life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Miracles”

07 Nov 2015

just a thought

  
My life was the size of my life.

Its rooms were room-sized,

its soul was the size of a soul.

In its background, mitochondria hummed,

above it sun, clouds, snow,

the transit of stars and planets.

It rode elevators, bullet trains,

various airplanes, a donkey.

It wore socks, shirts, its own ears and nose.

It ate, it slept, it opened

and closed its hands, its windows.

Others, I know, had lives larger.

Others, I know, had lives shorter.

The depth of lives, too, is different.

There were times my life and I made jokes together.

There were times we made bread.

Once, I grew moody and distant.

I told my life I would like some time,

I would like to try seeing others.

In a week, my empty suitcase and I returned.

I was hungry, then, and my life,

my life, too, was hungry, we could not keep

our hands off our clothes on

our tongues from

💃🏻

My Life Was the Size of My Life by Jane Hirshfield 
   

… and if what I desperately think I want doesn’t happen…God, and life, are still good…
😘

Posted in attitude, awareness, be, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Change, Choice, courage, grace, Gratitude, Happiness, healing, laugh, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, music, mystery, Passion | Leave a comment
04 Nov 2015

somewhere in New Jersey…

  
‘I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.’ 

‘I should think so — in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!’

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

 

this morning began at 4! I’ve been on my adventure for a couple hours now. This post is at my first Starbucks stop (chestnut praline latte, how I love thee) more posts and poetry as I go today… ❤️

   
    
 http://youtu.be/dBN86y30Ufc

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, confidence, connection, courage, determination, find art at pinterest, fun, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, music, Passion | Leave a comment
03 Nov 2015

wherever you go

 

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing, 

one below the other, one easier to hear, the other 
lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard 

yet always present. 
When all other things seem lively and real, 

this one fades. Yet the notes of it 
touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound 

of the names laid over each child at birth. 
I want to stay in that music without striving or cover. 

If the truth of our lives is what it is playing, 
the telling is so soft 

that this mortal time, this irrevocable change, 
becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again 

to hear the second music. 
I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds. 

All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart. 

💞

 The Second Music by Annie Lighthart
 

 God is my presence of mind 
My anger 

My passion 

My resistance 

God is my breathe 

My movement 

My flow 

God is my present circumstance 

My living 

My future 

My past 

God is my water 

My fire 

My earth 

My loving 

My glory 

My holy 

God is my music 

My melody 

My harmony

My song 

🎼

AL

  

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, Faith, find art at pinterest, grace, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, music, mystery | Leave a comment
30 Oct 2015

let the light  

  
You work with what you are given, 

the red clay of grief, 

the black clay of stubbornness going on after. 

Clay that tastes of care or carelessness, 

clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.
Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live, 

each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table. 

There are honeys so bitter 

no one would willingly choose to take them. 

The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity, 

honey of cruelty, fear. 
This rebus —slip and stubbornness, 

bottom of river, my own consumed life— 

when will I learn to read it 

plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire? 

Not to understand it, only to see. 
As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty, 

we become our choices. 

Each yes, each no continues, 

this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup. 
The ladder leans into its darkness. 

The anvil leans into its silence. 

The cup sits empty. 
How can I enter this question the clay has asked? 

🔹

Rebus by Jane Hirshfield

 

 The lion still roars 
I walk in grief 

On the purple beach 

the grey-green water 

meeting the sky 

Into infinity 

the world unending 

I sit on driftwood 

Fascinatingly carved by water 

Into pieces of art 

and shapes that look like 

cattle skulls in the desert 

I cry as I pick up rocks 

Why do i grieve such simple things?

Those precious shells 

I spent hours snorkeling for 

In 1985 

You polished them 

til they were smooth as silk 

So beautiful 

I loved everything about them 

and that memory they held 

Back When the world was still 

A mystery 

And I knew nothing about hardship 

Loss or pain 

I thought love and life were simple 

That you wanted me to be happy

That you loved me 

That we would build a family together 

I kept those shells in a special jar 

Would let the kids play with them

For a special treat 

I loved their delight in them 

As they played for hours 

sorting the colors and shapes 

Loving the story of us at the start

I Kept them close to me 

Through all the losses 

Then they were gone 

lost to me forever 

way after my innocence 

but somehow they took 

some shred I was holding on to 

Some secret part of me and you 

that was still beautiful 
As I picked up small beautiful rocks 

today at the beach 

They reminded me 

and it all returned 

all the losses 

all the pain 

What you chose 

The choices I was forced to make 

The price of gaining my soul 

The cost of winning my freedom 

I cry so deeply 

Right to the core 

such intense love 

for the wounded heart 

carried in small pieces 

of the world 

connecting all the pain 

and love together 

Bittersweet grief 

Bittersweet love 

Exquisite pain 

Exquisite joy 

Will I ever find love that understands this? 

Will I ever share this same heart as one? 

Will I ever make it home? 

Will I ever make it? 

Will I ever? 

Will I? 

Will? 

💙

AL

 

    

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com 

Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, connection, courage, dark, Death, Encouragement, Faith, find art at pinterest, giving, grace, Grieving, Growth, healing, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, Reflection, soul and spirit, Trust, truth, www.pinterest.com | Leave a comment
28 Oct 2015

look where you’re standing  

 
Pick a crevice, 

a homey gap 

between stones 

and make it 

your own. 
Grow a life here 

from wind 

rain 

and the memories of ancients 

embedded in limestone. 
The bees will use you 

for their sweet honey. 

The rock will soften under 

your touch. 

You will draw moisture from fog 

and hold it. 

Your presence 

will build soil. 
This is all we have 

in this life 

all we own: 

a flowering 

an opening 

a gap between stones 

for tiny tender roots. 

🎋

Flowering by Linda Buckmaster 
 

   

 

    

Listen to Eli Young Band sing Even if it Breaks Your Heart 

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com 

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, connection, courage, find art at pinterest, Freedom, Growth, healing, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, Patience, Relationships | Leave a comment
26 Oct 2015

so glad to see you

  When it’s time for souls to meet, there’s nothing on earth that can prevent them from meeting, no matter where each may be located. When two hearts are meant for each other, no distance is too far, no time is too long, and no other love can break them apart. 

    – Jaime Lichauco 

 Then came a moment of renaissance,

I looked up – you again are there,

A fleeting vision, the quintessence

Of all that`s beautiful and rare.

     – Alexander Pushkin

 

 Don’t be afraid to be fully seen, 

for you are God’s Beloved. 

Seek to truly see others as God’s Beloved. 

It is the light that re-creates us.

__________________

 
Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net
 

 Sōetsu Yanagi, founder of Japan’s modern craft movement, defines beauty as that which gives unlimited scope to the imagination; beauty is a source of imagination, he says, that never dries up. A thing so attractive and absorbing may not be pretty or pleasant. It could be ugly, in fact, and yet seize the soul as beautiful in a special sense…luring the heart into profound and endless imagination. 
     – Thomas Moore (edited)

 

 May morning be astir with the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,

Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse

That cut right through the surface to a source.
May this be a morning of innocent beginning,

When the gift within you slips clear

Of the sticky web of the personal

With its hurt and its hauntings,

And fixed fortress corners,
A Morning when you become a pure vessel

For what wants to ascend from silence,
May your imagination know

The grace of perfect danger,
To reach beyond imitation,

And the wheel of repetition,
Deep into the call of all

The unfinished and unsolved
Until the veil of the unknown yields

And something original begins

To stir toward your senses

And grow stronger in your heart
In order to come to birth

In a clean line of form,

That claims from time

A rhythm not yet heard,

That calls space to

A different shape.
May it be its own force field

And dwell uniquely

Between the heart and the light
To surprise the hungry eye

By how deftly it fits

About its secret loss.
💞
For the Artist at the Start of Day by John O’Donohue 

   
Yes, SI, this is for you…

💞

Listen to Joe Cocker sing You Are So Beautiful  

photos found at http://www.pinterest.com 

 

Posted in attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Change, Choice, connection, find art at pinterest, Freedom, Happiness, healing, intimacy, Joy, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, Passion, Relationships | Leave a comment
25 Oct 2015

peep

  
Photo found on facebook

🍁

The rain breaks, though the sky is still grey, even so

The trees are drenched in golden glow, 

leaves glistening like glowing emeralds, rubies, gold dripping in puddles to the ground,

there neon reds, pinks and oranges screaming for my attention like an extravert teenager in the 1980’s –

It is so beautiful it takes my breath away 

I stop and stare for timeless time, 

drinking it into my soul, 

into my storehouse of these flaming glory-moments

Then I go on with my day, 

full of wonder and hope 

I heard it in your voice this morning

There are good things ahead

🍂

AL

   
    
    
 
photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT

🍁

If we could, 

like the trees, 

practice dying, 

do it every year 

just as something we do— 

like going on vacation 

or celebrating birthdays, 

it would become 

as easy a part of us 

as our hair or clothing. 
Someone would show us how 

to lie down and fade away 

as if in deepest meditation, 

and we would learn 

about the fine dark emptiness, 

both knowing it and not knowing it, 

and coming back would be irrelevant. 
Whatever it is the trees know 

when they stand undone, 

surprisingly intricate, 

we need to know also 

so we can allow 

that last thing 

to happen to us 

as if it were only 

any ordinary thing, 
leaves and lives 

falling away, 

the spirit, complex, 

waiting in the fine darkness 

to learn which way 

it will go. 

🍂

Learning from Trees by Grace Butcher

  🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂
There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day. 

-Alexander Woolcott

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Blessing, Change, Choice, commitment, connection, Glory, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, mystery, nature, Relationships, Respect, Seasons | Leave a comment
24 Oct 2015

way back when

  
When I finally arrive there—

And it will take many days and nights—

I would like to believe others will be waiting

and might even want to know how it was.
So I will reminisce about a particular sky

or a woman in a white bathrobe

or the time I visited a narrow strait

where a famous naval battle had taken place.
Then I will spread out on a table

a large map of my world

and explain to the people of the future

in their pale garments what it was like—
how mountains rose between the valleys

and this was called geography,

how boats loaded with cargo plied the rivers

and this was known as commerce,
how the people from this pink area

crossed over into this light-green area

and set fires and killed whoever they found

and this was called history—
and they will listen, mild-eyed and silent,

as more of them arrive to join the circle,

like ripples moving toward,

not away from, a stone tossed into a pond.

🌎

The Future by Billy Collins 

   
photos found at http://www.pinterest.com

   

Posted in action, Adventure, attitude, awareness, beauty, Becoming Yourself, connection, find art at pinterest, Life, Miracles, mystery, Reflection, Relationships | Leave a comment
08 Oct 2015

love just is…there is no understanding why 

  
A man asked him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments…” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. 

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the realm of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the realm of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

                  —Mark 10.17-27

💞

We continually have to resist the belief that there’s something we have to do to “be saved.” We think there are “good” people (the man thought Jesus was one) and others who are less so. We believe our salvation is up to us. Clearly the disciples think so. Were that true, of course it would be impossible. But it’s up to God. And God has already “saved” us.

Take note that Jesus looks at the man and loves him. The man does not need to do anything for Jesus to love him; he already does. He responds to the man not with requirements but with love. Because that’s his point. There is no requirement. God already loves us. We are already saved. There is no salvation beyond God’s love; God’s love is not insufficient for our eternal joy. All we need to be “saved” from is our own distrust. The man seems to have great possessions but “lacks one thing.” Jesus looks on him in his poverty and sets him free: let go of what you can measure and what you can lose—either riches or goodness—and grasp only what is infinite, what is already yours. 

Meditate on this infinite love of God. It is yours, now. It surrounds you, fills you, gives you every breath. You can’t deserve it more or less. It is simply here. Even as you ask and wonder, maybe even doubt, God looks at you with love. God’s delight is not up to you. Let this light break in, and become you.

__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

  

As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.

~ Rumi

 

Photos found at www.pinterest.com 

Posted in attitude, awareness, Becoming Yourself, beloved, Choice, courage, determination, find art at pinterest, healing, inspiration, Letting Go, Life, Love, Miracles, People, Prayer, Relationships | Leave a comment
07 Oct 2015

a little help from our friends 

   
photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT

listen to Jack Johnson sing Upside Down http://youtu.be/dqUdI4AIDF0

🍁

If you stand at the edge of the forest 

and stare into it 

every tree at the edge will blow a little extra 

oxygen toward you 
It has been proven 

Leaves have admitted it 
The pines I have known 

have been especially candid 
One said 

that all breath in this world 

is roped together 
that breathing is 

the most ancient language

🔹

Ancient Language by Hannah Stephenson

  A bright gold canary diamond 

In the middle of a row of emeralds 

Light sparkles on brilliant color 

Natures jewels glimmering in sunlight 

Trees can’t help but be happy with who they are. 

Beloved 

Comfortable 

Extravagantly, audaciously beautiful 

Spectacularly themselves 

Totally at home where they’re planted 

Reaching for the sky 

Content to be rooted and grounded 

Letting their leaves come and go 

As they see fit 

watching all the dancing 

as seasons come and go. 

Knowing there will always be abundance 

Giving us life giving oxygen with, 

not even a whisper, 

of quid pro quo 

jealousy, 

or manipulation. 

Trees are magnificent. 

I can’t help but admire 

their character and integrity 

Their deep wisdom and acceptance of life. 

Their mystery and playfulness. 

Their understanding and gracious giving hearts. 

Even driving down the busiest of highways during rush hour 

becomes a beautiful experience 

when you spend the moments of the stop-n-go

looking out your car window 

at the show being put on 

right next to the roadway

🔹

AL

  
  

other photos found @ www.pinterest.com 

Posted in Adventure, attitude, awareness, beloved, Blessing, color, connection, find art at pinterest, Freedom, Gratitude, healing, Letting Go, Life, light, Love, Miracles, mystery, nature, Seasons | Leave a comment

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