life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Death”

29 Feb 2016

extra special

  
An extra day —

Like the painting’s fifth cow,
who looks out directly,
straight toward you,
from inside her black and white spots. 

An extra day —

Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real
as a drunk trips over a threshold
too low to see.

An extra day —

With a second cup of black coffee.
A friendly but businesslike phone call.
A mailed-back package.
Some extra work, but not too much —
just one day’s worth, exactly.

An extra day —

Not unlike the space
between a door and its frame
when one room is lit and another is not,
and one changes into the other
as a woman exchanges a scarf.

An extra day —

Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.

💌

February 29 by Jane Hirshfield

  

 

Posted in Adventure, art, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Choice, commitment, confidence, connection, courage, dark, Death, determination, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Grieving, Happy Holiday!, healing, home, Letting Go, Life, Losing, Love, Reflection, soul and spirit, strength, Trust, truth, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
10 Feb 2016

what if feeling bad is an ok part of being human?

  
I wish I had a nickel for every stranger who has ever told me, I’ve lost all hope. This happens to me regularly and what surprises me most is my instant reaction which is always something along the lines of “I know that feeling so well” or “Me too.” It seems this is one of the most common, most human feelings we can have and one we aren’t “supposed” to have if we’re evolved, rational creatures. It seems it’s a pitiable feeling to have, requiring an intervention or precipitating an emergency, but what if it just is something we feel sometimes, that’s very painful, made more painful by the feeling we are not supposed to feel it and that we should never ever say it out loud. What if our long days, months, years even with this feeling are hollowing out necessary places in our hearts where we can feel, really feel, what we long for? Like respect? Tenderness? Acceptance? Love?

   – Jen Lemen / facebook

    http://hopefulworld.org

   
  

  

 

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Choice, connection, courage, dark, Death, determination, do, Faith, find art at pinterest, Grieving, healing, Letting Go, Life, Love, Patience, People, Reality | Leave a comment
09 Feb 2016

doxology and dreams in the dark   

 

 When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness. 
– Job 30:26 


Smack dab in the middle of the fight 

While I waited for right 

my day turned to night 
I thought I was fine 

the good I would find 

then early one morning I found I was blind
I lay on the ground 

this dark hell I found 

fluttering wings the only sound 
I drank this dark brew 

no way out but through 

this darkness just grew and grew
Overtaking me, Helpless I turned 

My hope was all burned 

I could not choose what I thought I had earned 
I lay in Your hand 

in Your arc I did land 

trusting the truth I had already found 
Watching life pass 

going ever so fast 

oh how long will this dark, dark night last? 
In spite of the fear 

I am still here 

I give thanks even through tears 
I trust in Your plan 

My life is just sand

I am a follower and not a just fan
and if I should die 

The truth does not lie 

The sun will still be here when I say goodbye

I trust in the way

I open and say

Come open the door today
So light come and hold me 

Love come, grow boldly 

Till every bush, and bud, flames holy 

🌙

AL 

    
 

   

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, commitment, confidence, connection, create, dark, Death, find art at pinterest, forgiveness, Glory, Gospel, grace, Grieving, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, Poetry, power, Purpose, Reality | Leave a comment
29 Dec 2015

the beds we make: predicted 

 

how much of our lives do we predict through our words

which come from our thoughts 

our actions following that form 

belief systems so deep seeded are seated 

within us deeper than deep

most times we do things 

from an unconscious place

of familial familiarity 

patterns so old

we can trace them into generations past passing

the torturous torch

ever forward 

how do we stop this bitter flower flowering?

how do we dam the damning history if our history?

remember to remember 

thoughts become things

words are power

actions speak louder than shouting 

we can do hard things

we get to choose

that’s what free will is all about

all we need is love

love wins every time

put that truth in your peace pipe and smoke it!

I’ll take all that into all the upcoming 

brand spanking, 

sparkling 

new years 

year after year –

I choose a life of love

🍾

AL  

 So, you get to choose – are you going to suffer, or be happy for the next seven years? 
I’m going to suffer. 

  

  
HEALING: is moving forward even when nothing is working out, and understanding that one day, it will all work together to create an even better today than yesterday. 

   – Soul Pancake 

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, Change, Choice, commitment, connection, courage, dark, Death, determination, do, find art at pinterest, Freedom, Gratitude, Growth, healing, Reality, receiving, Reflection | Leave a comment
22 Dec 2015

gift

 

 Longest night.

Darkness falls like snow,

falls and falls, 

deepening.

Older than the universe,

here before it,

and will be after.

Wraps an arm around us

as if we’re old friends.

We are.

Darkness lives in us,

radiates from us.

We speak it.

Darkness is the velvet cloth

where you cherish the gem

of your presence among us,

darkness the womb,

darkness the manger

that cradles your light,

this holy being

that becomes us,

births us.

In the darkness

you do not come to us,

we come from you.

Because you are with and not apart,

even the darkness

is you.

Because you shine in it

the dark is our dark,

none of it unchanged.

Your being our light,

your hereness our life,

shining in the longest night.

__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

 

 To go into the darkness with a light 
is to know the light. 

To know the dark, go dark. 

Go without light and find that the dark too, blooms and sings 

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. 

– Wendell Berry 

  
Black. out. black. 

Black. on. black. 

Dark. on dark. on dark. 

I was simply looking for home. 

Not knowing the current alley would lead 

to where the sidewalk ended 

I stepped off the edge 

out of the world of light 

waking into morning night 

a banished sun 

no stars 

or moon 

or streetlights 

or fireflies 

or lighters 

in pitch darkness 

I lay, unable to move, 

senses adjusting 

to what is my new reality 

hearing the life 

that lives here 

wondering if I’ll make friends 

while I’m here 

learning this new space. 

🌌

AL

 

 Gift suggestions: 
To your enemy –  forgiveness. 

 To an opponent – tolerance. 

   To a friend – your heart. 

     To a customer – service. 

       To every child – a good example. 

          To all – love. 

💞

           – Oren Arnold

  

Posted in action, Adventure, Alone, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, connection, courage, dark, Death, determination, Dreams, find art at pinterest, fragile, Glory, Gospel, grace, Gratitude, healing, home, Letting Go, Love, Miracles, mystery, nature, power, Prayer, quiet, Reflection | Leave a comment
30 Oct 2015

let the light  

  
You work with what you are given, 

the red clay of grief, 

the black clay of stubbornness going on after. 

Clay that tastes of care or carelessness, 

clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.
Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live, 

each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table. 

There are honeys so bitter 

no one would willingly choose to take them. 

The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity, 

honey of cruelty, fear. 
This rebus —slip and stubbornness, 

bottom of river, my own consumed life— 

when will I learn to read it 

plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire? 

Not to understand it, only to see. 
As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty, 

we become our choices. 

Each yes, each no continues, 

this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup. 
The ladder leans into its darkness. 

The anvil leans into its silence. 

The cup sits empty. 
How can I enter this question the clay has asked? 

🔹

Rebus by Jane Hirshfield

 

 The lion still roars 
I walk in grief 

On the purple beach 

the grey-green water 

meeting the sky 

Into infinity 

the world unending 

I sit on driftwood 

Fascinatingly carved by water 

Into pieces of art 

and shapes that look like 

cattle skulls in the desert 

I cry as I pick up rocks 

Why do i grieve such simple things?

Those precious shells 

I spent hours snorkeling for 

In 1985 

You polished them 

til they were smooth as silk 

So beautiful 

I loved everything about them 

and that memory they held 

Back When the world was still 

A mystery 

And I knew nothing about hardship 

Loss or pain 

I thought love and life were simple 

That you wanted me to be happy

That you loved me 

That we would build a family together 

I kept those shells in a special jar 

Would let the kids play with them

For a special treat 

I loved their delight in them 

As they played for hours 

sorting the colors and shapes 

Loving the story of us at the start

I Kept them close to me 

Through all the losses 

Then they were gone 

lost to me forever 

way after my innocence 

but somehow they took 

some shred I was holding on to 

Some secret part of me and you 

that was still beautiful 
As I picked up small beautiful rocks 

today at the beach 

They reminded me 

and it all returned 

all the losses 

all the pain 

What you chose 

The choices I was forced to make 

The price of gaining my soul 

The cost of winning my freedom 

I cry so deeply 

Right to the core 

such intense love 

for the wounded heart 

carried in small pieces 

of the world 

connecting all the pain 

and love together 

Bittersweet grief 

Bittersweet love 

Exquisite pain 

Exquisite joy 

Will I ever find love that understands this? 

Will I ever share this same heart as one? 

Will I ever make it home? 

Will I ever make it? 

Will I ever? 

Will I? 

Will? 

💙

AL

 

    

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

Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, connection, courage, dark, Death, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, giving, grace, Grieving, Growth, healing, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, Reflection, soul and spirit, Trust, truth, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
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
23 Jun 2015

remember: it all flows

 
 Jairus begged him repeatedly, My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him…. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?”…. The woman came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. … While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?”…. He took her hand, and she got up….

                  —from Mark 5.2143
Jesus, interrupted, follows.

Interrupted again, he stops.

The clock ticking,

sirens still blaring, lights flashing,

he stops and listens.

His pause, it seems, is deadly.

But it isn’t, is it? 
Who does not feel the devil

turning within you, chanting,

There is not enough time?

Who does not fear the story,

told from behind a dark curtain,

You don’t have the power?
Of course you don’t.

It’s not yours.

Time does not belong; it flows.

Power does not sit; it flows.

You don’t have to dip into 

your little purse of time and energy:

you let infinite grace flow through you.
Healing happens without your effort;

you are only present.

It is not your time, not your energy, but God’s. 

You enter the river, and it flows through you.
When you are present in this moment

you will be present in the next.
And thus it is, when you are present in this life

you are present in the next.  
__________________  

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net 

   

Listen to Christy Nockles sing Grace Flows Down http://youtu.be/lBPNdTowJuc 

🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊

Photo sources at www.pinterest.com/al513

Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Choice, courage, Death, Faith, find art at pinterest, healing, Letting Go, Life, Love, soul and spirit, touch, Trust, truth, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
10 Jun 2015

bullfrogs and writing poems

  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
🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

photo sources found at www.pinterest.com

 

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Change, Choice, courage, create, dark, Death, find art at pinterest, Life, Love, mystery, nature, Poetry, Seasons, Trust, words, Writing, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
05 Apr 2015

and the sad things begin to be upended…      – Ann Voskamp

 

 When the cross hits your life, a loneliness, a blindness and a darkness come all around you. Darkness and lostness are the worst parts of suffering. The wonder of the Resurrection is that this darkness was opened out and at the heart of the darkness a secret light was discovered. Each one of us who has come here hasn’t come to this place out of curiosity but we have come because we know the need that is in our lives and we know the frailty that is in our hearts and minds. We are strangers in the world. In our journey through life anything can befall us. It seems to be very difficult for us as humans to learn how to love, to learn how the let the fear and the resentment and the blindness fall away from us and to come into the special joy and peace and freedom of love. No matter how assured or competent we may feel, there is none of us who has not large territories of fear in our hearts, fear of sharing ourselves, of opening ourselves, of entering life. That is why we come to an ancient holy place like this, before the dawn, to let the new tender light of the resurrection touch our helpless fear and transfigure it and open it into courage. 


~ John O’Donohue from his Easter Homily at Corcomroe Abbey 1992

 

Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed!

Crucified and risen Christ,
flood my heart with your light
and my soul with your living presence,
that I may trust the victory of God,
the victory of love over violence,
of life over death.
By your rising give me courage
to know that evil and oppression,
though they seem to reign,
have already been defeated.
You who bear me in your heart,
you have raised me up with you,
and set me free from my fear,
free from shame and despair,
free from all that would imprison me,
from all that would keep me 
from loving perfectly. 

Loving Christ, 
I have died in you and risen in you.
May I walk with courage
into this new life.
Amen.

__________________  
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light

www.unfoldinglight.net

 

 Listen to Sandi Patty sing Was It a Morning Like This? 

http://youtu.be/eb1ayV5sTtM

🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆

                                           Shake out your qualms. 
                                                Shake up your dreams. 
                                                Deepen your roots. 
                                                Extend your branches. 
                                                Trust deep water 
                                                and head for the open, 
                                                even if your vision 
                                                shipwrecks you. 
                                                Quit your addiction 
                                                to sneer and complain. 
                                                Open a lookout. 
                                                Dance on a brink. 
                                                Run with your wildfire. 
                                                You are closer to glory 
                                                leaping an abyss 
                                                than upholstering a rut. 
                                                Not dawdling. 
                                                Not doubting. 
                                                Intrepid all the way 
                                                Walk toward clarity. 
                                                At every crossroad 
                                                Be prepared 
                                                to bump into wonder. 
                                                Only love prevails. 
                                                En route to disaster 
                                                insist on canticles. 
                                                Lift your ineffable 
                                                out of the mundane. 
                                                Nothing perishes; 
                                                nothing survives; 
                                                everything transforms! 
                                                Honeymoon with Big Joy! 

Easter Exultet by James Broughton

🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆

photo sources found at

www.pinterest.com/al513

 

Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, Change, Choice, courage, dark, Death, find art at pinterest, Glory, Gospel, grace, Gratitude, Happy Holiday!, healing, home, Hope, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, Passion, Patience, power, soul and spirit, Today, touch, Trust, truth, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

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