life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “beloved”
sharing
For a Time of Sorrow
by Howard Thurman
I share with you the agony of your grief,
The anguish of your heart finds echo in my own.
I know I cannot enter all you feel
Nor bear with you the burden of your pain;
I can but offer what my love does give:
The strength of caring,
The warmth of one who seeks to understand
The silent storm-swept barrenness of so great a loss.
This I do in quiet ways,
That on your lonely path
You may not walk alone.
becoming
Do you know who you are
O you forever listed
under some other heading
when you are listed at all
you whose addresses
when you have them
are never sold except
for another reason
something else that is
supposed to identify you
who carry no card
stating that you are—
what would it say you were
to someone turning it over
looking perhaps for
a date or for
anything to go by
you with no secret handshake
no proof of membership
no way to prove such a thing
even to yourselves
you without a word
of explanation
and only yourselves
as evidence
To the Happy Few by W.S. Merwin
be you 😎
The people gathered around Aaron, and said to him,
“Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us.”
—Exodus 32.1
We tire of believing in a God so slippery,
a Lover so invisible,
so we make little ones
that we can set somewhere and not lose.
The golden calf of being busy.
The idol of producing.
The image of conforming.
The little god of being right.
We worship the god of having things under control.
We bow down to the idol of understanding things.
We give our gold to fashion the calf of being liked.
We adore the image of a happy, easy life.
Forgive us, God.
Take away our golden idols
that have so spectacularly failed us
and give us yourself instead.
Teach us to repent with each breath.
Help us to let go and trust
your Mystery, your Presence,
your Infinity, your Love.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
Every now and then I sit and watch the sun rise to remind myself how it’s done – peacefully, steadily, warmly and in beautiful color. – Richelle E. Goodrich
If I write a love poem
you will read it.
If I say my lover’s eyes are oceans, or galaxies
you will understand.
If I say I long for the feel of the curve of her waist
your hands will feel empty.
If I say her comfort is my earth
you will smile to yourself.
If I say she is larger than the world
you will grow confused.
If I say she is older than music
you will become wary.
If I say she is God
you will sigh and put the book down.
What can I do but sing of my love,
her hands like fields of wheat?
So I will not tell you the secret part,
only that her mouth is a river I kneel and drink from,
her love makes dawn arise in me,
her voice is like rain.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
Thank you, Ann Voskamp, just what I needed today 💌
Dear Self and me and you and us,
Really, it’s all going to be okay.
You’re going to be okay.
Promise.
Remember when you were 16 with that ridiculous hair?
And how you’d thought that by the time you got to here, to now, it was going to be good? That by now everything would be all good.
That by now you’d know down in the very marrow of your bones, what it’s like to really live loved. That you’d be known. Fully known. And wholly embraced.
That the Big Dream would have happened, that the peace and the purpose and the Big Point would be under your skin, that the awkward would be gone and that you’d finally fit and that your life made a real difference, you’d made a real mark, and that you really mattered.
You don’t have to worry: We all get to make one unforgettable mark. And every day, with every word, we get to decide: Do we mar the world, or mark the world?
Why in the world disdain the small? It’s always the smallest strokes that add up to the greatest masterpieces.
Because the thing really is: Do we ever really know which mark we make — that will matter the most? The extraordinary things happen nowhere else but in the everyday and today can always be the beginning:
That card you signed and sealed and put in the mail, the way you smiled and nodded to the white-crowned woman bent over the still-green bananas, the way you dug around in the dirt and and left that seed or that gift of the knees and that prayer whispered for a stranger or that glass of water you handed to someone and winked because you just knew — You’ve got to remember: we don’t know when and how we are leaving the greatest marks on the world. It all matters.
Believe it: Every tremor of kindness might erupt in a miracle on the other side of the world.
And the only way to ever leave beauty marks on the world is with bits of yourself — and this will hurt. Things of realest beauty don’t bring us glory — but Him glory.
Dear you, and self, and me, and us, — Just For Today — take these words, words of Dag Hammarskjold,
Secretary-General of the United Nations, words that you can take to the bank, take to eternity: “It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for … the masses.” Christ left the ninety-nine for the one.
Where you are, with that one child, that one street, that one call, it is a noble, Christ-called thing. It only takes one person to change the world — and one individual, one soul, can be all your world.
Really, beautiful You: The most exquisite marks anyone makes with their life — are the marks done in secret. The mark that no one — but One — will ever see.
And tell yourself this when you feel forgotten and invisible and unimportant: So the celebrities get their celebration here.
But the wise are the hidden who hold out for heaven — and the applause that comes from God. This is to choose the far greater.
I know you’re brave … and you’re scared. Because you keep doing big things that seems so small and you wonder where all this is really going and you only get one life here —
And though you’re weary, you do hard things and you keep getting out of bed and this is always the hardest part — and you keep believing that Christ didn’t leave this world until he showed us His scars — and He won’t ever let you leave this world until you leave your most beautiful mark. To show Him.
So Just For Today — listen: you’ve got to keep going.
His Kingdom is Upside Down and in Him your part is large and lovely and needed and art.
So go get the milk and take out the trash and throw in the laundry and wave giddy to the neighbors because there is a plan and there is a purpose and there is a God in heaven who didn’t just ink you onto the palm of His hands but etched your name right into Himself with nails and He’s hasn’t just got your number, He’s got your heart.
He sees you, hidden in Him, and you aren’t ever forgotten because God can’t forget those right in Him. You’ve never missed the boat when you’re holding onto the Cross.
So really — you’ve got to believe it for your 16 year-old-self and 56 year-old-self and for yourself right now: really, it’s all working out okay.
Because God’s writing your story and He never leaves you alone in your story, and His perfect love absorbs all your fear and His perfect grace carries all your burdens, and your story is a happily ever after because Christ bought your happily ever after so you always know how this story ends:
You’re going to be okay.
Dear Self, tuck this away to read again whenever you need to know it again — and promise me, you’ll laugh and sing and dance a bit today?
Heaven and His Kingdom and The Feast is coming! — so go ahead and pass down the fudge brownies.
Love,
Me
– Ann Voskamp
http://www.aholyexperience.com
hang in there 👭
Consider yourself
the way you would the wind.
Allow sun to approach you
so the rain can follow.
This will include caring
for things inside
of things.
Let some blossoms suppose
they are playing
into your hands,
As a rule stones will sing,
Give what you can,
what you have been given,
what you have to give.
“Consider Yourself” by Gary Margolis
http://dharmacomics.com
All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. – Julian of Norwich
I wonder why she said it like this?
I read it and think maybe she was convincing herself
Kinda like Im trying to do this morning
Like Ive been doing for months
Repeating it over and over
it’s gonna be ok
it’s gonna be ok
everything is really
gonna be ok
I love old English
I think I will incorporate
‘All manner of things shall be well’
into my daily pep talk
Yes, that’s feeding my soul today
in all manner of ways
ACL 5/22/13
always within reach
In the woods at sunrise voices speak,
dark, tunneling beneath roots.
Not uttering vast wisdom,
but saying enough.
Between our bodies some kind of energy,
not electric, but warm, a reaching.
In the day’s little catastrophes some light,
soft, awakening, enough to see by.
Crossing the desert of the living room,
the impossible distance from the store,
tired, or angry, or despondent,
desperate for escape, or treaties,
when certainly the gods have left you,
you are fed. The soul’s strange nourishment,
the morsel held in the palm of your disaster,
left in plain sight after every dark night.
Through your incoherent landscape runs
this steadfast mystery, the Holy One’s vow
that you will make it. A layer of dew,
flakes like frost on the desert floor.
______________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net/
Romans 8:22-39 KJV
“For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
life: acoustic & amplified 