“One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” ~Maya Angelou
Listen to Eric Clapton sing Let it Grow http://youtu.be/V069wWEnCys
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photo sources at www.pinterest.com/al513
There are no creatures you cannot love.
A frog calling at God
From the moon-filled ditch
As you stand on the country road in the June night.
The sound is enough to make the stars weep
With happiness.
In the morning the landscape green
Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.
The day is carried across its hours
Without any effort by the shining insects
That are living their secret lives.
The space between the prairie horizons
Makes us ache with its beauty.
Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue
To the farthest cold dark in the universe.
The cottonwood also talks to you
Of breeze and speckled sunlight.
You are at home in these
great empty places
along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.
You are comfortable in this spot
so full of grace and being
that it sparkles like jewels
spilled on water.
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸
From a Country Overlooked by Tom Hennen
Some days the words flow
all day
pouring
smooth and beautiful
words dancing
in streams
like fish in a pond
jumping in the sun
while bullfrogs
talk –
their amazing
deep bass voices
croaking conversations
vibrating through the air
and grasshoppers
scrape their legs
like bows on violin strings
in that cool raspy sound
free form jazz
only they can make.
these are sounds
that define summer
for all of us
southern girls and boys
who grew up in the country
where our entertainment
was driving through town
waving to each other
playing country music
or Lynyrd Skynyrd
loud
on truck radios
while coke-a-cola
and kick-a-boo joy juice
keeps us cool
as we hold hands
and sneak kisses
yes, some days
words flow like a
hot summer night
in the south
and some days
all the words fly north
and I am bare naked bones
searching
bereft
trying to light
wild fires in wet fields
trees with bare branches
scrape the grey sky
nothing is beautiful
no birds sing
the flow
is frozen
in time
I sit
like a Bronte novel heroine
in my moldy wedding dress
alone
in silence
waiting
for my lover
to return to me
AL 🐸
Listen to Ella & Louis sing Summetime http://youtu.be/lnXLVTi_m_M
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photo sources found at www.pinterest.com
And it begins to happen and nothing could be truer than what Pascal said: “Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.”
The darkness ebbs.
The shadows dim –
and all the trees and all the thankful, they ignite, seeing and believing the true colours of now. – Ann Voskamp
How can we be so blinded
by what we say we want
that we fail to see what we have
Closing our hands
Closing our hearts
Closing our eyes to what we already have
It’s tattooed all over the world
Engraved into our hands
Sculpted, within us as our heart.
Ringing as a clear bell,
the soul within us sounds continually.
We refuse to see.
We become angry,
because it’s not about us.
God does not obey our wishes,
Fails to bow to our immature and selfish demands
Live up to our ego-centric standards.
We aim so low, puffed up in pride,
Camouflaged by our speaking lies of our love
Love by our standards is always a rip-off,
built on selfishness.
Built on, I want.
Our words, sounding brass
Our tongues, full of venom
Our arms
Our words, are as empty as our love
Words can be weapons
used in machine gun fashion
to kill those in our line of fire,
usually those we live with,
claim to love most,
bleed the loudest red.
Joy is different than fleeting laughter.
Peace only comes through recognition of our place and repentance,
Opening closed fists.
Softening hard hearts.
Seeing with new vision.
Cleaning the green off the leaves
to become
our true colors of holy.
Our true songs of glory.
Our words finally carry real truth.
Thankful awareness changes
everything,
Only death can bring in next years harvest.
We are all connected.
We are all in season.
AL
Listen to the Beatles sing Love is All You Need http://youtu.be/ydfH7iuLR0I
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Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
when Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric”
I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:
to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.
we can’t cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us
it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.
🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋
a song with no end by Charles Bukowski
Listen to Katy Perry sing Firework http://youtu.be/QGJuMBdaqIw
Nobody loves such days,
everything smudged in powdered lead,
the whites all off, the blacks dull
like the bad side of a mirror.
Yet in a world of shadows
what matters are not the highlights
but the shades of grays.
This river, for instance, a sooty snake
mirroring an oatmeal sky.
But watch it eddy and swirl,
and gradually the lead turns silver, begins
to blaze from within, as if begging the sun
to bust out of its straight-jacket.
And shine. Which the sun very nearly does.
But in the end, it can’t be bothered.
It says, Sparkle yourself.
And eventually we do. Van Gogh returns
to the sea-light of his youth.
Sews the ear back on.
Trades his magentas and cyans
for a # 2 pencil. It is all in the shading,
he realizes. The pursuit of raging hues
was madness. God, no longer
in the rainbowed flame,
but in this wan, uncertain earthlight:
this almost-shimmer on a river.
Whatever plain brown paper wrapper
the day comes in.
☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
Gray Scale by Richard Schiffman
☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
Listen and watch Gene Kelly Singing in the Rain http://youtu.be/D1ZYhVpdXbQ
You could have grown cold, but you grew courageous instead. You could have given up, but you kept on going. You could have seen obstacles, but you called them adventures. You could have called them weeds, but instead you called them wildflowers. You could have died a caterpillar, but you fought on to be a butterfly. You could have denied yourself goodness, but instead you chose to show yourself some self-love. You could have defined yourself by the dark days, but instead through them you realized your light.
— S.C Lourie
Listen to Eva Cassidy sing Time is a Healer http://youtu.be/ttl-W-hVDpQ
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photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
God,
sometimes I just want you to hold me.
I’m not asking you to fix me,
though I wish you would.
I’m not asking you to fix my world,
though I really wish you would.
Just hold me.
The whole earth and all the galaxies
in one arm and me in the other,
held to you close,
where I discover who I really am.
Just for now I don’t need faith or insight,
don’t need to repent, don’t even
need to pray.
I just need you to hold me.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
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
#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
backbones get built
vertebrae by vertebrae
with every victory
with every heartache
with every triumph
with every shattering
with each awakening
they become sturdy
bearing the weight of new consciousness
embodying self-love
strengthened, emboldened
yet still flexible, yet still able
to make flowing and fluid movement
undulating with pulsing life
able to stand firm in the face of a challenge or adversity
backbones don’t magically appear because we wish them into being
backbones need nurturing and kindness and discipline and conviction and intention
and desire
to form and develop
they help us be stalwart and valiant
protecting the soft, vulnerable, tender inner parts of our being
robust, hearty boundaries that
don’t cut us off from nourishment — they make sure we’re getting the right kind
the fortitude to love, not blindly, but with courage.
💪🏻💪🏾💪🏽💪🏼💪🏿💪🏼💪
How Backbones Get Built by Eloiza Jorge
https://deepeningwisdom.wordpress.com/2015/05/25/how-backbones-get-built-a-poem/
Never quit. Never. Rest when you need to, then get back up. Strength comes as you walk. Backbones come one good choice at a time.
Listen to Katy Perry sing Roar http://youtu.be/CevxZvSJLk8
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
listen to Kate Earl sing Nobody http://youtu.be/imIxwxpd04E
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photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
life: acoustic & amplified 
