Note to Self:
Inspiration from
my son, Brandon (he’s made my mamma-heart very happy this morning)…LISTEN to Paul Baribeau sing Ten Things! http://youtu.be/9X_o_BAUJ-c
life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Blessing”
focus
listen to Eva Cassidy sing my favorite song…http://youtu.be/X6Oq-WQ-Sy4
No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property
without first tying up the strong man;
then indeed the house can be plundered.
—Mark 3.27
Jesus is able to cast out demons because he has already overpowered the “strong man.” He has robbed the demonic of its power.
What am I most afraid of? Is it being wrong, or being alone, or being powerless? Pain, failure, insecurity, being unloved, the shattering of my self-image? What is it? What is the deepest fear that will derail me today from loving perfectly? Take a moment to reflect.
When I feel this fear how might I react? What behaviors are red flags to me that I am afraid of the strong man?
Stay still for a moment. Breathe deeply. Be mindful of this: God has already overpowered that which I fear. Love has already disarmed it. Once, perhaps as a child, it made sense to fear it, but no longer. What I fear is now powerless to harm me.
I am free to walk into that fearful house and plunder it, to take life and beauty and grace. I am free to live deeply, to love perfectly, to know joy.
With trust, courage and gratitude I take this strength, this grace with me into the day.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
Photo source found at www.pinterest.com
starlight…have you anything to say to me??
When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn’t hear the stars
Singing, they didn’t believe him. They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
When nearby houses have turned off their televisions,
When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
Are between crossings, when the wind
Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence where the inside jokes
Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
My fair share of the music of the spheres
And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
Through their exiles in the desert.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌙🌟
The Silence of the Stars by David Wagoner
Listen to Ella Fitzgerald sing Stella by Starlight http://youtu.be/xDQ-Erg3KlQ
🌟🌙🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
who ya gonna be?
#363 curiosity
One day, many years ago,
I realized how little I knew
about life
about the world
about God
about love
about relationships
about nature
about cultures
about people
about learning
about how things work
about myself
about pretty much everything.
Yes, one day the full impact hit me
of how small my understanding
really is,
and it changed my life.
I became aware.
I became aware that I could choose,
even though no one gave me permission.
It hit me – that all the people,
who had told me they had the complete truth,
and so I should just believe them,
couldn’t possibly ALL be right.
I also realized, very importantly, most of them were not people I wanted my life to emulate.
So, maybe, living wasn’t about being right, or perfect.
Maybe life was about being open, learning about each other,
about helping each other.
Maybe love really was about unconditional,
whatever that truly meant.
Maybe life was about trying…
anything…everything
that I found intriguing,
or felt my soul drawn to.
And so I opened myself to this new way
of thinking,
of being,
of seeing.
I became curious.
I became open.
I became dogmatic –
about NOT being dogmatic.
I removed the words,
‘I’m right’ and ‘I can’t’ and ‘impossible’ from my vocabulary.
I fought my automatic judgements….
still one of my biggest daily battles….
I keep making that choice.
I fought to improve only myself,
to forgive myself,
to keep learning the hard way,
it is my choice.
I sought to tell, and live, my ever-evolving truth,
holding that truth lightly in open, adoring hands,
always allowing myself to be wrong without shame,
allowing for changes without despising the learning,
I am ever-so-happy when I make that choice!
I battled to take responsibility
for my thoughts and actions,
Always adjusting, making new choices.
Staying aware.
Being honest.
Making lots of mistakes,
Life is very messy at times.
I’ve lost a lot.
I’ve gained more than I lost.
At some point, along the way,
I became convinced, at least for me,
this was the only way to truly live.
The mystery keeps getting bigger.
I continue to do war with my desire to shut down my heart,
in the face of constant hurts and disappointments.
I keep letting go.
Opening, always opening.
Each step has become a miracle moment.
Each opening leads me to open more.
I have come to see everything is grace.
I have come to understand the extreme value,
of each human soul,
of being vulnerable,
of being human,
of just being.
I have made the commitment to the path of curiosity,
not because I will ever learn it all,
but because I won’t.
Yet, I am aware, that there is infinite learning at my fingertips,
and I want as much as I can get,
to go as high as I can go,
to know as much
of God,
and Mystery,
and life itself,
as I am able.
One day, not very long ago, I found the words of poet, Mary Oliver.
She gives these brilliant life instructions,
pay attention.
be astonished.
tell about it.
Yes, that has been my path.
As Einstein said,
I have no special talents –
I’m just passionately curious.
I add to that:
I have completely fallen in love with life!
I’ve grown fabulously addicted to seeing the holy miracles all around me.
I am so blessed, so full, so grateful!
I can’t help wanting to share
the path of this glorious adventure,
with others who love it too –
and so,
though I’ve been accused of talking too much,
more than a few times, in my life,
I’ll just keep on…
because, I’ve found,
all voices are beautiful –
in their own way.
AL
Listen to my friend, Barbara McAfee sing Who Ya Gonna Be? http://youtu.be/Xf5BJgOmBd8
give us peace 🇺🇸
I, may I rest in peace—I, who am still living, say,
May I have peace in the rest of my life.
I want peace right now while I’m still alive.
I don’t want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg
of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair
right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my peace now.
I have lived out my life in wars of every kind: battles without
and within, close combat, face-to-face, the faces always
my own, my lover-face, my enemy-face.
Wars with the old weapons—sticks and stones, blunt axe, words,
dull ripping knife, love and hate,
and wars with newfangled weapons—machine gun, missile,
words, land mines exploding, love and hate,
I don’t want to fulfill my parents’ prophecy that life is war.
I want peace with all my body and all my soul.
Rest me in peace.
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
I, May I Rest in Peace by Yehuda Amichai
For all whose lives have been taken by war,
grant your mercy O God.
For soldiers, civilians, those wounded and neglected,
grant your mercy, O God.
For earth despoiled and living beings sacrificed,
grant your mercy, O God.
For our glorification of war and violence
and our willingness to hurt others
to defend ourselves,
grant your mercy, O God.
We give thanks for your beloved
whom we have sacrificed;
we ask blessing for their loved ones,
confess our need for your grace,
and pray for the redemption of society.
Spirit of compassion and gentleness,
in the name of the One who was sacrificed,
save us by your grace,
and grant us your mercy.
Amen
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
🇺🇸 happy Memorial Day
Listen to Garth sing We Shall Be Free http://youtu.be/13s9eciFDzA
Quote photo sources found at www.pinterest.com
leaps & bounds
When you send forth your spirit, we are created
—Psalm 104.30
Holy One,
breath of the big bang,
idea of creation,
you who make spring come forth,
who make life out of nothing,
breathe yourself into me.
Create me.
you are the flame,
I am your light.
You are the nerve,
I am your muscle.
You are the Word,
I am the story.
You are the song,
I am the singing.
I am one with you
and one with all Creation.
One Spirit,
one flesh, many forms.
In your Spirit
I am we.
Holy One, live in me;
I am your body.
I remember,
and I live.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
🌌🌄🌅🗻🌈🗾🌋🌠🌍
my words my world my earth my sky
you are them all
my notes my music my score my song
you are them all
my heart my soul my mind my life
you are them all
my blood my breath my skin my bones
you are them all
everything I am everything I hope to be
you are them all
AL
Listen to Amos Lee sing Learned A Lot http://youtu.be/wgzFPP-Fa8o
🗾🌠🗻🌄🌍🌈🌌🌋🌅
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
[God] seems to delight in using the unexpected, the least likely, or the weakest link to turn our lives upside down and inside out . . . and fulfill the plan he has had in mind since the beginning of time.
~ Thelma Well
💞
sprung
Grass grows in the night
and early the mockingbirds begin
their fleet courtships over puddles,
upon wires, in the new green
of the Spanish limes.
Their white-striped wings flash
as they flirt and dive.
Wind in the chimes pulls music
from the air, the sky’s cleared
of its vast complications.
In the pause before summer,
the wild sprouting of absolutely
everything: hair, nails, the mango’s
pale rose pennants, tongues of birds
singing daylong.
Words, even, and sudden embraces,
surprising dreams and things I’d never
imagined, in all these years of living,
one more astonished awakening.
🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
Morning in May by Rosalind Brackenbury
This is my commandment,
that you love one another as I have loved you.
—John 15.12
that you love one another as I have loved you.
—John 15.12
that is,
with tender attention
and stout resilience,
that is,
despite your blame and fear,
your betrayal yet to come,
your lack of repentance,
as I have loved you
when you were determined
not to deserve it,
that you love as I have,
withholding nothing,
excusing no one,
that you pour yourself out
for the unworthy,
as I have
pour yourself out
of your life
into eternal love
and as I have
rise
new,
perfected
in love.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Prayer
Bright Morning Star
God’s diamond brooch
Upon the blackest night
Whispering Hope
‘Neath mercy’s cloak,
“The dark is almost light!”
Waken, Slumber!
Sleep not past
The painted dawn for thee.
Burst forth, O Star
One day not far
And shine Thy light on me.
– Beth Moore
I’m wandering through aisles in Barnes and Noble on Saturday. Wandering, wondering…hoping to find something I need to read, something to help me where I hurt and feel overwhelmed right now. I scan titles, can’t really focus, in the Christian aisle. I’ve read many of these books, nothing seems to be ‘it’ ugh. sigh. Surely I’m not past hope.
Suddenly, I see this book. Beth Moore (love her) 10 weeks of Devotional Prayer. Ah. Prayer! THAT’S what I need right now. Intense prayer. Prayer. Changes. ME!
I buy it, still in my fog. Sunday morning I will realize the name connection of this book, Whispers of Hope. My daughter, Krista, has just written a fictional, fantasy of her life story called, Whispers of Heaven. I bow in gratitude for these whispers speaking in my life, changing things, breathing hope in new ways.
And so I begin this 10 week journey into prayer. Learning to love more deeply and truly, open myself more fully, praise, and praise more, all good things, communicate deeper with spirit, learning intimacy in new areas of trust and allow for life changing power to flow in and through me.
Listen to Jackie Velasquez On My Knees
the power of broken hearts
The beginning is such a good place to be. There is much in store. But there is acknowledgment of what came before the beginning to mark this moment as a beginning. And in that place I was there, too. But let’s start where beginning is—the union of Me and you, the awakening of your heart, bit by bit, to Me.
I awaken you further, now.
These first starts are for you to appreciate the moments that came before them—to see where I was, what I was doing, before you recognized my presence. Let me take you back to where I was when you couldn’t see Me there. Perhaps the definitions of beginning will need to be rewritten.
I always begin again in you.
I am the discovery of the beginning—all hope and life in you. I will give you a fresh start this day. I give you new breath, new eyes, new adventures to set out on with Me. But I want to start this beginning by going back to where I’ve always been with you.
I have always been with you, even when you couldn’t see it. I want to show you now.
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Loop @ Gather Ministries
http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=278b78041b94c30f445911b53&id=ae645e9e7d&e=b9eb1d83ef
photo sources found @ www.pinterest.com/al513
spaces for re-defining more
New beginnings. Springtime joy. Spaces opening. Baggage shedding. Words healing.
The future’s so bright…
😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
photo sources found at
life: acoustic & amplified 