life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “light”
seasons
Walking among trees being stripped,
the graveyard of colors at my feet,
branches above slowly being robbed,
air chilling, reaching farther into me,
I can’t shake the gentle dread
that something more will be required,
something taken, or outgrown,
requiring a reckoning of grief,
no loss God wants to save me from,
no turning that I want to miss,
a coming free that will not feel like such,
a birth resembling autumn’s lovely death.
I know no other passage through these woods.
The small path reaches out to me.
I feel my breathing, steady, slow and small.
The forest turns around me as I go.
Mist rises from the farm field to the west,
that slowly fills with yellow morning light.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
breakthrough
I sit with the storm
watching the wind do what wind does,
visible-invisible work.
It howls through the roof tops,
blows leaves past the window.
It is quite the showoff this morning.
The gracious tree drips sorrow for me.
Thunder and lightening,
scare the dog into the bathroom,
but thrill me with their ferocity.
All morning it goes
as I work at my 4′ space
pausing occasionally, or more,
to watch the crying games.
Then suddenly,
into my concentration,
my writing lights up.
It’s dramatic, startling even.
I look up quickly
to see what has happened
and the storm is completely gone.
The sunlight has broken through the overcast sky.
The trees are drenched in golden glow,
leaves glistening like glowing emeralds.
It is so beautiful it takes my breath away.
I sit and stare for timeless time,
drinking it into my soul,
into my storehouse of these glory moments.
Then I go back to my work,
full of wonder and hope.
AL 10/04/13
thank you, Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver reminds me
to let go of any need, that might linger within,
to, even try, to impress anyone,
least of all,
myself.
LET GO…
just stay alert to the extravagant impressiveness around me,
puddling at my feet,
drowning my life with goodness.
To be easily astonished,
easily filled with wonder,
to allow life to boggle my mind.
To stay a child of joy and nature,
a collector of abundant miracles,
never taking one of them for granted.
To stay in awe of sunsets
and dandelions,
coffee shops
and grasshoppers.
Bears and ants.
To gasp every time I get a view of the ocean,
to be breathless at the view from a mountaintop road at sunset.
To thrill when I see a leaf change color.
To crane my neck, every single time, to catch a glimpse of sunlight on water,
and the curve of a babies cheek.
To get a chill of macabre delight
at gnarly, old toenails,
and bats hanging upside down
in a dark damp cave,
or flying around a street light as darkness falls slowly through the air.
Such things keep me alive.
These are the true riches of our living.
Extreme miracles everywhere around us.
We are here to witness,
here to share descriptions of such beauty,
even our feeble attempts are so amazing
they boggle the mind.
Thank you, Mary Oliver, for this reminder,
with your lovely vision
and every beautiful, glorious word.
We are each here to do our part,
to record our miracles
in our own way.
With our
lives,
voices,
pens,
paints,
dances,
lyrics,
artistry,
we make up this tapestry,
record the blazing glory,
of this masterpiece we live in.
We each add notes to the grand symphony of life,
no accidents,
or accidental people.
Only I can tell you the grandeur of my living space,
it is mine alone,
until I share it.
As I share,
I allow the singing of the rocks to be heard,
but also to stay a silent mystery
–
at least for those
who don’t choose to hear
this exquisite, out-of-this-world music,
playing with such brilliance, light and passion,
everywhere we go.
AL 8/23/13
be the light
You cannot get sick enough to help sick people get better. You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive. It is only in your thriving that you have anything to offer anyone. If you’re wanting to be of an advantage to others, be as tapped in, turned in, turned on as you can possibly be.
– Esther Abraham-Hicks
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you
slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
It is a gift of God, the life of the Spirit breathing in you, the maker of worlds uttering, “Let there be light.” – Steve Garnaas – Holmes
The divine in you is not the power to conquer wrong
but simply the passion to be good news,
to open eyes, to set free.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
living who you are
Found on Paulo Coelho’s Blog:
Several times I gave received via Internet some texts attributed to me, as
the text below. I made several changes and decided to post it here:
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on
staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the
meaning of the other stages we have to go through.
Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we
give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that
have finished.
Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did
you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting
friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering
why this has happened.
You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out
why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life
have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be
awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or
wife, your friends, your children, your sister. Everyone is finishing
chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will
all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.
Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.
That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy
souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or
donate the books you have at home.
Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible
world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain
memories also means making some room for other memories to take their
place.
Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them.
Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and
sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect
your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your
love to be understood.
Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program
over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a
certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that
are broken off; marriage or work that is promised but there is no starting date;
decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.”
Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell
yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that
there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person
– nothing is irreplaceable; a habit is not a need. This may sound so
obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.
Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but
simply because that no longer fits your life.
Shut the door, change the record, clean the house and shake off the dust.
Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.
– unknown (edited by Paulo Coelho)
the thin thread in the dark
The past 5 months have been some of the toughest I have ever experienced – and I have been through some tough times over these past 23 years – but the past 5 months have been brutal. They have worn me down and out. My faith has been strong and I have had miracles and amazing people come into my life to help me in every way possible, but there is something about day after day of this type of faith – walking for months in extremely difficult living, months of having no money, pain and grief from loss. Living with no relief for months on end, not knowing where you will eat or sleep next – which wears you out and drains your resources to the very last drop.
And then one day, after 127 days of this, I woke up and it was the day I had known could happen. The day I had feared would come. The day I had dreaded and tried to keep from coming. It was upon me. I woke up with no hope and all was dark. I’ve had a few such days, weeks, even months over these past years and they are some of the hardest, bleakest of times I have ever experienced. I shudder when I think about them. I wasn’t able to write, or share during those times. I would completely shut myself off and not even talk to people for the most part. When I have gone into the dark, it has been me, alone, locked into the darkness struggling to find God, to find my way forward, my way out, wrestling with the questions which have no answer. I am always concerned I won’t make it, I won’t recover, I won’t come out, I won’t have the strength to make this next choice I need to make – I will finally just give up and stay there. Everything I have hoped for, and struggled so hard for, will never be accomplished and I will die of my brokenness. This time was different, this time I had no defense and there was no more fight, no more struggle.
Somehow in the darkest of my days, I am always given some thin thread of hope. Sometimes just a whisper. A glimpse of God working. When I can’t. God does. Every time. I have found that I am never alone. God is always in the dark with me, and that is why my faith has taken over my life. I have found the love of God to be so transformative I have nothing else I can do but to remove my will so that God can, hopefully, be seen more and more –
Union with God means every bit of our human nature transfigured in Christ, woven up into his creative life and activity, into his redeeming purpose, heart soul, mind and strength. Each time it happens it means that one of God’s creatures has achieved its destiny. – Evelyn Underhill
As I move through this darness I am more and more aware of the magnitude of God. I am finding glimpses of devastating grace and am learning how little I know about the mystery and magnitude of God.
The next few days I will be sharing some insights from my place of darkness. This darkness has been a scary thing to encounter and I pray that it is the right thing to share it. This is new territory for me and I am not sure where it will lead me. My constant prayer is, ‘Help me – Not my will, but Thine be done.”
I share this to bring hope to myself, and to others who also find themselves in the darkness, it’s always easier when we walk together. Once again I have found, I do not know the answers to this mystery and we are never alone.
life: acoustic & amplified 