life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Passion”

sprung    

   
 


 Grass grows in the night

and early the mockingbirds begin
their fleet courtships over puddles,
upon wires, in the new green
of the Spanish limes.

Their white-striped wings flash
as they flirt and dive.
Wind in the chimes pulls music
from the air, the sky’s cleared
of its vast complications.

In the pause before summer,
the wild sprouting of absolutely
everything: hair, nails, the mango’s
pale rose pennants, tongues of birds
singing daylong.

Words, even, and sudden embraces,
surprising dreams and things I’d never
imagined, in all these years of living,
one more astonished awakening.

🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
Morning in May by Rosalind Brackenbury
 
This is my commandment, 
         that you love one another as I have loved you.
                  —John 15.12

that is, 
with tender attention
and stout resilience,
that is,
despite your blame and fear,
your betrayal yet to come,
your lack of repentance,

as I have loved you
when you were determined 
not to deserve it,

that you love as I have,
withholding nothing,
excusing no one,

that you pour yourself out
for the unworthy,

as I have 
pour yourself out
of your life
into eternal love
and as I have
rise
new, 
perfected
in love.

__________________  
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

 
 

What haunts us are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.    – Maria Torok & Nicholas Abraham 

 

sometimes. 
I don’t know what to say. 
sometimes. 
The very words catch behind
safe guards of emotion. 
sometimes. 
Speech refuses to commence. 
sometimes. 
Words pool behind the locked door. Waiting. 
sometimes. 
I lay and pray the words you don’t want to hear will dissolve inside me. 
sometimes.  
Silence fills the outside air. 
sometimes. 
Inside air is thick and muggy,
like the rain forest 
or Savannah in August. 
sometimes. 
I go to sleep with heavy lungs,
weight of the unspoken hanging like the world between us. 
sometimes. 

ACL 6/19/13

      

Listen to Sara Bareilles sing Brave http://youtu.be/QUQsqBqxoR4 

🙊🙉🙈🙊🙉🙈🙊🙉🙈🙊🙉🙈🐵

Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513 

settling in to happiness

  What happens when your soul

Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?  

First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears

And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep. 

But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint. 

What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world

To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?

O the Beloved
Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions—

Like Hafiz.
💑💑💑💑💑💑💑💑💑
What Happens by Hafiz
 
 Today I want to greet joy

Without a trace of protection 
I want to open my eyes to the light
Without a blink of dread
I want to look at my past
Without a whisper of shame
I want to look at my future 
Without a hint of fear 
Today I want to dance
Without pausing to think
I want to belly laugh
Without caring who hears
I want to open my arms
and twirl in the sun
Until I fall breathless
free to be myself
full of the joy
that I open to allow
completely letting go
Without even a smudge of suspicion 
or an instant of hesitation

ACL 3/4/13

 
Listen to Stevie Wonder sing For Once In My Life http://youtu.be/3oZClso_yUQ
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513 

love heals the wound it makes….

 

Turning

Love is a mystery…

Wait! You already have it wrong

So do I!

And that’s the meaning of the song!

 

I gave it away for once,

The meaning;

What I’m saying…

Is the question still gone?

 

I’m going to twist these rhymes

And hold them till the end,

For I am the waiting comma;

And the semicolon you won’t send…

 

The ellipsis at the turn…

And the truth around the bend

The silent, waiting answer,

The wound that will not mend?

💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞

by Matthew Mele
  
Listen to Eva Cassidy Time is a Healer http://youtu.be/ttl-W-hVDpQ 
 
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513 

 

be true 

 

You are the only faithful student you have.
All the others leave eventually. 

Have you been making yourself shallow
with making others eminent? 

Just remember, when you’re in union,
you don’t have to fear
that you’ll be drained. 

The command comes to speak,
and you feel the ocean
moving through you.
Then comes, Be silent,
as when the rain stops,
and the trees in the orchard
begin to draw moisture
up into themselves.

💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💧
You Are the Only Student You Have by Rumi 
  
 
 
We are here practicing the Art of Self Change – the spiritual warrior practices absolute trust in the struggle for awareness. The most important factor is true presence. This moment is the gift. 
The starting point is always ourselves. It’s essence is like water, flowing. Only the willingness to change will bring anything new into our lives. Only a correct relationship with ourselves will bring about right relationships with others and the Divine. 
       – Unknown
 
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513 

the power of broken hearts

 

  

The beginning is such a good place to be. There is much in store. But there is acknowledgment of what came before the beginning to mark this moment as a beginning. And in that place I was there, too. But let’s start where beginning is—the union of Me and you, the awakening of your heart, bit by bit, to Me.

 

I awaken you further, now.

 

These first starts are for you to appreciate the moments that came before them—to see where I was, what I was doing, before you recognized my presence. Let me take you back to where I was when you couldn’t see Me there. Perhaps the definitions of beginning will need to be rewritten.

 

I always begin again in you. 

 

I am the discovery of the beginning—all hope and life in you. I will give you a fresh start this day. I give you new breath, new eyes, new adventures to set out on with Me. But I want to start this beginning by going back to where I’ve always been with you.

 

I have always been with you, even when you couldn’t see it. I want to show you now.

🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠🌠

Loop @ Gather Ministries 

http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=278b78041b94c30f445911b53&id=ae645e9e7d&e=b9eb1d83ef

 

 

 

photo sources found @ www.pinterest.com/al513

 

 

 

and the sad things begin to be upended…      – Ann Voskamp

 

 When the cross hits your life, a loneliness, a blindness and a darkness come all around you. Darkness and lostness are the worst parts of suffering. The wonder of the Resurrection is that this darkness was opened out and at the heart of the darkness a secret light was discovered. Each one of us who has come here hasn’t come to this place out of curiosity but we have come because we know the need that is in our lives and we know the frailty that is in our hearts and minds. We are strangers in the world. In our journey through life anything can befall us. It seems to be very difficult for us as humans to learn how to love, to learn how the let the fear and the resentment and the blindness fall away from us and to come into the special joy and peace and freedom of love. No matter how assured or competent we may feel, there is none of us who has not large territories of fear in our hearts, fear of sharing ourselves, of opening ourselves, of entering life. That is why we come to an ancient holy place like this, before the dawn, to let the new tender light of the resurrection touch our helpless fear and transfigure it and open it into courage. 


~ John O’Donohue from his Easter Homily at Corcomroe Abbey 1992

 

Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed!

Crucified and risen Christ,
flood my heart with your light
and my soul with your living presence,
that I may trust the victory of God,
the victory of love over violence,
of life over death.
By your rising give me courage
to know that evil and oppression,
though they seem to reign,
have already been defeated.
You who bear me in your heart,
you have raised me up with you,
and set me free from my fear,
free from shame and despair,
free from all that would imprison me,
from all that would keep me 
from loving perfectly. 

Loving Christ, 
I have died in you and risen in you.
May I walk with courage
into this new life.
Amen.

__________________  
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light

www.unfoldinglight.net

 

 Listen to Sandi Patty sing Was It a Morning Like This? 

http://youtu.be/eb1ayV5sTtM

🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆

                                           Shake out your qualms. 
                                                Shake up your dreams. 
                                                Deepen your roots. 
                                                Extend your branches. 
                                                Trust deep water 
                                                and head for the open, 
                                                even if your vision 
                                                shipwrecks you. 
                                                Quit your addiction 
                                                to sneer and complain. 
                                                Open a lookout. 
                                                Dance on a brink. 
                                                Run with your wildfire. 
                                                You are closer to glory 
                                                leaping an abyss 
                                                than upholstering a rut. 
                                                Not dawdling. 
                                                Not doubting. 
                                                Intrepid all the way 
                                                Walk toward clarity. 
                                                At every crossroad 
                                                Be prepared 
                                                to bump into wonder. 
                                                Only love prevails. 
                                                En route to disaster 
                                                insist on canticles. 
                                                Lift your ineffable 
                                                out of the mundane. 
                                                Nothing perishes; 
                                                nothing survives; 
                                                everything transforms! 
                                                Honeymoon with Big Joy! 

Easter Exultet by James Broughton

🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆

photo sources found at

www.pinterest.com/al513

 

good friday

 

come with Jesus to the lynching tree
we stand aside and nod
good thing it wasn’t you or me
but just some lamb of god

we sing our hymns we know them well
we sing our righteous songs
and so we send that boy to hell
for that will right our wrongs

some people weeping in the street
they cry the lynching tree
but we can’t quit the judgment seat
the way it has to be

the boy is dead lay out the pall
it’s finished move along
but how come he forgives us all
before we know it’s wrong

how come the god we slight and say
that it’s all right to kill
the god who died comes back our way
and loves us loves us still

it looks so dark the lynching tree
so dark for you and me
but here’s the strangest thing I see
a bud upon that tree

__________________  
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light

www.unfoldinglight.net

Listen to Adele sing http://youtu.be/4k-W6cZ2CiY

💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

photo source found at www.pinterest.com/al513

beautiful mess

 

 We can’t find our path without getting messy. Messy comes with the territory. We came in messy. We learn messy. We love messy. We grow messy. We leave messy. I never found my way to clarity without first befriending confusion, in all its chaotic forms. I never found a path that felt like home before falling into quick-sand. I never established a new way of being without trying the wrong way of being on for size. I never found the light without stumbling around in the dark. I never tasted God before getting a little dirt in my mouth. Not that all messiness is good messiness, but some of it is. In the heart of the chaos, is the clay that shapes us home. Chaotic Magnificence!

      – Jeff Brown    

  

 

 

 

Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513 

The creative process is a process of surrender, not control. – Julia Cameron

 
 

  

  

   

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

 

 So full of life and beauty today I had to pull over and take a few pictures to remember this gorgeous day!!! Very full heart! So grateful! xo 

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