Faith | life: acoustic & amplified

Archive for the category “Faith”

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

06 Jul 2015

questions that don’t go away…

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest
breathing

like the ones

in the old stories
who could cross

a shimmering bed of dry leaves

without a sound,
you come

to a place

whose only task
is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.
requests to stop what

you are doing right now,

and
to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,
questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,
questions

that have patiently

waited for you,
questions that have no right

to go away.

🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂

Sometimes by David Whyte

Listen to Norah Jones sing Things You Don’t Have to Do http://youtu.be/mdyQCRgtDhM
🍂🍃🍁🍃🍂🍁🍃🍂🍁🍃🍂🍁

Photo sources found on www.pinterest.com/al513

Posted in action, Adventure, Alone, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, Change, Choice, commitment, Faith, find art at pinterest, Letting Go, Life, mystery, nature, soul and spirit, strength, truth, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

04 Jul 2015

Happy 4th

I’m reading a book on hope

which sounds like I’ve taken up tatting

old fashioned and harmless
hope is unpopular

even Buddhists diss it telling us to live

in one awful moment at a time

and these days almost everyone wants to be a Buddhist
hope is hard to grasp when your imagination’s

grown fat on darkness

like the thick underside of a mushroom
tragedy is grand scale

predictably beautiful in its way

hope is hokey

imperfect full of stumbling little acts
the way a strand of neighbors standing in the rain

on the shoulder of Highway One American flags

in their hands and homemade signs:

Peace is Patriotic

can make another strand start up

even in the imagination
standing on a curve of the coast highway

where the land seems to fall away

into the open mouth of the ocean

their bodies like flags

waving sloppily

steadfast in the downpour

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
How to Hope by Katharine Harer – with thanks to Rebecca Solnit for her book, Hope in the Dark

💙❤️💙❤️💙❤️🇺🇸

Listen to Los Lobos/Grateful Dead sing This Land is Your Land http://youtu.be/zM18HENqNbk

❤️

But the day is past. The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.

John Adams

July 03, 1776 to Abigail Adams

read full letter at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/john-adams-to-abigail-adams-2/

Posted in America, Blessing, courage, Faith, Freedom, Gratitude, Happy Holiday!, Life, Peace, Respect | Leave a comment

02 Jul 2015

picture this

a photograph

a memory

a poem

a song

a kiss

a touch

a slap

a smile

a frown

a gift

a breath

a pause

a word –

of love or hate or truth or lie

all vivid pictures

memorials in a lifetime

of moments never to be forgotten

snapshots of a single frame in time

just a shutter-length

a stutter-length

an eye-lash blink

never to be here again –

yet never to be gone –

always within us

they live forever

we live forward

becoming the collective

of all these moments

as we grow

with each opportunity

we choose to become –

more or less –

we gain courage

we live with integrity

with truth.

or we remain hidden

afraid to let go of what’s gone.

we make these choices every instant we live –

every moment ours to decide:

to be,

or not to be?

yes, Mr. Shakespeare,

that, is still, the question.

Listen to Rosemary Clooney sing Sway http://youtu.be/eWI5tyS_sTg 😘😘😘😘😘😘😘😘😘😘

Top photo by Fisherman Dan @ Branford CT

bottom photo source @ www.pinterest.com/al513

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

There was nothing there when I heard a voice.

Haven’t you had a strangeness like this?

I did not respond right away, ignoring it,

and its restlessness increased.

I chucked it off as imagination.

Haven’t you ignored queasy feelings?

Perhaps it was from the empty fields,

but there was stillness in the grass and air.

This uneasiness followed me into the car

and went with me.

When stillness is so quiet, nothing is heard.

There was nothing in my house.

Nothing in the sky. Nothing in the isolated miles.

The voice persisted.

Ever ignore something that refused to be ignored?

It was telling me to enjoy and love.

The message was everywhere it needed to be.

All I had to do was listen—then it was everywhere.

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

When Stillness Is Heard by Martin Willitts, Jr.

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Change, Choice, courage, Faith, inspiration, Letting Go, Life, Love, Passion, Relationships, touch, Trust, truth | Leave a comment

01 Jul 2015

nothing is worth more than this day!

Your life isn’t behind you; your memories are behind you. Your life is ALWAYS ahead of you. Today is a new day. Seize it! – Steve Maraboli

Listen to Frank Sinatra sing The Best Is Yet to Come http://youtu.be/TOyeyOEmFtE

🍒🍓🍎🍉🍊🍏🍑🍌🍇🍋🍐

Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513

Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Choice, commitment, courage, determination, Faith, find art at pinterest, inspiration, intimacy, Letting Go, Life, Love, Passion, Patience, power, Relationships, soul and spirit, strength, Trust, truth, 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

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….