life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “fun”

Thanks-full for you

Ever meet someone who immediately fits right into your bones? Someone you just want to talk to for 5-10-unlimited days straight, just to see where the conversation could take you? Someone who speaks your language, makes you laugh AND gives you chill bumps in that brief encounter? sigh…I hope you have…cause it’s really good!

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Friendship is like a garden. -Al

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Never put a period where God put a comma… – Al

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy;
they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
-Marcel Proust

filled with graces

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A little drop of the sky, a little drop of the land, a little drop of the sea, on your forehead, beloved one. To protect, to shield and to surround you. The little drop of the Three, to fill you with the graces.
– Traditional Celtic Prayer

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Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.
– Ryunosuke Satoro
photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT

joy comes

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welcome

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watercolor paintings by Mary Lou Peters

October. Its brilliant festival of dry
and moist decay. Its spicy, musky scent.
The church’s parking lot deserted
except for this one witness,
myself, just resting there.

Somewhere a radio plays Flamenco.
A spotlight of sunshine falls on the scattered debris.
Blood-red and gold, a perfect circle of leaves
begins to whirl,
slowly at first, keeping the pattern,
clicking against the blacktop
like heels and castanets,
then faster, faster, faster. . .
round as a ruffle, as the swirling
skirts of an invisible dancer.
Swept off into the tangled woods
by the muscular breeze.
The hoarse cheering of crows.

Inside the dark empty church,
long cool shadows, white-painted wood,
austere Protestant candles thriftily snuffed,
Perhaps a note on the altar,
Gone dancing. Back on Sunday

Outside by Dolores Stewart

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The Crest at Reserve of Turpin

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for Anni

All I do these drawn-out days
is sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge
where there are no pheasants to be seen
and last time I looked, no ridge.

I could drive over to Quail Falls
and spend the day there playing bridge,
but the lack of a falls and the absence of quail
would only remind me of Pheasant Ridge.

I know a widow at Fox Run
and another with a condo at Smokey Ledge.
One of them smokes, and neither can run,
so I’ll stick to the pledge I made to Midge.

Who frightened the fox and bulldozed the ledge?
I ask in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge.

The Golden Years
by Billy Collins

Dearest Anni,
Congratulations on your newest beginning. I will scatter walnuts under your bushes for you to discover regularly. Perhaps Sarah Margaret could do the vista?
I love you my lovely friend

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safety vs. joy

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That our God would only be safe if He were dead.

But He is the Living Word and His Word is a flashing, double-edged sword and He doesn’t write Himself into neat five-point outlines but He is like the wind — and He speaks in parables that subvert and poetry that ignites and metaphors that jolt and there is nothing safe or small or stiff about Him.

That’s what I am thinking as I scrub smudge marks off cupboards, try to wash away all these marks. Thinking what the Beaver said of Aslan:“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver.“Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

There is nothing safe about the Christ who rent the veins and the veil to save us — He is Divine and He is Dangerous and He is Detonating. He is no tame lion.

What did Randy Alcorn say and in the most Scriptural sense? “It’s dangerous faith in our untamed Savior that leads us to the joy we crave.“

And what the world desperately needs is more dangerous disciples of an unsafe God.

He is wholly unsafe and He’s the untame lion whose claws tear into the scales of my thick sins and the ripping away of everything filthy dragon can feel like a burning right through to the heart. I need His perfectly dangerous ways.

Real love is never safe.

Because grace is a dangerous thing and too often those who speak the most about grace are the most graceless of all.

I am just beginning to learn it and see it painfully in me: The modern-day Pharisees focus on avoiding sin and not on ardently loving our Savior.

What all us Pharisees need to experience is this: Ardent love for your Savior is the most direct path of sin avoidance.

What all us Pharisees need to experience is the mystery of the whole of holy Scripture and real crazy love.

“The holy wild is always pervaded with mystery,” writes Mark Buchanan.

Maybe faith isn’t as much formula as the mystery of being drawn to, surrendering to, the overwhelming love and will of the most dangerous Reality in all the universe?
– Ann Voskamp
read full blog at http://www.aholy experience.com

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On this day of your life I believe God wants you to know…

…that safety is not the thing you should look for in the
future. Joy is what you should look for.

Security and joy may not come in the same package.
They can…but they also cannot.
There is no guarantee.

If your primary concern is a guarantee of security,
you may never experience the truest joys of life.
This is not a suggestion that you become reckless,
but it is an invitation to at least become daring.

Neale Donald Walsh
http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com

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I gotz good people who go with me

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This face is all I have, worn and lived in
And lines below my eyes are like old friends
And this old hearts’ been beaten up
And my ragged soul has had things rough
And this face is all I have, worn and lived in

The fairest they can fall bored in believing
Something to achieve, this peaceful feeling
After all these tears are only true
And your silver spoons can’t dig up my roots
And this face is all I have, worn and lived in

Worn and lived in
Through the tides of time
Worn and lived in
This face of mine
And I kept believing, the reflection on the wall
Who needs to be the fairest of them all

I never looked like you, cool and streamlined
I have this honesty that grows with time
And when cracks appear they suit me fine
Like a good old dog you won’t hear me whine
And this face is all I have, worn and lived in

Worn and lived in
Through the tides of time
Worn and lived in
This face of mine
And I kept believing the reflection on the wall
Who needs to be the fairest of them all

Sins and lies, they take the place of truth and answers
You can trade a glance and call it second sight
You cannot buy sympathetic mirrors
And honesty is an answer you cannot find

And I kept believing the reflection on the wall
Who needs to be the fairest of them all

This face is all I have, worn and lived in
And lines below my eyes are like old friends
And this old hearts’ been beaten up
And my ragged soul has had things rough
This face is all I have, worn and lived in
And this face is all I have, worn and lived in
– Willie Nelson

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becoming free like children

Lord, thank you
for setting me free.
Free to blow bubbles,
fly kites,
listen to seashells,
cuddle kittens,
build castles in the sand,
wish on stars.

Thank you
for setting me free.
Free to hunt for four-leaf clovers,
explore oak trees with inviting branches,
run laughing in the rain,
walk barefoot,
jump puddles,
wave at trains.

Thank you
for setting me free.
Free to yellow my nose in buttercups,
catch a firefly to see his light,
pick the first wild strawberry,
count the stars,
talk to ladybugs,
chase a thistle.

Thank you
for setting me free.
Free to see you in
sunlight dancing on the water,
dogwood smiling at the sky,
willows curtseying to the river,
azaleas flaming across the land,
rainbowed cobwebs,
drifting leaves.

Thank you
for setting me free.
Free to play with,
wonder at
and love
all that you have given me.
And free, as well,
to give it back
to you.

Lord, do archangels
need you
as much as I do?

Father, thank you
for setting me free.
Free to be
poor,
little,
weak.

Thank you for setting me free.
Free to be
misunderstood,
rejected,
forgotten.

Thank you
for setting me free.
Free to be
unsatisfied,
empty,
stripped.

Thank you
for setting me free.
Free to
break through,
let go,
enter the flame.

Father, thank you
for setting me free
by binding me
more closely
to yourself.

– Sue Garmen
in Souvenirs of Solitude by Brennan Manning

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Sunday Paper

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I love paper
good quality paper creates
joy and satisfaction
few other things can achieve for me
That being said,
Newspaper makes my skin crawl
Like fingernails on a chalkboard
I hate the feel they have
Hate the ink that always smudges
Leaving traces on my fingers
Feelings and films of grime on my hands
When I was a kid
it was worth it for the ‘funnies’
Even as I would lay them on the floor
and try to touch as little as possible.
Something tells me the rapid decline
of the newspaper industry
has something to do with this feeling.
I would, however, like to experience a good
British Pub
Fish n chips
Wrapped in newspaper
Somehow I like the idea.
Feels romantic
in a messy kinda way –
like a walk in the rain or snow
or a roll in the hay or leaves
or standing beside the ocean as the tide comes in or a drive in a convertible on a summer afternoon.
All the really fun things in life
Leave us messy and a little greasy
smiling and breathless
eyes shining
with crazy hair –
Which we are proud of
In those moments.

AL 10/21/13

in the middle

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The White
by
Patricia Hampl

These are the moments
before snow, whole weeks before.
The rehearsals of milky November,
cloud constructions
when a warm day
lowers a drift of light
through the leafless angles
of the trees lining the streets.
Green is gone,
gold is gone.
The blue sky is
the clairvoyance of snow.
There is night
and a moon
but these facts
force the hand of the season:
from that black sky
the real and cold white
will begin to emerge.

http://www.patriciahampl.com

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