life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Faith”

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
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
24 Sep 2015

becoming one

The sojourning spirit is deep within each of us, if we’d listen, but it is not fundamentally about finding ‘the job’ or ‘the voice’ or ‘the degree’ or ‘the position’. The journey, at least as I know it, is a journey to union. It is a journey from fragmentation to wholeness, a journey from exile to home, a journey from attachment to union, a journey from hiding to “being hidden” in Christ, a journey from neurosis to theosis.    – Chuck deGroat

   
    
    
 

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, be, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, commitment, compassion, confidence, connection, courage, Encouragement, Faith, Freedom, friendship, grace, Gratitude, Growth, Habits, Happiness, healing, intimacy, Joy, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, music, mystery, nature, Prayer, Reality, Reflection, Relationships, soul and spirit, Trust, truth, voice, Vulnerability, words, www.pinterest.com | 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
17 Sep 2015

what love looks like 

   
 Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word love, not meaning sentimentality, but a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.

          -Maya Angelou

   
  There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.   I John 4:18

top photo by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT

other photos found on facebook

💞

It’s hard to love someone really,

especially the annoying, the arrogant, the cruel—

because I want to be separate from them.

I don’t want to be one with them,

soiled by their sin, associated with their dirt.

I want to push their boat off in a good direction

but not be in their boat.

But to love someone 

is to cease judging the cruel as more cruel than I.

To love someone is to go to heaven or hell with them,

to put my arm around them and go together.

To lay aside my private little self

and be part of our divine oneness.
God leaves the perfect halls of heaven

to be one of us, to be us,

mucked in our grime, weak as the weakest of us,

blamed with our worst, frail, faulty and failed.

It’s not the gracious, condescending gesture 

to the needy that makes it love;

it’s the absence of distance, the common wound,

it’s the arm around one, walking the way with one,

the resurrecting grace of giving your whole self away,

changing someone’s life by giving them yours.

It’s hard to love really because you have to die.

You disappear. You stop being separate,

stop being a little “one” so far from the “other,”

and be One. Less than that is zero.
But it’s easy to love, really,

when finally in our failure we give up

and throw away our pretensions of virtue,

and dump out the cardboard box 

of our our whole useless heart and all its little pieces,

and, becoming so emptied… wait, 

and God fills us with God’s only love

that flows through us without our having to bother

with the work of getting in its way. 
It’s hard to love really, 

until we empty out

and shine. 

__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, determination, Faith, Freedom, friendship, intimacy, Letting Go, Life, Love, People, Relationships, Trust, truth | Leave a comment
10 Sep 2015

hammock time 

  

 The breeze – 
Takes the pages of my thoughts
Ruffles the edges
Carries them through the air
Without a worry
Without a care
Scattering my secrets
Sowing my life
  http://dorindaduclos.com/2015/04/23/the-breeze/

Night Owl Poetry ©2015 Dorinda Duclos Used with permission 

    
 

 
Thoughts float in and out 
Abstract

In the silence

Whatever is there can come…and go
You come…You go
I am still as the breeze sways the hammock
The blue sky
the trees the sounds of summer
You come…You go
I flow with the river

No hurry 

No worry

Allowing God to lead

Allowing the universe to help me
You come…You go
Allowing all things to be how they should be

Allowing life to be as it is

Allowing everything to be grace

Allowing my lips to sing gratitude
Music floats around me Slipping in and out
You come…You go
Allowing strength to rebuild 

Allowing the empty to be filled

So it comes
So it goes
I lay down and sleep in peace

for all good things 

done, gone and to come
You have come…You have gone
I am 
still

🔹

AL

 

listen to Simon & Garfunkel sing Bridge Over Troubled Waters http://youtu.be/jjNgn4r6SOA

photo sources at www.pinterest.com 

Posted in awareness, beauty, Choice, connection, courage, Faith, find art at pinterest, Growth, inspiration, Letting Go, Life, Love, music, mystery, Patience, Peace, Relationships, soul and spirit, Trust, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
18 Aug 2015
1 Comment

I’ll meet you there…

 

 A lone bird slips through the air.

You do not have to explain yourself.
The beating of your heart

is one with the vast, wordless song of the stars,

the great hum of the world. 
Rivers murmur praise,

deserts and oceans chant their meditations,

cities recite their industrious psalms;

and in your cell, unheard, unknown,

the mystery of heaven unfurls

in your silence. 
No one knows your place,

no one.

No one knows your precious belonging.

We can only believe, 

or err.
The marigold by the roadside

never knows. 

But it is true.
Your only work is to come to trust.
__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹

 

 It’s not just that when one door closes, another door opens. 

When one door closes, Amy, choirs burst into chorus, orchestras orchestrate, bugles bugle, marching bands march, dogs catch Frisbees, cats “chow, chow, chow,” pigs fly, and 10,000 new doors open. 

Kind of makes you want a door to close, huh? 

Whoohoooo! 

    The Universe

🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹

I will be taking a break from this blog🔹not sure how long🔹maybe forever🔹lots of beauty in the past 1,000+ posts if you are interested 🔹wishing love, life, music & much happiness to all who come here🔹as well as all who don’t🔹

AL💞

 8🔹18🔹15 AD

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Change, Choice, confidence, connection, courage, Faith, find art at pinterest, Growth, Happiness, Letting Go, Life, Love, receiving, Reflection, soul and spirit, Trust, truth, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com
06 Aug 2015

say yes to things

 

 A day so happy. 
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden. 

Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.

There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess. 

I knew no one worth my envying him. 

Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.

To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.

In my body I felt no pain.

When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️

Gift by Czeslaw Milosz

  
Gratitude always proceeds the miracle. – Ann Voskamp

🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛

Talk about breakthrough…

that says it all. 

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you

Ahhhh

Yes,

There it is –

Love always wins! ❤️

AL

 

Listen to Sarah McLaughlin sing Ordinary Miracle http://youtu.be/OD2kz_U5NQM 
⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️

photo sources found at www.pinterest.com

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Beliefs, Choice, Faith, find art at pinterest, grace, Gratitude, Life, Love, Miracles, soul and spirit, Trust, truth, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
03 Aug 2015

what matters most

  
Maybe no one needs us to out-debate them this summer, like they need us to out-love them. Maybe no one needs us to prove anything like they need us to have proof of what mends us… of what moves us.       – Ann Voskamp

Read full blog post at http://www.aholyexperience.com/2015/07/when-you-feel-a-bit-like-the-worlds-ablaze-with-hard-things-the-emmaus-option/

Listen to Adele sing To Make You Feel My Love http://youtu.be/ZzmTFBPMhk8

Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com

   
 

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Beliefs, beloved, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Freedom, Gospel, grace, Letting Go, Love, mystery, soul and spirit | Leave a comment
31 Jul 2015

we came here

 

 Proof of Heaven

this was the reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little you may know me better there.      – Aslan
We are brought places so that we may know God, just a little, better here in this broken world. We are given glimpses, shaded bits of glory, the pieces we are ready for, come to us, changing our lives forever, as we attempt to absorb this brilliance, so far beyond our understanding. We grapple and try, to open our minds ever wider. We try to share, in ways we are able, this new understanding, this life changing knowledge, knowing how difficult it is to understand. We could never have understood these things happening before we went through it for ourselves, yet we also know it is too important to keep to ourselves, and we understand that, IF we, who are just ordinary people, have experienced this, (and we cannot deny we have) then it is possible for others as well. 
And so, we try. We put it into inadequate words and we share it however we are called, this unexpected knowledge we have been given, even as we are just a bit embarrassed at the position it puts us in. It seems like it was a little simpler before these revelations. Yet it is also the best gift we have ever experienced and we just want others to know, to share it, to open to amazing grace. As Anne LaMotte says, ‘God’s grace comes to us right where we are, but never leaves us there’. 
When we find fellow travelers, who have experienced similar things, it is joyous and wonderful to share. It gives us strength, hope and allows us to open ourselves to even more of the unlimited possibilities which are ever present and possible as we move through this place and into the place where we are so intimately known, so completely beloved and so permanently connected. 
AL

 

Listen to Carrie Underwood sing How Great Thou Art http://youtu.be/3X6IzGDoGwo

Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513 

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Choice, compassion, confidence, connection, courage, Faith, home, Letting Go, Life, Love, Passion, Peace, People, perceptions, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

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