life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “People”

wounded healers

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Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal. John 12:24-25, The Message

Nobody escapes being wounded. We all are wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not “How can we hide our wounds?” so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but “How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?” When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.

Jesus is God’s wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed. Jesus’ suffering and death brought joy and life. His humiliation brought glory; his rejection brought a community of love. As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others.
– Henri Nouwen
http://www.henrinouwen.org

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ringing loud

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…and that we all feel this undeniable bond with the land of our birth, and she knows it: we are all born of the dust of the earth and the breath of God.

Heavenly patriotism is this belief that all human lives everywhere are worth the same.

That we’re a country of countries, a world of families, a earth of one human race, and that was it — the essence of this great land she lived in.

What really unites this great land is more than a flag — it’s an idea. The idea that all peoples under heaven are the idea of a Great God.

That all peoples under heaven, in our back alleys and in our hospitals, in our prisons and shelters and headlines and every person in our far-flung world, are flagged as the handiwork of God, the dream of God, the art of God.

Everywhere she looked, there it was — “I was the stranger and you welcomed me in.“

It was strange and glorious, how it was happening in her, for her nation, for all the nations: Heavenly patriotism makes you patriotic for all of humanity.

You are doing something great with your life – when you’re doing all the small things with His Great love.

You aren’t a citizen of here working your way into heaven. You’re a citizen of heaven working His Way through here.

And it was there in every flag: the stripes that went on like a road, like The Way of Love that goes everywhere and always welcomes the wanderer in.

All those stars like a Love that can’t be contained by the walls in this world.

There under the bloom of fireworks,she could feel it –

the love of Christ exploding a heart.

– Ann Voskamp (edited)
http://www.aholyexperience.com
such good stuff! read her patriotic and amazing blog – http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/07/what-really-unites-a-great-land-people-the-real-power-of-patriotism/

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i double-dog dare you!

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the words you speak become the house you live in. – Hafiz

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The Music of Language
Words Are Energy
by Madisyn Taylor

Each word we speak has a life of its own, a vibratory signature that creates waves into the expanse of the universe.

When we speak or write, we use the vehicles of words to carry meaning, as well as energy, from ourselves to another person or group of people. We may be speaking to our baby, our boss, or to an audience of 500 people. We may be writing a love letter, a work-related memo, or an entry in our own diary. Whatever the case, each word we speak or write has a life of its own, a vibratory signature that creates waves in the same way that a note of music creates waves. And like musical notes, our words live in communities of other words and change in relation to the words that surround them. When we are conscious of the energy behind our words, we become capable of making beautiful music in the world. If we are unconscious of the power of words, we run the risk of creating a noisy disturbance.

Some of us know this instinctively, while others come to this understanding slowly. Most of us, though, speak without thinking at least some of the time, blurting out our feelings and thoughts without much regard for the words we choose to express them. When we remind ourselves that our words have an impact on the world at the level of energy, we may find within ourselves the desire to be more aware of our use of language.

A fun way to increase our sensitivity to the power of words is to simply make a list of our favorite words and notice the energy they contain. We can write them down and post them where we can see them, or we can speak them aloud, feeling them reverberate in our bodies and in the air around us. This is like learning to consciously play an instrument that we have been playing unconsciously for most of our lives, and the effect can be startling and delightful. As we grow more comfortable and confident playing the instrument of language, we will begin to compose beautiful messages, creating positive energy every time we write or speak.

DailyOM
http://www.dailyom.com

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The poets job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it. – Jane Kenyon

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Even with the Bumps
by Jenna Doezema

There will be hard paths to walk
People: evil, cruel that stalk
Even in bumps through the trail,
If you hold God’s hand, you will not fail

Yes, evil lurks in all direction,
But you have strength in God’s perfection
He will send down miracles,
Like Jesus rising from the dead
His body no longer covered in red

A few days later he’s teaching about God
How he uses you like a rod
You’re the bait
Getting people from every country and every state
to learn about Him

When times are rough, go and pray
Day after day after day
Praise the Lord
He is your weapon;
Your glorious shining sword
Strikes enemies in your right
And He will always win the fight
Remember, He is all powerful!

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open and empty to be filled

Don’t take anything personally. Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly, it has nothing to do with you. Their point of view and opinion come from all the programming they received growing up. When you take things personally, you feel offended and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflict. You make something big out of something so little because you have the need to be right and make everybody else wrong.
– Don Miguel Ruiz

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I am loved by God as I am, not as I should be. – Brennan Manning

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A good humored Christian who accepts others as they are, not as they should be, is an evangelist.
– Brennan Manning

Lord, help me in what You have called me to do…

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“If you can¹t you must, and if you must you can.” – Tony Robbins

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You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book

Just get up from your desk
and open the window,
keep silent until you hear three
sounds you’ve never heard before,
run your tongue around your mouth,
smell the air.
I tell you what, put down this book (phone, computer)
and do this one thing now:
let your hands drift out and touch,
then drift again;
run your fingers
over rough wood, then let them fall
against your own soft skin. I met a woman once
who told me to touch her jumper,
Expensive, she said. It bobbled
under my hand so she told me
I wasn’t feeling it right,
and for too long I believed her
because she said quality spoke.
I didn’t see how beautiful
the world is
with its only wish
that I belong,
and how my touch,
my smell, hearing, sight,
so different from hers
is the only one that matters.

You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book by Sarah Salway, from You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book. © Pindrop Press, 2012.

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i am a little church

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i am a little church (no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor
of hurrying cities—i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are the prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

I am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish) at peace with nature
—i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, I life my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

“i am a little church” by e. e. cummings, from E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962, edited by George James Firmage

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God’s purpose in our woundedness is to bring to being the highest form of beauty.

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The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling; a beauty different from the beauty of landscape and the cold beauty of perfect form. This beauty that has suffered its way through the ache of desolation until the words or music emerged to equal the hunger or desperation at its heart.
Not all woundedness succeeds in finding its way through to beauty of form. Most woundedness remains hidden, lost inside forgotten and pain filled silence.
Where woundedness can be refined into beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place.
Compassion is one of the most beautiful presences a person can being to the world and most compassion is born from one’s own woundedness.
When you have felt deep emotional pain and hurt, you are able to imagine what the pain of others is like; their suffering touches you.
The greatest evil and destruction arises when people are unable to feel compassion.
The beauty of compassion continues to shelter and save our world.
– John O’Donohue

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