Encouragement | life: acoustic & amplified

Archive for the category “Encouragement”

19 Jul 2015

mediocrity…never…the battle is on!

Feeling empty and unstrung
I wake from my dream

warnings of being unwilling to change

of being stuck in one place

unwilling to do things different

I sit at my desk

afraid

because this dream was not about you

it was about me

and it scares the hell outta me

that it is what I will allow.
I know

the tractor beam of mediocrity is on –

will my shields hold?

Will I stay out of the pig pen,

or just give up and wallow in the stinky mud?

The comfortable parking space calls me..
All this,

and the glaring monotony,

the forced prison,

of my day

stares at me.

how will I break this day open?

how will I know I have

reached beyond my need for security?

how will I battle my own resistance?

how will I stay focused on my own need,

and not distract myself with yours?

I open poems by Mary Oliver

The Moths is all it takes!

I feel the door of freedom swing open wide.

I write

I post

I say ‘thank you’

for these, and all the other words.

Within the hour I get a comment from Oriah, whose poem,

The Invitation,

was a life changer

and I know life

has answered my need to know

that I am connected to the whole

I feast

on bacon

with a side of strawberries n cream & passion fruit Godiva truffles

knowing there is always

more goodness

than I could ever eat up

my cup is overfull and sticky

from all that honey

from all those

beauti-ous bees.

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

AL (Oct 2013)

Listen to Willie Nelson sing This Face http://youtu.be/_79LW9_OIUA
😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

Find photo sources at www.pinterest.com/al513

The mind must

set itself up

wherever it goes

and it would be

most convenient

to impose its

old rooms—just

tack them up

like an interior

tent. Oh but

the new holes

aren’t where

the windows

went.

🏡🏠🏠🏡🏠🏡🏠🏡

New Rooms by Kay Ryan

Posted in action, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, beloved, Change, Choice, commitment, community, connection, courage, determination, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Freedom, Gratitude, Letting Go, Life, Love, Passion, Poetry, Reflection, soul and spirit, strength, truth, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

07 Jul 2015

Love has feet that walk it through time. – Jeff Brown

Every choice is always the wrong choice,
Every vote cast is always cast away-

How can truth hover between alternatives?
Then love me more than dearly, love me wholly,

Love me with no weighing of circumstance,

As I am pledged in honour to love you:
With no weakness, with no speculation

On what might happen should you and I prove less

Than bringers-to-be of our own certainty.

Neither was born by hazard: each foreknew

The extreme possession we are grown into.
💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞

Whole Love by Robert Graves. Public Domain.

Listen to Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville sing Don’t Know Much http://youtu.be/WmuJ0us63GQ

💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞

Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513

Posted in awareness, beloved, Change, Choice, Encouragement, Life, Love, Relationships, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

26 Jun 2015

when we grow afraid we forget

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear

without my contriving.
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.
I, 12 [I believe in all that has never been spoken] by Rainer Maria Rilke.

🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊

How can you not see it,

if you stand still enough,

or walk out far enough:

the light shimmering from every leaf,

the actual hardness of every stone?

This stone says something

of humility and presence,

of where it came from, and the belly of stars,

but it stays silent to draw you nearer.

We are, all of us, even the thin geranium

on the back stoop, reaching up

for light, for life, for beauty,

singing out with the great silent voice

of the immense glory of being,

the long, amazing story

and a love story it is.

Without your having to remember—

such a gift, such a gift—

your lungs open to the world

and take in life, each moment.

Who gave you that?

How can you not sing, even in silence?

When we grow afraid we forget,

we wear protective layers

of things to believe, things to do,

so many things to do,

so that we don’t come too near

and catch fire.
_________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

(I agree, Mary Oliver…hum, hum)
Listen to Mat Kearney sing Closer to Love http://youtu.be/EMRXXBGotnw

🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀

Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Choice, compassion, connection, courage, determination, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Growth, Happiness, Letting Go, Life, Love, Passion, soul and spirit, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

20 Jun 2015

it is the duty and calling of an artist to speak their truth – unknown

Listen to Sara Barelleis sing Vegas http://youtu.be/HOHK2sXoIVw

🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Career, Choice, commitment, courage, create, determination, do, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Habits, Happiness, Impossible, inspiration, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, music, mystery, Passion, Patience, Relationships, soul and spirit, Trust, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

16 Jun 2015

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

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, beloved, Blessing, Choice, connection, courage, create, Dancing, determination, do, Dreams, education, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Gratitude, Growth, healing, home, Joy, Letting Go, Life, Love, Mother, power, Uncategorized, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

05 Jun 2015

shiny things

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

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, courage, determination, Encouragement, find art at pinterest, Life, Passion, soul and spirit, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

04 Jun 2015

God shows up

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

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, courage, dark, Encouragement, Faith, inspiration, Life, light, Miracles, mystery, nature, soul and spirit, touch, Trust | Leave a comment

27 May 2015

on growing strong bones

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

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Change, Choice, commitment, courage, create, determination, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Gratitude, Growth, inspiration, Patience, power, Reflection, Relationships, soul and spirit, strength, Trust, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

25 May 2015

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

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

🇺🇸 happy Memorial Day

Listen to Garth sing We Shall Be Free http://youtu.be/13s9eciFDzA

Quote photo sources found at www.pinterest.com

Posted in America, awareness, Blessing, compassion, courage, determination, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Freedom, giving, Gratitude, Happy Holiday!, inspiration, Peace, politics, power, Prayer, Uncategorized, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

23 May 2015

what are you looking for?

When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see. – John O’Donohue