life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Peace”
peaceful
To bring about peace in the world, to stop all wars, there must be a revolution in the individual, in you and me. Economic revolution without this inward revolution is meaningless, for hunger is the result of the maladjustment of economic conditions produced by our psychological states: greed, envy, ill-will, and possessiveness. To put an end to sorrow, to hunger, to war, there must be a psychological revolution, and few of us are willing to face that. We will discuss peace, plan legislation, create new leagues, the United Nations and so on and on; but we will not win peace because we will not give up our position, our authority, our money, our properties, our stupid lives. To rely on others is utterly futile: others cannot bring us peace. No leader is going to give us peace, no government, no army, no country. What will bring peace is inward transformation which will lead to outward action. Inward transformation is not isolation, is not a withdrawal from outward action. On the contrary, there can be right action only when there is right thinking, and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace.
💞
The First and Last Freedom, J. Krishnamurti
photos found at http://www.pinterest.com
photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT
Listen to Cat Stevens sing Peace Train
now
Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.
Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.
Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.
We are each* a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.
My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?
What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?
Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.
This is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.
Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.
🔹
Today by Hafiz *edit by me…original words ‘Hafiz is’
It’s there
balled up in the corner of your mind
covered over with cobwebs
under the heaviest lock and key
booby trapped
even Indian Jones couldn’t get to this
arc of your self-covenant
anger slowly poisoning you over the years
toxic rivers seeping out
flowing through your veins
as you refuse to touch it
or to acknowledge it can be conquered
the shadowy ghost of events so painful
you have avoided them your whole life
refused to allow
the crumpled, tangled, horrible
nightmare of these memories
to be straightened out
come into the sunlight
to begin waste removal
and cleanup of the mountain of trash
so deep
it’s eaten you from the inside out
destroying your peace
and your chances for building the life you deserve
you’ve tolerated much
to gain nothing
will you ever
reach for higher ground?
I pray you will
some fine day
I feel wonder
for how valued we each truly are,
how beloved.
I am amazed at how far, and willing,
God is to go,
to seek just one.
Love is everything
we are all God’s children,
no matter what we choose to do.
💞
AL
photos found at facebook
so inviting
AWAKEN TO THE INVITATION
As the density of night gives way to the bright song of the dawn, so your soul continually coaxes you to give way to the light and awaken. Longing is the voice of your soul, it constantly calls you to be fully present in your life: to live to the full the one life given to you. Rilke said to the young poet, “Live everything.” You are here on earth now, yet you forget so easily. You traveled a great distance to get here. The dream of your life has been dreamed from eternity. You belong within a great embrace that urges you to have the courage to honor the immensity that sleeps in your heart. When you learn to listen to and trust the wisdom of your soul’s longing, you will awaken to the invitation of graced belonging that inhabits the generous depths of your destiny. You will become aware of the miracle of presence within and around you.
– John O’Donohue
Like this ocean
Needs the moon
Like my coffee
Needs the cream
Like my music
Bleeds dark blue
So do I need you
Like the body
Water craves
Like the frugal
Money save
Like the artist
Must create
So do I need you
I need you
like breathe
Like food
Like rain
I need you
Right now
And every day
Like the waves
Must kiss the shore
So do I need you
Always
So do I need you
🔹
AL
🔹
photos found at www.pinterest.com
what matters most
THE ANCIENT DREAM
She has come to sense the inner world goes deep, indeed deeper than the wounds and breakages that others inflict. The contemplative has broken through to that sanctuary in the soul where love dwells. Crucial to this contemplative journey is the trust and imagination to realize that regardless of how you have been damaged, there is within you a sanctuary of deep love, trust and belonging. This is the ancient dream, the masterpiece of divine creativity: the creation of the human heart. Before time – back in the winter of nothingness and then all through the infinite springtime of evolution – the dream was the birth of an intimate well of kindness, care and love in the world, dwelling in the tabernacle of the human heart.
🔹
John O’Donohue
Excerpt from BEAUTY
dear lord in this time of darkness
help us see the darkness
dear lord help us to not pretend
no more pretending
dear lord may our gaze be defenseless
and unshardable
teach us the piety of the open eye
dear lord in this time of darkness
may we be unafraid to mourn and together and hugely
may dignity lose its scaffolding
faces crumble like bricks
dear lord let grief come to grief
and then o lord help us to see the bees yet in the lavender
the spokes of sunlight down through the oaks
and the sleep-opened face of the beloved
and the afternoon all around her
and her small freckled hands
🔹
Prayer by Teddy Macker
Hearts out searching for a home
that one place where we belong
it’s a cold dark night here lately
but I have seen the light
home is your arms
holding me tight
deeper and deeper into the beautiful
waking my heart to sing this song
fly with me as flames grow higher
passion flaming deep desire
touching us on this dark night
There are times when life goes hazy
that place we all fall down
life can be so hard my baby
will you hold the line tonight?
open up your heart and fight
we can do it together
love’s the place where dreams come true
we can make it together
I believe we can make it
through
there is hope in this moment
there is hope in the sky
when days go dark and lonely baby
as long as stars are burning bright
there is hope
there is hope, ’cause
they burn for you
oh baby
we can make it through
🔹
AL
Listen to Time of the Season by The Zombies http://youtu.be/wG5R7vyu-mA
photos found at www.pinterest.com
September’s Still Remembering
This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.
🙏🏻
September, 1918 by Amy Lowell
Listen to September Grass by James Taylor http://youtu.be/1lMJyn1YtcA
❤️
Photos found at www.pinterest.com
Peace in Our Hands by Valerie Lorimer – find her artwork on Etsy
hammock time
The breeze –
Takes the pages of my thoughts
Ruffles the edges
Carries them through the air
Without a worry
Without a care
Scattering my secrets
Sowing my life
http://dorindaduclos.com/2015/04/23/the-breeze/
Night Owl Poetry ©2015 Dorinda Duclos Used with permission
Thoughts float in and out
Abstract
In the silence
Whatever is there can come…and go
You come…You go
I am still as the breeze sways the hammock
The blue sky
the trees the sounds of summer
You come…You go
I flow with the river
No hurry
No worry
Allowing God to lead
Allowing the universe to help me
You come…You go
Allowing all things to be how they should be
Allowing life to be as it is
Allowing everything to be grace
Allowing my lips to sing gratitude
Music floats around me Slipping in and out
You come…You go
Allowing strength to rebuild
Allowing the empty to be filled
So it comes
So it goes
I lay down and sleep in peace
for all good things
done, gone and to come
You have come…You have gone
I am
still
🔹
AL
listen to Simon & Garfunkel sing Bridge Over Troubled Waters http://youtu.be/jjNgn4r6SOA
photo sources at www.pinterest.com
hello, again!
A few weeks ago I took a break. I truly had no idea if I would return here. I was ok with that – it’s a lovely body of work.
I enjoyed my break, a few times I thought about it…mainly I didn’t….
Over the past three or four days I keep getting a recurring message, ‘speak to the dry bones’. (Haven’t totally worked that out yet…in fact, I’m at sea on it – I welcome any thoughts on it…)
Then, yesterday, I got the message in my soul…time to start again – return and build – and so, here I am. Not really sure where it’s going to go…feels a lot different from my first post 4+ years ago. There are lots of new things going on in my life. Lots of things being moved and removed. Interesting times for me, hard things, as always, still, there is the same, consistent hand of faith holding me, guiding me, urging me on, keeping me on the path of love, joy and peace. The world is a hard, broken place to live in, but deep inside each of us lives the key to overcome the world. I believe that completely.
Thank you for reading my words. Thank you for being a part of my life. Thank you for understanding, or even mis-understanding my thoughts. It’s all good stuff!
Welcome to my adventure!
Love and kisses,
Amy
Wisdom cries out in the street;
at the busiest corner she raises her voice:
“I will pour out my thoughts to you.”
—Proverbs 1.20, 21, 23
I listen.
Amid the clatter and chatter
of my fears and fantasies,
the rattle and traffic of this world
the trip wire pitch, the push,
the drive for the deal
to buy me and sell me—
I listen to your soft voice
humming beneath worry and duty,
steady, its ocean of silence,
its moon of light,
the nearest murmur,
no argument, no decree,
no foreign words, no hard words,
no words,
but wind in grass,
saying all I need to know,
flowing water,
a river poured out in me
to drink, to bathe,
to lie in and float
to your sea.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
listen to Neil Diamond sing Hello Again http://youtu.be/ZnbMHkiIGwk
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com
every day life offers…
This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?
Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.
And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.
Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.
So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.
☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Starfish by Eleanor Lerman
Listen to The Eagles sing Peaceful Easy Feeling http://youtu.be/n00g71TySS4
we came here
Proof of Heaven
this was the reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little you may know me better there. – Aslan
We are brought places so that we may know God, just a little, better here in this broken world. We are given glimpses, shaded bits of glory, the pieces we are ready for, come to us, changing our lives forever, as we attempt to absorb this brilliance, so far beyond our understanding. We grapple and try, to open our minds ever wider. We try to share, in ways we are able, this new understanding, this life changing knowledge, knowing how difficult it is to understand. We could never have understood these things happening before we went through it for ourselves, yet we also know it is too important to keep to ourselves, and we understand that, IF we, who are just ordinary people, have experienced this, (and we cannot deny we have) then it is possible for others as well.
And so, we try. We put it into inadequate words and we share it however we are called, this unexpected knowledge we have been given, even as we are just a bit embarrassed at the position it puts us in. It seems like it was a little simpler before these revelations. Yet it is also the best gift we have ever experienced and we just want others to know, to share it, to open to amazing grace. As Anne LaMotte says, ‘God’s grace comes to us right where we are, but never leaves us there’.
When we find fellow travelers, who have experienced similar things, it is joyous and wonderful to share. It gives us strength, hope and allows us to open ourselves to even more of the unlimited possibilities which are ever present and possible as we move through this place and into the place where we are so intimately known, so completely beloved and so permanently connected.
AL
Listen to Carrie Underwood sing How Great Thou Art http://youtu.be/3X6IzGDoGwo
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
life: acoustic & amplified 