life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “grace”

27 Jul 2016

quest for that shade of blue


When the light lessens,

Causing colors to lose their courage,

And your eyes fix on the empty distance

That can open on either side

Of the surest line

To make all that is

Familiar and near

Seem suddenly foreign,
When the music of talk

Breaks apart into noise

And you hear your heart louden

While the voices around you

Slow down to leaden echoes

Turning the silence Into something stony and cold,
When the old ghosts come back

To feed on everywhere you felt sure,

Do not strengthen their hunger

By choosing to fear;

Rather, decide to call on your heart

That it may grow clear and free

To welcome home your emptiness 

That it may cleanse you

Like the clearest air

You could ever breathe. 
Allow your loneliness time

To dissolve the shell of dross

That had closed around you;

Choose in this severe silence

To hear the one true voice

Your rushed life fears;

Cradle yourself like a child

Learning to trust what emerges,

So that gradually 

You may come to know
That deep in that black hole 

You will find the blue flower

That holds the mystical light 

Which will illuminate in you

The glimmer of springtime. 

💙

A Blessing for Loneliness by John O’Donohue  


Alone and lost

    at the edge

    of an ocean

    of memories,
    a heart of the deepest blue

        beats

    to the slow monotony

    of a swaying metronome;
found in the crashing waves

    of a dark desolate shore.

 
The weeping wind,

    with its hidden whispers,

    murmurs her name;
as nights they walked

    hand in hand
        flashback into view.
Haunting the torn fabric of his soul.

💔

Shipwrecked heart by AllPoetry member, Halosonthemoon

read the rest here: http://ow.ly/eO4E302oGFH


when I ride the nights ragged hours

when my loneliness rages with ruthless, restless, too warm turning 

when heaven is that smudge of light

seen beside the farthest star

when sleep is torn from my hungry grasp

and I am left without an inch of satisfaction 

from the feathers beneath my head

when I open my eyes to the same shade of black

I see with them closed

then I feel the disappearance of my desire to conform

my self is borderless at 3 am

my pretensions dissolve into this dark

I surrender to my grief

as well as to my hope

I swim to the other end of the bed

to cooler pastures

I visit the sheep 

living among the stuff 

down there

I listen as they recited the 23rd Psalm 

to reassure my nervous entering

in that strange world

I hear all the sounds from this new dimension 

my mind takes on the shape of new perspective 

alert to this unusual adventure 

I cry a little

laugh a little

think about the glory of love

the world turns on its axis

I breath free

I fly home

💞

AL


I am a sheep

and I like it

because the grass

I lie down in

feels good and the still

waters are restful and right

there if I’m thirsty

and though some valleys

are very chilly there is a long

rod that prods me so I

direct my hooves

the right way

though today

I’m trying hard

to sit at a table

because it’s expected

required really

and my enemies—

it turns out I have enemies—

are watching me eat and

spill my drink

but I don’t worry because

all my enemies do

is watch and I know

I’m safe if I will

just do my best

as I sit on this chair

that wobbles a bit

in the grass

on the side of a hill.

🐏

Here In The Psalm by Sally Fisher


Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone. As if life

were a progressive and cunning crime

with no witness to the tiny hidden

transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny

the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

out your solo voice You must note

the way the soap dish enables you,

or the window latch grants you freedom.

Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

The stairs are your mentor of things

to come, the doors have always been there

to frighten you and invite you,

and the tiny speaker in the phone

is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into

the conversation. The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness and

seen the good in you at last. All the birds

and creatures of the world are unutterably

themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

🌎

Everything is Waiting for You by David Whyte

from Everything is Waiting for You

©2003 Many Rivers Press


photo sources found at pinterest.com


Posted in Adventure, Alone, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, beloved, Change, Choice, connection, courage, dark, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, grace, Gratitude, healing, laugh, Letting Go, Life, Lonely, Love, Relationships, soul and spirit, Trust, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
24 Jul 2016

soul feelings

He Played Three Violin Parts At Once, The Result Is A Spine-Tingling Version Of ‘Hallelujah’ You’ll Never Forget.


Music has been used for a variety of purposes, but many uses have been forgotten and lost. Work chants were used with sailors, field workers, slaves and soldiers to increase their productivity. Musical rhythms created patterns of organization and control movement – for an activity such as rowing a boat. It created unity and cooperation among workers. The musical rhythm set a work pace. It also helped people focus on the music and not the hard, and arduous work.
Some songs give people identity, like “our” song, and songs for a sports team or a group or nation. Jingles can persuade people to accept a certain point of view. Jingles are used extensively in China to promote political points of view and in advertising to encourage people to buy a product.
When ancient conquerors came into a new land, they quickly outlawed local music – as their music strengthened identity in a culture and its old ways. The Russians did this in Finland during World War II, outlawing the music, Finlandia, as it gave the local people courage and strength. Music has more power than we give it credit for.
Special uplifting music can change a person’s outlook, creating a window to heaven – a new way of feeling and thinking. Ancient people referred to music that altered and uplifted a person’s conscious as the “music of the spheres.”
Author Viola Pettit Neal, wrote about a novel use of music, “The conquest of evil will ultimately be accomplished by use of rituals of sound and form. For evil is that which is disharmonious and cannot exist in harmonious pattern of sound and form. The word ‘ritual’ in its true definition is an orderly movement of sound and geometrical form in sequential patterns.”[1] Neal suggests that harmonious music can overcome disharmony (evil). Many African tribes surround someone who has behaved badly, singing their name and song to them – reestablishing harmony. It makes sense that Osama bin Laden outlawed music for his followers. Guess it would be hard to prepare for a suicide bombing mission, when you were humming a breezy Beach Boys tune. Such harmony would make it near impossible to get people do heinous deeds.
Could we use music to change people that have done unscrupulous things? Why not use harmonic and healing music: In prisons, with children in trouble or business with poor reputations? Where negotiations are taking place? What about on a war front? How serious could people be about fighting, when everyone was singing Silent Night?
Research has shown that people easily believe others in a distant country are enemies – if they don’t know them. In contrast, if they know the people, they don’t want them to be hurt. What about sharing songs from countries to lesson international tension? If people like a country’s music, it will be harder to demonize their people – as the enemy. For example, racism against black people declined in the end of the last century, when young people loved black rap music.
The people of Estonia, a small Romanian country, had been slaves for thousands of years. As slaves, they were demoralized. When the abusive Czars were shot, the Estonians saw their chance for freedom, but had no courage to seize the opportunity. In a country of only a million people, half of them sang nonstop for a week. The energy created from singing – realigned their “will,” determination and spirit. They rose up and boldly gained their freedom.
Shortly after Hitler took control of Poland, Russia overpowered the Romanian countries. Under Stalin’s rule about a third of Estonians were randomly forced to work in Siberia. Most died. This practice terrorized the people. Later, Hitler as well as the Russians, enslaved Estonian men and forced them to fight against each other, with brothers killing brothers. Pain colored the Estonians with fear, shame, and horror; once again, breaking the spirit of the people.
After World War II, the Russian occupation created harsh conditions, little food, no jobs, no places to live, but plenty of fear. When the communist regime fell, the Estonian people found themselves again beaten down with no strength to gain their freedom.
Once again, the Estonian people came together with a song-festival for five days, with a half of million people attending. Afterwards, the Estonia people gained their freedom, crediting their courage to the energy created by singing. To this day the Estonian people hold a song-festival every five years.
Sound and music is chock full of hidden energy. Music is invisible, but its powers are greater than we ever dreamed of.
[1] Viola Pettit Neal, Through the Curtain, 1962. 

by 

Jill Mattson

 jill@jillshealingmusic.com


I love you wild –

like oceans, volcanoes, tsunamis and bees

I love you natural –

like seasons, rainbows, and falling leaves

I love you large –

like Grand Canyon’s,   

the mountains and sky

I love you small – 

like the atom, lady bugs, birds flying high 

I love you tender – 

like mamas with babies, 

and soft, falling rain

I love you strong – 

like soldiers with orders,

and wind on the plains

I love you like every cliche ever written

I love you with words that can never be spoken 

I love you in mystery I can’t understand

when hearing your voice

or seeing your hands

I love you deeper than knowledge

and wider than life

You fill me with beauty,

I am music, 

yes, music

you are my life

🎼

AL


photo sources at pinterest.com

Posted in art, attitude, beauty, beloved, Change, Choice, connection, find art at pinterest, grace, Gratitude, inspiration, intimacy, Letting Go, Life, Love, music, mystery | Leave a comment
20 Jul 2016

mirror mirror   


Reborn as a court reporter

Inside a waking dream

Trapped between misspelling Subpoena and shouting guilty over and over

In a feudal land someone personified Justice as a woman, as a joke.
Oh the bliss that reason brings

Cold, calculated, harmony of all things

Where we agree, to agree, to disagree

That we can all agree on something.

“If only I got what I deserved”

Said no man ever.  

The wrongs of another cannot be punished too harshly

Until you turn the eye inward,

To the mote and see yourself,

Know yourself,

Judge yourself,

Find mercy for yourself if you can.

Such a futile exercise for man

When you are done with yourself, 

Ask if you can ever withhold forgiveness again?

🙀

Finding Mercy by Charles Cooper


We are all of us judged every day. We are judged by the face that looks back at us from the bathroom mirror. We are judged by the faces of the people we love and by the faces and lives of our children and by our dreams. We are judged by the faces of the people we do not love. Each day finds us at the junction of many roads, and we are judged as much by the roads we have not taken as by the roads we have.
The New Testament proclaims that at some unforeseeable time in the future, God will ring down the final curtain on history, and there will come a Day on which all our days and all the judgments upon us and all our judgments upon each other will themselves be judged. The judge will be Christ. In other words, the one who judges us most finally will be the one who loves us most fully.
Romantic love is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Christ’s love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ’s love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy. The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering that Love has endured for our sake, and that is also our acquittal. The justice and mercy of the judge are ultimately one.

⚖

~Frederick Buechner originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

              Somewhere between what it feels like, to be at

one with the sea, and to understand the sea as

mere context for the boat whose engine refuses

finally to turn over: yeah, I know the place—

stumbled into it myself, once; twice, almost.  All

around and in between the two trees that

grow there, tree of compassion and—

much taller—
tree of pity, its bark 

more bronze, the snow
              settled as if an openness of any kind meant, as well,

a woundedness that, by filling it, the snow

might heal…You know what I think? I think if we’re

lost, you should know exactly where, by now; I’ve

watched you stare long and hard enough at the map

already…I’m beginning to think I may never

not be undecided, about all sorts of things: whether

snow really does resemble the broken laughter

              of the long-abandoned when what left comes back

big-time; whether gratitude’s just a haunted

space like any other.  This place sounds daily

more like a theater of war, each time I listen to it—

loss, surprise, victory, being only three of the countless

fates, if you want to call them that, that we don’t

so much live with, it seems, as live for now among.  If as

close as we’re ever likely to get, you and I, is this—this close—

⛵️

Carl Phillips. 

Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 19, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets


I am not your enemy.

I am for you, not against. 

I am not like your anger,

I am not your fear.

I am your joy, your peace. 

I am your breathing, your heartbeat, 

your blood, your Being. 

I am the fullness of you, 

unfolding as you let me.

I have only blessing for you,

like a mother for her newborn. 

I am your perfection, longing for you. 

My judgment is not harsh, but pure mercy,

my seeing your brilliance folded in the bud,

my knowledge of your beauty waiting in you.

I do not judge your doubts 

but give you strength to tear them open

and find in them the mirror of your grace.

I know your childish fears, 

your helpless lashing out,

I have seen the rage seeping into you.

My wrath burns not against you but that lie.

I will hold you until you quiet in my arms.  

You are angry because you are afraid

that I am not here for you

but I am here

                   for you.

Be still, and let me hold you. 
__________________  

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net



Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Choice, determination, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, focus, grace, Gratitude, Judging, Letting Go, Life, Love, Peace, People, perceptions, Poetry, Prayer | Leave a comment
15 Jul 2016

how far will you go?      


Better to live your life open rather than exist on borrowed time, waiting for the great unmasking.

      – Kate Jacobs



love is the flame
all people yearn for the flame

some people never discover there actually is a flame

some people ignore the flame

some people avoid the flame 

some people examine the flame

some people research the flame

some people control the flame

some people fear the flame

some people are fooled by fake flame

some people admire the flame

some people use the flame

some people walk on the flame

some people dance with the flame

some people dance in the flame

some people become the flame

some people are consumed by the flame
your choice…

how will you burn?

🔥

AL


Those who are drawn to the root of love are mystics. Mystics are not satisfied with the surface patterns of love, with the emotional tangles and insecurities of human loving. They seek a purer wine, a more potent passion. They need the essence of love, its divine substance.

         ~ Irina Tweedie


On the day I died

water ran through pipes,

footsteps identified people in the house and

the dogs nails clicked quickly on the wood floors above my head,

insisting it was time to go out for relief. 

I still needed coffee,

light with cream,

2 sugars. 

The sun was bright 

and I remember the sky was that deep blue,

romantically named, azurite. 

There was cockscomb, 

half alive in pots near the wooden footbridge I walked over. 

I used to love them when I was alive. 

I touched their red, velvety, blooms seeking to feel something. 

I mistook fluttering angel wings for birds,

battles fought,

 just beyond where I lay

on the words of Wendell Berry –

the only thread

keeping me tethered to this world. 

I sat on benches beside ghosts 

of those who had gone before me. 

I could still only feel them beside me,

I was in the world between worlds. 

There was darkness, a fire swamp, screaming, clashes of swords, 

I could not save myself. 

God was everywhere. 

I found myself in a boat,

where I stayed for 2 years, until, 

in recent weeks,

the call came to step out,

to start walking on water. 

Late in the day, 

I stood in the bathroom, 

accepting the most insulting job offer I have ever received,  

then sat on a stool,

 trying to act as if I was alive,

pretending to look for puzzle pieces,

slightly aware of the colors and shapes,

singing echoes of songs I used to love,

with my beautiful Robin,

who seemed very much alive. 

🔥

AL 

In Memoriam of my death, consumed by the flame, 

December 3, 2012 – 

may I be remembered as 

Daniel J O’Connell having the:

Spirit of a warrior

Soul of a poet


Irradiat your mind with the light from within, allow your existence to move along within the unbroken continuity of nature. The ideal of authenticity lies deep in the heart of one’s union to the world not the possession of it. The grandeur of unity holds a definitive place in the infinite. When you calibrate your spirit with that of the world you are left open to respond to your life harmoniously with the universe. Unmask your illusions from those artificial ideas you have build your lives upon with walls and boundaries solidifying your thoughts about a tragic disassociation to nature. It’s up to you to be open now or wait for the great unmasking…the choice is yours but unmasking now allows you to reconcile your existence while you still have the chance to live it.

    – Lissette T. Hesmadt


We have known and have believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who remain in love remain in God and God remains in them.  1 John ‪4:16‬


No matter the results and outcomes,
     the thousand possibilities,

          you are here now. 
Why even try to trace

     what the beggar will do with your money?

          Let your giving be the whole horizon.
Be lovingly present

     and wars and stars and grief and cats alike

          will be unable to trouble you.
At the center of the world and in each breath

     this is the holy temple, the birthing moment:

          giving and receiving love. That is all. 
This is the sacred point,

     the love in you 

          meeting the love in the world.
However broken or weary you are,

     bring yourself here, in love, 

          now. 
__________________  

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net


photo sources at http://www.pinterest.com

Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Burnign Bridges, Change, Choice, courage, dark, Death, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Glory, Gospel, grace, Gratitude, Growth, Habits, healing, home, Letting Go, Life, Love, mystery, Passion, Poetry, power, Purpose | Leave a comment
13 Jul 2016
1 Comment

otters and birthdays and glimpses of the mystery   


Yeah, so, the past month has been an intense one for me in every way. A bit emotionally brutal. We can all relate, I’m sure. It’s shown me a lot of new things about myself, also revealed some new glimpses of this mystical mystery named, so simply, “Love,” in our language. 

I’ve been a student of the nature of Love for the past 7 years, which doesn’t seem very long, now that I write it down, but, I have to report, just this short time of study, it has changed me in every area of my life. 

My studies are always, first and foremost, practical. To me nothing I ‘believe’ is worth anything if it does not actually work in my living to bring me healing, make me a better human, remove my baggage to reveal my highest and best self, lead me into paths of peace and load my arms with fruit to share with fellow pilgrims along the way…and, so, I began by asking God to reveal what love was and how love worked. 

My first flash came in 2009, riding on a CT commuter train from New Haven to Branford, looking at the marsh fly by. I had been asking for some days, intensely seeking, when God showed himself to me as ‘LOVE.’ That brief instant changed everything for me. I experienced the Aleph of The Mystery and left that train, completely changed a flash or, in real time less than 30 minutes…

Many wonderful writers have helped me along this open-ended, unlimited path of discovery on this topic. I must give much beautiful credit to Henri Nouwen, who helped me early on in my excavation of this topic. His revelations, and life surrendered to this mystery, have inspired much learning in my own voyage on this simple, yet so radical, path. 

Over these years, I felt lead to share some of my tiny bits of insight with others – it has just been so amazing! So beautiful! So everything – I just wanted others to open to it as well, to learn and heal along with me!  Over these years I have learned to be a writer and a poet. Until recently I didn’t feel I could claim those ‘titles,’ but I do now, just another way love has changed me. I am so grateful. 

This brings us to yesterday, which brings us to Frederick Buechner’s 90th birthday! Buechner is one of the best, most beautiful, writers ever. Sometimes I stop breathing when I read his words. I won’t say more, at this moment, as this is becoming a very long post, but here’s my best advice: read him! 

Recently someone, somewhere, on Facebook, posted words by poet, Fred LaMotte. They deeply touched me and so I ‘friended’ him. Then he began posting his words and I found myself on Amazon ordering one of his books. I received it last week, and it has been moving me into some very deep waters. 

Yeah, so, back to yesterday, I re-posted a happy birthday write-up about Buechner and then…

I got this comment from Fred LaMotte:

He was the reason I became a teacher and a school chaplain. When I was a 10th grader at Exeter Academy (near Boston) he was the school chaplain. It was before he became a writer. One dreary morning in late Winter, we were 700 half asleep boys in morning ‘Chapel’ (it was just an assembly really), and decided to read to us. He read the entire 7th chapter of ‘The Wind In The Willows,’ ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn.’ It was very long and I think I might have been the only one stayed awake. It was amazing. Not only did it show me my first real piece of spiritual writing, but I thought, “Wow! This is his job? Reading to people about the great God Pan? I want to do this!” Thank you Frederick Buechner.

💞

WOW!! Then Fred LaMotte shared that chapter of the Wind and the Willows, ya know, the one that inspired some pretty intense poetry, which is, at this moment plowing up some new fields in my back forty…

Wow upon WOW!

Here’s that link. My advice: Read it!! 

http://yourradiance.blogspot.com/2013/03/piper-at-gates-of-dawn.html?m=1

I have not read The Wind in the Willows since I was a teenager, and, at that time I remember thinking it was rather stupid. My thoughts being something like, ‘Good grief, what in the heck is this about?’ 

Yesterday, I finally ‘got it!’ I broke down. I took my shoes off and bowed to the glory. Yesterday, a gift of love I offered was returned to me, unaccepted. I ‘got it!’ I broke down. I took my shoes off and bowed to the glory. There’s no right or wrong here, just gift. I choose to be only grateful to continue on in the, ‘yes and amen!’ of it all. 

I have no idea what Love (God) will teach me next. I am a very humble beginner. No Master here. Just a girl who cannot believe how lucky I am to be on this narrow road. A very unlikely pilgrim, I. Always wearing inappropriate shoes for climbing these steep hills, but somehow, always getting the view of the most beautiful sunsets imaginable. I guess it’s true what Babe Ruth said, ‘You can’t beat a man who keeps getting up!’

Here’s a song I wrote for my children’s musical about my life of faith, named: The Fantastical Inside-Out-Upside-Down Journey of a Rich Little Poor Girl 


 You Otter Know (verses spoken in the style of Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant/choruses in Sinatra style)

I was walking in the forest 

I was feeling all alone

The birds and bees were sleeping,

the weeping willow weeping
Then I heard a little creature

Start moving oh so slow

and the little brook began to play

music with its toes

the woodpecker was keeping time

upon that tall oak tree

and I could not help start dancing

cause I knew it was for me

and as I whirled and twirled about 

I came upon a log

and the beaver and the otter (Frank Sinatra style Beaver. Sammy Davis Otter)  

were acting more like hogs (pushing each other to get to the log stage with microphone) 

and then they each began to croon

they’re words were oh so rare

I stood there for a moment

my foot still in the air
and they sang to me…
You otter know I love you

loved you from the start

(if you’ll beaver me

then I’ll beaver you

You never walk alone)

You otter know I love you

love your precious heart

(beaver me it’s true

I’ve always loved you

You’re never far from home)
and the band it just kept playing

and my happy heart did gasp

Cause this was so much better

than that silly talking a** 

uhhh donkey
Then my heart it felt so happy

and my eyes at last could see

That though I hadn’t been aware

You’d never once left me

and as I danced on down that path

 I swear I sang this song

The one my friends had written,

which had been there all along
and I sang…
You otter know I love you

loved you from the start

(if you’ll beaver me

then I’ll beaver you

You never walk alone)

You otter know I love you

love your precious heart

(beaver me it’s true

I’ve always loved you

You’re never far from home

💞

AL

Ephesians 1:4

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.  

New Living Translation




You don’t have to melt

until you are ready. 

Remember this:
Each moil of your unoiled joints,

every numb stiff gristle of resistance,

cramp of anger, clabber of shame,
clot of envy, opinion or belief,

is simply a mass of refusal

contracted into “me,”
a particle afraid to waltz

with its field, a wave

that will not settle to its sea,
a sky who thinks it is a cloud,

a self who didn’t give up

I-dentity…
Don’t let go until you’re

ready, friend. You have forever. 

You remember this:
To melt is not to pass away,

but to pulverize diamonds 

with your dancing,
watch the spiraling fire

of your body, and witness

the whirled. 

🔥

Alfred K. LaMotte


Some mornings 

I wake up a king,

anointed, anticipated,

shining.
Some mornings

I wake up a pilgrim,

on a journey yet unseen,

but on a road laid out

with adventures to be met.
Some mornings 

I wake up a mule.

No power to wield,

nowhere to go,

just me, just here,

dull and pointless.
Those days

I must be 

most vigilant and ready,

for my master 

is a good samaritan

and I never know

when I will be needed

for something luminous.

__________________  

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net


photo sources found at http://www.pinterest.com

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09 Jul 2016

if you look for me…


Nature, 

my teacher

my school

my temple

my shed

my friend

my lover

my passion

my peace

my darkness

my shining

my opening

my knowledge 

my quests

my mystery

my luminosity

my path

my return

my budding

my harvest

my seasons

my eternal 

my connection 

my uniqueness

my blush

my beauty

my ravaging

my savaging

my circle

my arrow

my path

my journey 

my longing

my desire

my tryst

my trust

my hope

my haven

my safety 

my risk

my skip-itty-doo-dah

the hair on my chinny-chin-chin

my space

my intimacy

my solitude

my family

my found

my faith

my dancing

my lame

my music

my words

my rhythm 

my song

my vision

my sight

my lost

my found

my sin

my soul

my tears

my laughter

my being

my belonging

my life 

my love

my looking in

my letting go

my begging

my abundance

my start

my stop

my end

my beginning

my heart

my skin

my senses

my fences

my flash 

my fire

my living

my death

my creator

my Spirit

my wound

my healer

my receiver

my giver

my adventure 

my wild

my silence

my sound

my doo-be-doobie-do

my fa-la-la-la

my going

my coming

my heaven 

my home

my ashes

my resurrection 

my grounding

my wings

my births

my deaths

my everything 

🌸🌻🌺🌾🌷🌹

AL


photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT


in the heart of the yellow sun

the great current

the blinding white stars 

over a blue sheet

.

when this age has passed

and thunder rolled back its 

ringing flames

nestled in the high pines                 

of course these wild atoms of your heart

.

swallowed by the great current

the burning wings

the wedding at cana

and so it happens

to each and all

water to wine

flesh to light

.

it is summer now

in the skies long house

a rib cage of heat and fragrance

surrounded by 5000

your a lifted fish 

or a loaf

in the hands of christ

.

it is no wonder now

you are surrounded 

by immigrants and thresholds

 as vulnerable as dew

 in a field of fire

.

it is useless now 

to utter

the unsayable

why would you want to burn redemption

when the whole world is an open secret

totally lifted 

and out of proportion

🌞
Adam A DeFranco

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Blessing, Change, Choice, compassion, confidence, connection, Faith, find art at pinterest, Glory, Gospel, grace, Gratitude, inspiration, intimacy, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, nature, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
26 Jun 2016

check in


thank you, dear heart,

for being so brave,

for the courage to stay open,

for giving, and receiving, love,

for taking me into battles

and winning wars with your ferocious strength

for valiantly defending your fragile tenderness 

for loving your own terrible beauty 

for revealing your deepest darkness to the light of discovery

and laying open your wounds to the healing air

for being willing to walk into heartbreak again and again,

knowing what you do. 

For, even when you are shaking afraid,

you always shout,

‘YAY!’

‘Yes’

‘Let’s dance’ 

and

‘I gotta have more cowbell…’

Thank you for your life giving work

your refusal to quit

your belief in the way I live

I adore you

I honor you

I cherish and bless

your amazing work 

in my chest,

in my world,

in my relationships,

and in my wanderings. 

I give you the gift of the best me,

in every moment we have together,

the brightest shining light, 

I can be

we do good work, girl,

you got the beat,

Oh, skip it, Let’s roll!
Yours forever true, 

❤️

AL





Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Change, Choice, commitment, compassion, connection, courage, Encouragement, find art at pinterest, grace, Gratitude, Letting Go, Life, Love, mystery, soul and spirit, transformation, Trust, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
05 Jun 2016

why should I worry or fret?


Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. Rest is the essence of giving and receiving; an act of remembering, imaginatively and intellectually but also physiologically and physically. To rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals. To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right; to rest is to fall back literally or figuratively from outer targets and shift the goal not to an inner static bull’s eye, an imagined state of perfect stillness, but to an inner state of natural exchange.
The template of natural exchange is the breath, the autonomic giving and receiving that forms the basis and the measure of life itself. We are rested when we are a living exchange between what lies inside and what lies outside, when we are an intriguing conversation between the potential that lies in our imagination and the possibilities for making that internal image real in the world; we are rested when we let things alone and let ourselves alone, to do what we do best, breathe as the body intended us to breathe, to walk as we were meant to walk, to live with the rhythm of a house and a home, giving and taking through cooking and cleaning. 
When we give and take in an easy foundational way we are closest to the authentic self, and closest to that self when we are most rested. To rest is not self indulgent, to rest is to prepare to give the best of ourselves, and to perhaps, most importantly, arrive at a place where we are able to understand what we have already been given.
In the first state of rest is the sense of stopping, of giving up on what we have been doing or how we have been being. In the second, is the sense of slowly coming home, the physical journey into the body’s un-coerced and un-bullied self, as if trying to remember the way or even the destination itself. In the third state is a sense of healing and self-forgiveness and of arrival. In the fourth state, deep in the primal exchange of the breath, is the give and the take, the blessing and the being blessed and the ability to delight in both. The fifth stage is a sense of absolute readiness and presence, a delight in and an anticipation of the world and all its forms; a sense of being the meeting itself between inner and outer, and that receiving and responding occur in one spontaneous movement.
A deep experience of rest is the template of perfection in the human imagination, a perspective from which we are able to perceive the outer specific forms of our work and our relationships whilst being nourished by the shared foundational gift of the breath itself. From this perspective we can be rested while putting together an elaborate meal for an arriving crowd, whilst climbing the highest mountain or sitting at home surrounded by the chaos of a loving family.
Rested, we are ready for the world but not held hostage by it, rested we care again for the right things and the right people in the right way. In rest we reestablish the goals that make us more generous, more courageous, more of an invitation, someone we want to remember, and someone others would want to remember too.

…
REST By David Whyte

there are words strung together

in such beauty

lined up in perfect sequence

finally arranged in such a way

they touch secret places

of pain so hidden inside us

they have had no way of expression 

they almost don’t exist

they are so deep

so shadowy scarred and twisted

so nameless I can’t acknowledge them

because they might possibly be a ghost

and why would I disturb alien creatures,

when there is quite enough pain

right here in plain sight

to try to heal and deal with?
until these thoughts appear,

the magical key,

and shadows become real,

in these words of another – 

because the other 

has felt 

has written

has sung

has wrestled and wrangled with…

this too!

and the words they have mined 

from these dark, broken quarries 

touch that wispy, pain-filled place

inside of me

with delicate fingers

and declare they are so,

and, somehow,

they make them alright,

binding and healing

my shame-filled broken bones

my secret stab wounds 

my almost too pain-full to be real

merely by sharing them out loud!

Suddenly, my soul says, aha!

And I breathe again, 

and I lay down to rest. 

Then roses in my heart

turn from blush to deepest crimson

and birds come and build nests in the trees,

which declare every moment that

Yahweh is always gracious,

and the morning wakes up

new and alive. 

Then love burns seven times hotter 

than I ever even thought possible

and I count gift after gift

of never-before-seen riches at my fingertips

as I step into a life 

that matters

because I am beloved

because I understand myself better

and the meaning of,

It is what it is

and

the truth shall set you free

become my praise songs

because I AM

with every word

and I grin and say,

‘You aren’t much, my girl’

and I belly laugh…

because it is true!

and then I laugh even harder because,

truth is also,

I AM everything I need to be! 

oh, hallelujah 

glory be!

🌞

AL

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beliefs, beloved, confidence, connection, courage, Faith, find art at pinterest, grace, Happiness, healing, Letting Go, Life, light, Love, Miracles, Poetry | Leave a comment
09 May 2016

needing a dull moment


There are times when I need to rest,

a sabbath of dullness,
because the rest of the time

I am walking around behind God,
even the stirred dust sparkling,

even the shadows gleaming,
God every instant saying

“Let there be light.
Let there be stone. This stone,

and this light laying on the stone.
Let there be this tree, this branch,

and each of these birds singing in it.
Let there be this bee, let there be its labor,

and the wonder of its coming and going.
Let there be this river, and its waters,

its springs and tributaries, and their flowing.
Let there be this person.

Let there be this hope unfolding in this heart.
Let there be this moment.

Yes! And now this one!”
It never stops.

It never stops.

__________________ 
Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net




Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, commitment, compassion, connection, courage, create, Dancing, Freedom, grace, Gratitude, healing, Hope, inspiration, Joy, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, nature, Peace, rest | Leave a comment
06 May 2016

make the most of it


Setting priorities is a difficult process…
No, it’s not!

That’s just what I keep saying. 

But, it’s really very simple –

Just this…
What is the most important thing(s) in my life?
How do I reorganize my life around 

the most important thing(s)?
Am I willing to do the work focused on that/those?
Those questions are on me. 

The answers are very clear,

very simple. 
YES! 
Ok, then…

Get busy

make your music happen 

Focus 

Work

Do it!

This is it!

Set your sites…

Now…

Go…

💃🏻

AL





Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Career, Choice, confidence, connection, courage, create, Encouragement, find art at pinterest, focus, fun, grace, Happiness, inspiration, Joy, laugh, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, music | Leave a comment

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