Todays weather calls for
Sunny outlook
with occasional clouds floating through
a few showers always possible
through out the day
daisies sure to peek out of the green grass
just to smile for me
wine and laughter at sunset
moon tonight
full of you
with a sweet dream or two
and more than a few songs
sure to drift through me
continuing on
into my sleeping hours
Waking to a great new day of promise tomorrow
🔁
Amy Lloyd (AL)
Did you know that whenever you feel love, you literally begin to glow? You probably did.
But did you know that the glowing is actually made up of zillions of minute sparkles? And that these sparkles receive as much energy as they create? And that because of this energy exchange you completely stop aging and look younger? Abundance is immediately drawn to you? Healing powers fill you? Muscles are strengthened, pounds are shed, and your vision improves? Lingering questions are answered? New friends are summoned? Old friends are poked? Problems are solved? And maple syrup tastes more maple-y?
All when you feel love.
It’s true,
The Universe
Ms. Nature is moody one
the sky is varying shades
of pale baby blue
the water is like a silver mirror
endless beautiful
the same rocks that glittered
like a million diamonds
just yesterday
are silent today
big dependable rocks
ready for Monday work week
still the same
still awesome
still beautiful
just in a different mood
today the brilliant emerald moss
on those huge rocks suspended
in the metallic mercury
glow against the silver
I think of Ireland
my draw to visit
the Emerald Isle
on the other side of this pond
life is different
yet the same
the oyster boat trolls
a heron waits until
just the right moment
then takes off
flying so close to the water
on and on
until I lose him in the horizon
I feel like him
waiting for my moment
resting for the next phase of flight
and in the fullness of time
at just the right nudge
I will take that breath and
fly
staying close to the water
my source of life
as the epic journey home
continues
My heart knows for sure
my love story has
a very happy ending
💚
Amy Lloyd (AL)
Holy One, Divine Lover,
I am your image.
Your glory, your love,
your life, your grace
is folded up in me
a thousand times
and this, my life,
is your unfolding
like a rose.
Each day your beauty emerges,
each moment your light unfolds
in me.
I honor this mystery. I trust it.
I give thanks,
that even in ugly places
you unfold your beauty in me,
each breath one of the infinite
petals of God.
In the rose garden of God
I marvel at the variety.
I walk with gentle wonder.
I give thanks
that in each of us
you give yourself
to all of us.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.onbeing.org/blog/david-whyte-the-house-of-belonging/8886
I cannot tell you anything that you are not already capable of knowing yourself.
Nor can I give you anything that is not already at your fingertips.
You have all the answers within your own Being to all of the questions you or anyone else may ask.
Each of us has enormous capacity of Being.
So what is it that we want or need from each other?
Value; We have the capacity to value ourselves and in doing so we set our own value.
Companionship; We experience companionship with others to the capacity that we have companionship with ourselves.
How can I understand others, if I don’t understand myself?
You reflect to me what is already within my own awareness whether I am awake to it or not.
What most of us are looking for outside of ourselves is a reflection, a mirror of what lies within us so that we can gaze upon ourselves.
As I gaze upon myself in the reflection of you
I see the beauty that hides within me
In your grief I touch on the grief I hide inside
In your laughter, laughter is ignited within me
Your Joy radiates and pierces the Joy laden in me
So that we can be in Joy
Your Spirit Unites with Mine as we gaze at Beauty emanated by a flower
This must mean that Beauty enables us to see our harmony
A harmony so perfect that nothing can escape it
As I connect to the world outside of myself it reflects me to you and you to me
We are in concert with the great symphony of the Cosmos
Infinitely expressing itself
In those special tender moments when I touch something in me gazing at you
I can hear the masterpiece sweeping us away
I can see the Vision drawing us near
I can smell the fragrance of our essence
For You Are a Part of Me and I am a Part of You
Endless Reflections of the One in Us
🎭
Reflections of Me
© 2014 Mechel Gallaway All rights Reserved
Welcome and entertain them all
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
🏡
Parker J. Palmer with a light-hearted metaphor from Rumi — on the unexpected visitor and welcoming her in, serendipitous chaos and all.
I paddled a small boat
through wind and waves in the open sea,
the wind wanting to wipe me sideways,
waves lurching me about,
the constant pressing, the effort,
the all aloneness of it,
a little dot in an ocean wide of green,
the struggle so welcome, so satisfying,
because I was there.
I have climbed mountains and hiked deserts,
raised children and journeyed through a marriage
simply to be there.
You have swung the hammer, sewed the seams,
taken the bus, changed the diapers,
recovered from the illness, done the time.
You run races, you wash dishes,
you row your body through its failings,
you work the work of youth or of aging,
you put your shoulder to it.
Even in prayer’s stillness
you go the distance.
This is the holy pilgrimage:
to meet the given day.
You give yourself to this moment as it is,
hand to hand, all in,
and beyond all accomplishment
you are given the gift
of this life.
You come home with salt in your hair
and a whole wide sea in your heart.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
Yesterday afternoon I watched Kate Hudson die in her movie,
A Bit of Heaven,
and I thought about how important our little bit of time is here on this earth.
The vast importance of now!
To never hold back sharing our love,
our bit of time here with the ones we love.
This morning, as I scrolled through my Facebook feed,
I read posts from various friends,
anniversaries of loss.
The shock of too young loss.
The bewilderment of unexpected loss.
The anger of longing for the love loss.
Missing persons.
Persons missing persons.
I listened to the music these friends shared.
Music chosen in a very personal, intimate way,
helping them deal,
bringing them comfort,
tapping into their passion,
their anger,
their extreme feelings,
their great oceans of emotion.
Music helping them allow,
helping them to move,
helping them release,
as they remain here, feeling left and bereft.
Music. Always music.
I cried with them,
for them,
for my own tsunami of losses.
As their music poured into me,
I felt their particular loss,
and I stood along side them and held them in love.
I honor the grieving hearts of the world.
I honor the gift, and power, of music.
🎼
Amy Lloyd (AL)
It’s happened
time and time again…
yet this time more so
than anything,
capital…ANYTHING…
ever before.
don’t you think it’s strange,
how a shared pancake can be life changing?
it was the opposite of the final straw.
it was the catalyst for the rising curtain of the beginning,
starting a chain reaction of Biblical proportion,
a new free-fall dive
into the inner deep,
silence tearing up the very foundations
of the ocean floor,
of this life lived on the dangerous edges
of the radical cliffs of self-examination.
Seven days of seismic eruption
creating volcanic activity so great
that dreams,
long gestating in the souls womb,
burst forth –
born,
ready to scream in their own voice,
into this wonderful world.
as if no longer able to remain
hidden inside their clay container.
Seven days so extraordinary
they have changed my world
as I have always known it.
uncovering the naked bones of my foundation,
exposing the shadowy villains of my learned weaknesses,
giving me new strength to heal those newly uncovered,
rotted, shattered places.
in this place of my own choosing
I walk, choosing to be soft,
in spite of the gripping fear.
I choose vulnerability as my guide forward,
into the fury of places I have long avoided.
somehow, all of this,
including not knowing much of things
I dearly wish I knew,
brings me hope for the brilliant future
of this long-awaited life,
no longer holding back
but fully, wholly, inhabited,
at this current phase of growth,
as it should be
when we fall completely,
head over heels,
in love.
🔥
Amy Lloyd (AL)
I am learning a new thing
I am digging deep into my belief systems
My very foundation –
the thing I learned,
the thing I wanted,
from the very beginning.
The very thing I have based every decision of my life on for 51 years,
has crumbled,
discovered hidden and rotten
under every good thing I’ve attempted to build.
I kept wonder why my fabulous additions
kept falling down around my ears…
now I see the gaping ground fault,
the illusive, sinking sand,
which I must release and repair.
It’s very difficult.
It’s extremely frightening.
It’s supremely challenging.
My new thing goes against the grain
of everything I’ve ever thought,
dreamed,
done…
since my very earliest childhood memories.
It’s been so very expensive.
Life built.
Time spent.
Dreams bent.
All washing away
as I open my hands and allow
a new firm foundation
to be built
as the levee breaks
and carries the remaining sinking sand
forever away…
times…
they are a changing!
At the end of your chanted path,
where the desert becomes the sea,
when you arrive your
songs are already here.
They greet you with silence
and you learn your name.
The rainbow curves toward darkness.
The surface of every sphere
tilts into its vacuum, pours
a golden yolk into raven wings.
Now make a new body of your brave
annihilation, weightless as a flame.
And tell me, dancing tongue of fire,
don’t you prefer the night?
Blackness becomes you.
🔥
Alfred K LaMotte
When the sooty corners of our dark night
absorb into porcelain skin at last
leaving it a whole new shade of refined
When the geese in their skeined wedge take another enchanted voyage across the endless blue
When we wake up to this new day
loving life in spite of all that has gone before
When the one who loves us allows us joy in our exile
until we are ready to break our silent bread
When we allow the challenging heaviness of our limiting beliefs to enter into our arena wrestling until we have achieved Olympic gold
When we trust the great freedom of what has brought us to this very moment
When the wine of our heart
in it’s purest burgundy of bubbling merry or deepest sorrow
pours clear and jeweled in its crushing
When we give away freely our best crimson to everyone we meet at this royal wedding
When we finally recognize the truth that there is no journey of arriving
there is simply life
this grandest celebration of skin touching skin
the sharing of moments
the wonder of storytelling
the ancient ancestral linage of our tree-relations
the wonder of teaching and tasting and exploring
coffee and kisses and learning any odd/old/new thing with the ones you love
then we have arrived at our true work
the why we have sought so desperately to uncover for so long
lying crumpled and useless in the trash can
as we, a bit drunk, on our own exquisite vintage
make love to the world in blissful ecstasy
shhhh…there are new songs playing
listen…
just listen…
to that saxophone…
In this world
I’m so glad there is you
🎷
Amy Lloyd (AL)
No matter how dark the clouds seem, they are only clouds. The sun is always shining, the sky is always light blue. The clouds are just droplets of water, gathered together to tease people who don’t remember the truth.
– Chris Collins
“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/
Most of life begins with a whisper ..a sigh that slips through the unconscious mind, the bridge between human and divine… raising the bar… giving us jiggle room to live a different kind of life…..there are no notes any more. Wisdom on paper, wisdom in blood.
Nothing more than thin layers dividing land from the sea, a clear lane that resides between ethereal sound and make believe. Peter Pan, a ship in the sky, a way to live enchanted, before the mystery flies over…beyond the eye…and heaven looks like…feels like…sounds like…smells like…a way through where nothing is divided.
Breathing God takes concentration, purity runs like…peach juice down the chin; laughter from a child; finding honey on the tongue as ordinary …dressing in robes no one can see, and purple, drapes nicely in the heat of the day…some will say it is only play, and a new day begins with thin sheets of invisible…wide roads of possible, milky white and radiant.
Stepping into, standing beside, claiming victory, ignoring nothing other than the speed in which you die. Born for this…
to be alchemy and dreamer all at the same time… tantalized by burning through layers while walking the streets catching whiffs of perfume…Julian of Norwich no further down the road than a few hundred years and I can still hear her saying…”this God of yours walks in mysterious ways, I’ve heard it too….” and the sunrise begins to taint the Nebraska sky…a slight puff of cloud coverage begins on the edge, a yellow hue…prayers slip through the heart space, between kingdoms of glory and powers of might…I call on all the guidance that waits nearby…and another holy day begins. The world within the world.
Beauty,
Donna Knutson
I step softly into this day
a bit raw
a bit salty
I sit with my understanding
I stare into the abyss between
I uncover the wound to feel the morning air
I gently touch what is exposed
I sing over it
I let it go
I allow this hard thing to be the right
I do not see it all
I see enough
I walk forward with my longtime companion,
Beauty, in all she is,
attends my walking,
never disappoints,
she keeps my heart soft,
gives me hope in the smug places.
I am ever aware and grateful
🌸
Amy Lloyd (AL)
…and in the time remaining…all I wish you is love…
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.
~Erich Fromm
life: acoustic & amplified 