life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Choice”

03 Oct 2015

what if?

 

 Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
– Leo F. Buscaglia

   
 Job’s wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.” 
         

But he said to her, “You speak as any fool would speak. 
         

Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”
                  —Job 2.9-10

   

      By the grace of God 
         

Christ tastes death for everyone’s sake.
                  —Hebrews 2.9

The question is not why there is suffering:
why shouldn’t there be?
Should there be no germs or earthquakes?

Should life be free of risk, or pain, or tears,
free of choices or freedom, but only directed by God?

Is pleasure always good, pain always bad?

Isn’t suffering necessary for love?

What would “deserving” be?

Would we want a God continually judging us,
the Dispenser Of Suffering And Reward?

Can God actually control suffering or pleasure?

Why is speaking in public, or being alone,
 heaven for one and hell for another?

A blind person I know rebuffs our sympathy:
what we call suffering she does not.

What if one experienced sickness not as suffering 
but a time to accept mortality, to draw near to God, 
a Sabbath?

Who “allows” evil or injustice, war or poverty? 
Who “allows” suffering when we eat meat? 

If a person suffered for their evil,
 could God not comfort them, relieve their sorrow or pain?

Or isn’t that the one thing God promises:
 not to make our lives exactly as pleasurable as we deserve
but to be with us in it all?

There is evil because we are imperfectly loved;
 sometimes we can’t bear our hurt, 
but project it onto others.

How does God deal with evil? 

By being with us in our pain, to heal it
 so we may stop spreading it.
 God suffers with us, “tastes death for everyone’s sake.”

There is no “reason,” nor need there be. 
There is no need for labels of “good” and “bad.”  
There is only gracious presence for all,
and the love that is willing to suffer for others,
 the saving grace of the cross.

Rather than question suffering,
 receive it as part of life, 
enter into people’s pain and the suffering of the world,
 and absorb it, so it may stop spreading —

and you will find God there.

 

__________________

 
Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

 

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

🔹

I want you to remember

I will always love you

Love does not forget

The sun will shine tomorrow

Don’t look back and regret 
Please won’t you remember 

rainy skies and grey days

Some times you will get

there’s always sun to follow

Then rainbows I predict 
I hope that you’ll remember

Love is really true

Sing and please don’t fret

The sun it shines, although 

you may not see it yet

🔹

AL

 

Listen to Little Anthony sing Tears on my Pillow  http://youtu.be/uxjQ3M_v7xc

🔹

photos found at www.pinterest.com

Posted in attitude, awareness, Beliefs, beloved, Change, Choice, compassion, courage, dark, Death, find art at pinterest, Gospel, grace, healing, Letting Go, Life, Love, Reflection | Leave a comment
02 Oct 2015

what matters most 

 THE ANCIENT DREAM

She has come to sense the inner world goes deep, indeed deeper than the wounds and breakages that others inflict. The contemplative has broken through to that sanctuary in the soul where love dwells. Crucial to this contemplative journey is the trust and imagination to realize that regardless of how you have been damaged, there is within you a sanctuary of deep love, trust and belonging. This is the ancient dream, the masterpiece of divine creativity: the creation of the human heart. Before time – back in the winter of nothingness and then all through the infinite springtime of evolution – the dream was the birth of an intimate well of kindness, care and love in the world, dwelling in the tabernacle of the human heart. 
🔹

John O’Donohue 

Excerpt from BEAUTY


 dear lord in this time of darkness
help us see the darkness
dear lord help us to not pretend

no more pretending
dear lord may our gaze be defenseless 

and unshardable 
teach us the piety of the open eye 
dear lord in this time of darkness

may we be unafraid to mourn and together and hugely
may dignity lose its scaffolding

faces crumble like bricks
dear lord let grief come to grief
and then o lord help us to see the bees yet in the lavender

the spokes of sunlight down through the oaks
and the sleep-opened face of the beloved

and the afternoon all around her 

and her small freckled hands

🔹

Prayer by Teddy Macker

 

Hearts out searching for a home
that one place where we belong

it’s a cold dark night here lately

but I have seen the light

home is your arms 

holding me tight
deeper and deeper into the beautiful 

waking my heart to sing this song

fly with me as flames grow higher

passion flaming deep desire

touching us on this dark night
There are times when life goes hazy

that place we all fall down

life can be so hard my baby

will you hold the line tonight?

open up your heart and fight 
we can do it together

love’s the place where dreams come true

we can make it together 

I believe we can make it

through 
there is hope in this moment 

there is hope in the sky

when days go dark and lonely baby

as long as stars are burning bright

there is hope

there is hope, ’cause

they burn for you

oh baby 

we can make it through

🔹

AL

Listen to Time of the Season by The Zombies http://youtu.be/wG5R7vyu-mA

 

photos found at www.pinterest.com 

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, commitment, compassion, courage, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, friendship, healing, Letting Go, Life, Lonely, Love, mystery, Passion, Peace, People, Prayer, Reflection, soul and spirit, touch, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
01 Oct 2015

inward journey  

  

Courage is a word that tempts us to think outwardly, to run bravely against opposing fire, to do something under besieging circumstance, and perhaps, above all, to be seen to do it in public, to show courage; to be celebrated in story, rewarded with medals, given the accolade, but a look at its linguistic origins leads us in a more interior direction and toward its original template, the old Norman French, Coeur, or heart.

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go – to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.

– David Whyte

  

trees, in general; oaks, especially; 

burr oaks that survive fire, in particular; 

and the generosity of apples 
seeds, all of them: carrots like dust, 

winged maple, doubled beet, peach kernel; 

the inevitability of change 
frogsong in spring; cattle 

lowing on the farm across the hill; 

the melodies of sad old songs 
comfort of savory soup; 

sweet iced fruit; the aroma of yeast; 

a friend’s voice; hard work 
seasons; bedrock; lilacs; 

moonshadows under the ash grove; 

something breaking through 

🔹

 – Patricia Monaghan: Things to Believe In

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Beliefs, Change, Choice, courage, create, find art at pinterest, perceptions, soul and spirit, strength, Trust, truth, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
30 Sep 2015

higher ground 

 

    
  

 

            It’s an interesting

custom, involving such in-

            visible items as the food

that’s not on the table, the clothes

            that are not on the back

the radio whose only music

            is silence. Doing without

is a great protector of reputations

            since all places one cannot go

are fabulous, and only the rare and

            enlightened plowman in his field

or on his mountain does not overrate

            what he does not or cannot have.

Saluting through their windows

            of cathedral glass those restaurants

we must not enter (unless like

            burglars we become subject to

arrest) we greet with our twinkling

            eyes the faces of others who do

without, the lady with the

            fishing pole and the man who looks

amused to have discovered on a walk

            another piece of firewood.

🔹

Doing Without by David Ray

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

Listen to Sara Bareilles sing Between the Lines http://youtu.be/s8e45WHIduM

Posted in action, attitude, awareness, beloved, Blessing, Change, Choice, commitment, connection, courage, determination, Faith, Glory, Gratitude, Growth, healing, Letting Go, Life, Love, perceptions, Reflection, Relationships, soul and spirit, strength, Trust, truth, Uncategorized, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
29 Sep 2015

roots

You don’t have to sit with white linen on, light your tree scented candles and channel Buddha. There doesn’t have to be a “Dream Big” journal or a fairy involved. Just slow yourself down a few times a day and check in. Why am I so overwhelmed? Why am I rushing? Why am I so angry?       – Tancie Leroux

 

 A FRIEND OF mine dreamed that he was standing in an open place out under the sky, and there was a woman also standing there dressed in some coarse material like burlap. He could not see her face distinctly, but the impression that he had was that she was beautiful, and he went up to her and asked her a question. This friend of mine described himself to me once as a believing unbeliever, and the question that he asked her was the same one that Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, only he did not ask it the way you can imagine Pilate did — urbanely, with his eyes narrowed—but instead he asked it with great urgency as if his life depended on the answer, as perhaps it did. He went up to the woman in his dream and asked, “What is the truth?” Then he reached out for her hand, and she took it. Only instead of a hand, she had the claw of a bird, and as she answered his question, she grasped his hand so tightly in that claw that the pain was almost unendurable and prevented him from hearing her answer. So again he asked her, “What is the truth?” and again she pressed his hand, and again the pain drowned out her words. And then once more, a third time, and once more the terrible pain and behind it the answer that he could not hear. And the dream ended. What is the truth for the man who believes and cannot believe that there is a truth beyond all truths, to know which is to be himself made whole and true?
🔹

-Frederick Buechner Originally published in The Hungering Dark

 

 Out of perfection nothing can be made.
Every process involves breaking something up.

The earth must be broken to bring forth life.

If the seed does not die, there is no plant.

Bread results from the death of wheat.

Life lives on lives.

Our own life lives on the acts of other people.

If you are lifeworthy,

you can take it.

🔹

  – Joseph Campbell- Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

 

photos on www.pinterest.com 

Posted in attitude, awareness, beloved, Change, Choice, courage, grace, Gratitude, healing, Letting Go, Miracles | Leave a comment
28 Sep 2015

final word

  
There, don’t you hear it too?

Something is calling, although

The day is blank and gray.
The eye fastened on nothing,

The ear undistracted

And we with nothing to say.
But still that sense of calling,

Of something seeking attention

Beyond our consciousness.
That voice in voiceless things

When they cease to be themselves,

Losing their choice and purpose.
Joining the indiscriminate

Otherness which surrounds us

At our own times of withdrawal.
It is then that the world calls us

As if to reinterpret

Or to reconfigure.
Whose is this voice? A god’s?

Surely not. It seems

To be the voice of duty
That speaks of origins

And of relationships

Between things grown apart.
And I remember the muezzin

Singing every morning

Raptly, as if for himself.
Singing in the dark hour

At a distance, over all,

And yet outside our door.
His practised lilt spoke more

Of the puzzles of night than of

The determinations of morning.
As though the light had still

To be charmed into being

And each day a reward.
The voice is much like his,

A commanding meditation

Rising from the blankness.
Of a sleeping senselessness,

Thoughtful, improbable,

But stirring us to beauty.
And like his, the voice

Links us for a while

In its reiterations
Then ends abruptly, as if

Distracted by something else

Of no great importance.

🔹

Calling by John Fuller

   
 photos found @ www.pinterest.com

Posted in awareness, Change, Choice, connection, determination, find art at pinterest, Letting Go, Love, Patience, quiet, Relationships | Leave a comment
26 Sep 2015

decisions  

 

there is a turning point 

in every life

a point of decision 

to overcome

or succumb 

a point of taking responsibility 

for your life

or not

there’s also a point 

of no return

where you draw a deep breath

and all you have chosen up to this point,

good or bad

comes out to meet you 

AL

  

Posted in attitude, awareness, Change, Choice, find art at pinterest, Life, Love, Reflection, soul and spirit, strength, Uncategorized | Leave a comment
25 Sep 2015

a thousand more 

  

 You could pray for 1,000 nights, visualize for 1,000 days, and give thanks for 1,000 things, but it’s when you physically prepare the way no matter how silly, tiny, or futile your efforts may seem – that 1,000 miracles will find you. 

Uga-chugga, Uga-chugga – 

    The Universe

Thoughts become things… choose the good ones! ® 

© http://www.tut.com ®

 

 #312 magic 

The simplest things in life 

Are the most extraordinary 

Let them reveal themselves. 

            – Paulo Coelho 
There is magic in every little thing. 

Your very breath is magic 

You, showing up on this tiny planet, 

at this very time in history. 

The way the sun glints off your hair. 

The way the trees recognize you. 

The way a child can turn their head 

and plunge you into grief. 

it’s all miraculous. 

Einstein reminds us –

We have a choice in how we live. 

One of two ways – 

As if nothing 

Or 

As if everything 

Is miraculous. 

I’m so glad I chose to see the enchanted pathway. 

It’s always a fine day here. 

No matter what circumstance I find myself in. 

Magic abounds.  

💞

AL

 

find photos at www.pinterest.com 

Listen to Christina Perri sing A Thousand Year http://youtu.be/rtOvBOTyX00

  

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, Beliefs, Choice, Encouragement, find art at pinterest, inspiration, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, perceptions, soul and spirit, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
21 Sep 2015

being alive 

 

 What is this hand in me, hanging on,
grabbing for what I do not need?
The clinging hand, white knuckled, fretting,

leads me and gets stuck in narrow places. 
Grasping, be done. That yearning,

die in me. That whole hand, cut it off. Let it go.
The hand to possess, the foot to be elsewhere,

the eye to colonize, let them go. I am already myself. 
Away with longing forever to be otherwise.

Better to enter life—yes, come in, come all the way in—
than stay in the grave the hand holds tight,

the unquenchable fire of always needing more.
Bend my wanting of trinkets, God. Give me thirst 

for what is poured into me. 
Unable to add to my infinite life,

I will only be this, alive. 
__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

 

  photos found at www.pinterest.com

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Choice, compassion, connection, courage, determination, healing, Joy, Letting Go, Life, Love, Passion, People, Relationships, soul and spirit, Trust, Vulnerability | Leave a comment
20 Sep 2015

September’s Still Remembering

 

 This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; 
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; 

The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, 

And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows. 

Under a tree in the park, 

Two little boys, lying flat on their faces, 

Were carefully gathering red berries 

To put in a pasteboard box. 

Some day there will be no war, 

Then I shall take out this afternoon 

And turn it in my fingers, 

And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate, 

And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves. 

To-day I can only gather it 

And put it into my lunch-box, 

For I have time for nothing 

But the endeavour to balance myself 

Upon a broken world. 

🙏🏻

September, 1918 by Amy Lowell

   
Listen to September Grass by James Taylor http://youtu.be/1lMJyn1YtcA

❤️

Photos found at www.pinterest.com

 

 Peace in Our Hands by Valerie Lorimer – find her artwork on Etsy

Posted in awareness, beauty, Change, Choice, compassion, connection, Encouragement, Faith, Freedom, Life, Love, Peace, Seasons, soul and spirit, touch | Leave a comment

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