life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “grace”
each piece
I am struck by the otherness of things rather than their sameness.
The way a tiny pile of snow perches in the crook of a branch in the
tall pine, away by itself, high enough not to be noticed by people,
out of reach of stray dogs. It leans against the scaly pine bark, busy
at some existence that does not need me.
It is the differences of objects that I love, that lift me toward the rest
of the universe, that amaze me. That each thing on earth has its own
soul, its own life, that each tree, each clod is filled with the mud of
its own star. I watch where I step and see that the fallen leaf, old
broken grass, an icy stone are placed in exactly the right spot on the
earth, carefully, royalty in their own country
❄️
Looking for the Differences by Tom Hennen
❄️
top photo found at http://www.pinterest.com
photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT
❄️
O come thou Mystery,
unseen, unbidden, unfelt,
but so madly needed here.
Come to us
who push you away with our despair,
snare us with wonder.
Come to us, the lonely and broken,
O Small One,
not to solve but to be with.
Come to us who grieve
place or worth or hope,
and find it with us.
Come to us in our smugness
and lay yourself down in the manger
of our secret wounds.
Come to us in our privilege
and let us hang our lives
on a poor little peasant child.
Come to us in our violent fear
and calm us with your tiny voice.
Ask us to love you.
For us who find it hard to love each other,
come and gather us in a circle,
have us care, have us sing.
Come to us, too afraid to need,
be fragile among us,
and let us fall in love.
Neglect our neglect, Emmanuel,
come and be a tiny flame of love among us,
and light our own.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
gift
Longest night.
Darkness falls like snow,
falls and falls,
deepening.
Older than the universe,
here before it,
and will be after.
Wraps an arm around us
as if we’re old friends.
We are.
Darkness lives in us,
radiates from us.
We speak it.
Darkness is the velvet cloth
where you cherish the gem
of your presence among us,
darkness the womb,
darkness the manger
that cradles your light,
this holy being
that becomes us,
births us.
In the darkness
you do not come to us,
we come from you.
Because you are with and not apart,
even the darkness
is you.
Because you shine in it
the dark is our dark,
none of it unchanged.
Your being our light,
your hereness our life,
shining in the longest night.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
To go into the darkness with a light
is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.
Go without light and find that the dark too, blooms and sings
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
– Wendell Berry
Black. out. black.
Black. on. black.
Dark. on dark. on dark.
I was simply looking for home.
Not knowing the current alley would lead
to where the sidewalk ended
I stepped off the edge
out of the world of light
waking into morning night
a banished sun
no stars
or moon
or streetlights
or fireflies
or lighters
in pitch darkness
I lay, unable to move,
senses adjusting
to what is my new reality
hearing the life
that lives here
wondering if I’ll make friends
while I’m here
learning this new space.
🌌
AL
Gift suggestions:
To your enemy – forgiveness.
To an opponent – tolerance.
To a friend – your heart.
To a customer – service.
To every child – a good example.
To all – love.
💞
– Oren Arnold
simply still
In the sixth month already
of the impossible
Gabriel,
so usually unseeable—
startling,
though you thought him so foreign,
how nearer than you
to the seed of your life—
fills the room with his wings,
wraps with his words
this world
beside God’s so small,
sets it in the greater one
among stars
and you
lit by the same light,
and calls forth your trust in heaven’s actual, —
for with God nothing is impossible—
the divine within,
inviting your invitation
from even deeper in,
a Word,
a world entrusted to you,
your being
that by gift and labor blesses,
brought with singing
through the portal of this blood of birth
and that crucial other,
calling to life
in your drab littleness
the body of your holiness,
the flesh that God without you cannot have.
Even God waits
to see the miracle,
the birth that only you can birth.
There is no test for paradise,
only paradise.
Say yes.
😇
_________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.designlovefest.com/2012/12/holiday-centerpiece/
rejoice!
SUNDAY MORNING WITH THE SENSATIONAL NIGHTINGALES
by Billy Collins
It was not the Five Mississippi Blind Boys
who lifted me off the ground
that Sunday morning
as I drove down for the paper, some oranges, and bread.
Nor was it the Dixie Hummingbirds
or the Soul Stirrers, despite their quickening name,
or even the Swan Silvertones
who inspired me to look over the commotion of trees
into the open vault of the sky.
No, it was the Sensational Nightingales
who happened to be singing on the gospel
station early that Sunday morning
and must be credited with the bumping up
of my spirit, the arousal of the mice within.
I have always loved this harmony,
like four, sometimes five trains running
side by side over a contoured landscape––
make that a shimmering, red-dirt landscape,
wildflowers growing along the silver tracks,
lace tablecloths covering the hills,
the men and women in white shirts and dresses
walking in the direction of a tall steeple.
Sunday morning in a perfect Georgia.
But I am not here to describe the sound
of the falsetto whine, sepulchral bass,
alto and tenor fitted snugly in between;
only to witness my own minor ascension
that morning as they sang, so parallel,
about the usual themes,
the garden of suffering,
the beads of blood on the forehead,
the stone before the hillside tomb,
and the ancient rolling waters
we would all have to cross some day.
God bless the Sensational Nightingales,
I thought as I turned up the volume,
God bless their families and their powder blue suits.
They are a far cry from the quiet kneeling
I was raised with,
a far, hand-clapping cry from the candles
that glowed in the alcoves
and the fixed eyes of saints staring down
from their corners.
Oh, my cap was on straight that Sunday morning
and I was fine keeping the car on the road.
No one would ever have guessed
I was being lifted into the air by nightingales,
hoisted by their beaks like a long banner
that curls across an empty blue sky,
caught up in the annunciation
of these high, most encouraging tidings.
Nothing separates us, my dear, nothing except what you want to keep separate. We are united because I have made it so. – Loop
I want to make a poem
that slips into the heart stream
quietly, tenderly,
with no great splash
just a graceful entry,
with minimal ripples
which plunges deeply upon entering
and allows the mud to settle gracefully around it.
I want to make a poem
which allows the heart to trust,
to open,
to flower in it’s own time
knowing, for sure,
it is dependable,
steady,
written to last
through the fiercest storms
though the world burn
and the mountains crumble
words of love
so beautiful
so eternal
they come to life
each time they are read,
or spoken
and anyone who dares to read the poem I make
cannot help but
find within themselves
clouds of peace
wrapped up in thick blankets of joy
and will forever know for sure
they are
beloved
❤️
AL
Everything real comes through the heart. When it is truly opened, everything secondary falls away- egoic glory, fame and fortune, substitute gratifications. The heart doesn’t care about such things. It doesn’t hold it against you if you don’t own your own home, achieve your goals, have a perfect body. The heart doesn’t care what you have earned or accumulated. No matter our seeming differences, we are all the same when the heart gate opens. Deep feeling levels the playing field.
Love is the great equalizer.
– Jeff Brown
love beyond reason. trust without borders
photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT
We develop grace as we learn with the guiding hand of the universe, life will unfold exactly the way it should.
The idea of trusting the universe is a popular one these days, but many of us don’t know what this really means and we often have a hard time doing it. This is partly because the story of humankind is most often presented as a story about struggle, control, and survival, instead of one of trust and collaboration with the universe. Yet, in truth, we need to adhere to both ideas in this life.
On the one hand, there is much to be said about exerting control over our environment. We created shelter to protect ourselves from the elements. We hunted for animals and invented agriculture to feed ourselves. We built social infrastructures to protect ourselves and create community. This is how we survive and grow as a civilization. However, it is also clear that there are plenty of things that we cannot control, no matter how hard we try, and we often receive support from an unseen force – a universe that provides us with what we cannot provide for ourselves.
It is a good idea to take responsibility for the things in life that we can control or create. We work so we can feed, clothe, and shelter our loved ones and ourselves. We manifest our dreams and visions in physical form with hard work and forethought. But at a certain point, when have done all that we can, we must let go and allow the universe to take over. This requires trust. It requires a trust that runs deeper than just expecting things to turn out the way we want them to. Sometimes they will, and sometimes they won’t. We develop equanimity and grace as we learn to trust that, with the guiding hand of the universe, life will unfold exactly the way it should. We are engaged in an ongoing relationship with a universe that responds to our thoughts and actions.
🌀
dailyom.com
by Madisyn Taylor
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)…
– T. S. Eliot
🌀
‘What if it were so much
simpler than that’
said the wiseman.
‘But …’ said the fool
🌀
But Said the Fool by Nic Askew
decisions determine destiny
Today I want to feel my way
into a familiar name
for the One who holds us all:
a name of endearment,
like the names lovers use in the tangled sheets
a name that ripples through sunlight and tears.
I will listen for that name today,
Knowing it is the name the Beloved uses to call me.
😍
~Oriah House (c) 2015 
My child, don’t be afraid. I am here. I know how hard it is to feel, sometimes. This moment, I know, is difficult to let yourself feel. Don’t hold back. Don’t protect yourself from feeling, your emotions this way and that. This is a gift from Me, the way your heart swings from high to low. I am the constant one. I keep you still.
There are things you will have to face now. I know you want to bury your head, and I let you do that, your head buried on my chest. But know when you lift your head, I will be there to help you to rise. And you will rise, and your feet will find firm footing, and you will square your shoulders and take one step forward, and then another, and you will find you know your way.
There is much ahead, and the path does not always seem clear. But I help you to rise. I go ahead, and I help you to rise. And when you stumble, I will help you to stand again. And when you are scared, I will firm your trembling lip and I will navigate you through the storm of emotions and I will quiet your quivering heart.
You are fierce and gentle. You are beautiful and strong. You are chosen and delighted in. You are all I’ve made you to be. I took everything from you that has kept you from rising. I have taken everything that makes you feel small and unsure and hesitant.
You can go forward, to the places I lead you. And you will know who you are. My child, the one who knows your Father, the one who knows your own name.
😍
loop
You are loved. Always and forever.
to each his own
18 years ago
I stood at the edge
of a great abyss
in life
a part of me,
not known until that time,
had awakened
now I had a choice to make,
to accept –
or deny –
this part of myself,
which was revealed
in such a wild,
drastic,
unexpected
and overwhelming manner
I knew this would be
what, ultimately,
saved,
or
destroyed,
me.
as I stood,
still in innocence,
not really knowing –
yet, somehow,
knowing in every way –
the costs,
the benefits,
the responsibility,
the awareness.
the long dark road ahead,
the excruciating valley years to come,
the sharp, rugged climb up the mountain.
18 years ago,
I struggled
with all of this
as I stood on a balcony
and made certain vows
concerning the choices
I would make through
my time of learning:
I would only follow love.
No matter how I failed,
I would remember it is not about how good I am.
I would try, to the best of my ability, to live the words of Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount.
I would never make a choice
simply to benefit myself,
only to get money,
or to be comfortable.
I would learn to be truthful and fair
and be the person I wanted to be.
I would be honest with myself – always – especially when I was wrong, or made a mistake –
yet, I would not live in fear or hate myself if I made mistakes,
I would stay aware and learn –
so I would not make the same mistake twice.
I would make the best choice I could at any given moment,
and then move forward the best I could with no regret.
I would do my best and give my best.
I would look for good things every day.
And with these parameters firmly in place,
like Eve,
I bit that apple
and began…
for good…
for bad…
to make my choices.
from there I began to grow in wisdom, knowledge and self respect
from there I began the path to healing
from there I began to understand myself and realized each souls value, including my own
from there I have learned all I know about life and love
from there I began the long walk home
💞
AL
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
– Yeats
life: acoustic & amplified 