life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “beloved”

yesterday   

  
yesterday I was born a leaf

a small fragile tender wisp

trembling as I hung on the vine

yesterday I was a gust of air

short lived, but not insignificant 

full of bone rattling cold and hat disturbing bravado

yesterday I was a large, slow, snow flake

plopping down like a wet goose feather

making the world a magical place

yesterday I was a world made of glass

lying shattered on the floor

hoping to be recycled into a new and useful object

yesterday I was various people

a student, a host, a friend, a lover

feeling my way into the next moment hoping to find a way home

yesterday I stood tall as a tree

shaking, hurting, yet proud, with stubborn certainly 

accepting what winter brings, gently weeping, waiting for spring

❄️

AL

 

   

  

  

personal reminders 

 

   

  

   

    
  

  

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com 
  

fall down 7 times, get up 8 

 

There is a path we all walk in life. All the places we go when the path gets too rocky and exhausting and brutal and beautiful are dead-end detours. If you take these detours you are not bad, but you are wasting your time and energy.

The path looks like this:
Come back to the path.

There’s no other way.

You will never find your perfect life “balance” on the path for the same reason you will never find a unicorn on the path – because these things don’t exist. Forget unicorns and balance. If you were perfectly balanced, you’d never have to take anyone’s hand to steady yourself, and that would be a tragedy.

There is no solid ground on the path — so don’t hold your breath till you find it. Breathe deeply and keep moving forward awkwardly. You can make it down the whole path imbalanced and flailing. When you fall, give thanks for the opportunity to rest. While you’re down, send love to every other path walker who’s down with you at that moment.

Then get back up.

Or crawl. Crawling is encouraged and respected. Path running is fine, but crawling is much better. Crawlers travel with their eyes close to the ground — so they never miss an inch of the beautiful, rocky path. Crawlers get less glory but learn the most about the path’s terrain. 

And know your fellow travelers are both your teachers and students. Your relationships with them will be the hardest part of path walking. To avoid humbling oneself into the role of student and having the courage to position oneself into the role of teacher — many try to walk the path alone.

But the path was not designed for solo treks.

The path was designed to teach Love. Whenever you introduce your true self to a fellow path traveler and listen and speak and learn and stay with her for a while – that is called Love. Walking with and staying with messy fellow path travelers for any length of time is Love. Love is the most brutal and beautiful part of path traveling. Participate. Learn from and teach every path traveler you encounter. Exchanging love with fellow path travelers is how we gather the wisdom and strength we’ll need to overcome the next obstacle on our path.

Note: You do not teach by teaching — you teach by loving. Be humble and courageous.

You always have enough strength.

And courage and wisdom. You always have exactly what you need for your daily trek. Sometimes you won’t believe this, because you will encounter stretches of the path that are treacherous and terrifying, but if you give up in the middle of those stretches — if you sit down permanently in them — then you have to live there. Don’t live in the dark, scary parts. Trust and keep moving. There will be a clearing soon and you will feel the warm sun again.

The One who created your path is outside of time, so your life is an epic movie that has already been scripted. So don’t plan or worry — your job is to trust your path and participate fully and notice as much as you possibly can and keep on moving.

But don’t become proud or ashamed.

Don’t become proud that you are further along than many travelers or ashamed that you are far behind others. Your position on the path relative to other travelers has nothing to do with your strength or stamina or wisdom or cunning. We are all in different places because we all have different entry points to the path.

Where you are and where everyone else is along the path is none of your concern or business.

Let that go.

You are exactly where you are supposed to be, always, and so is everyone else. The portion of the path you wake up to today was written for you. 
Everyone is exactly where he or she is supposed to be. You are not your own or anyone else’s path-planner. You are just a traveler. You just keep moving. Trust the Path. Follow in the footsteps of a billion other mighty travelers who have walked and run and crawled the path before you.

Fear not. And carry on, warrior.

🛤

you’re on by Glennon Doyle Melton

on Donald Miller StoryLine Blog http://storylineblog.com/2016/01/26/make-the-most-of-the-path-youre-on/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=Donald%20Miller&utm_content=Make%20the%20Most%20of%20the%20Path%20You’re%20On

    

   
  
  
photos found at http://www.pinterest.com

everyday hero

  
Quote of the Day: Virtue 
Next to the seven deadly sins, the seven cardinal virtues are apt to look pale and unenterprising, but appearances are notoriously untrustworthy.
Prudence and temperance, taken separately, may not be apt to get you to your feet cheering, but when they go together, as they almost always do, that’s a different matter. The chain smoker or the junkie, for instance, who exemplifies both by managing to kick the habit, can very well have you throwing your hat in the air, especially if it happens to be somebody whom for personal reasons you’d like to have around a few years longer. And the courage involved isn’t likely to leave you cold either. Often it’s the habit kicker’s variety that seems the most courageous.
If you think of justice as sitting blindfolded with a scale in her hand, you may have to stifle a yawn, but if you think of a black judge acquitting a white racist of a false murder charge, it can give you gooseflesh.
The faith of a child taking your hand in the night is as moving as the faith of Mother Teresa among the untouchables, or Bernadette facing the skeptics at Lourdes, or Abraham, age seventy-five, packing up his bags for the Promised Land. And hope is the glimmer on the horizon that keeps faith plugging forward, of course, the wings that keep it more or less in the air.
Maybe it’s only love that turns things around and makes the seven deadly sins be the ones to look pale and unenterprising for a change. Greed, gluttony, lust, envy, and pride are no more than sad efforts to fill the empty place where love belongs, and anger and sloth just two things that may happen when you find that not even all seven of them at their deadliest ever can.

 ⚜

~ Frederick Bruechner originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

 

   

 

  

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com 

break away

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

🕊

-Kurt Vonnegut

 how little I understand 
about life

how small is my vision

how tiny my wings

my experience negligible 

my brain so under developed 

my travels so limited

even as I attempt to smash the box of my learning

as I fight to open to all good things 

as the mystery, 

the dream,

gets bigger

my desire to see, 

touch, 

taste, 

handle, 

hear,

experience 

burns me to the ground

carries me to the sky

fills me with longing

empties me of myself

allows me to be a part of the whole miracle producing she-bang

calls me to be courageous-

a brilliant dancer, even

in spite of my fear,

my limiting inheritance 

my illusion of having two left feet

stop thinking so much

just be

just dance

just fly

🕊

AL

   
  

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.

🎪

― Jiddu Krishnamurtio  


   

  photos found at http://www.pinterest.com

what about now? 

 

This moment 

is the house of God 

I am 

is 

right now 

is the present moment 

I can only know intimacy 

fellowship 

magic 

when I stay 

right here 

now 

be here now 

give thanks now 

see the blazing bush 

take off my shoes 

it’s all about now 

stay aware 

stay a while

live here

Love will build our home

you are welcome here

now

abide 

with me 

come on a my house 

come on home 

to me 

🏡

AL

  
  
  
 

Even on a perfectly still morning,

nothing moving,

trees frozen into the ground,

sky frozen to itself,

still, (how is this?)

here you are,

burgeoning into being,

the roaring sun

silent between the trees,

(everyone I meet, your blossoming!)

what is only just becoming

humming in becoming,

(the more still I am

the more vibrant it is)

everything thrumming with you

and the silence of your delight,

your anticipation

of what even you, 

even now, 

are just discovering,

—oh look!—

just becoming. 

__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com 

be with me  

 
God has no doctrine, do you know that?

Only delight.
The Desired One comes to you, 

waits outside your house in the morning cold,

seeks you even in the worst neighborhood,

for no fancier reason than this:

the Beloved likes you,

and wants to be with you,

and hopes you will fall in love.
It is only the lost

for whom that is not enough.
Our Lover comes to us

even in our greed and terror

with no more complicated plot in mind

than to spend the awful hours and years

with us

and make them paradise. 
__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

  
http://youtu.be/rUam2NeGZ_0

you gettin’ excited?

 
  If you want to know the past, to know what has caused you, look at yourself in the PRESENT, for that is the past’s effect. If you want to know your future, then look at yourself in the PRESENT, for that is the cause of the future.

🍾

      – Majjhima Nikaya   

Holy One,

as a new year approaches

I seek to become not a new person

but more myself,

more aware of what is infinitely good in me,

more attentive to you in me,

who you become in me to be.
I am grateful for your presence,

in awe of your glory,

open to your grace

in me.
Unfold your light in me

and I will become you. 

Unbind your compassion in me

and I will shine with you.

Be in me;

I will be in you.

__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

  
Weather Report
Light

today and ‪tomorrow‬,

emanating from within.

Visibility will be mixed

as some hide the light and others glow.

An atmosphere of glory will prevail

as God moves through us all.

__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

  
  
http://www.pinterest.com

ready? clean. close. begin.  

 

 CLOSING 2015
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.
Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened.
You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister.

Everyone is finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.
Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.
That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home.
Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them.
Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.

Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood.
Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.”
Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back.

Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need.

This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.
Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life.
Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.
Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

🎭

Paulo Coelho

 

The devil loves unspoken secrets, especially those that fester in a man’s soul. 

       – Melville

 

  the path keeps winding
I keep walking

always into surprises

always into adventures

today an unexpected ‘wow’ on the path

love always wins

grace always changes us

I keep seeing it

as I practice this truth named love

as I let go into the the flow

as I clear out the old

leave

return

let go

keep letting go

making space for now

the work of living in now

this freedom thing is a worthwhile challenge 

this mystery just keeps expanding

this love thing is truly

the only thing

that could possibly 

change this world….

or anyone…

mainly..

namely.

someone 

like 

me. 

begin again

trust the new beginning. 

🌎

AL

 

open says me

  
📩

I’ve received all these things 

in envelopes

of various shapes,

colors even:

checks

cash

invitations

cards

art

poems

precious stones

rocks

music

glitter

bills

pills

seeds

buttons

forgiveness 

candy

letters

cards

keys

doodles

stickers

stamps

words

hate

love

broken love

addresses

certificates 

the list goes on…

I search for direction a poem about envelopes

and all these different envelopes, 

from years past, 

pass, 

kaleidoscope like,

filing quickly through my thoughts – 

then come the questions –

what about pushing the envelope? 

(where did that saying come from?)

what about return to sender?

what about that pony express? 

what about priority mail?

Then the simple thought descends –

Envelopes contain sealed mysteries 

easily revealed by tearing them open

as do we…

we never know what we’ll find

until we get inside. 

💌

AL

   
    
   
photos found at http://www.pinterest.com

✉️📬

Post Navigation