.be/lnXLVTi_m_M
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com
Genius is only one percent cleverness and ninety-nine percent a very long endurance. Keep going and never, ever give up. – Ann Voskamp
And it begins to happen and nothing could be truer than what Pascal said: “Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.”
The darkness ebbs.
The shadows dim –
and all the trees and all the thankful, they ignite, seeing and believing the true colours of now. – Ann Voskamp
How can we be so blinded
by what we say we want
that we fail to see what we have
Closing our hands
Closing our hearts
Closing our eyes to what we already have
It’s tattooed all over the world
Engraved into our hands
Sculpted, within us as our heart.
Ringing as a clear bell,
the soul within us sounds continually.
We refuse to see.
We become angry,
because it’s not about us.
God does not obey our wishes,
Fails to bow to our immature and selfish demands
Live up to our ego-centric standards.
We aim so low, puffed up in pride,
Camouflaged by our speaking lies of our love
Love by our standards is always a rip-off,
built on selfishness.
Built on, I want.
Our words, sounding brass
Our tongues, full of venom
Our arms
Our words, are as empty as our love
Words can be weapons
used in machine gun fashion
to kill those in our line of fire,
usually those we live with,
claim to love most,
bleed the loudest red.
Joy is different than fleeting laughter.
Peace only comes through recognition of our place and repentance,
Opening closed fists.
Softening hard hearts.
Seeing with new vision.
Cleaning the green off the leaves
to become
our true colors of holy.
Our true songs of glory.
Our words finally carry real truth.
Thankful awareness changes
everything,
Only death can bring in next years harvest.
We are all connected.
We are all in season.
AL
Listen to the Beatles sing Love is All You Need http://youtu.be/ydfH7iuLR0I
💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
That which is – is only grace. There is nothing else. – Ramana Maharshi
Your prayers are not little,
they are the cries of God.
Your power is not slight,
it is the sun in your heart.
Your path is not through a city of strangers,
but through heaven.
You are walking neither on air nor earth
but the hands of angels.
God is not far off,
but within.
You are not alone,
but surrounded by love.
This world is the bread,
this moment the chalice.
This visible world is a window
into the glorious world within it.
This is not the last chapter.
There is more.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
Listen to Seal sing I’m Alive http://youtu.be/RwwnxpBxiRo
⌛️⌛️⌛️⌛️⌛️⌛️⌛️⌛️⌛️
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
shiny things
when Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric”
I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:
to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.
we can’t cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us
it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.
🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋
a song with no end by Charles Bukowski
Listen to Katy Perry sing Firework http://youtu.be/QGJuMBdaqIw
God shows up
Nobody loves such days,
everything smudged in powdered lead,
the whites all off, the blacks dull
like the bad side of a mirror.
Yet in a world of shadows
what matters are not the highlights
but the shades of grays.
This river, for instance, a sooty snake
mirroring an oatmeal sky.
But watch it eddy and swirl,
and gradually the lead turns silver, begins
to blaze from within, as if begging the sun
to bust out of its straight-jacket.
And shine. Which the sun very nearly does.
But in the end, it can’t be bothered.
It says, Sparkle yourself.
And eventually we do. Van Gogh returns
to the sea-light of his youth.
Sews the ear back on.
Trades his magentas and cyans
for a # 2 pencil. It is all in the shading,
he realizes. The pursuit of raging hues
was madness. God, no longer
in the rainbowed flame,
but in this wan, uncertain earthlight:
this almost-shimmer on a river.
Whatever plain brown paper wrapper
the day comes in.
☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
Gray Scale by Richard Schiffman
☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
Listen and watch Gene Kelly Singing in the Rain http://youtu.be/D1ZYhVpdXbQ
every choice matters
You could have grown cold, but you grew courageous instead. You could have given up, but you kept on going. You could have seen obstacles, but you called them adventures. You could have called them weeds, but instead you called them wildflowers. You could have died a caterpillar, but you fought on to be a butterfly. You could have denied yourself goodness, but instead you chose to show yourself some self-love. You could have defined yourself by the dark days, but instead through them you realized your light.
— S.C Lourie
Listen to Eva Cassidy sing Time is a Healer http://youtu.be/ttl-W-hVDpQ
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
God,
sometimes I just want you to hold me.
I’m not asking you to fix me,
though I wish you would.
I’m not asking you to fix my world,
though I really wish you would.
Just hold me.
The whole earth and all the galaxies
in one arm and me in the other,
held to you close,
where I discover who I really am.
Just for now I don’t need faith or insight,
don’t need to repent, don’t even
need to pray.
I just need you to hold me.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
life: acoustic & amplified 
