life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Peace”

loving the oh-so not-so ordinary   

 

 This day is not ordinary. This day may be one of quiet or chaos, challenge or rest. But no moment is ordinary. It may be familiar. It may be predictable. It may make you frustrated and angry, discouraged and sad. It may be one where you see hope, hope all around. It may be the day you see deeper, go further, pursue a new place you’ve never traveled before.
 

I hold you in what you see as ordinary. I look ahead and stay here with you, in this moment.

 

Let me unfold it for you.
 

There is a point where you can no longer see. There is a point where there are obstacles and there is nothing to do but wait on Me, look to Me, desire for Me to take hold of all control and guide you.
Where I guide you, where I am with you, is not the place of ordinary.

There are the regular tasks to get done, the job to do, the responsibilities to complete. It may involve doing the same thing day after day, for a while, and another while.
But still, where I am is not ordinary.

Here—here I am, with you. The intake of your breath, the shape of your skin, the ideas taking place in your mind, the beat of your heart. You are a wonder, a beauty, and this day, with all I’ve made, can never be an ordinary day.

Let Me give you new eyes to see so you don’t miss the possibilities around you that I see. Let Me give you new eyes to see so you don’t get discouraged and mistake wonder for ordinary. Let me show you how what you think is mundane may be an opportunity to be with Me in a new way.
I am always new and always the same. You can always count on Me. But I never stop wanting you to see the hidden wonder in this not-so-ordinary day.

🎭

Loop

http://loop.gatherministries.com/loop-1/?utm_source=Loop+Devotional&utm_campaign=cee6d83e4e-Loop_85_This_Not_So_Ordinary_Day12_16_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a7b9cec9e0-cee6d83e4e-100590649

  
Rama Ink blog!! ❤️ click title below to visit!!! 

https://ramaink.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/cross-roads/#like-2971

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

everyday hero

  
Quote of the Day: Virtue 
Next to the seven deadly sins, the seven cardinal virtues are apt to look pale and unenterprising, but appearances are notoriously untrustworthy.
Prudence and temperance, taken separately, may not be apt to get you to your feet cheering, but when they go together, as they almost always do, that’s a different matter. The chain smoker or the junkie, for instance, who exemplifies both by managing to kick the habit, can very well have you throwing your hat in the air, especially if it happens to be somebody whom for personal reasons you’d like to have around a few years longer. And the courage involved isn’t likely to leave you cold either. Often it’s the habit kicker’s variety that seems the most courageous.
If you think of justice as sitting blindfolded with a scale in her hand, you may have to stifle a yawn, but if you think of a black judge acquitting a white racist of a false murder charge, it can give you gooseflesh.
The faith of a child taking your hand in the night is as moving as the faith of Mother Teresa among the untouchables, or Bernadette facing the skeptics at Lourdes, or Abraham, age seventy-five, packing up his bags for the Promised Land. And hope is the glimmer on the horizon that keeps faith plugging forward, of course, the wings that keep it more or less in the air.
Maybe it’s only love that turns things around and makes the seven deadly sins be the ones to look pale and unenterprising for a change. Greed, gluttony, lust, envy, and pride are no more than sad efforts to fill the empty place where love belongs, and anger and sloth just two things that may happen when you find that not even all seven of them at their deadliest ever can.

 ⚜

~ Frederick Bruechner originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

 

   

 

  

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

bring us peace  

 

 Oh time,
Oh love,

Oh life,

awaken us all

to hear,

to see,

to be aware

shake our comfort zones

let us scream

let us cry

let us shout

let us waste no more of our living

help us to choose wisely

help us to live passionately 

help us to love mercy, to establish justice, to inhabit grace

keep us humble

keep us growing 

keep us connected 

knowing our own valve, as well as the value of every other

Oh God of love

Oh God of life

Oh God of joy

shake us now with heavenly thunder, 

crack open our hearts and bring us peace

❤️

AL

  
 

  

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

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

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

   

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.unfoldinglight.net

 

  

http://www.designlovefest.com/2012/12/holiday-centerpiece/

 

 

when will it get better? 

 

 The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action: and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;

Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,

On purpose laid to make the taker mad.

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have extreme;

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.

   All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

   To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

🔥

 – Sonnet CXXIX, William Shakespeare 

 

 I believe it is no ones intention to live as a perpetual victim. 
No one ever said they wanted that as a career,

wanted to spend their valuable life having no personal power –

yet how many are there

trapped by the belief that life, 

God, 

some ‘other’ 

has taken something from them

which they should have?

they deserve(d) it

they didn’t want to lose what’s gone

      (I understand that)

but now it’s gone

and they’ve been wronged

they spin in the agony of not controlling 

someone,

deity,

something, anything

else. 
They can’t see what they’re doing,

they can’t hear what they’re saying,

they can’t see how they’re living,

because they are sure

sure they are right,

sure they deserve to be this grand victim,

sure the very best of life,

their very happiest,

is behind them now. 

They may say ‘they are not special’,

but in reality they believe they are SO special

life should only, always, give them what they want…

no matter what. 
I used to try to convince them otherwise,

spend massive energy,

years invested in living with people determined not to see,

not to let go,

not to find happiness and peace. 

People refusing to do the work to gain truth and freedom. 

now I take it case by case,

I trust God enough to allow them to come,

allow them to go. 

I do my own hard work 

of letting go

of letting go

of letting go…

of loving with no expectations of return…

of finding out new insights about my own heart…

of standing in my own healing,

sight,

strength,

without being distracted by the manipulation 

of people living as victims. 

I remind myself (over and over) everyone has a right to live as they choose, 

truth is never an argument to be won. 

Then I give thanks that I chose something new for myself. 

I pray for each person in the world to live with peace and joy…

I grieve my own, very personal losses, 

and, eventually,

life goes on…

🌀

AL

  
 Amidst ten thousand losses and swirling joys. 

At this very instant on the sacred Earth I wait. 

Come to us Beauty, Wisdom, Goodness, Peace, Solace, Grace, Counsel, Love. 

See the open archway this cold night 

Air, rich as gold flows.

Fine snow, glistens our faces. Each flake, 

every exquisite crystal blossom is the covenant of your love 

told a thousand, thousand times. 

   – Patricia Van Ness

 

  

 Listen to Serenity Fisher sing So Far From Oh Well

Nothing separates us, my dear, nothing except what you want to keep separate. We are united because I have made it so.      – Loop 

 

 I want to make a poem
that slips into the heart stream 

quietly, tenderly,

with no great splash

just a graceful entry, 

with minimal ripples

which plunges deeply upon entering

and allows the mud to settle gracefully around it. 

I want to make a poem

which allows the heart to trust,

to open,

to flower in it’s own time

knowing, for sure,

   it is dependable,

steady,

written to last 

through the fiercest storms

    though the world burn

and the mountains crumble

words of love

    so beautiful 

           so eternal 

they come to life

   each time they are read,

    or spoken

and anyone who dares to read the poem I make

cannot help but

   find within themselves  

clouds of peace

   wrapped up in thick blankets of joy 

  and will forever know for sure 

    they are 

          beloved

❤️

AL 

 

Everything real comes through the heart. When it is truly opened, everything secondary falls away- egoic glory, fame and fortune, substitute gratifications. The heart doesn’t care about such things. It doesn’t hold it against you if you don’t own your own home, achieve your goals, have a perfect body. The heart doesn’t care what you have earned or accumulated. No matter our seeming differences, we are all the same when the heart gate opens. Deep feeling levels the playing field.

Love is the great equalizer.

     – Jeff Brown

  

and then one day…

 

 The road to forgiveness.. after the pilgrim lanes,
and the ruined chapel,

the gull cries and the sea-hush 

at the back of the island, 

it was the way, standing still 

or looking out

or walking, or even talking 

with others in the evening bar, 

holding your drink

or laughing with the rest,

that you realized part of you

had already dropped to its knees,

to pray, to sing, to look, 

to fall in love with everything

and everyone again,

that someone from far inside you

had walked out into the sea light

and the great embracing quiet

to raise its hands

and forgive

everyone in your short life

you thought you hadn’t,

and that all along

you had been singing 

your quiet way 

through the rosary of silence

that held their names….

😍

Excerpted from LEAVING THE ISLAND by David Whyte

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

it was bouncing around in my brain this morning   – Linda Clark

  
Getting it Right—Write!

I have a notion

I must confess

A notion you see

That has me quite obsessed
It sits in my head 

both day and night

it haunts my dreams

and gives me great fright
It rules my thoughts

this little notion

stirring up doubts

and causing a commotion
It wiggles and niggles

in my brain

with a feverish pitch

it drives me insane
This obsession you ask

what could it be?

My obsession is a task

I seek endlessly!
To get it right

To do my best

To show I’m bright

I can pass the test
This feeling to get it right

Is ever so strong

I work day and night

To not get it wrong
I was given great insight

About this “getting it right”

I just learned recently

A truth that has finally set me free
It’s not it at all

about getting it right.

It’s about happiness and light

and letting your soul shine bright
No have to’s

No pressure

No should’s

Did me a world of good!
So no longer will I labor

to get it right 

I will do my best

to give it a rest! 
So In my chair I sit and write

No longer will I yearn

or worry with concern

it’s quite easy once when you learn
I will change my mantra

and simply ignore

those three little words

I was obsessed with before
What’s my new mantra

you might ask

I’ve changed my word

just a small task
I am no longer worried

about that word right

I will feed my soul

and simply WRITE!! 

🌀

Linda Clark

   

  

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
 Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,

 Transforming our broken fragments

 Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides

 That is more gracious than the smallness

 That fuels us with fear and force,

 A dignity that trusts the form a day takes. 
So at the end of this day, we give thanks

 For being betrothed to the unknown

 And for the secret work

 Through which the mind of the day

 And wisdom of the soul become one. 

🔹

John O’Donohue
 

 
http://www.creativesoulsart.com

even on the hard days    

  Respectfully given,

exalted being

full of grace,

remember to forget:

surrender struggles to catch it’s breath,

then falls soft

as evening prayers at twilight,

gathering into the corners of our hearts

before falling full 

onto the center of our living circle,

 free and happy as a Friday night. 

next morning’s sun fills us, 

each day, each season. 

nurture moves with grace, 

evolving slowly thru 

our caring hands,

our grieving hearts,

our shared experience, 

our acts of courage,

the healing salt of our tears,

the energy generation of our joy. 

with pieces of our true love,

we fly flags, 

of prayer,

of peace,

of poems,

of our own making 

to heal the worlds – 

within us/

without us. 

we allow –

simply complex. 

we understand –

clearly unclear. 

we stand and fill our world with 

the beauty,

the mystery,

of sound,

of hum,

of laughter,

of voice,

of music,

protecting us 

from lesser gods,

the terror all around. 

love is the shield, 

love is the answer,

love is the choice,

love is our glory,

our salvation,

crowning us 

sons and daughters 

of the King. 

at times,

in spite of our broken pieces,

our refusal to believe,

even our darkened hearts. 

 –

astonishing, 

isn’t it?

AL

A sob in the night 

awakens us from dreams,
a crack opens in the wall

and in seeps the dark stream
with pieces of broken things in it,

and blood, and our own ragged edge,
and in seeps the light,

and the voice singing.
We want to pull the wall around us,

the sorrow pouring in,
but it is breached now,

it is only an illusion,
and we are out in the dangerous light,

the fragile street,
tender as everyone else,

ready to duck, ready to weep.
We are all refugees now,

foreigners, except to foreigners.
It’s the egg that is cracked,

the stone rolled away.
If there is a place for love,

for your own brave soul, this is it.
The cord in another’s heart

knotted in yours, 
the hand reaching for you

you can reach out to.
Terror and the stillness,

and the voice singing. 
__________________ 

Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Unfolding Light

http://www.unfoldinglight.net

   
   
and for each person in this world 🙏🏻

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