life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Glory”

I am here to tell you morning has come 

there’s this whisper promise 

in the breeze,

a bit of ethereal fog slipping between the sheets 

of night 

and dawn breaking.
there’s this rumor running 

afoot in this new born day,

a sideways glance of something – 

Oh it’s JOY! 

and all this glory burning hot. 
there’s this holy hushing

songs of angels,

a chorus of bluebells

bowing heads

softly clapping

as they watch it all approaching. 
there’s this first blush of light,

smudging darkness,

a bit like the bitter and sweet

mixed each day with our longing 

for joy to come nest. 
there’s a song playing on low

sometimes you forget to remember 

be still and know

as sure as spring follows winter

love always wins

listen to your heartbeat 

joy is our birthright 

right now

morning has come

🌞
Amy Lloyd (AL)


It could happen any time, tornado,

 earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.

 Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could, you know. That’s why we wake

 and look out — no guarantees

 in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,

 like right now, like noon,

 like evening. 
Yes!
-William Stafford

At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

 

 – Albert Schweitzer

your prison is walking through this world all alone  – Deperado (lyric).  

You must leave a lot behind

for your life to become whole.
What the Beloved lets go of

to have you!
If there were a hell 

God would always be there 

carrying people out. 
There is a flock that is not well

without you.
When you think you’ve run away,

proud of your independence,

you’re really just lost.

You need each other. 
All of life is God’s party

at having found you.

Or maybe, today, another.
Don’t be ashamed to be brought in

on the shepherd’s shoulders:

you got lost in the best possible way,

looking for God. 

         

Remember each of the other ninety-nine

came the same way. 

         

         

__________________  

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

listen to Love is My Religion



and before it can be begun

the wind whips the wisps of promise

out of our reaching hands

the hard ground dries the wettest seeds

the thorny earth strangles

the fragile thin ice easily breaking

plunges us under the dark icy water of yesterday’s pain

the sensitive places choke us

we allow old wounds to be reopened 

by new innocents

replay 

rewind

again and again

life is not always kind

love is not always given a chance to bloom

buds crushed early

unicorns are tricky

yeti never let themselves be fully seen

or photographed

quickly disappearing into the foggy forest 

yes, truth is written by those in the know:

“it is ours to win or lose”

so, what will we choose?

to step in or duck out?

some people love to talk loud about the desire to win

then secretly, swiftly throw the game

and silently walk away

thinking they are playing life safe

fear is a brutal master

comfort-zones will kill us all

though we’ll keep 

breathing for many years

trust is a deep quarry hidden within

the high walls of the castle

each kingdom must be won 

the beast slain by our courageous spirit

removing the massive heads of the monsters

with the found sword of our personal truths

Envision holding those fearful grotesque trophies aloft!

Stepping into your full name! 

Champion

Conquerer

Love always wins! 

You must choose it! 

You can do it,

were born that way! 

Amy Lloyd (AL)


All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that’s a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.
― Paulo Coelho 


Read that again:

All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that’s a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.
― Paulo Coelho 

where’ve you been? 

The rising moon has hid the stars;

Her level rays, 

like golden bars,
       

Lie on the landscape green,
     

 With shadows brown between.
And silver white the river gleams,

As if Diana, in her dreams,
     

 Had dropt her silver bow
       

Upon the meadows low.
On such a tranquil night as this,

She woke Endymion with a kiss,
       

When, sleeping in the grove,
       

He dreamed not of her love.
Like Dian’s kiss, 

unasked, unsought,

Love gives itself, but is not bought;
       

Her voice, nor sound betrays
      

 Its deep, impassioned gaze.
It comes,

—the beautiful, the free,

The crown of all humanity,—
     

  In silence and alone
      

 To seek the elected one.
It lifts the boughs, 

whose shadows deep,

Are Life’s oblivion, the soul’s sleep,
       

And kisses the closed eyes
     

  Of him, who slumbering lies.
O, weary hearts! O, slumbering eyes!

O, drooping souls, whose destinies
       

Are fraught with fear and pain,
       

Ye shall be loved again!
No one is so accursed by fate,

No one so utterly desolate,
    

   But some heart, though unknown,
       

Responds unto his own.
Responds,

—as if with unseen wings,

A breath from heaven had touched its strings
    

   And whispers, in its song,
      

“Where hast though stayed so long!”

😍
  – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


I’ll always want to drive with you.

I’ll always want to trace 

all the corners of the world 

with my own bare hands. 

We’ll whirl by the exits like flight. 

Like wind. 

Two birds collecting stories. 

Breaking all cages. 

Chasing our whims.

Maybe we could leave tonight

without falling far behind

we’ll shed our pain and armor

and be in this music,

these dreams, 

these roads.

Yours and mine.

We’ll find the center 

of everything

and we will ride.

We’ll just drive.

🚘

by Victoria Erickson, Writer



tons and tons of sparkles 


Did you know that whenever you feel love, you literally begin to glow? You probably did. 
But did you know that the glowing is actually made up of zillions of minute sparkles? And that these sparkles receive as much energy as they create? And that because of this energy exchange you completely stop aging and look younger? Abundance is immediately drawn to you? Healing powers fill you? Muscles are strengthened, pounds are shed, and your vision improves? Lingering questions are answered? New friends are summoned? Old friends are poked? Problems are solved? And maple syrup tastes more maple-y? 
All when you feel love. 
It’s true, 

    The Universe

      http://www.tut.com


Ms. Nature is moody one

the sky is varying shades 

of pale baby blue

the water is like a silver mirror

endless beautiful

the same rocks that glittered 

like a million diamonds 

just yesterday 

are silent today

big dependable rocks

ready for Monday work week

still the same 

still awesome

still beautiful

just in a different mood

today the brilliant emerald moss

on those huge rocks suspended 

in the metallic mercury

glow against the silver

I think of Ireland

my draw to visit

the Emerald Isle

on the other side of this pond

life is different 

yet the same

the oyster boat trolls

a heron waits until

just the right moment

then takes off 

flying so close to the water 

on and on 

until I lose him in the horizon

I feel like him 

waiting for my moment

resting for the next phase of flight

and in the fullness of time

at just the right nudge

I will take that breath and 

fly

staying close to the water

my source of life

as the epic journey home 

continues

My heart knows for sure

my love story has 

a very happy ending

💚

Amy Lloyd (AL)


Holy One, Divine Lover,

I am your image.

Your glory, your love,

your life, your grace

is folded up in me 

a thousand times

and this, my life,

is your unfolding

like a rose.

Each day your beauty emerges,

each moment your light unfolds

in me.

I honor this mystery. I trust it. 

I give thanks, 

that even in ugly places

you unfold your beauty in me,

each breath one of the infinite

petals of God.
In the rose garden of God

I marvel at the variety.

I walk with gentle wonder.  

I give thanks

that in each of us

you give yourself

to all of us. 
__________________  

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

http://www.onbeing.org/blog/david-whyte-the-house-of-belonging/8886

I cannot tell you anything that you are not already capable of knowing yourself.

Nor can I give you anything that is not already at your fingertips.

You have all the answers within your own Being to all of the questions you or anyone else may ask.
Each of us has enormous capacity of Being.

So what is it that we want or need from each other?

Value; We have the capacity to value ourselves and in doing so we set our own value.

Companionship; We experience companionship with others to the capacity that we have companionship with ourselves.
How can I understand others, if I don’t understand myself?
You reflect to me what is already within my own awareness whether I am awake to it or not.

What most of us are looking for outside of ourselves is a reflection, a mirror of what lies within us so that we can gaze upon ourselves.
As I gaze upon myself in the reflection of you

I see the beauty that hides within me
In your grief I touch on the grief I hide inside

In your laughter, laughter is ignited within me
Your Joy radiates and pierces the Joy laden in me

So that we can be in Joy
Your Spirit Unites with Mine as we gaze at Beauty emanated by a flower
This must mean that Beauty enables us to see our harmony 

 A harmony so perfect that nothing can escape it
As I connect to the world outside of myself it reflects me to you and you to me
We are in concert with the great symphony of the Cosmos

Infinitely expressing itself
In those special tender moments when I touch something in me gazing at you

I can hear the masterpiece sweeping us away

I can see the Vision drawing us near

I can smell the fragrance of our essence
For You Are a Part of Me and I am a Part of You

Endless Reflections of the One in Us

🎭

Reflections of Me

© 2014 Mechel Gallaway All rights Reserved


the wild & salty now 


Welcome and entertain them all

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

🏡

Parker J. Palmer with a light-hearted metaphor from Rumi — on the unexpected visitor and welcoming her in, serendipitous chaos and all.


I paddled a small boat

through wind and waves in the open sea,

the wind wanting to wipe me sideways,

waves lurching me about,

the constant pressing, the effort, 

the all aloneness of it,

a little dot in an ocean wide of green,

the struggle so welcome, so satisfying,
because I was there. 
I have climbed mountains and hiked deserts,

raised children and journeyed through a marriage

simply to be there.
You have swung the hammer, sewed the seams, 

taken the bus, changed the diapers,

recovered from the illness, done the time.

You run races, you wash dishes,

you row your body through its failings,

you work the work of youth or of aging,

you put your shoulder to it.

Even in prayer’s stillness

you go the distance.
This is the holy pilgrimage:

to meet the given day.

You give yourself to this moment as it is,

hand to hand, all in,

and beyond all accomplishment

you are given the gift 

of this life.

You come home with salt in your hair

and a whole wide sea in your heart. 

      
__________________  

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net


Yesterday afternoon I watched Kate Hudson die in her movie,

A Bit of Heaven,

and I thought about how important our little bit of time is here on this earth. 

The vast importance of now! 

To never hold back sharing our love,

our bit of time here with the ones we love. 

This morning, as I scrolled through my Facebook feed,

I read posts from various friends,

anniversaries of loss. 

The shock of too young loss. 

The bewilderment of unexpected loss. 

The anger of longing for the love loss. 

Missing persons. 

Persons missing persons. 

I listened to the music these friends shared. 

Music chosen in a very personal, intimate way,

helping them deal, 

bringing them comfort,

tapping into their passion, 

their anger,

their extreme feelings,

their great oceans of emotion. 

Music helping them allow,

helping them to move,

helping them release,

as they remain here, feeling left and bereft. 

Music. Always music. 

I cried with them, 

for them,

for my own tsunami of losses. 

As their music poured into me,

I felt their particular loss, 

and I stood along side them and held them in love. 

I honor the grieving hearts of the world. 

I honor the gift, and power, of music. 

🎼

Amy Lloyd (AL)


exposé   


It’s happened 

time and time again…

yet this time more so 

than anything, 

capital…ANYTHING…

ever before. 

don’t you think it’s strange,

how a shared pancake can be life changing?

it was the opposite of the final straw. 

it was the catalyst for the rising curtain of the beginning,

starting a chain reaction of Biblical proportion,

a new free-fall dive 

into the inner deep,

silence tearing up the very foundations 

of the ocean floor,   

of this life lived on the dangerous edges

of the radical cliffs of self-examination. 

Seven days of seismic eruption 

creating volcanic activity so great 

that dreams, 

long gestating in the souls womb,

burst forth – 

born, 

ready to scream in their own voice, 

into this wonderful world. 

as if no longer able to remain

hidden inside their clay container. 

Seven days so extraordinary 

they have changed my world

as I have always known it. 

uncovering the naked bones of my foundation,

exposing the shadowy villains of my learned weaknesses,

giving me new strength to heal those newly uncovered, 

rotted, shattered places.

in this place of my own choosing

I walk, choosing to be soft, 

in spite of the gripping fear. 

I choose vulnerability as my guide forward, 

into the fury of places I have long avoided. 

somehow, all of this,

including not knowing much of things 

I dearly wish I knew,

brings me hope for the brilliant future 

of this long-awaited life,

no longer holding back

but fully, wholly, inhabited,

at this current phase of growth,

as it should be

when we fall completely,

head over heels,

in love. 

🔥

Amy Lloyd (AL)



Love, like fire, can only reveal its brightness On the failure and beauty of burnt wood.           – Philippe Jaccottet   

Everyone is having a hard time. Everyone is insecure. Everyone is hassled. Everyone is tired–we all need more sleep. Everyone wishes he had more courage, more money, and better social skills. Everyone wants more glamour in his life, and we all desperately need more laughter. Few can figure out how they ended up living the life they lead. Don’t be misled by flippant talk; it’s a battle for everyone.
🔥

– Joshua Halberstam​


the flesh covers the bone  

and they put a mind  

in there and  

sometimes a soul,  

and the women break  

vases against the walls  

and the men drink too  

much  

and nobody finds the  

one  

but keep  

looking  

crawling in and out  

of beds.  

flesh covers  

the bone and the  

flesh searches  

for more than  

flesh.  

 

there’s no chance  

at all:  

we are all trapped  

by a singular  

fate.  

 

nobody ever finds  

the one.  

 

the city dumps fill  

the junkyards fill  

the madhouses fill  

the hospitals fill  

the graveyards fill  

 

nothing else  

fills.

Alone With Everybody by Charles Bukowski


in the world between worlds

where the shimmering abstract

holds all the secrets within us

words are absent

no scripture exists

there are no definitions

as there is no need for such things

in our eternal knowing 

we are ever-being known

the mystic colors of God fill us

unseeable in this earthly realms obscured vision 

they hold us there 

where we don’t need to be understood 

or understand anything

we are simply

all we could ever hope to be

we are the lover and the beloved

eternal love

eternally loved 

complete

You in I

I in you

one

until the scab scraping 

demand of this waking earth

this illusion glazed moment we choose to serve

pulls us completely blinded

into a day in a life

pushes us ass-backward 

into the harsh reality

of jaded time

of hard-earned, hard-learned experience 

of continually disappointed expectation

of broken hearts, once tender

of broken dreams, once beautiful 

broken everything, once whole and healthy

and instead of fighting for our very lives,

we put away our dreaming space,

as if it were somehow the wrong

we decide we’ve learned the truth – 

that love hurts –

though what we’ve learned is trickery –

because true love sets us free

and so we surrender to 

the soul-sucking zombie apocalypse of our addictions,

our chosen favored forms of slavery

as the children of chattel always do

not knowing our vast worth

our royal bloodline

our supreme destiny

we clothe ourselves in useless, flimsy armor 

our only known defense. 

we use fools gold 

cheap drug store variety,

Madison avenue, false-advertisement protection, 

these rabbits feet of proclaimed luck,

these traps of anger, arrogance and pride,

against the barbarian onslaught

of what we have been brainwashed to accept

as important 

the carnivorous eating of our flesh

by the demands of our own complex making

focused only on our foolish collecting of silly objects,

overrated treasures and pleasures 

as we ignore our need for love

choosing instead to battle

the cannibals salivating at every corner

waiting for us to stumble and weaken

so they can take our place at the top of the illusive list 

of whatever sort 

we have entered into 

as our arena of competition  

eventually they will toast to their victories over us 

with our own fresh, falling blood

pouring from the golden goblets we ourselves had taken from another 

we accept it as normal

as we attend to the business of forgetting 

who we are

pretending to be full

as we starve to death

in order to get just a little bit more than those waiting 

for what will never satisfy any of us 

lusting for salt 

even as we faint from dehydration 
we live, lonely, in empty mansions

forgetting all that makes a house glow

is the home light burning inside of our other to warm our bones

in order to impress those who will never truly know us, love us, or want our best to be honored 

in order to arrive at the end of our hourglass 

dragging what we will not be able take with us…
we trade our chance to be truly remarkable

to create singular intimacy

we see our chance to find gardens of happiness,

to build something as mind boggling as the seven wonders,

and we choose to ignore it

as we continue on.

too busy, too consumed,

to stop for a moment,

just one moment,

to take off our shoes,

fall down and worship…

to allow the lover into our heart –

as though love isn’t important enough for the likes of us

why do we go about wasting our opportunity here?

how can we awaken to the highest and best within ourselves?

how can we choose to lay our hearts bare in vulnerability?

how can we empty the deepest motes of fear and isolation?

why do we trade love for ash?

why would we ever do such a thing? 

why?

Let us return again to where we began…

the joyous place of our belonging

to the passion and wild danger inside our freedom loving hearts

children on Christmas morning 

full of sheer wonder and excitement 

at the beauty of who we are 

passionately in love with our created uniqueness

the fullest colors of our self unleashed

living worship eternally under vast blue skies

shining from our highest place, 

with the extreme audacity, 

the sheer wonder and glory

of our calling as love

pure love

I in you

You in I

as we 

the many

become 

the one 

💞

Amy Lloyd (AL)



Many of us seek that which we will flee if we find it. I have seen this time and again, both in myself and in others. We seek, we search, and then we find a calling or a relationship that is a perfect reflection of our yearning and we turn away and go back to seeking, almost as though the light of our true-path was too bright for us, too vulnerable for us, too real for us. This is a pattern that we have to recognize and heal or else we will never stop looking for what is already there. True-path is not always around the next corner. Sometimes it’s right under our feet…

🛤

  Jeff Brown

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

~Erich Fromm

the space between breaths


All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.

    – Octavia E. Butler


fierce surrender
relentlessly engaged
In a loud and howling world, it’s in the silence of a broken heart that the chambers of you can hear the sound of God speaking. It’s in the emptiness that happens in the wake of a broken heart, that God fills you with Himself.
Soundlessly, relentlessly praying through your spaces of brokenness makes the heart bigger, until you hold the gift of God alone.
I memorize the white of the moon. Freeze frame the Farmer grinning in the white light of it there on the tractor seat, the peak of his feed cap pulled low over his face. We get to inhale. We get to live every day like it might be our last —- because one of these days, we’re guaranteed to be right.
We get to surrender to the glory, to the weight of it coming through the thinning sky, and there’s nothing in this world that’s normal — there’s only growing blind to the glory. There’s only growing blind to the injustice, to the blood on our own hands, to the love we could make, to the One who says, “Holy Father, keep them in Your name…. —- that they may be one, even as we are one” (John ‪17:11‬) to the truth that we all belong to one another. It’s the cynics who wear armour to shield the heart from all this beauty that wounds.
You are perishable here.

Taste the moments accordingly.
Taste the space between every breath like it is bread, the space between the stars where you and he are just for now, the space between you and faces you love and being here no more, the spaces between the pain, between you and streets of grief, between you and injustice and war and mothers cradling their babies in fear, and learn to love before it’s too late. I need to etch that into me.
You are perishable here, Taste the moments accordingly —

You get to decide whether you are going to taste it, all of it and know that God is good and enjoy Him and make your life about others tasting His goodness too.
You get to decide whether you’re going to spend your one life trying to make an impression and look good —  or make a difference and do good.
You don’t get long here before you get to be a memory — so make your life about getting thirsty people glasses of water.

💧

    – Ann Voskamp

blog: aholyexperience.com


Isaiah 6
There were banks of candles flickering in the distance and clouds of incense thickening the air with holiness and stinging his eyes, and high above him, as if it had always been there but was only now seen for what it was (like a face in the leaves of a tree or a bear among the stars), there was the Mystery Itself, whose gown was the incense and the candles a dusting of gold at the hem. There were winged creatures shouting back and forth the way excited children shout to each other when dusk calls them home, and the whole vast, reeking place started to shake beneath his feet like a wagon going over cobbles, and he cried out, “O God, I am done for! I am foul of mouth and the member of a foul-mouthed race. With my own two eyes I have seen him. I’m a goner and sunk.” Then one of the winged things touched his mouth with fire and said, “There, it will be all right now,” and the Mystery Itself said, “Who will it be?” and with charred lips he said, “Me,” and Mystery said “Go.”
Mystery said, “Go give the deaf hell till you’re blue in the face and go show the blind heaven till you drop in your tracks, because they’d sooner eat ground glass than swallow the bitter pill that puts roses in the cheeks and a gleam in the eye. Go do it.”

Isaiah said, “Do it till when?”

Mystery said, “Till hell freezes over.”

Mystery said, “Do it till the cows come home.”

And that is what a prophet does for a living and, starting from the year that King Uzziah died, when he saw and heard all these things, Isaiah went and did it.

🔥

~ Frederick Buechner originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words


What is your unrelenting passion?

My Beloved said, “My name is not complete without yours.”

And I thought, How could a human’s worth ever be such?

And God knowing all of our thoughts, and all our thoughts are just innocent steps on the path, then addressed my heart.

God revealed a sublime truth to the world when He sang

“I am made whole by your life. Each soul, each soul completes Me.”
– Hafiz


wicked surprises of the call 


God goes out for whiskey Friday night,

Staggers back Monday morning

Empty-handed, no explanation.
After three nights of not sleeping,

Three nights of listening for

His footsteps, His mules sliding
Deftly under my bed, I stand

At the stove, giving him my back,

Wearing the same tight, tacky dress, same slip,
Same seamed stockings I’d put on before He left.

He leans on the kitchen table, waiting

For me to make him His coffee.  
I watch the water boil,  

Refuse to turn around,

Wonder how to leave Him. 
Woman, He slurs, when have I ever done

What you wanted me to do?

❓❓❓❓

Reason by Robin Coste Lewis


Get off my back, God.

Take your claws out of my shoulder.

I’d like to throw you off

like I would brush off some particularly repellent insect!

Sometimes I get the feeling that if I could turn round

quick enough

I would see you

grinning at me,

full of glee, plotting, scheming, devious, challenging

The hell with all this stuff about fire and storm

and still, quiet waters.

I’ve got your number.

I’ve unmasked you.

I’d like to throw you off

like I would brush off some

particularly repellent insect.

You’re a daemon!

Unfortunately, you seem to have this great attachment

to me.

Actually, being honest, I know in my heart

I’d miss you if you weren’t there,

leering at me, reminding me of
death and dread and destiny,

winding me up and puncturing

my pretensions.

I know, with a sinking feeling in my gut

that all the best of me 

–
the fire and storm, 

and even, now and then, still waters,

are born out of the death-defying struggle

that we wage,

my dearest daemon.

💪🏻

Wresting With God by Kathy Galloway


I didn’t ask for this,

did I?

in fact, I believe I tried to block it, 

avoid it at all costs. 

But here I am feeling 

outta sorts,

facing my bittersweet days. 

Wondering where the hell

this is gonna take me?

What is my purpose here?

here, 

where I lived my experiment for 5 years?

here,

what was taken 

now returns,

and I am not sure what to do with it…

light it up

or 

burn it down?

all I know is this is the place

I have been called to 

at this moment 

for only God knows what,

and He’s not talking,

hasn’t shown his face in weeks. 

I must rely on this silly sliver of a promise,

that it is meant for my good 

– somehow,

someway. 

Any-hoo,

Trust is a ruthless business,

an extreme proposition to live. 

I am not leaning to my own understanding, 

or natural desires,

even a bitty-bit, 

or I definitely wouldn’t be right here

 – right now

or anytime in the future. 

Yet here I am,

standing on this holiest of my profane grounds,

way out in the back forty

of thecomfort zone,

knowing beyond knowing,

I’m in the only place 

I’m supposed to be 

right now.  

This is where the magic happens. 

🌎

Amy Lloyd (AL)


God wants to encounter you with His love, so you can become a light everywhere you go, your life will shout to the world, ‘I’ve seen Him, I’ve felt Him. I’ve heard His voice. He is alive. He is here with us. In us. For us.’



rest in the miracle that has always already happened!    – Fred LaMotte


When the world does not conform

to the story in my head

I get a feeling that

“something’s not right.”

Why is the story in my head

not down-loading properly?
Why do I sense that the world

needs to be fixed

and I must repair what is “wrong”

by imposing my story

onto the mystery

of the ineluctable?
Yet the world is not a problem.

The problem is

there’s a story in my head
but it’s not quite the same

as your story, is it?
And so there is conflict,

there is suffering,

even if our stories are about

salvation, about justice

and equality, the perfect

marriage, the cleanest

environment, or gaining

enlightenment…
Happiness cannot arise

if we slather the world in the thin

veneer of our narration.

Happiness is the dance

of atoms ordered by

the dynamics of chaos

in the heart of the now

when we let both story

and teller disperse

like a fine mist,
when we let things clarify

all by themselves

the way silt filters and falls

through a mountain brook

in liquid transparency.
Now rest in the miracle

that has always

already happened.

Just shut up and see.

A rain cloud vanishes.

There are crystal drops on

blades of grass, each containing

the sun.
💫

SOMETHING’S NOT QUITE RIGHT by Alfred LaMotte

Let us go forward quietly, forever making for the light…

   Vincent Van Gogh 

these anniversaries 

the marking of dates

building Ebenezer memorials 

from the stones of help

bringing me to this place

tasting again

the bitter herbs

the roasted lamb

the flat bread

the milk and honey flowing over everything 

the fresh dates and figs 

of now

sitting with this

bitter-sweet

sweet-bitter

this life

this love

this past

this practice 

this present 

this grateful 

that gratitude 

that changing

this constant

this birth

this death

this resurrection 

always this love

ah this love

just. 

this. 

love. 

always the path of thanks

always the gifts presenting 

along the diamond road

this is my tradition

my version of holiday 

each one

my best of days

my worst of days

feeling it wrapping around my senses

these memories clouds 

wrapping around me

enveloped from behind me

me always facing forward

always facing toward the rising moment just ahead

the path before me the most important 

always remembering,

along with that other Southern Belle…

tomorrow is another day…

the best is always yet to be! 

🗓

AL 7/23/16 gratitude/tradition


Life

                                    truly             

                            is beauty                

                    beauty                                     

           salted                                                     

        by rare moments                                           

of exquisite suffering.    
 Life

  truly             

    is suffering               

              suffering                                    

  peppered                                              

           by rare moments                                           

of exquisite beauty.    

         

🌹                   

https://www.claudiuskeepsakes.com/collections/frontpage/products/duality-of-life-mug


there’s this summer song

of cool wind on my skin, 

playing sweet percussion through the tall, lush marsh grass

gentle water

invisible birds singing in surround sound

my heart resonates with the language we have spoken

the songs we have sung

the rich vibrations of our connection

over the past few days

the new sun warms my back

my shadow sits large

writing poems

this silence my gratitude

this morning my pleasure

this day my gift

this moment my life

thank you for reaching out 

for breaking through the darkness

for holding my hand
💞

AL


The worst isn’t the last thing about the world. It’s the next to the last thing. The last thing is the best. It’s the power from on high that comes down into the world, that wells up from the rock-bottom worst of the world like a hidden spring. Can you believe it? The last, best thing is the laughing deep in the hearts of the saints, sometimes our hearts even. Yes. You are terribly loved and forgiven. Yes. You are healed. All is well. 

     – Frederick Buechner 

      The Final Beast


Then I walked 

straight forward

out of the gate,

through the wood,

along the river,

toward the mountain
and I thought of the future

I could make in the world

if I walked toward it

like this,

with my face toward the hills

and my eyes full of light

and the earth sure

and solid beneath me,

walking

with a fierce anticipation,

and a faithful expectation,

with the sun and the rain

and the wind on my skin

and that old sense…

of many paths

breaking from one path.
So learning to walk

in morning light

like this again,

we’ll take our first 

light step

toward mortality,

walking

out of the garden,

through the woods,

along the river,

toward the mountain,

its simple,

that’s what we’ll do,

practicing as we go

and

we’ll be glimpsed, 

traveling westward, 

no longer familiar,

a following wave,

greeted, as we were at our birth,

as probable 

and slightly 

dangerous strangers,

someone

coming into view,

someone about

to find out.
Some wild 

and improbable risk 

about to break 

on the world again.
..
David Whyte

Adapted from LEARNING TO WALK

From RIVER FLOW: 

New and Selected Poems


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