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…
“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
The breeze –
Takes the pages of my thoughts
Ruffles the edges
Carries them through the air
Without a worry
Without a care
Scattering my secrets
Sowing my life
http://dorindaduclos.com/2015/04/23/the-breeze/
Night Owl Poetry ©2015 Dorinda Duclos Used with permission
Thoughts float in and out
Abstract
In the silence
Whatever is there can come…and go
You come…You go
I am still as the breeze sways the hammock
The blue sky
the trees the sounds of summer
You come…You go
I flow with the river
No hurry
No worry
Allowing God to lead
Allowing the universe to help me
You come…You go
Allowing all things to be how they should be
Allowing life to be as it is
Allowing everything to be grace
Allowing my lips to sing gratitude
Music floats around me Slipping in and out
You come…You go
Allowing strength to rebuild
Allowing the empty to be filled
So it comes
So it goes
I lay down and sleep in peace
for all good things
done, gone and to come
You have come…You have gone
I am
still
🔹
AL
listen to Simon & Garfunkel sing Bridge Over Troubled Waters http://youtu.be/jjNgn4r6SOA
photo sources at www.pinterest.com
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
A lone bird slips through the air.
You do not have to explain yourself.
The beating of your heart
is one with the vast, wordless song of the stars,
the great hum of the world.
Rivers murmur praise,
deserts and oceans chant their meditations,
cities recite their industrious psalms;
and in your cell, unheard, unknown,
the mystery of heaven unfurls
in your silence.
No one knows your place,
no one.
No one knows your precious belonging.
We can only believe,
or err.
The marigold by the roadside
never knows.
But it is true.
Your only work is to come to trust.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹
It’s not just that when one door closes, another door opens.
When one door closes, Amy, choirs burst into chorus, orchestras orchestrate, bugles bugle, marching bands march, dogs catch Frisbees, cats “chow, chow, chow,” pigs fly, and 10,000 new doors open.
Kind of makes you want a door to close, huh?
Whoohoooo!
The Universe
🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹
I will be taking a break from this blog🔹not sure how long🔹maybe forever🔹lots of beauty in the past 1,000+ posts if you are interested 🔹wishing love, life, music & much happiness to all who come here🔹as well as all who don’t🔹
AL💞
8🔹18🔹15 AD
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.
⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️
Gift by Czeslaw Milosz
Gratitude always proceeds the miracle. – Ann Voskamp
🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛
Talk about breakthrough…
that says it all.
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Ahhhh
Yes,
There it is –
Love always wins! ❤️
AL
Listen to Sarah McLaughlin sing Ordinary Miracle http://youtu.be/OD2kz_U5NQM
⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com
I closed my eyes
and returned
to people,
and places,
I love.
I closed my eyes
and opened
my heart
to magic,
and mystery,
I fell in love.
I closed my eyes
and committed
my life
to love, to You,
my soul’s beloved.
I closed my eyes
and saw
a new heaven,
and earth,
a world of love.
I closed my eyes
and found
myself,
within myself
deep calling to deep
I closed my eyes
and sang
my words,
songs you gave me,
my love song to You.
AL
photo sources at www.pinterest.com
Maybe no one needs us to out-debate them this summer, like they need us to out-love them. Maybe no one needs us to prove anything like they need us to have proof of what mends us… of what moves us. – Ann Voskamp
Read full blog post at http://www.aholyexperience.com/2015/07/when-you-feel-a-bit-like-the-worlds-ablaze-with-hard-things-the-emmaus-option/
Listen to Adele sing To Make You Feel My Love http://youtu.be/ZzmTFBPMhk8
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com
Proof of Heaven
this was the reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little you may know me better there. – Aslan
We are brought places so that we may know God, just a little, better here in this broken world. We are given glimpses, shaded bits of glory, the pieces we are ready for, come to us, changing our lives forever, as we attempt to absorb this brilliance, so far beyond our understanding. We grapple and try, to open our minds ever wider. We try to share, in ways we are able, this new understanding, this life changing knowledge, knowing how difficult it is to understand. We could never have understood these things happening before we went through it for ourselves, yet we also know it is too important to keep to ourselves, and we understand that, IF we, who are just ordinary people, have experienced this, (and we cannot deny we have) then it is possible for others as well.
And so, we try. We put it into inadequate words and we share it however we are called, this unexpected knowledge we have been given, even as we are just a bit embarrassed at the position it puts us in. It seems like it was a little simpler before these revelations. Yet it is also the best gift we have ever experienced and we just want others to know, to share it, to open to amazing grace. As Anne LaMotte says, ‘God’s grace comes to us right where we are, but never leaves us there’.
When we find fellow travelers, who have experienced similar things, it is joyous and wonderful to share. It gives us strength, hope and allows us to open ourselves to even more of the unlimited possibilities which are ever present and possible as we move through this place and into the place where we are so intimately known, so completely beloved and so permanently connected.
AL
Listen to Carrie Underwood sing How Great Thou Art http://youtu.be/3X6IzGDoGwo
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
the bright, glowing world opens my heart in beauty –
there’s this summer song
of cool wind on my skin,
playing sweet, soft percussion through the tall, lush marsh grass
gentle water laps at the sand
invisible birds singing in surround sound
visible ones splash and dive for breakfast
patient, yet very aware
my heart resonates with the language we have spoken
the songs we have sung
the rich vibrations of our connection
over the past months…
over the past two days…
today’s fresh sun warms my back
my shadow sits large
writing poems
this morning
this day
this moment
in silence birthing
my gratitude
my pleasure
my gift
my life
thank you
for being you,
for reaching out,
for holding my hand
and my heart 💞
AL
Listen to John Legend sing All of Me http://youtu.be/Mk7-GRWq7wA
💞
find photo sources @ www.pinterest.com/al513
life: acoustic & amplified 