life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Happiness”
life is sweet!
Joy
Julie Cadwallader-Staub
Who could need more proof than honey –
How the bees with such skill and purpose
enter flower after flower
sing their way home
to create and cap the new honey
just to get through the flowerless winter
And how the bear with intention and cunning
raids the hive
shovels pawful after pawful into his happy mouth
bats away indignant bees
stumbles off in a stupor of satiation and stickiness
And how we humans can’t resist its viscosity
its taste of clover and wind
its metaphorical power:
We yearn for a land of milk and honey
we call our loved ones “honey”
all because bees just do, over and over
again, what they were made to do
Oh, who could need more proof than honey
to know that our world
was meant to be
and
was meant to be
sweet?
Joy by Julie Cadwallader-Staub (www.juliecspoetry.com) used by permission, all rights reserved.
What’s Your Shadow Look Like?
Afraid of dying, we avoid living.
We sleep a sleep of fear,
dark nightmares pulled up around our chins.
Thinking we must survive now,
we wait to live later.
But the present moment is constantly being destroyed,
swept away into the past,
taken by a thief
who leaves another.
Life is transitory.
Each day, in fact, can be our last.
So wake up,
and live in the present moment.
The thief steals only what you have kept,
not what you have spent.
What calls out in your life?
What song needs singing,
what person needs loving,
what risk invites the investment
of all of yourself?
Child, awaken.
Rise to this day.
If you love someone, tell them,
before the moment to do so
is burned in a flash.
If you have a gift,
give it before the moment
vanishes like a dream.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Used with Premission
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Practice Letting Go
Fear makes us cling rather than letting go. But clinging
only binds us to our fear. It does not set us free. Practice letting go.
Fear inhibits our willingness to be fully, lovingly
present each moment. Afraid of the responsibility and uncertainty of investing
ourselves in the present moment, we withhold ourselves. Afraid of what might be
demanded of us, we do not engage in what is before us. Wishing things were
otherwise, we bury ourselves elsewhere. But life is this, not something else.
Practice being present.
All that you are and all that you have is God’s. You have
nothing to lose. Practice giving yourself away.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Used with Permission
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
It’s A Wonderful World! part 2
The Sun Walks by Steve Garnaas-Holmes
The sun walk
s through the autumn woods
slowly on her long yellow legs,
notices things, points them out,
reaches down between the grasses
and draws out their color,
touches leaves here and there
and makes them brilliant,
plucks a leaf and drops it,
plucks a leaf and drops it.
All through the woods her light
flutters down, swings down, dances down.
It is not winter that takes these leaves,
not frost that steals them in the night.
She gives them. It’s how she finds her way
down into the black soil,
how she gives her light
to the darkness working beneath.
It is not death
that takes us from this world,
but life that gives us, ripe and golden,
into the next.
______________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Used with Permission
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
It’s A Wonderful World! part 1
790 by Emily Dickinson
Nature — the Gentlest Mother is,
Impatient of no Child —
The feeblest — or the waywardest —
Her Admonition mild —
In Forest — and the Hill —
By Traveller — be heard —
Restraining Rampant Squirrel —
Or too impetuous Bird —
How fair Her Conversation —
A Summer Afternoon —
Her Household — Her Assembly —
And when the Sun go down —
Her Voice among the Aisles
Incite the timid prayer
Of the minutest Cricket —
The most unworthy Flower —
When all the Children sleep —
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light Her lamps —
Then bending from the Sky —
With infinite Affection —
And infiniter Care —
Her Golden finger on Her lip —
Wills Silence — Everywhere —
“790” by Emily Dickinson. Public domain
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