life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Love”
each piece
I am struck by the otherness of things rather than their sameness.
The way a tiny pile of snow perches in the crook of a branch in the
tall pine, away by itself, high enough not to be noticed by people,
out of reach of stray dogs. It leans against the scaly pine bark, busy
at some existence that does not need me.
It is the differences of objects that I love, that lift me toward the rest
of the universe, that amaze me. That each thing on earth has its own
soul, its own life, that each tree, each clod is filled with the mud of
its own star. I watch where I step and see that the fallen leaf, old
broken grass, an icy stone are placed in exactly the right spot on the
earth, carefully, royalty in their own country
❄️
Looking for the Differences by Tom Hennen
❄️
top photo found at http://www.pinterest.com
photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT
❄️
O come thou Mystery,
unseen, unbidden, unfelt,
but so madly needed here.
Come to us
who push you away with our despair,
snare us with wonder.
Come to us, the lonely and broken,
O Small One,
not to solve but to be with.
Come to us who grieve
place or worth or hope,
and find it with us.
Come to us in our smugness
and lay yourself down in the manger
of our secret wounds.
Come to us in our privilege
and let us hang our lives
on a poor little peasant child.
Come to us in our violent fear
and calm us with your tiny voice.
Ask us to love you.
For us who find it hard to love each other,
come and gather us in a circle,
have us care, have us sing.
Come to us, too afraid to need,
be fragile among us,
and let us fall in love.
Neglect our neglect, Emmanuel,
come and be a tiny flame of love among us,
and light our own.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
gift
Longest night.
Darkness falls like snow,
falls and falls,
deepening.
Older than the universe,
here before it,
and will be after.
Wraps an arm around us
as if we’re old friends.
We are.
Darkness lives in us,
radiates from us.
We speak it.
Darkness is the velvet cloth
where you cherish the gem
of your presence among us,
darkness the womb,
darkness the manger
that cradles your light,
this holy being
that becomes us,
births us.
In the darkness
you do not come to us,
we come from you.
Because you are with and not apart,
even the darkness
is you.
Because you shine in it
the dark is our dark,
none of it unchanged.
Your being our light,
your hereness our life,
shining in the longest night.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
To go into the darkness with a light
is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.
Go without light and find that the dark too, blooms and sings
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
– Wendell Berry
Black. out. black.
Black. on. black.
Dark. on dark. on dark.
I was simply looking for home.
Not knowing the current alley would lead
to where the sidewalk ended
I stepped off the edge
out of the world of light
waking into morning night
a banished sun
no stars
or moon
or streetlights
or fireflies
or lighters
in pitch darkness
I lay, unable to move,
senses adjusting
to what is my new reality
hearing the life
that lives here
wondering if I’ll make friends
while I’m here
learning this new space.
🌌
AL
Gift suggestions:
To your enemy – forgiveness.
To an opponent – tolerance.
To a friend – your heart.
To a customer – service.
To every child – a good example.
To all – love.
💞
– Oren Arnold
following
On this day of your life I believe God wants you to know…
…that there is a solution. There is. But you must keep
going to find it. You cannot stop, you cannot give up.
This is about more than just patience. This is about
more than just persistence. This is about absolute
knowing that God is on your side.
When you know this, you never give up…and the
sense of struggle goes away. You simply keep moving
forward knowing that, in the end, all will work out.
And that along the way there will be great insights
and wonderful remembering.
🎇
– Neale Donald Walsh
God Path with Robin OK 12/17/15
🌌
I won’t wish this pain away
I’ll just trust You and obey
won’t search for treasure on this ground
Cause in You my wealth is found
I know this is right where I should be
I will wait for Your light to shine in me
I will praise You every day
I am Yours
Beloved for eternity
Whatever will bring You glory
Whatever will magnify Your name
Whatever will bring You glory
Whatever, my life is not the same
Whatever will show you’re holy
Whatever I do is for Your praise
Whatever to tell my story
Whatever, my heart will sing Your grace
🌅
AL
🌋
Written on 11/22/13 at French Park in Cincinnati (first pic) Day before following God’s call to go to Louisville. $40 and no place to stay. I lived in my car for several weeks. ❤️ Miracles and adventures abounded….
loving you loving me
I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life’s joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love’s raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
“Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret.”
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
“My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.
🤗
Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Dance of the Soul
Photos found at http://www.pinterest.com
finding center
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
🎄
Trees by Joyce Kilmer
photo by Jen Lemen
🌳
The simplest things in life
Are the most extraordinary
Let them reveal themselves.
– Paulo Coelho
🌲
There is magic in every little thing.
Your very breath is magic
You, showing up on this tiny planet,
at this very time in history.
The way the sun glints off your hair.
The way the trees recognize you.
The way a child can turn their head
and plunge you into grief.
it’s all about perspective.
Einstein reminds us
We have a choice in how we live.
One of two ways –
As if nothing –
OR
As if everything –
Is miraculous.
I’m so glad I choose to see the enchanted pathway.
It’s always a fine day here.
No matter what circumstance I find myself in.
Magic abounds.
🌳
AL
simply still
In the sixth month already
of the impossible
Gabriel,
so usually unseeable—
startling,
though you thought him so foreign,
how nearer than you
to the seed of your life—
fills the room with his wings,
wraps with his words
this world
beside God’s so small,
sets it in the greater one
among stars
and you
lit by the same light,
and calls forth your trust in heaven’s actual, —
for with God nothing is impossible—
the divine within,
inviting your invitation
from even deeper in,
a Word,
a world entrusted to you,
your being
that by gift and labor blesses,
brought with singing
through the portal of this blood of birth
and that crucial other,
calling to life
in your drab littleness
the body of your holiness,
the flesh that God without you cannot have.
Even God waits
to see the miracle,
the birth that only you can birth.
There is no test for paradise,
only paradise.
Say yes.
😇
_________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.designlovefest.com/2012/12/holiday-centerpiece/
things will fit
We think we get over things.
We don’t get over things.
Or say, we get over the measles
but not a broken heart.
We need to make that distinction.
The things that become part of our experience
never become less a part of our experience.
How can I say it?
The way to “get over” a life is to die.
Short of that, you move with it,
let the pain be pain,
not in the hope that it will vanish
but in the faith that it will fit in,
find its place in the shape of things
and be then not any less pain but true to form.
Because anything natural has an inherent shape
and will flow towards it.
And a life is as natural as a leaf.
That’s what we’re looking for:
not the end of a thing but the shape of it.
Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life
without obliterating (getting over) a single
instant of it.
😘
The Cure by Albert Huffstickler
Photos found at http://www.pinterest.com
time to get quiet
some years ask questions
some shake the foundations of our worlds
in a year of answers
be as quiet as possible
practice solitude
acquaintance yourself with silence
open your inner ears
listen for voices from other dimensions
care for your soul
allow deep mystery to bloom
sit in nature
find spots of beauty to fill you up
take time
go slow
so you can hear everything
waiting to be revealed
for such a time as this
🌪
AL
life: acoustic & amplified 