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poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Letting Go”
Make me sweet again, fragrant and fresh and wild, and thankful for any small event. – Rumi
Passion is a feeling that tells you: this is the right thing to do. Nothing can stand in my way. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says. This feeling is so good that it cannot be ignored. I’m going to follow my bliss and act upon this glorious sensation of joy.
― Wayne W. Dyer
I dreamt we walked together along the shore.
We made satisfying small talk and laughed.
This morning I found sand in my shoe and
a seashell in my pocket.
Was I only dreaming?
🌊
– Maya Angelou
I see you
A woman in the city, who was a sinner,
stood behind him at his feet, weeping,
and began to bathe his feet with her tears….
He said, “Do you see this woman?”
—Luke 7.37, 44
……………………..
No, we do not see.
To one of Jesus’ most arresting questions,
we have to answer: we don’t see her.
We see our prejudices and stereotypes. W
e see our fears and projections.
We don’t see this woman;
we see what we think of her.
We see a sinner.
We see someone disrupting our dinner.
We see someone who makes us uncomfortable.
Which is to say, we see our judgment,
our expectations,
our discomfort.
We see our own stuff.
We don’t see her.
But Jesus saw this woman,
really saw her.
He saw her pain and her strength,
her gratitude, her courage,
her transformation.
He saw the precious value of her gift.
He saw her soul at work.
He saw God’s grace in her.
Jesus really saw people.
He saw who they were and knew their story,
not because he had ESP
but because he paid attention.
The woman at the well,
the bent over woman,
the rich man,
Bartimaeus,
the woman who touched him in a crowd…
he really saw people because he wanted to. He
paid attention.
And there was healing in his seeing.
What he saw in people was not their flaws
but the mercy of God.
And seeing the grace was like sunlight on plants:
it made people heal and grow and bear fruit.
God, help me really see.
Help me set aside my feelings and judgments,
and see whole people,
your beloved,
precious souls.
Help me see myself:
help me notice my projections,
and name my fears and expectations;
help me confess my blinders
and set them aside so I can see.
Beloved, help me really see people,
really see your grace,
really see at all.
Beloved, I want to see.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
At dusk, by the irrigation ditch
gurgling past backyards near the highway,
locusts raise a maze of calls in cottonwoods.
A Spanish girl in a white party dress s
trolls the levee by the muddy water
where her small sister plunks in stones.
Beyond a low adobe wall and a wrecked car
men are pitching horseshoes in a dusty lot.
Someone shouts as he clangs in a ringer.
Big winds buffet in ahead of a storm,
rocking the immense trees and whipping up
clouds of dust, wild leaves, and cottonwool.
In the moment when the locusts pause and the girl
presses her up-fluttering dress to her bony knees
you can hear a banjo, guitar, and fiddle
playing “The Mississippi Sawyer” inside a shack.
Moments like that, you can love this country.
—–
“Passing through Albuquerque” by John Balaban
I wanna take this moment to look into your eyes.
Linger there with courage, allow your soul to rise
Feel your loving spirit
Touch your hidden dreams.
Let you know you’re not alone
that you’re finally seen…
Now’s there’s one less stranger in the world.
One less lonely heart in the night.
Lift your eyes and look at me
now there’s one less stranger in the world.
If you speak right from your heart
and let me do the same
If you allow my point of view
As we grow and change
If we both ask questions
to answers we seek
Then just sit in silence
allow our hearts to speak….
There’d be one less stranger in the world.
One less lonely heart in the night.
Lift your eyes and look at me
now there’s one less stranger in the world.
💑
AL
TRUE LONGING
When you forget or repress the truth and depth of your invisible belonging and decide to belong to some system, person, or project, you short-circuit your longing and squander your identity. To have true integrity, poise, and courage is to be attuned to the silent and invisible nature within you. Real maturity is the integrity of inhabiting that “immortal longing” that always calls you to new horizons. Your true longing is to belong to the eternal that echoes continually in everything that happens to you. Real power has nothing to do with force, control, status, or money. Real power is the persistent courage to be at ease with the unsolved and the unfinished. To be able to recognize, in the scattered graffiti of your desires, the signature of the eternal.
💞
John O’Donohue
Excerpt from ETERNAL ECHOES
TOUCH is what we desire in one form or another, even if we find it through being alone, through the agency of silence or through the felt need to walk at a distance: the meeting with something or someone other than ourselves, the light brush of grass on the skin, the ruffling breeze, the actual touch of another’s hand; even the gentle first touch of an understanding which until now, we were formally afraid to hold.
Whether we touch only what we see or the mystery of what lies beneath the veil of what we see, we are made for unending meeting and exchange, while having to hold a coherent mind and body, physically or imaginatively, which in turn can be found and touched itself. We are something for the world to run up against and rub up against: through the trials of love, through pain, through happiness, through our simple everyday movement through the world.
And the world touches us in many ways, some of which are violations of the body or our hopes for safety: through natural disaster, through heartbreak, through illness, through death itself. In the ancient world the touch of a God was seen as both a blessing and a violation – at one and the same time. Being alive in the world means being found by the world and sometimes touched to the core in ways we would rather not experience.
Growing with our bodies, all of us find ourselves at one time violated or wounded by this world in difficult ways, and still we live and breathe in this touchable, sensual world, and through trauma, through grief, through recovery, we heal in order to be touched again in the right way, as the physical consecration of a mutual, trusted invitation.
Nothing stops the body’s arrival in each new present, except death itself, which is intuited in all cultures as another, ultimate, intimate form of meeting. Nothing stops our ageing nor our witness to time, asking us again and again to be present to each different present, to be touchable and findable, to be one who is living up to the very fierce consequences of being bodily present in the world.
To forge an untouchable, invulnerable identity is actually a sign of retreat from this world; of weakness, a sign of fear rather than strength, and betrays a strange misunderstanding of an abiding, foundational and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear.
…
Excerpted from ‘TOUCH’ From
CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment
and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. by David Whyte
let’s do something new
me and you
let’s travel uncharted territory
make new maps of all we find
let’s create a new heaven
and a new earth
just by touching each other’s souls
tracing hearts around each other’s scars
being kind to one another
let’s do something extraordinary
something spectacular
something world changing
something wild
let’s create a brand new star
just by loving each other
so completely
it starts a supernova of epic proportion
let’s do something fun
something we can laugh at forever
something to bring joy into the room
peace into this broken world
💞
AL
Things take their own time. The seeds planted do not sprout the next day, but that does not mean they never will. Be patient. Your life only gets better when you do. Work on yourself and the rest will follow. You will bloom to the person you were always meant to BE. — Unknown
do the work
Each of us in our own work, our own play,
can transform the earth,
can ring a thousand stars
with any insignificant
anonymous sacrament
of the commonplace…
This little bowl of tea
could bring peace to
all my ancestors,
to a hundred unborn
generations, if I hold it
tenderly, like a planet
in the vast ancient space
of my palm, sip darkly
without naming the flavor,
and taste nothing with my
mind but This…
then give thanks
with a breath of silence in
no hurry to go.
_________
Fred LaMotte
Your faith is not your steadfast belief,
not certainty beyond questions.
Your faith is not what you think of God
or God’s anointed, for you yourself
have done some powerful anointing.
Your faith is giving your gifts,
without questioning how valued they are,
without questioning how worthy you are,
but simply offering what is in you.
What saves you is knowing you are received
without price, without judgment.
The Savior’s love is indeed powerful,
but how precious
is what you have done for the Beloved.
God’s giving and receiving
are married in you.
All that is broken is forgiven,
all that is wounded is healed,
all that is offered is cherished.
All that is broken is forgiven,
all that is wounded is healed,
all that is offered is cherished.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
we do not need to stay broken
healing is our natural state of being
once we are whole again
we must be aware of the release of our pain
and open ourselves to move
to the next natural state of living
we leave the brokenness behind
and dance in the light again
stronger than before
spreading our wings to fly
higher than we ever dared before!
🎁
AL
circles keep circling
This is the beginning.
Almost anything can happen.
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.
Think of an egg, the letter A,
a woman ironing on a bare stage
as the heavy curtain rises.
This is the very beginning.
The first-person narrator introduces himself,
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.
Here the climbers are studying a map
or pulling on their long woolen socks.
This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the wall of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl.
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night with her,
your first night without her.
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent,
before the doors lurch apart.
This is the middle.
Things have had time to get complicated,
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers
teeming with people at cross-purposes—
a million schemes, a million wild looks.
Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack
here and pitches his ragged tent.
This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,
where the action suddenly reverses
or swerves off in an outrageous direction.
Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph
to why Miriam does not want Edward’s child.
Someone hides a letter under a pillow.
Here the aria rises to a pitch,
a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.
And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge
halfway up the mountain.
This is the bridge, the painful modulation.
This is the thick of things.
So much is crowded into the middle—
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,
Russian uniforms, noisy parties,
lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall—
too much to name, too much to think about.
And this is the end,
the car running out of road,
the river losing its name in an ocean,
the long nose of the photographed horse
touching the white electronic line.
This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,
the empty wheelchair,
and pigeons floating down in the evening.
Here the stage is littered with bodies,
the narrator leads the characters to their cells,
and the climbers are in their graves.
It is me hitting the period
and you closing the book.
It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen
and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.
This is the final bit
thinning away to nothing.
This is the end, according to Aristotle,
what we have all been waiting for,
what everything comes down to,
the destination we cannot help imagining,
a streak of light in the sky,
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.
💞
Aristotle by Billy Collins
So that
I stopped
there
and looked
into the sun,
seeing not only
my reflected face
but the great sky
that framed
my lonely figure
and after a moment
I lifted my hands
and then my eyes
and I
allowed myself
to be
astonished
by the great
everywhere
calling to me
like an
invisible
and unspoken
invitation,
like something
in one moment
both calling to me
and radiating
from where I stood,
as if I could
encompass
everything
I had been given
and everything
taken from me
as if I could be
everything
I have learned
and everything
I could know,
as if I knew
in that moment
both the way
I had come
and, secretly,
the way
I was still
promised to go,
brought together,
like this,
with the
unyielding ground
and the symmetry
of the moving sky,
caught in still waters.
Someone
I have been,
and someone
I am just,
about to become,
something I am
and will be forever,
the sheer generosity
of being loved
through loving:
the miracle reflection
of a twice blessed life.
…
Twice Blessed by David Whyte
From Work in Progress
the path keeps winding
I keep walking
always into surprises
always into adventures
today an unexpected ‘wow’ on the path
love always wins,
though the windmills of God
do grind slowly, for sure!
grace always changes us
I keep seeing it
reflecting back at me
from eyes I meet in every place
I let go into the the flow
the mystery keeps expanding
this thing, love, is truly the only thing
that could possibly change this world….
or anyone……
mainly….
namely….
someone….
like…
me.
☺️
AL
rebel souldance & mystic moonshine
I go to sleep
&
I wake up this morning,
thinking…
of conversation
of love
of friendship
of anam cara
of music
of poetry
of art
of creating
of beauty
of kindness
of truth
of life
of writing
of pens
of ink
of gratitude
of allowing
of hoping
of partnership
of relationship
of rEVOLution
of all things new
of souls and time
of forces of nature
of beauty and all she is
of magical moments
of miracle days
of the real meaning of home
💞
AL
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
soul dancin’ swayin’ to the music…
When we choose indifference, we betray our world. Yet the world is not decided by action alone. It is decided more by consciousness and spirit; they are the secret sources of all action and behavior. The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.
John O’Donohue
Excerpt from
TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US (US)
quote by Wayne Dyer
here’s the thing…
what’s a girl to do with all this happiness?
what sort of containers can hold this amount of wild joy?
will howling at the moon help?
or dancing in a beautiful fountain with you?
will you take a back road to see me?
tell me I’m the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen?
will you love me?
living well doesn’t depend on it…
but it would be nice…
to share this happiness with you
do something wild?
spend some beautiful time together
on this beautiful journey?
Let’s allow joy to flow in big puddles all around us,
do some soul dancing,
till we swim in the ocean of all this amazing grace!
💞
AL
Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.
– Angelina Jolie
view from the doorway
It feels like the end of something
but we forget the rest.
It is a door
and something on the other side,
this moment a single petal
of a rose unfolding.
From the doorway looking back
we see you walking along
and ahead we see you
walking along.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
miles come
miles go
some stay a while
some roll on beneath our feet
or our wheels
barely noticed
driving in the fast lane
with the windows rolled up tightly
in God we trust
unfolding on every bill we pull from pocket
but, the world doesn’t work that way…
or does it?
peace,
love,
always seal the deal
go ahead,
open the door,
walk away free,
changed
ready to see some new things
every choice brings us to our new place
right here
right now
notice it
say thank you
always say
thank you
🚪
AL
photos found at http://www.pinterest.com
life: acoustic & amplified 