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Archive for the category “beloved”

13 Jul 2016

otters and birthdays and glimpses of the mystery

Yeah, so, the past month has been an intense one for me in every way. A bit emotionally brutal. We can all relate, I’m sure. It’s shown me a lot of new things about myself, also revealed some new glimpses of this mystical mystery named, so simply, “Love,” in our language.

I’ve been a student of the nature of Love for the past 7 years, which doesn’t seem very long, now that I write it down, but, I have to report, just this short time of study, it has changed me in every area of my life.

My studies are always, first and foremost, practical. To me nothing I ‘believe’ is worth anything if it does not actually work in my living to bring me healing, make me a better human, remove my baggage to reveal my highest and best self, lead me into paths of peace and load my arms with fruit to share with fellow pilgrims along the way…and, so, I began by asking God to reveal what love was and how love worked.

My first flash came in 2009, riding on a CT commuter train from New Haven to Branford, looking at the marsh fly by. I had been asking for some days, intensely seeking, when God showed himself to me as ‘LOVE.’ That brief instant changed everything for me. I experienced the Aleph of The Mystery and left that train, completely changed a flash or, in real time less than 30 minutes…

Many wonderful writers have helped me along this open-ended, unlimited path of discovery on this topic. I must give much beautiful credit to Henri Nouwen, who helped me early on in my excavation of this topic. His revelations, and life surrendered to this mystery, have inspired much learning in my own voyage on this simple, yet so radical, path.

Over these years, I felt lead to share some of my tiny bits of insight with others – it has just been so amazing! So beautiful! So everything – I just wanted others to open to it as well, to learn and heal along with me! Over these years I have learned to be a writer and a poet. Until recently I didn’t feel I could claim those ‘titles,’ but I do now, just another way love has changed me. I am so grateful.

This brings us to yesterday, which brings us to Frederick Buechner’s 90th birthday! Buechner is one of the best, most beautiful, writers ever. Sometimes I stop breathing when I read his words. I won’t say more, at this moment, as this is becoming a very long post, but here’s my best advice: read him!

Recently someone, somewhere, on Facebook, posted words by poet, Fred LaMotte. They deeply touched me and so I ‘friended’ him. Then he began posting his words and I found myself on Amazon ordering one of his books. I received it last week, and it has been moving me into some very deep waters.

Yeah, so, back to yesterday, I re-posted a happy birthday write-up about Buechner and then…

I got this comment from Fred LaMotte:

He was the reason I became a teacher and a school chaplain. When I was a 10th grader at Exeter Academy (near Boston) he was the school chaplain. It was before he became a writer. One dreary morning in late Winter, we were 700 half asleep boys in morning ‘Chapel’ (it was just an assembly really), and decided to read to us. He read the entire 7th chapter of ‘The Wind In The Willows,’ ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn.’ It was very long and I think I might have been the only one stayed awake. It was amazing. Not only did it show me my first real piece of spiritual writing, but I thought, “Wow! This is his job? Reading to people about the great God Pan? I want to do this!” Thank you Frederick Buechner.

💞

WOW!! Then Fred LaMotte shared that chapter of the Wind and the Willows, ya know, the one that inspired some pretty intense poetry, which is, at this moment plowing up some new fields in my back forty…

Wow upon WOW!

Here’s that link. My advice: Read it!!

http://yourradiance.blogspot.com/2013/03/piper-at-gates-of-dawn.html?m=1

I have not read The Wind in the Willows since I was a teenager, and, at that time I remember thinking it was rather stupid. My thoughts being something like, ‘Good grief, what in the heck is this about?’

Yesterday, I finally ‘got it!’ I broke down. I took my shoes off and bowed to the glory. Yesterday, a gift of love I offered was returned to me, unaccepted. I ‘got it!’ I broke down. I took my shoes off and bowed to the glory. There’s no right or wrong here, just gift. I choose to be only grateful to continue on in the, ‘yes and amen!’ of it all.

I have no idea what Love (God) will teach me next. I am a very humble beginner. No Master here. Just a girl who cannot believe how lucky I am to be on this narrow road. A very unlikely pilgrim, I. Always wearing inappropriate shoes for climbing these steep hills, but somehow, always getting the view of the most beautiful sunsets imaginable. I guess it’s true what Babe Ruth said, ‘You can’t beat a man who keeps getting up!’

Here’s a song I wrote for my children’s musical about my life of faith, named: The Fantastical Inside-Out-Upside-Down Journey of a Rich Little Poor Girl

You Otter Know (verses spoken in the style of Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant/choruses in Sinatra style)

I was walking in the forest

I was feeling all alone

The birds and bees were sleeping,

the weeping willow weeping
Then I heard a little creature

Start moving oh so slow

and the little brook began to play

music with its toes

the woodpecker was keeping time

upon that tall oak tree

and I could not help start dancing

cause I knew it was for me

and as I whirled and twirled about

I came upon a log

and the beaver and the otter (Frank Sinatra style Beaver. Sammy Davis Otter)

were acting more like hogs (pushing each other to get to the log stage with microphone)

and then they each began to croon

they’re words were oh so rare

I stood there for a moment

my foot still in the air
and they sang to me…
You otter know I love you

loved you from the start

(if you’ll beaver me

then I’ll beaver you

You never walk alone)

You otter know I love you

love your precious heart

(beaver me it’s true

I’ve always loved you

You’re never far from home)
and the band it just kept playing

and my happy heart did gasp

Cause this was so much better

than that silly talking a**

uhhh donkey
Then my heart it felt so happy

and my eyes at last could see

That though I hadn’t been aware

You’d never once left me

and as I danced on down that path

I swear I sang this song

The one my friends had written,

which had been there all along
and I sang…
You otter know I love you

loved you from the start

(if you’ll beaver me

then I’ll beaver you

You never walk alone)

You otter know I love you

love your precious heart

(beaver me it’s true

I’ve always loved you

You’re never far from home

💞

Ephesians 1:4

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.

New Living Translation

You don’t have to melt

until you are ready.

Remember this:
Each moil of your unoiled joints,

every numb stiff gristle of resistance,

cramp of anger, clabber of shame,
clot of envy, opinion or belief,

is simply a mass of refusal

contracted into “me,”
a particle afraid to waltz

with its field, a wave

that will not settle to its sea,
a sky who thinks it is a cloud,

a self who didn’t give up

I-dentity…
Don’t let go until you’re

ready, friend. You have forever.

You remember this:
To melt is not to pass away,

but to pulverize diamonds

with your dancing,
watch the spiraling fire

of your body, and witness

the whirled.

🔥

Alfred K. LaMotte

Some mornings

I wake up a king,

anointed, anticipated,

shining.
Some mornings

I wake up a pilgrim,

on a journey yet unseen,

but on a road laid out

with adventures to be met.
Some mornings

I wake up a mule.

No power to wield,

nowhere to go,

just me, just here,

dull and pointless.
Those days

I must be

most vigilant and ready,

for my master

is a good samaritan

and I never know

when I will be needed

for something luminous.

__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

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

Posted in action, Adventure, Alone, art, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Beliefs, beloved, Blessing, Blog, Change, Choice, commitment, community, confidence, connection, courage, create, determination, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Freedom, friendship, fun, Glory, Gospel, grace, Gratitude, Growth, healing, home, Hope, Imagine, intimacy, Joy, Letting Go, Life, Love, mystery, Passion, Patience, Peace, People, Quotes

12 Jul 2016

I am fascinated by bold individualism – Charles Cooper (meee tooooo!!!❤️)

dark matter sutra

last nite in the dark sky

a fox was calling

this eerie voice scathing scratching the air

scaring every living thing around

straight out of a horror movie or worst

some scary witch after me

for all my past sins and debauchery

I was ready to lock the doors

grab a pitch fork

throw the covers over my head

who knows really what a fox really is

maybe a prisoner in a fur body

trying to get out

some convict from a strange distant galaxy

“ .. and for your crimes against humanity

we shall set you on another world

known as earth

in strange body

with strange bedfellows

whizzing bullets

and hungry wolves”

no matter what religion or science says

you never really know

who or what is in these other bodies

each of us stardust

catapulted from the infinite womb

dark matter given form

like blue hanuman

or immortal sunlight

I will call out to you from the wilderness

a purple cloud in a wide room

a child with a halo

a bed of moss

or some eagle soaring above the plane

in a total act of rebellion

from his dark matter sutra

NO PATH
‘There is No Path that Goes all the Way’

:-Han Shan
Not that it stops us looking

for the full continuation.
The one line in the poem

we can start and follow

straight to the end. The fixed belief

we can hold, facing a stranger
that saves us the trouble

of a real conversation.
But one day you are not

just imagining an empty chair
where your loved one sat.

You are not just telling a story
where the bridge is down

and there’s nowhere to cross.
You are not just trying to pray

to a God you always imagined

would keep you safe.
No, you’ve come to a place

where nothing you’ve done

will impress and nothing you

can promise will avert
the silent confrontation,

the place where

your body already seems to know

the way, having kept
to the last, its own secret

reconnaissance.
But still,

there is no path

that goes all the way,
one conversation

leads to another,
one breath to the next

until
there’s no breath at all,

just

the inevitable

final release

of the burden.
And then,

wouldn’t your life

have to start

all over again

for you to know

even a little

of who you had been?
…
Excerpt from ‘NO PATH”

From RIVER FLOW: New and Selected Poems by David Whyte

return to your own path

love leads us ever onward

to the open skies of freedom

❤️

photo sources @www.pinterest.com

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, confidence, connection, courage, determination, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Growth, healing, home, Hope, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, Passion, Quotes | Leave a comment

11 Jul 2016

peace. love. seal the deal. – Miles

White and black cannot be found

in the ruins and valleys of a human face.

You’re the dust in a wrinkled rainbow,

whorled pallet of earth tones,

ginger, sorrel, burnt sienna.
Who called you “white,”

that disdain for shadows,

color of the fear of falling

through the prism of contradictions?
You are not white, you are oak,

apple wood and dandelion.

Make wine of yourself.

Make a barrel of your bones.

Acquire the flavor of your ancestors.
Who called you “black,”

that abstraction of a laughing tear?

You are not black, you have sown

sunset in your cheek furrows.

You are banyan, and mahogany,

kola nut and olive, cocoa bean of grief,

kinnikinnik of the sacred pipe.

You are the night.
Voracious love has dipped us both

in honey, meshed our dreams

in darkest cilia, netted our souls

like mushrooms in sweet loam,

the wild manure of one dragon.
Through innumerable pungent roots

the same juice bears us upward

into starlight.

🌠

Who Told You? by Alfred K. LaMotte

my heart hurts today

for this pain.

I feel great sorrow,

shattering grief,

love cracks me open,

allows me to feel this

hurricane of rage,

this fraction of our creation –

soul division.
for what we,

as human-kind,

have chosen to accept

within the soil of our borders,

our birthright is so much more.

we are each beloved.

we are royal, each and every one.
sadness sits on me,

a heavy fog,

as I drive,

wait,

pay,

that smarmy man

with the weird goatee,

wearing the faded Jack Daniels t-shirt,

I try to love him –

I humbly admit my failure today,

I promise to keep trying,

it is my only hope to change this world.

I return to my place in this universe,

the one I belong to for this moment –

I walk a mile quickly

my angst

mixing with grief

tears won’t stop

I walk this beach,

so familiar,

yet always new.

I pick up rocks,

I move from rocks,

to sand,

to benches.

I stand while the gulls float,

so easy,

so secure,

so assured,

so secure,

so loved,

so free.

As I watch

peace fills me…
I let go…
always a brutal struggle for this stubborn girl,

(I prefer to name that quality ‘determined’)

always, always, worth it.
trusting life is a ruthless business.

I choose to live,

I choose to feel,

I choose to open,

I choose to pay attention,

I choose to connect,

I choose to participate,

I choose to love,

ruthlessly.

What about you?

💞

God grant you the eyes of heaven

to see each person’s divine belovedness

and so find joy.
God grant you a listening heart

to hear the cries of the silenced,

and so gain wisdom.
God grant you humility

that unburdened by yourself

you may be free.
God grant you courage

to enter the world’s dark wounds,

and so bring healing.
God grant you patience,

to know the strength of the long journey,

and so be given hope.
God grant you a heart of love,

to be moved to action,

and so receive deep peace.
God grant you God’s own spirit

to share in the healing of the world,

and so know God’s deep delight.

__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, commitment, compassion, confidence, connection, courage, determination, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Happiness, home, Hope, Imagine, inspiration, Letting Go, Life, light, Love, mystery, Passion, Peace, power, Prayer | Leave a comment

09 Jul 2016

a toast!

Presence is the leaven that makes earth rise.

We knead this loaf by walking gently,

honoring ecstatic raspberries

that tumble through the crippled zero

of a junked tire,
peaches fallen into putrefying splendor,

lightning of naked twigs on Autumn sky,

hieroglyphs that signify how jaggedness

resolves into awakened space.
This isn’t just pretend, it’s how

Christ beholds the lilies…

Let that eye of kindness lead you

back to the vulva where your clan emerged,
womb-amber chaos all our dreams

entangle in, the quintessential element

of seeing, where we suck

the nipple of original otherness.
After love making, some mother

must have swept our ashes up

in the wake of her heartbeat
where we could smell the mulch

of opposites, the musk of the dead

in a bundle of throw-out hyacinths.
We tasted rubies and moonlight,

the bitter yeast on golden grapes

un-gleaned at vineyards edge,

first fruits for homeless strangers,

those lovers of losing their way…
from the heat of the composted loss

the packed blackness of our sorrow

suddenly sprouts bejeweled graces.
I’m still stumbling home from that

first fragrance, friend.

You’re not as drunk as I am yet,

but you’ll get there, you’ll get there.

🍷

Leaven by Alfred K. LaMotte

love warriors walk through this world

love dripping from open hands

falling onto shattered pieces of the broken

staining bits of the kaleidoscope of hurting hearts

stepping carefully

yet confidently

slowing down

pouring out what is so needed

brutally defending tenderness

as the ones who have forgotten to know

appear to do battle…

fearful, hardened, defense

not knowing what they have forgotten…

oh, dearest, please wake up,

please allow yourself to remember

we are all the light

we are each the beloved

please let me hold you

touch those wounded places

touch your face

breathe your soul into mine

until we are completely one

rub love on your sore spots

until you remember

what you already know

stay here with me

for a long long while

let’s walk together

talk about all this beauty

connecting

hands

hearts

love

ah yes

love

as we go forward

allowing this drip to become

a pour

a fountain

a river

an ocean

the very universe

let’s dream together

as we sail our sea green ship

into this mystic world beyond the stars

beyond the moon

and once again

find ourselves home in the sun

living this exquisite ecstasy

drunk on the love brew

only we

can create

together

🍾

The Love of the Soul wells up within my heart; and understanding, pity, love and self-forgetfulness arise. I carry love to all I meet. I meet men’s love with love and remember not myself.

——–

Discipleship in the New Age I

Alice A. Bailey

Page 176

The Tibetan D.K.

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,

and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes

to see with the other eye.
Open your hands,

if you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel

the shepherd’s love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.

Don’t accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.

Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”

Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always

widening rings of being.

🍥

A Community of the Spirit by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

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06 Jul 2016

commit to the process

LIFE – the temptation is always to reduce it to size. A bowl of cherries. A rat race. Amino acids. Even to call it a mystery smacks of reductionism. It is the mystery.
As far as anybody seems to know, the vast majority of things in the universe do not have whatever life is. Sticks, stones, stars, space – they simply are. A few things are and are somehow alive to it. They have broken through into Someone, or Something has broken through into them. Even a jellyfish, a butternut squash. They’re in it with us. We’re all in it together, or it in us. Life is it. Life is with.
After lecturing learnedly on miracles, a great theologian was asked to give a specific example of one. “There is only one miracle,” he answered. “It is life.”
Have you wept at anything during the past year?
Has your heart beat faster at the sight of young beauty?
Have you thought seriously about the fact that someday you are going to die?
More often than not, do you really listen when people are speaking to you instead of just waiting for your turn to speak?
Is there anybody you know in whose place, if one of you had to suffer great pain, you would volunteer yourself?
If your answer to all or most of these questions is no, the chances are that you’re dead.

💃🏻

~ Frederick Buechner

originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

maybe we should redefine the human body

this fleeting flash of existence

into something more manageable

possibly use an oracle from a lost tongue

or something children can grab

even the physical fact of your face

stubble of rough beard

its really an undiscovered haven of wilderness preserves

or some flashing blue temple of luminous fibers

you are a cloud capped tower

the souls fiery predilection

untamable fire

a great globe

a gorgeous palace

melting into thin air

this coat of you

garment of flesh and blood

a miracle of armor protecting us from dust and plague

a kaleidoscope moving at the speed of light

provoking an epiphany of star poems

law me down a border on the edge of this constellation

so I can escape an ejected primordial comet of revolutionary escapades

before too long let us each and all reclaim human regeneration

and so welcome the clean space to become perfected art

you –

this blinding flash of condensed atoms

breast arms and legs

turmoil totally unmanageable

welcome me into this new undefinable rouge ecstasy

like a galloping red bird of infinity

before the dark void swallows me whole

into a veritable contradiction of neo-forms

__________
Adam A. DeFranco

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1699576296948473/

I wonder if writing this poem
will spill you out of me
through my fingertips
will the ink become your blood
this paper your skin
for me to touch
again and again?

I wonder if stretching my hands to the sky,
while standing on my tiptoes
will release your wings
so you can fly free with me
into the starry sky
discovering all the worlds we have inside?

I wonder if I stand as tall, and as still, as a tree
you will come to me
climb up inside me
twist your arms and legs into my branches
hold me close and never let me go?

I wonder if I sing you a love song
if I will become a part your soul
and you part of mine
both of us sewn within these chords
of mine and yours
absorbing each other
into our very dna?
Will we become each other?
Forever becoming each other’s other?
mirrors of beauty
to dance inside the aleph
where heaven meets the earth?

I want to know…

🌳

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Letting Go, Life, Love, mystery, Passion, Poetry, Relationships, soul and spirit, strength, transformation, Trust, truth, Uncategorized, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

05 Jul 2016

thanks-living

From this bench

I can see four Miles

I have walked Miles ahead with each

two have shared

this very spot with me

in flesh and bone

two have been here in the spirit

of friends benches

and Anam Cara soul connection

Miles

and

Miles

and

Miles

a dog named Miles –

and many the Miles

to come –

each of my Miles inform my living

have had vast impact

in my heart

Letting go is my continual lifework

surrender my career

I’ve let go of everyone,

everything,

I’ve ever loved.

I carry them,

green, rooted trees,

within me.

I am done with questions,

I am committed to this process of my becoming.

I am a force of the nature of love.

I have no regrets,

no demands.

I fly with the seagulls,

bend low before the burning bushes,

I sit in the holy hush of the Sound of silence,

letting go,

seeking new understanding.

the deep places within me

give thanks for each piece of love I have experienced,

The blue sky shouts out to me

all that is coming…

the best is always yet to be,

Yes, coming to me and through me,

as I break the newly discovered

hardened edges of my heart

to allow

freedom

for you

and

💜

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, balance, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Choice, connection, courage, Faith, find art at pinterest, Happiness, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery | Leave a comment

04 Jul 2016

this spud’s for you

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

/ Elie Wiesel

Pomme Frites

drizzled with truffle oil,

sprinkled with sea salt…

who can stop,

once you’ve tasted heaven?

Why have we been taught to protect our hearts?

to live without passion?

told that our sensitivity is a weakness,

not a gift?

We settle for what we consider control,

which is a sham,

an illusion of the most fragile,

arrogant tomfoolery.

We shut down,

become indifferent,

avoid the messy feelings,

shields holding our hearts at bay,

afraid of breaking,

in desperation, keeping grief out of our business,

allowing life, and love, to go limp and cold,

lying in the oily, paper-lined, basket,

no one wants to eat this.

What will it take to taste ourselves again?

to reach for another emotion,

and then another,

unable to resist,

as we do for another hot, crunchy, delicious french fry?

Only when we allow all of our emotions,

the full spectrum of our living,

pain and sorrow,

love and joy,

all felt passionately

within our living moments,

our numbered days,

can we become our true selves,

will we allow our highest and best to be revealed?

Only then, can we even begin to step into our lives,

our true hearts,

the love, which we truly deserve,

our humanity.

Once we have have been stripped of our need for perfection,

love begins,

once we get a taste of this,

we can’t stop reaching,

exploring the shadows,

and the light,

eating the good fruit of the ground,

opening further and further

to the mystery dug in this ground.

Only then can we begin to open into our own unique and precious gifts

Only then,are we finally ready to begin authentically sharing ourselves,

and our gifts,

with others.

🍟

let us never forget to make our days count and be aware that how we live, and what we leave behind us, matters.

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, balance, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Choice, emotions, find art at pinterest, Freedom, Gratitude, Grieving, healing | Leave a comment

03 Jul 2016

return to me

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

💞

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

I want to make a poem
that slips into the heart stream
quietly, with no great splash
just a graceful entry,
with minimal ripples
which plunges deeply upon entering
and allows the mud to settle gracefully around it.
I want to make a poem
which allows the heart to trust,
to open,
to flower in it’s own time
knowing, for sure,
it is dependable,
steady,
Words written to last a lifetime,
through the fiercest storms,
though the world burn,
and the mountains crumble.
Words of love
so beautiful
so eternal
they come to life
each time they are read,
or spoken,
and anyone who dares to read the poem I make
cannot help but
find within themselves
clouds of peace
wrapped up in thick blankets of joy
and will forever know for sure
they are
beloved
💞
AL

I smiled at myself

in the mirror this morning

said, ‘good morning’

to the crazy haired girl

looking at me with happy eyes

I make happy coffee

and smile as the heaven-brew

hits morning tastebuds

I have many thoughts this morning

plans and inspiration

floating through

I smile at the fresh pink fuzz

on the backyard tree

at the birds hopping through grass

at the dirty pig statue

looking so perfectly thrilled

To be so dirty

I believe I will live this quote today:

The only thing that ultimately matters is to eat an ice cream

cone, play a slide trombone, plant a small tree, good God, now

you’re free.

– Ray Manzarek

Hmmm wonder where I’ll find that trombone?

💃🏻

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, beloved, Choice, connection, courage, Encouragement, find art at pinterest, Freedom, friendship, healing, Hope, Letting Go, Life, Love, mystery | Leave a comment

29 Jun 2016

nothing is more powerful than beauty in a wicked world… – Amos Lee

I asked the earth, I asked the sea and the deeps, among the living animals, and things that creep. I asked the winds that blow, I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and to all things that stand at the doors of my flesh…My question was the gaze I turned to them. Their answer was their beauty.

– St Augustine

Lovers find secret places inside this violent world
Where they make transactions with beauty. – Rumi

Close your eyes.
Fall in love.
Stay there.
– Rumi

We live, shields up,
prepared for battle,
expecting war.
We harden ourselves,
with the best of intentions.
Our best defense is protective prevarication.
Our best offense is distracting laughter.
Violence becomes a way of life.
Tenderness becomes a thing we try to remove from our children
as early as possible.
We think we know this –
if we can control the carnage,
if we don’t allow our weaknesses to drag behind us
like toilet paper stuck to our shoe,
No vulnerabilities allowed to peak out like saggy undergarments.
No imperfections leaking out of our ears or fingertips,
we’ll win.
We got this.
We set life up without possibility of change,
without allowing any new circumstances to come to us…

then love comes
with it’s un-understandable mystery
and finds us not ready.
Who could ever be ready for this?
then we seek places,
benches, beaches, back seats…
places to share with the other.
unexpected moments of joy and connection
find us at newly found secret spots
where shields are lowered,
vulnerability given,
tenderness ruthlessly
invades the moment
and beauty is transacted.
soul’s mingle,
hands touch.
Life gets messy and wet.
Car windows steam up on drizzly mornings
as love comes peeking through
working to melt stony hearts,
to return us to joyful living
these are the moments life was made for,
two souls torn from the same clay,
loving each other for a million years and more,
suddenly find each other within the same moment,
and it takes our breath away.