spaces for re-defining moreΒ
New beginnings. Springtime joy. Spaces opening. Baggage shedding. Words healing.
The future’s so bright…
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life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Change”
beautiful mess
We canβt find our path without getting messy. Messy comes with the territory. We came in messy. We learn messy. We love messy. We grow messy. We leave messy. I never found my way to clarity without first befriending confusion, in all its chaotic forms. I never found a path that felt like home before falling into quick-sand. I never established a new way of being without trying the wrong way of being on for size. I never found the light without stumbling around in the dark. I never tasted God before getting a little dirt in my mouth. Not that all messiness is good messiness, but some of it is. In the heart of the chaos, is the clay that shapes us home. Chaotic Magnificence!
– Jeff Brown
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
color guard π Β Β
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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My heart is green
with the fuzz of springtime growth
borning life again
from the rich, bloody soil
it throbs anew
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My mind is blue
as the sky in sunshine
then
like the night full of stars and glittering tears
it diamond sparkles
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My life is orange
as flames in a forest
fire
breathing the wind
it grows wild
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My love is red
there is no hiding it
passion
real as anything
it woos pilgrims
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My touch is gold
hands, lips on wounds
aching
for velvet skin, shared breath
it heals all
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My soul is pearl
creamy and warm
welcome
to all who come
it opens hearts
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My word is platinum
I seek only truth
wisdom
life with integrity
it unlocks doors
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My work is emerald
deep as the world
brilliant
full of riches
it creates wealth
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My legacy is silver
of the finest made
pure
nothing for me
it’s all about You
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ACL 3/28/15
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True Colors by Eva Cassidy
photo sources found at
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memories
Though deep indifference should drowse
The sluggish life beneath my brows,
And all the external things I see
Grow snow-showers in the street to me,
Yet inmost in my stormy sense
Thy looks shall be an influence.
Though other loves may come and go
And long years sever us below,
Shall the thin ice that grows above
Freeze the deep centre-well of love?
No, still below light amours, thou
Shalt rule me as thou rul’st me now.
Year following year shall only set
Fresh gems upon thy coronet;
And time, grown lover, shall delight
To beautify thee in my sight;
And thou shalt ever rule in me
Crowned with the light of memory.
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Though Deep Indifference Should Browse by Robert Louis Stephenson
Not Over You by Gavin McGraw
Photo sources at
Stop now for one minute. Say a silent prayer of thanks for your life. Pain will pass. Joy will remain. Β Β Β – Paulo Coelho
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ο»ΏI will have become like
the madman running
to see the moon
in the window,
the hawk
I saw tracing the cliff edge
above the river.
I will be the man
I have pursued all along
and finally caught.
to see the moon
in the window,
the hawk
I saw tracing the cliff edge
above the river.
I will be the man
I have pursued all along
and finally caught.
I will be
all my intuitions
and all my desires
and then I will walk
slowly down the steps
as if dressed in white
and wade into
the water for
a second baptism.
I will be like
someone who cannot
hide their love
but
my joy will become ordinary
and everyday
and like a lover
I will find out
exactly what it is like
to be the happiest, the only one
in creation
to really
understand how much,
Iβm just
a hairβs breadth
from dying.
Mortality My Mistress by David Whyte (excerpt)
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Ghost by Ella Henderson
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ο»ΏYou who live temperate zones,
who haven’t lived through these months here
of cold, shoveling snow, shoveling more
snow, living in box canyons of snow,
under worried roofs, dripping walls,
chipping ice, walking stiff-kneed on ice,
dressing complicatedly for every sojourn,
the layers, the precautions, things matted,
frozen shut, the dark skies,
skies continually falling, dark,
if you haven’t looked out windows
trying to remember what a yard looks like,
trying to guess where the ground is,
longing for green, longing for smells,
longing to walk across grass, to be outside
and not hurt, longing for something
to be easyβdo you know this yearning
for light, for warmth, for beauty, for release,
do you know this ache?
who haven’t lived through these months here
of cold, shoveling snow, shoveling more
snow, living in box canyons of snow,
under worried roofs, dripping walls,
chipping ice, walking stiff-kneed on ice,
dressing complicatedly for every sojourn,
the layers, the precautions, things matted,
frozen shut, the dark skies,
skies continually falling, dark,
if you haven’t looked out windows
trying to remember what a yard looks like,
trying to guess where the ground is,
longing for green, longing for smells,
longing to walk across grass, to be outside
and not hurt, longing for something
to be easyβdo you know this yearning
for light, for warmth, for beauty, for release,
do you know this ache?
I believe you know it
with or without the metaphor in your yard.
It’s the ache for the new world,
for the old life to close its winter eye,
the ice grave to crack wide open,
for your true self to walk toward you
out of the darkness. It’s the ache
for freedom, the long, dark ache for Easter.
It’s not a bad thing
to live in the longing, with even grace
not merely laid at your feet yet,
not of your doing, but purely gift.
To know you are waiting,
and what you are hungry for.
And how deep is your longing.
And that it is coming.
Today is the first day of spring.
The forecast is for snow.
I am filled with hope.
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Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
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photo sources found at
we are each unique and if we didn’t exist Something in the world would have been lost. – Martha GrahamΒ
A list of freedoms:
I am willing to sound dumb.
I am willing to be wrong.
I am willing to be passionate about something that isn’t perceived as cool.
I am willing to express a theory.
I am willing to admit I’m afraid.
I’m willing to contradict something I’ve said before.
I’m willing to have a knee-jerk reaction, even a wrong one.
I’m willing to apologize.
I’m willing to be perfectly human.
– Donald Miller in Scary Close
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breaking open
ο»ΏAbundance is not a state of finances or wealth, it is a state of inner health. Wherever there is joy, appreciation, gratitude, giving, caring, creativity, vision, inspiration, love, patience and playfulness, there is abundance
– Unknown
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ο»ΏYou donβt need anyoneβs affection or approval in order to be good enough. When someone rejects or abandons or judges you, it isnβt actually about you. Itβs about them and their own insecurities, limitations, and needs, and you donβt have to internalize that. Your worth isnβt contingent upon other peopleβs acceptance of you β itβs something inherent. You exist, and therefore, you matter. Youβre allowed to voice your thoughts and feelings. Youβre allowed to assert your needs and take up space. Youβre allowed to hold onto the truth that who you are is exactly enough. And youβre allowed to remove anyone from your life who makes you feel otherwise. β Daniell Koepke
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ο»ΏFrom love we learn to ease
our fretful longing for more
and to rest in the blessedness
of things as they are.
From love we learn to heal our losses
and our fears of loss.
Love awakens us.
It shows us the truth about ourselves and
gives us the courage to live this truth.
Love sustains us:
it is our quintessential nourishment.
And love connects usβto others,
to ourselves, and to the source of all being.
Love is our teacher,
and we are loveβs apprentices.
β Rich & Antra Borofsky
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what am I to do?
ο»ΏDeny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.
βMark 8.34
God of love, be in me
to embody your gentleness and grace,
to love at my own cost,
to enter the suffering of the world,
to hold the wounded in my heart,
to bear the monstrous without explanation,
to absorb the pain without retaliation,
to let there be a hell on earth
without another,
to trust that even the greatest evil
cannot drive you out,
and that love and forgiveness alone
will change the world.
Grant me faith to be willing
to be overwhelmed
and raised again.
I do not ask for heroic strength
but for you
to bear the cross in me,
that by your Spirit in me
I may be Christ,
crucified,
and risen,
no longer small,
no longer threatened,
no longer afraid.
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Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
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be still
In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to spring.
It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.
The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.
The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for us
to follow.
The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.
The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.
If she stands still it will catch up with her.
Pause with us here a while.
Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.
If I say the word God, people run away.
They’ve been frightenedβsat on ’till the spirit cried “uncle.”
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can’t name.
They know he’s out there looking for them, and they want to be found,
But there is all this stuff in the way.
I can’t talk about God and make any sense,
And I can’t not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.
I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God.
Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm fur,
And sense the whole tragedy of life and death.
You see there the consequences of carelessness,
And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived.
The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh.
We don’t build many temples anymore.
Maybe we learned that the sacred can’t be contained.
Or maybe it can’t be sustained inside a building.
Buildings crumble.
It’s the spirit that lives on.
If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,
What would you worship there?
What would you bring to sacrifice?
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?
Go there now.
What’s in the Temple by Tom Barrett
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stay open…stay soft…the hard world needs it
A significant decision.
Put off until a tomorrow
that might never appear.
And a knowing deep
in tired bones.
Of what he, she,
I must do.
Along with its pain,
consequence and
inexplicable relief.
Nic Askew
Now is the time to let your grief find expression. No false strength. Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to the person gone, and thank them for being with you these few moments, and encourage them to go on with whatever their work is, knowing that you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience. In my heart, I know that we will meet again and again, and recognize the many ways in which we have known each other. And when we meet we will know, in a flash, what now it is not given for us to know: Why this had to be the way it was.
Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts β if we can keep them open to God β will find their own intuitive way.
– Ram Dass
life: acoustic & amplified 