Hope | life: acoustic & amplified

Archive for the category “Hope”

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

25 Apr 2016

refining thoughts

Relax.
This won’t last long.
Or if it does,
or if the lines make you sleepy or bored,

give in to sleep, turn on the T.V.,
deal the cards.

This poem is built to withstand such things.

Its feelings cannot be hurt.
They exist somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.

Pick it up anytime.

Start it in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like.
Look, there’s a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he’ll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you’re busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it’s sex you’ve always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party’s unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don’t think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this

is a poem for the entire family.

Right now, Budweiser is dripping from a waterfall,

deodorants are hissing into armpits of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don’t know what music this poem can come up with,

but clearly it’s needed.

For it’s apparent

they will never see each other again

and we need music for this
because there was never music

when he or she

left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer than life.
I want you to look at it

when anxiety zigzags your stomach

and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I’ll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don’t give anything for this poem.
It doesn’t expect much.
It will never say more

than listening can explain.

Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house.
And if you’re not asleep

by now, or bored beyond sense,

the poem wants you to laugh.
😄

Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn

The purpose of poetry is not to create literary criticism. It exists to delight, instruct, and console living people in the sloppy fullness of their humanity.

☺️

– Dana Gioia

Sometimes my words

stick

inside my pen.

Hidden within the

inky blood,

refusing to flow.

Dammed up

blockage of

frozen heart,

stubborn mind,

unwilling soul,

refusing to know,

what is already known –

heard 10 thousand times

between the lines

of shaded eyes

refusing to grow.

🙃

Posted in attitude, Becoming Yourself, Hope, Imagine, Letting Go, Life, Miracles, Poetry, soul and spirit, Trust, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

22 Apr 2016

love came calling

Love came to tell me,

‘there is nothing that does not include me…

from your breath

to the neighbor

who is hard to ‘tolerate.’

Everything is love

it’s all connected

it’s all life’s about

So, Love came to call,

to tell me,

to make sure I truly understood,

what love looks like.

The real thing

is costly,

is all powerful,

all encompassing.

Yes, love came

and stayed,

whispering in my ear,

every damn day

reminding me,

‘There is nothing

that does not include me…

nothing’

😘

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, compassion, confidence, connection, Faith, find art at pinterest, grace, Hope, Letting Go, Life, Love | Leave a comment

16 Apr 2016

watch & pray

HIDING is a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light. Even hiding the truth from ourselves can be a way to come to what we need in our own necessary time. Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose, the snow bound internal pulse of the hibernating bear.
Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother’s womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world; to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.
Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence, as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often in ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named.
We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with too easily articulated ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.

Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others, especially in the enclosing world of oppressive secret government and private entities, attempting to name us, to anticipate us, to leave us with no place to hide and grow in ways unmanaged by a creeping necessity for absolute naming, absolute tracking and absolute control. Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about our selves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed.
Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control. Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.

☺️💞☺️
HIDING by David Whyte

All the things hidden in my heart

Like Mary, the mother,

Watching and observing Jesus.

Being the witness of the unseen miracles

The keeper of all I have seen.

My faith is real,

because I have experienced great acts of God,

faithfulness

on the inside, and outside, of my life,

In the daily progression of my journey.

You can’t take any of it away from me.

I know what I have seen.

This is not my daddy’s faith

This is not my momma’s relationship.

This is all mine.

Intimacy

Walking together.

Miracles.

Clouds and colors,

falling stars and pillars of fire,

pointing the way.

Falling in love.

Commitment.

Yes, the words of Jesus changed my life,

When I began to live them daily.

When I stepped into the great unknown.

Became an observer of my own soul.

Became open to the door of the unknown.

Became comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Fell in passionate love with grace.

Walked through the unlocked door into freedom

All the hidden things will be revealed

All the hidden things will be proclaimed

All the hidden things will be shouted from the rooftops.

All the hidden things will be joyfully sung at the top of my lungs.

All the hidden things will remain hidden no more.

💖

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, find art at pinterest, Hope, mystery, Passion, Poetry | Leave a comment

26 Mar 2016

2…the space between

“For us women the spiritual life, in one way, is easier than for men. Only a certain temperament of man can surrender like we can surrender. And spiritual life is surrender. Bhai Sahib said, ‘Women are taken up through the path of love, for love is a feminine mystery.’ He said we women do not need many spiritual practices. We need only to renounce. Renounce what? Renounce the world. Complete renunciation, which is the most difficult thing for the woman, is necessary. I had to do it—to give everything away. Bhai Sahib said to me, “You cannot say to the Beloved, ‘Oh I love you, but this is mine, and so far and no further.'” You have to give everything away, including yourself, in complete surrender.”
💞

~ Irina Tweedie (20th century Russian Sufi mystic)

Yesterday, this poem (below) resurfaced. I wrote it a while ago, after a disappointment. It immediately spoke up and wanted to appear on the blog…I said, hmmmm, do I really want to go there in public? It kept saying, yes (and refusing to be ignored). OK. Surrender brings humility. Rejection beings a chance to learn new layers. Love, and life, require courage.

So, I am posting this poem for whoever it is for…

have you ever given,
or received,

a gift –

unwanted,

or misunderstood?
We’ve built a whole retail myth of love

from giving,

mostly,

unwanted gifts.

‘Re-gifting’ is a popular side effect

of things taken,

out of obligation,

by others who don’t want,

or think they need,

the present presented.
It’s a thing in relationships as well,

it takes two to tango.

If one person is wanting something,

the other is not able to understand,

or accept,

it just doesn’t work.
This week I experienced a return.

My greatest gift,

the gift of me,

held out to another.

My gift was not wanted,

so, eventually, I withdrew

this large, tall gift of

myself,

complete with all I have to bring to a relationship.

I wanted to share this with someone,

who I love,

but that person doesn’t want the same thing I want.

This gift of sharing all of the various shades, shapes and colors of our souls

in this amazing thing called life.
One of my lessons,

hardest learned –

you can’t give someone something,

if they don’t want it.
I have become mindfully committed to

not allowing a glimpse of possibility,

or potential,

to derail me from what I really want.
Never. never. never….

settle,

Never. never. never….

quit!
You can make lemonade from lemons,

but

you can’t make a silk purse

out of a sow’s ear.
This week I received blessed closure.

The final collapse of space held for another to enter

The invitation explored,

expired,

I moved into new, beautiful space.

No more allowing,

or trying to give myself

to someone who didn’t really want what I have to give.

It’s not wrong,

it’s just painful.
Unconditional love is free,

living and giving it

requires responsibility to living my highest and best

and requiring that in return.

I believe in it,

completely,

however,

it will cost you,

change you,

require much more than cheaper versions of love.

Not everyone can accept the responsibility of this gift,

which always requires the best of us,

the same in gift in return,

knowing its value,

tenderest of care,

thinking of the other,

stepping out of our ego,

into its vast ocean of mystery,

life changing grace.

This week I followed the gift full circle.
I woke up a bit sad,

truthfully, for both of us,

but new,

released from the wish of what was not to be.
I hope to be able to re-gift it soon,

to someone

who truly knows how to value it,

nurture it,

return it to me,

equally,

with the dream,

the vision,

of what could be,

if we build an ark of this love,

sail into the mystic

and invite the world

to the best party ever…

Water into wine,

has always been,

just the beginning of miracles!!!!!

❤️💔❤️

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Choice, confidence, connection, courage, create, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, giving, grace, Grieving, Growth, healing, Hope, Letting Go, Life, Love, mystery, Reality | Leave a comment

19 Mar 2016

amazing grace

God, save me from the lie

of an acceptable death,

the heroic sacrifice (too many spent),

a crazed god’s scheme

to sell forgiveness for blood.

Save me from the anticipated gesture,

the deal agreed upon.

Deliver me instead into truth’s sordid lap,

the bewildering perversion

that comes of fear, and death its only issue,

violence its only hands and feet;

the way we judge, the way we think we can.

Let me not blame this on you.
No: only in the jumpy torchlight

of the unnecessary flames

of another lynching, another rape,

a war, an execution,

the tragedy of power,

only here in honest horror

do we see your awful love in all its range,

your inexplicable grace unbending,

mercy nailed and crowned with thorns.

Only here in our deepest depravity,

not planned, not paid for, but accepted,

can I know love strong enough

to save me and all this trembling world

not from that but this,

not from the fear of hell

but from the hell itself of fear.

Only in my deepest loss, and yours,

do I see love win

and raise me up to something new

and really alive.
__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

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 by fellow pilgrims, or foes, or strange bed-fellows,

other days we seem to walk alone
no matter
we walk on
or we sit and wait
relying on radical trust
we learn the virtues by living
because we have truly learned
what we could never learn
by our own understanding
faith is the victory
everything is grace

☀️

Posted in attitude, awareness, find art at pinterest, forgiveness, Freedom, Glory, Gospel, grace, Gratitude, Happy Holiday!, healing, Hope, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, Passion, soul and spirit, strength, Trust, truth, Vulnerability, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment

09 Mar 2016

uphold the integrity of the quest – spoken @ Infusion Cincinnati

A GLIMPSE

The beauty of the imagination is that it can discover such magnificent vastness inside a tiny space. Our culture is dominated by quantity. Even those who have plenty hunger for more and more. Everywhere around us, the reign of quantity extends and multiplies. Sadly the voyage of greed has all the urgency but no sense of destination. Desire becomes inflated and loses all sense of vision and proportion. When beauty becomes an acquisition it brings no delight. When time seemed longer and slower, the eye of the beholder had more space and distance to glimpse the beautiful. There was a respect for the worlds that could be suggested by a glimpse.

☄

John O’Donohue

Excerpt from BEAUTY

I steal glimpses of beauty,

in all she is –

this moment,

sky in my rearview.

A huge bowl of rainbow sherbet

my favorite-color-kind

with raspberry, orange & lime

swatches of lemon, indigo & periwinkle

float like barges –

in, out

around.

Framing.

Dancing.

Living.

At one point tangerine fills the top of the hilly crest,

headlight stars

blaze brilliant against the backdrop.

Indigo stretched above, framing this momentary masterpiece.

At times I find it hard to keep moving forward

into the matt gray of drudgery ahead.

With so much loveliness going on

right behind me…

how can I keep heading away from it?

How can I not be a part of this splendor?

Eventually, midnight blue seizes its moment of glory,

then night falls over all,

and I am left,

aching with the beauty,

the majesty,

the extravagant display,

of this wonderful world.

I go to wondering

if this longing in my heart

will ever be answered?

If my whole life I will wait

for a moment which will never come?

Will it never be realized under this piece of sky?

Will it always be this whisper?

The magic of hope,

this thing with wings,

hovering over my heart

for another 50 years,

echoing on into eternity.

🌄

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, big, Blessing, Choice, connection, courage, find art at pinterest, Habits, healing, Hope, Imagine, inspiration, Letting Go, Life, light, Love, Miracles, mystery, nature, Passion | Leave a comment

05 Mar 2016

take a breath

In these times when anger

Is turned into anxiety

And someone has stolen

The horizons and mountains,
Our small emperors on parade

Never expect our indifference

To disturb their nakedness.
They keep their heads down

And their eyes gleam with reflection

From aluminum economic ground,
The media wraps everything

In a cellophane of sound,

And the ghost surface of the virtual

Overlays the breathing earth.
The industry of distraction

Makes us forget

That we live in a universe.
We have become converts

To the religion of stress

And its deity of progress;
That we may have courage

To turn aside from it all

And come to kneel down before the poor,

To discover what we must do,

How to turn anxiety

Back into anger,

How to find our way home.

🏡

John O’Donohue
‘For Citizenship’ from BENEDICTUS

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. – Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Posted in America, anger, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Beliefs, Career, Choice, compassion, confidence, connection, courage, Encouragement, find art at pinterest, Freedom, Hope, Imagine, Life, Peace, politics, power, Reality | Leave a comment

28 Feb 2016

do a little bit more

I hope you have a great day

I hope you know I love you

I hope you love me in whatever way you can

I hope you see the miracles today

I hope you make good choices

I hope you find peace

I hope life blooms again for you

I hope the lights lead you home

I hope you see the shining possibility of the future

I hope you always remember

😘

One day you will find the thing
You are meant to love

And it will whittle you down

Make you lean of excess

One day the tattered baggage

You’ve been carrying from place to place

Will get set down on the side of the road

With hardly a thought

One day you’ll decide you’ve had enough

Of the shackles chaffing your ankles

And you’ll walk out of them

The ties that once bound so tightly suddenly slack

One day you’ll be nothing but sinew and bone and burning passion

All claws and wails and sweetness and strength

A wild thing

A thing that’s found its home

🏡

One Day by BRANDI REYNOLDS

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

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Faith, find art at pinterest, home, Hope, inspiration, Life, Love | Leave a comment

02 Feb 2016

together in a hopeful world

Yesterday there was a facebook post from Jen Lemen over at Hopeful World http://hopefulworld.org (she’s one of my most admired people on the planet) telling me that it was a half-way-between-solstice moment and she would be burning a fire in celebration and prayer. If anyone wanted to be part…just say ‘yes’ and she would bring us! I said, ‘Yes, please’ as quickly as I could type it!!!
And so, last night, while I was sleeping…Jen Lemen was doing something so amazing, I get chill bumps every time I think about it!!! She was holding me, and mine, in that space between.

Yes, there was INTENTION, there was fire, there was singing, there was celebrating and grieving, there was prayer for the world, for everyone who requested it…and, Holy Batman, Batman, there was prayer for ME and all I hold within and without me.
What a gift! Beauty and all she is! Powerful and humbling! Encouraging and valuing! I feel it all this morning and I say, Thank you, Jen! Thank you, more than I can say! I am so blessed by you and your work!! 💞

I woke up to these words from Jen this morning:

Writing blessings. Saying prayers. May you be happy and peaceful. May no harm come to you. May no difficulty come to you. May you be deeply blessed. May you take care of anyone and everything smaller and sweeter than you are. May you surrender your power to make space for a forgotten voice. May you notice the earth and how she moves and breathes. May you say yes when you’re called and stay quietly beside until the time is right. May you become love and be love and find love and hope for more love, when others say it doesn’t matter or all hope is gone. #pathofprayerandpleasure #urbanfamily #bliss #mysticlife #blessings #imbolc #brigid #celticspring

🙏🏻

– Jen Lemen @ Hopeful World

http://hopefulworld.org

The poet gives you a little stone to stand on,