and all this glory burning hot.
there’s this holy hushing
songs of angels,
a chorus of bluebells
bowing heads
softly clapping
as they watch it all approaching.
there’s this first blush of light,
smudging darkness,
a bit like the bitter and sweet
mixed each day with our longing
for joy to come nest.
there’s a song playing on low
sometimes you forget to remember
be still and know
as sure as spring follows winter
love always wins
listen to your heartbeat
joy is our birthright
right now
morning has come
🌞
Amy Lloyd (AL)
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out — no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
Yes!
-William Stafford
At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
plunges us under the dark icy water of yesterday’s pain
the sensitive places choke us
we allow old wounds to be reopened
by new innocents
replay
rewind
again and again
life is not always kind
love is not always given a chance to bloom
buds crushed early
unicorns are tricky
yeti never let themselves be fully seen
or photographed
quickly disappearing into the foggy forest
yes, truth is written by those in the know:
“it is ours to win or lose”
so, what will we choose?
to step in or duck out?
some people love to talk loud about the desire to win
then secretly, swiftly throw the game
and silently walk away
thinking they are playing life safe
fear is a brutal master
comfort-zones will kill us all
though we’ll keep
breathing for many years
trust is a deep quarry hidden within
the high walls of the castle
each kingdom must be won
the beast slain by our courageous spirit
removing the massive heads of the monsters
with the found sword of our personal truths
Envision holding those fearful grotesque trophies aloft!
Stepping into your full name!
Champion
Conquerer
Love always wins!
You must choose it!
You can do it,
were born that way!
Amy Lloyd (AL)
All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that’s a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.
― Paulo Coelho
Read that again:
All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that’s a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.
― Paulo Coelho
Did you know that whenever you feel love, you literally begin to glow? You probably did.
But did you know that the glowing is actually made up of zillions of minute sparkles? And that these sparkles receive as much energy as they create? And that because of this energy exchange you completely stop aging and look younger? Abundance is immediately drawn to you? Healing powers fill you? Muscles are strengthened, pounds are shed, and your vision improves? Lingering questions are answered? New friends are summoned? Old friends are poked? Problems are solved? And maple syrup tastes more maple-y?
All when you feel love.
It’s true,
Nor can I give you anything that is not already at your fingertips.
You have all the answers within your own Being to all of the questions you or anyone else may ask.
Each of us has enormous capacity of Being.
So what is it that we want or need from each other?
Value; We have the capacity to value ourselves and in doing so we set our own value.
Companionship; We experience companionship with others to the capacity that we have companionship with ourselves.
How can I understand others, if I don’t understand myself?
You reflect to me what is already within my own awareness whether I am awake to it or not.
What most of us are looking for outside of ourselves is a reflection, a mirror of what lies within us so that we can gaze upon ourselves.
As I gaze upon myself in the reflection of you
I see the beauty that hides within me
In your grief I touch on the grief I hide inside
In your laughter, laughter is ignited within me
Your Joy radiates and pierces the Joy laden in me
So that we can be in Joy
Your Spirit Unites with Mine as we gaze at Beauty emanated by a flower
This must mean that Beauty enables us to see our harmony
A harmony so perfect that nothing can escape it
As I connect to the world outside of myself it reflects me to you and you to me
We are in concert with the great symphony of the Cosmos
Infinitely expressing itself
In those special tender moments when I touch something in me gazing at you
I can hear the masterpiece sweeping us away
I can see the Vision drawing us near
I can smell the fragrance of our essence
For You Are a Part of Me and I am a Part of You
On Dec 3, 2014 (2 year anniversary of my living death in the dark night of the soul, I got a post titled Love never Dies from Jen Lemen at Hopeful World http://hopefulworld.org
Here’s a taste of what it said:
I am struck also as I write to you from this wintery desk, that building our capacity for stillness helps so much when the wild comes to our restless souls. Without that practice of being quiet, it’s easy to be scared when our wild, instinctual thoughts pop up. It’s easy to think that they are bad somehow or in need of corralling. But the practice of quiet and stillness helps us recognize our instinctual knowing for what it is: a call to our most true nature. A call to a kind of expression that is more vibrant, more textured, more passionate, more alive–even if it’s a little bit messy. Even if it kicks up a little bit of shame that we are this human, this raw.
So I invite you today to sit with me for three magic minutes. I’ll be right here with you, my own mind a rollercoaster of crazy, of frantic, of nonsensical worrisome things. I’ll sit with you and notice everything in my own soul, while you notice everything in yours and together we will begin to knit together an understanding of what’s underneath that noise: a gorgeous, exquisite tapestry of human longing designed to carry us to an awake magnificent place.
Will you join me?
Setting the timer now.
Let me know how it is on the other side.
With so much love,
Jen
It’s now 3.5 years later and Jen Lemen is still bringing all that, and more to me, to you, to the shaky, hoping world, to the edges of eternity…love never dies.
Today, in this crazy, brutal brutal place, where we ask…
how can these two people be our Presidential choices?
how can people keep killing other people?
how can I deal with the grief and the fear of this?
how can I help?
what is the solution?
what is my part?
Jen Lemen is doing her part. She’s offering Soul Snacks – http://www.thewayofdevotion.org/soul-snacks
Amazing gifts to all of of struggling, hungry, hurting, angry, frustrated pilgrims and poets.
Right now she has open enrollment and I have just this…
Don’t wait! http://www.thewayofdevotion.org/soul-snacks
Gobble this up, savor it a bite at a time, eat them from start to finish, or nibble from the middle to each edge of crust. Savory, delectable soul-spices involving all your most subtle senses. http://www.thewayofdevotion.org/soul-snacks
I
💞
Keep wrestling, burn, scream, let go, melt, let your heart keep breaking for the sake of your heart, keep saying the names of your people, fiercely defend your tenderness, think, grieve, repair, renew, continue to do what’s in your heart to do…each thread matters…each color makes the world more beautiful…
in the end, only love is eternal, only love remains… http://www.thewayofdevotion.org/soul-snacks
🔥
AL
We are God’s thread
weaving through the tapestry,
the masterpiece is slowly
created.
Potential for beauty, we can’t know,
unfolding,
becoming,
revealing glory
so bright
it makes the sun squint
and reach for sunglasses.
Brilliance so far beyond ourselves
we go shining into the gray
as we open to the new jewels appearing,
sparkling in the moonlight.
As we step into the needle’s eye
the angels catch their breath,
cheering our blazing garments,
dazzled by the vision
God is revealing through the creation.
As we surrender to the greatest mystery,
the beauty we inhabit
becomes us,
walking in humble clay
eyes out shining the stars
set in the heavens.
Until we totally disappear and all that’s left
is holiness
so pure
all we can do
is
bow in wonder
at ourselves
and give thanks
as the silk thread
becomes liquid gold and silver
pure and simple
glory
as we realize our place in the whole.
We are the temple of our creator.
The home of God.
😎
AL
As deftly and finally as one pulls out a thread
someone is weaving them, gracefully tying them,
minute and irreversible.
In the towering sky, even under the fortress,
root tendrils muscle in and bind ligaments
through an abyss we had been told was absolute.
No enormity of terror
can keep up
with the steady, unseen healing.
Before the assault, the horrible wound,
gaping and exposed,
the stitching has already begun.
Even as we sigh in our own world,
moving on, separate,
we are being sewn in.
In the earthquake, the collapsing mountains,
not a bit of rubble falls
on the path from the temple.
If you could hold your immortal soul
in your hands, you would hardly recognize it
from one moment to the next.
Your grave is already empty.
__________________
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,
photo above OF Lissette Hesmadt taken by her daughter!!! Ah-mazing!
🌞
Never water yourself down just because someone can’t handle you at 100 Proof.
🌞
– Unknown
Someone you know was walking through the woods alone, just following his whims, when he looked down into the hollow where a dark stream flowed. On the other side of the stream he saw something gold glinting in the darkness. It was out of his way, and looked difficult to reach, but the mysterious thing beckoned to him. So he left the well-maintained path, and descended the steep bank. He made his way, with great effort, through painful brambles and resistant thickets. Beyond the stream he could see the gold thing, shining in a tiny shaft of sunlight. As he stepped into the stream he realized that it was much deeper than he had imagined. He paused, thinking this was a silly obsession. What would people think of him going to all this trouble just to find a piece of trash beside a creek? But that thing seemed to be calling out to him— not from across the stream, but from within him. And he thought, “What better have I to do than to pursue this mystery?” So he plunged into the stream. It was over his head, and cold, and the current was surprisingly strong. He imagined what would happen if he drowned, and they found his body here. How would they explain that? It made him laugh. But he had resolved to make this little journey, so he swam across the current.
On the other side he waded through the mud to the treasure. It was certainly nothing that anybody else would want. It was an old picture with a gilded frame, dirty and mostly caked with mud, but shiny along one edge. He wiped off the glass. What he saw astonished him. It was a portrait. To someone looking on it might have looked like nothing but vague shapes of light and shadow. But among the dreamy shapes, he saw a portrait of himself! Only it was more noble and beautiful than he could have imagined. In this picture he had purpose. There was a look in his eyes of deep joy and wisdom. And it was clear that whoever had painted the picture had done so with great love and tenderness, with respect for even the tiniest and most ordinary details. Amazed, he stared at it for a long, long time. The afternoon passed away.
Finally, clutching it to his heart, he returned across the stream. But in the strong current the picture slipped from his hands and it sank into the unreachable depths. At first he wanted to dive down and find it; but then, floating on the water, he realized that it did not matter. He had seen the picture, and it was engraved in his heart; that was all that mattered to him. He crossed the stream and found a new road, eager to go home and, though it seemed impossible, to tell his wife.