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12 Dec 2015

slowly

walking by faith
expecting miracles

we rely on things to come

we hope in what is not seen

we stand on invisible ground

fly without evidence of our wings

we fight battle with foes from another dimension

we teach without seeing the whole vision

we trust what we cannot see with our eyes

we walk on

knowing,

for sure,

we are going the right way

directed by the silence

in bright, beautiful pathways of grace

and dark, eerie forests of fog

somedays we are surrounded

others we seem to walk alone

no matter

we walk on

slowly, surely

enjoying the view

or we sit and wait

relying on radical trust

we learn the virtues by living

because we have learned

what we could never learn

by our own understanding

faith is the victory

everything is grace

🌳

photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT

🌳

Hope is with you when you believe

The earth is not a dream but living flesh,

That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,

That all things you have ever seen here

Are like a garden looked at from a gate.
You cannot enter. But you’re sure it’s there.

Could we but look more clearly and wisely

We might discover somewhere in the garden

A strange new flower and an unnamed star.
Some people say we should not trust our eyes,

That there is nothing, just a seeming,

These are the ones who have no hope.

They think that the moment we turn away,

The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,

As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

🌳

Hope by Czeslaw Milosz

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, commitment, determination, Faith, home, Letting Go, Life | Leave a comment

29 Nov 2015

the very most grand adventurous perspectives

But for my hand, as unattempted yet,

Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.

Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail

And say there is no sin but to be rich;

And being rich, my virtue then shall be

To say there is no vice but beggary.

Since kings break faith upon commodity,

Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.

– Philip the Bastard from “King John” (2.1.592)

People don’t like love, they like that flittery flirty feeling. They don’t love love – love is sacrificial, love is ferocious, it’s not emotive. Our culture doesn’t love love, it loves the idea of love. It wants the emotion without paying anything for it.

– Matt Chandler

time wears down

as life takes its anguished toll

of strained shoulders and weary back

from the unyielding pressure of anger’s mighty weight

lash of black eyed look,

the demon,

lying in wait,

blame unleashed

words stripping tender heart skin

of the vulnerable

innocence unprepared for attack

leaving hope in shreds,

shame cocks its hat sideways

flames of passion freeze in place

ice, brittle, cutting

fills veins,

painful,

slicing to ribbons

destroying all goodness in its path

wounds with nothing to hide

nowhere to hide

Only you can change this –

you CAN change this!

I know for sure…

you can…

if you choose to…

God only knows

if you will

🔹

3 spectacular wishes on this day…for every day
love

home

music

AL 5/13/15
Real riches are the riches possessed inside.

– B. C. Forbes

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, be, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, commitment, confidence, courage, Faith, find art at pinterest, home, Letting Go, Love, music, People, perceptions, soul and spirit, Trust, truth, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

20 Nov 2015

largely speaking

Sweet Darkness
When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone

no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark

where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.
There you can be sure

you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb

tonight.
The night will give you a horizon

further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn
anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

🔥

– David Whyte

I sense infinity

I open myself to the unlimited

and with that opening

I glimpse unending love

I breathe the cold morning air

Absorb the sunlight dancing on the water

take in the sight of millions of diamonds

on blue velvet

and I struggle,

reaching, to open fully

to take in this message

to understand this beauty

I sit in silence

I listen in wonder

I stay in that moment

for eternity

it is for eternity

as I walk home

I ask my soul’s questions:

How will I allow God to love me?

How will I allow love to touch me?

☀️

photo by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT

Posted in action, Adventure, Alone, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Choice, color, dark, determination, find art at pinterest, Gratitude, healing, home, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, Relationships | Leave a comment

17 Nov 2015

even on the hard days

Respectfully given,

exalted being

full of grace,

remember to forget:

surrender struggles to catch it’s breath,

then falls soft

as evening prayers at twilight,

gathering into the corners of our hearts

before falling full

onto the center of our living circle,

free and happy as a Friday night.

next morning’s sun fills us,

each day, each season.

nurture moves with grace,

evolving slowly thru

our caring hands,

our grieving hearts,

our shared experience,

our acts of courage,

the healing salt of our tears,

the energy generation of our joy.

with pieces of our true love,

we fly flags,

of prayer,

of peace,

of poems,

of our own making

to heal the worlds –

within us/

without us.

we allow –

simply complex.

we understand –

clearly unclear.

we stand and fill our world with

the beauty,

the mystery,

of sound,

of hum,

of laughter,

of voice,

of music,

protecting us

from lesser gods,

the terror all around.

love is the shield,

love is the answer,

love is the choice,

love is our glory,

our salvation,

crowning us

sons and daughters

of the King.

at times,

in spite of our broken pieces,

our refusal to believe,

even our darkened hearts.

–

astonishing,

isn’t it?

❣

A sob in the night

awakens us from dreams,
a crack opens in the wall

and in seeps the dark stream
with pieces of broken things in it,

and blood, and our own ragged edge,
and in seeps the light,

and the voice singing.
We want to pull the wall around us,

the sorrow pouring in,
but it is breached now,

it is only an illusion,
and we are out in the dangerous light,

the fragile street,
tender as everyone else,

ready to duck, ready to weep.
We are all refugees now,

foreigners, except to foreigners.
It’s the egg that is cracked,

the stone rolled away.
If there is a place for love,

for your own brave soul, this is it.
The cord in another’s heart

knotted in yours,
the hand reaching for you

you can reach out to.
Terror and the stillness,

and the voice singing.
__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

and for each person in this world 🙏🏻

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Change, Choice, connection, courage, create, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, Freedom, friendship, fun, grace, Gratitude, Grieving, Growth, healing, home, Hope, Imagine, inspiration, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, Patience, Peace, People, perceptions, Poetry, Prayer, receiving, Relationships | Leave a comment

01 Nov 2015

hello

listen to Michael Buble sing Feeling Good

Posted in action, Adventure, Alone, attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, Burnign Bridges, Career, Change, Choice, confidence, connection, courage, determination, do, Dreams, Encouragement, Freedom, Gratitude, home, inspiration, Letting Go, Life, Losing, Love, People | Leave a comment

22 Oct 2015

fall. falling. fallen.

Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season

Changes its tense in the long-haired maples

That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves

Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition

With the final remaining cardinals) and then

Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last

Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.

At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees

In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager

And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever

Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun

Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,

A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud

Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything

Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s

Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment

Pulling out of the station according to schedule,

Another moment arriving on the next platform. It

Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away

From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,

Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving

Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,

Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.

And every year there is a brief, startling moment

When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and

Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless

Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:

It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;

It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

🍂

Fall by Edward Hirsch

In Fall I saw

a skyline of tree roofs

blowing off in

natural disasters

of Biblical proportions.

Every treehouse laid bare

roofs to be mended in April

when surplus roofing supplies arrive

from Mother Nature

painted bright shades of spring green

with all the colors of the rainbow

adorning the mended windows

as the birds move into their summer homes.

All in the right time

not before

I have known days of the extreme

Both hot and cold

Pain and joy

Full and empty

I have wsited for spring

I have been healed

like the trees

Now I wait for the time

when the lovebirds come build their nest

in my heart

🍁

Nature Photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT

Word art found on facebook

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, beloved, connection, find art at pinterest, healing, home, Hope, Letting Go, Life, Love, mystery, nature, Patience | Leave a comment

14 Oct 2015

at the river

The mouth of the river may be beautiful.

It doesn’t remember the womb of its beginning.

It doesn’t look back to where it’s been

or wonder who ahead of it polished the rough stones.
It is following the way

in its fullness,

now like satin,

now cresting,

waters meeting, kindred

to travel gathered together,

all knowing it flows

one way, shining or in shadows.

And me, the animal

I ride wants to drive forward,

its longing not always my own,

overrunning its banks and bounds,

edgeless, spilling along the way
because, as I forget,

it knows everything

is before it.

🔹

Journey by Linda Hogan

It’s a beautiful, perfect day

Warm, with a shadow of cool

makes me know fall is coming

I do love me some October

I drove to Rocky Hill

to sing

spent way too much money

on not much of anything

coffee

filling up with gas

ordered a book for 46$

from Chenè in Africa,

Re-Authoring the World:

story narrative

changing our perceptions

changing our world

things are changing for me

it is time for me to begin again

time for readjusting the flow

time to take another step

time to make my choices

from a place of strength

from a place of determination

Freedom belongs to those who use it

🔹

you think you have time…

🔹

listen to Amy Grant & Vince Gill sing House of Love

2 bottom photos found at http://www.pinterest.com 

🔹

Nothing has to happen immediately, this minute, or right now. It’s okay to pause for just a moment. Just take a breath. Then go quietly inside. Ask Life Itself to lead you to your best outcome. There’s nothing you have to do, really, except get out of your own way. — Neale Donald Walsch

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beloved, Choice, connection, Faith, home, Letting Go, Life, Love, mystery, nature, Passion, Patience | Leave a comment

05 Aug 2015

beauty in all she is

It’s true, what all our heroes say. There is a way

in this world for beauty,

for good. It may

be a crooked path

in a tanglewood, but

stay the course and,

when the way grows rocky,

walk your horse,
and who knows, you may yet

come upon the wild rose,

as I have done, and,

paying close attention,

keep from crushing her into

the grime, and then,

with any luck, in time

remember how you found her

and how to find her again

when the way gets wilder.

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

To a Wild Rose by Todd Boss

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is anam ċara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and ċara is the word for friend. … In the early Celtic church, a person who acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an anam Ċara. It originally referred to someone to whom you confessed revealing the hidden intimacies of your life. With the anam ċara you could share your innermost self, your mind, and your heart. This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging. … In everyone’s life there is great need for an anam ċara, a soul friend, in this love you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. Where you are understood, you are at home.

– John O’Donohue

Listen to Christina Perri sing A Thousand Years http://youtu.be/q9ayN39xmsI

Photo sources at www.pinterest.com/al513

Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, beloved, Blessing, connection, find art at pinterest, friendship, home, Life, Love, mystery, Relationships, soul and spirit, touch, Trust, truth, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

31 Jul 2015

we came here

Proof of Heaven

this was the reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little you may know me better there. – Aslan
We are brought places so that we may know God, just a little, better here in this broken world. We are given glimpses, shaded bits of glory, the pieces we are ready for, come to us, changing our lives forever, as we attempt to absorb this brilliance, so far beyond our understanding. We grapple and try, to open our minds ever wider. We try to share, in ways we are able, this new understanding, this life changing knowledge, knowing how difficult it is to understand. We could never have understood these things happening before we went through it for ourselves, yet we also know it is too important to keep to ourselves, and we understand that, IF we, who are just ordinary people, have experienced this, (and we cannot deny we have) then it is possible for others as well.
And so, we try. We put it into inadequate words and we share it however we are called, this unexpected knowledge we have been given, even as we are just a bit embarrassed at the position it puts us in. It seems like it was a little simpler before these revelations. Yet it is also the best gift we have ever experienced and we just want others to know, to share it, to open to amazing grace. As Anne LaMotte says, ‘God’s grace comes to us right where we are, but never leaves us there’.
When we find fellow travelers, who have experienced similar things, it is joyous and wonderful to share. It gives us strength, hope and allows us to open ourselves to even more of the unlimited possibilities which are ever present and possible as we move through this place and into the place where we are so intimately known, so completely beloved and so permanently connected.
AL