life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “awareness”

15 Apr 2016

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

  

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Change, Choice, Poetry, Reality | Leave a comment
14 Apr 2016

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 

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Career, Change, Choice, Encouragement, find art at pinterest, Gratitude, Life, Love | Leave a comment
12 Apr 2016

them bones… them dry dry bones

  
Around 15 years ago now

I took a business trip 

Somewhere in the middle of Florida

I was hostess for a community meeting

to talk about a new electrical line route and sub-station 

proposed for this area

by the electric company I worked for at the time

I was with a team 

We stayed in a local bed and breakfast

I had breakfast with a married couple 

from somewhere west of Orlando,

can’t remember the town,

who were prophets of God. 

Don’t ask me how I know,

I just do. 

I was still learning to open to mystery

(my fundamental Baptist background 

was being constantly challenged)

and I was early in my ‘testing’ to find out if God was really real,

I was early in my healing from the abuse, 

shattering and loss I had gone through in the past years of my life. 

Then, somehow, this couple and I were alone together –

the rest of the team out checking out the project route. 

I ended up in their room.

I told them some of my story. 

I sang for them. 

They prayed over me,

anointed me with oil,

proclaimed and prophesied my future. 

They wrote prophesy down on paper,

then burned it in the fireplace. 

It was all a little weird and surreal,

more than a little scary,

and yet I knew they were sent there, 

at that very place and time,

because God sent them there for me. 

I do not know their names,

I never saw them again,

the business card they left me had a number which was not active – 

Curiosity made me call that number a few weeks later. 

Number not in service. 

I never told anyone about this. 

It was a very strange episode I kinda ignored. 

I’ve never spoken, or written, about it since,

until now,

all these years later. 

It keeps coming back to me lately,

since I recently spent an unexpected evening with 

one of those project team members I was traveling with on that fateful trip.

I still don’t understand it,

but I am grateful,

I realize how far God’s grace has lead me 

since the day of my unexpected, mysterious, anointing. 

❣

AL

  
  
  

Posted in awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, courage, find art at pinterest, Impossible, intimacy, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, Poetry, power | Leave a comment
07 Apr 2016

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

   

   
  
  

 

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, connection, courage, Faith, find art at pinterest, Freedom, friendship, Grieving, Growth, healing, Letting Go, Life, Love | Leave a comment
06 Apr 2016

sometimes on a greyhound  

 

 A life without love is a waste. “Should I look for spiritual love, or material, or physical love?”, don’t ask yourself this question. Discrimination leads to discrimination. Love doesn’t need any name, category or definition. Love is a world itself. Either you are in, at the center…either you are out, yearning.
❤️

~ Shams

  
to learn to trust

we must be trustworthy. 

trust is a choice. 

not an easy choice. 

but the best choice. 

trust is not naive 

trust is 

brutal 

reckless

ruthless

courageous 

strong

brave

trust takes the teeth out of insanity 

trust allows us to make good choices 

trust gives us the ability to know wisdom

trust opens the door to love

trust brings healing to our lives

trust is a gift

that must start with yourself 

just trust yourself a little bit

learn to be trustworthy to your soul

soon you will be able to give some to others

then, maybe, even the world

💞

AL

  
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. The one who looks outside, dreams; the one who looks inside, awakens.  

❤️

    -Carl Jung

  
I want to both awaken and dream, to see all that is in my heart (and yes, that means the dark gunky stuff as well as the wonderful shiny stuff) and see the world in a way that helps me contribute to dreams of sustainable peace and justice. And here it is- the gift of another day to begin again. 

❤️

  – Oriah Mountain Dreamer

  

The surface is always blank.

The real, submerged. 
Look down into that sky,

where beneath a vague cloud flashes,
—is it above or below?—

created, given, waiting.
There is another way,

another side of your little boat.
Beneath your dreary, fruitless nights

something graced awaits,
abundance exceeding your capacity, blessing

at which you laugh in wonder and fright,
a gift that bears you to the breaking point,

a net swelled with light and glory,
and not by luck, but given in love: a presence, 

a companionship you hadn’t recognized.
Heaven is offered, hearts are restored

in something as simple as a broiled fish, shared.
But first you learn a new way,

another side, the unrecognized friend.
And then, after the gift, the revelation,

you learn a new way, another side.
The Mystery doesn’t leave you.

It leads.

__________________ 
Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

  
find photo sources at http://www.pinterest.com

Posted in awareness, balance, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, connection, courage, create, find art at pinterest, Life, Love | Leave a comment
04 Apr 2016

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 

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, balance, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Change, Choice, find art at pinterest, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, moment, Passion, perceptions | Leave a comment
03 Apr 2016

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

Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, Choice, find art at pinterest, laugh, Letting Go, People, Quotes, Reality | Leave a comment
02 Apr 2016

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

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Change, Choice, Encouragement, find art at pinterest, Growth, Happiness, mystery, nature, Patience, Poetry | Leave a comment
31 Mar 2016

doors, windows, bridges, kite’s flying high

It is big sky and its changes,

the sea all round and the waters within.

It is the way sea and sky

work off each other constantly,

like people meeting in Alfred Street,

each face coming away with a hint

of the other’s face pressed in it.

It is the way a week-long gale

ends and folk emerge to hear

a single bird cry way high up.
It is the way you lean to me

and the way I lean to you, as if

we are each other’s prevailing;

how we connect along our shores,

the way we are tidal islands

joined for hours then inaccessible,

I’ll go for that,

and smile when I

pick sand off myself in the shower.

The way I am an inland loch to you

when a clatter of white whoops and rises…
It is the way Scotland looks to the South,

the way we enter friends’ houses

to leave what we came with, or flick

the kettle’s switch and wait.

This is where I want to live,

close to where the heart gives out,

ruined, perfected,

an empty arch against the sky

where birds fly through

instead of prayers

while in Hoy Sound

the ferry’s engines thrum

this life this life this life.
⛴

Orkney / This Life
Andrew Greig

For Catherine and Jamie


this birth of awaiting changes

this for that

tit for tat

tuxedo memories

pinstripe debonair

glamour hangs

like confetti in the air

life goes

round and round

flinging dreams

synthetic roads

leading nowhere

screams and laugher

hardest when not fair

up one side now

down the other there

we hang on

we stomp our feet

and swear

this ain’t right

this we cannot bear

life goes forward

ever on and on

wanting only

to change our point of view

we are loved

no matter what we lose

love will win

love’s always

life’s sweet muse

sight or blind

the vision ours to choose

❤️

AL

I’ll be the wild that keeps your heart in the clouds and you’ll be the anchor that keeps my feet on the ground.

⚓️

by Victoria Erickson


Hey, wait a minute…(pause…..)
Living artfully with time might only require something as simple as pausing.

—Thomas Moore

Let Me Tell You About Beginnings..

Posted in attitude, awareness, balance, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Choice, connection, laugh, Letting Go, Life, Love | Leave a comment
31 Mar 2016

today’s study’s 


Some people move through your life

like the perfume of peonies, heavy

and sensual and lingering.

Some people move through your life

like the sweet musky scent of cosmos

so delicate if you sniff twice, it’s gone.

Some people occupy your life

like moving men who cart off

couches, pianos and break dishes.

Some people touch you so lightly you

are not sure it happened. Others leave

you flat with footprints on your chest.

Some are like those fall warblers

you can’t tell from each other even

though you search Petersen’s.

Some come down hard on you like

a striking falcon and the scars remain

and you are forever wary of the sky.

We all are waiting rooms at bus

stations where hundreds have passed

through unnoticed and others

have almost burned us down

and others have left us clean and new

and others have just moved in.

👫👬👫👭👫

The visible and the in- by Marge Piercy


my fellow exalted, beautiful beings,

full of grace,

as we touch and pass,

respectfully remember to forget:
surrender struggles to catch it’s breath,

then falls soft

as evening prayers at twilight,

gathering into the corners of our hearts

before falling full onto the center of our living circle,

free and happy as ‪Friday night‬.

next morning’s sun fills us,

each day, each season.

nurture moves with grace,

evolving slowly thru

our caring hands,

our grieving hearts,

our shared experience,

our acts of courage,

the healing salt of our tears.

with pieces of our true love,

we fly flags,

of prayer,

of peace,

of poems,

of our own making

to heal the worlds –

within us/

without us.

we allow –

simply complex.

we understand –

clearly unclear.

we stand and fill our world with the beauty

of sound,

of hum,

of voice,

of music,

protecting us

from lesser gods,

the terror all around.

love is the shield,

love is the answer,

love is the choice,

love is our glory,

our salvation,

crowning us

sons and daughters

of stars and starships.

at times,

in spite of our broken pieces,

shattered places,

our refusal to believe,

even our own darkened hearts.

–

astonishing,

isn’t it?

ok, now forget it all –

and practice tenderness.

💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻

AL

 

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, community, connection, courage, find art at pinterest, grace, healing, intimacy, Letting Go, Life, Love, Patience, Peace, People, perceptions | Leave a comment

Post Navigation

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →