The sojourning spirit is deep within each of us, if we’d listen, but it is not fundamentally about finding ‘the job’ or ‘the voice’ or ‘the degree’ or ‘the position’. The journey, at least as I know it, is a journey to union. It is a journey from fragmentation to wholeness, a journey from exile to home, a journey from attachment to union, a journey from hiding to “being hidden” in Christ, a journey from neurosis to theosis. – Chuck deGroat
words drift
but don’t land
foggy whispers
fragments of emotions
to fragile for words
I just sit with it all
letting it all go
peace moving through
like a ghost knowing no borders
allowing all things to be
just as they are
allowing things to happen
as they will
knowing all will be well
there is nothing for me to make
music moves into my soul
love cannot fail
a million diamonds sparkle on the water
this dance defines my life
I am the luckiest girl in the world
AL
what a very, very, very good morning…
Listen to the Beatles sing Let It Be http://youtu.be/WcBnJw-H2wQ
It takes a level of self-love, of dedication and determination to live your greatest life. So, look within. Look at every area of your life and ask yourself these questions: Am I on course? Am I growing mentally, emotionally and spiritually? Anything that is blocking that, anything that is preventing you from living your greatest life, make the tough decision to… let it go. — Unknown
💞
The first day of autumn here,
gardens giving away their gifts,
leaves beginning to turn the pages
of their death.
In the Southern world
it is not autumn but spring,
soil softening, seeds cracking,
branches opening their hands.
Either way
it is a season
of letting go.
__________________
Weather Report –
Release;
expect gradual seasonal winds
with occasional sudden squalls,
as life moves through your life.
Throughout the day
much that you possess evaporates,
and much that you fear,
eventually leaving little but you
and the One Who Loves You.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
Turn a fool into gold
Turn a broken heart into a warrior of love
Turn a weak voice into an instrument of peace
Turn my messy life into a picture of grace
Turn my eyes to see only beauty
Turn my mourning into laughing
and my weary heart to be a trusting home
Turn my sorrow into pure joy
keep my feet from stumbling on the path
That is my prayer, oh Lord,
Turn my fear into courage
And turn my self will into a puddle of loving goodness to pour out on the ones I love
Let me walk hand in hand,
and sleep in peace each night,
in fields of gold with the one who loves me like no other could ever love me
Thank you. Thank you,
always and forever
So be it
xo
💞
AL
Listen to Jason Isbell sing Cover Me Up http://youtu.be/WdwnGG29Upw
💞
photo found on facebook/rumi
The phoebe sits on her nest
Hour after hour,
Day after day,
Waiting for life to burst out
From under her warmth.
Can I weave a nest for silence,
Weave it out of listening,
Listening,
Layer upon layer?
But one must first become small,
Nothing but a presence,
Attentive as a nesting bird,
Proffering no slightest wish,
No tendril of a wish
Toward anything that might happen
Or be given,
Only the warm, faithful waiting,
Contained in one’s smallness.
Beyond the question, the silence.
Before the answer, the silence.
🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦
Beyond the Question, 1 by May Sarton
Listen to Playing for Change sing Gimme Shelter http://youtu.be/4K8t6kCYfJo
🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦
A great read from one of my favorite writers. A holy Experience by Ann Voskamp http://www.aholyexperience.com/2015/07/for-all-us-hope-ers-when-things-arent-working-out-as-wed-hoped/
When did you last stand
still enough to hear?
The words whose
meaning lie
hidden amongst
the spaces in between.
🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞
by Nic Askew
Listen to “Fragrance” (Live Acoustic Performance) – Mark & Sarah Tillman http://youtu.be/gqGp1xvfZB8
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
A great storm lashes this nation
while much of the people sleep,
a storm of racial hatred, a storm of fear.
In fear a white man seeks out blacks
and kills them in their church.
This is not new.
The storm will not stop,
the waves of death will not stop.
He is only one wave of the storm,
blown by great winds of fear.
It is not out of hope or happiness he kills,
he kills out of fear.
The one wave is not the problem; the storm is.
The storm envelopes us all.
It defeats us, makes us anxious.
We cry, “Do you not care that we are perishing?”
A great storm battered the disciples’ boat.
Wind, invisible and relentless,
howled down on them, pushing against them.
Waves would not stop, would not stop
bashing them, beating them,
filling the boat, threatening to swallow them.
Fear howled in them like the wind,
fear beat in them like waves,
a relentless storm of fear.
Their hearts cried, “Save us! Manage this!”
But Jesus was asleep, not worrying,
not in control. Serene. At peace.
“Jesus, join our anxiety! Won’t you despair with us?”
But Jesus was unafraid.
Maybe weary, maybe needing not to be needed,
but also unafraid. At peace.
It was not fear, but his sisters’ and brothers’ cries
that awakened him. In his deep calm he rose,
not in fear, not in anger, but in peace
and gave his peace to the others,
and gave his peace to the winds and the seas.
Infinite peace flowed through him like wind,
passed out into the world like waves,
peace stronger than the storm.
It was not fear, but peace that calmed the storm.
The Man of Peace cries out in our own souls.
Calms the storms of our fears.
Grants us peace beyond understanding.
We let it fill us, that divine peace,
deep peace with all the world,
deepest love for this world and all its children,
children with and without mercy,
peace with the world and all is raging wounds,
peace even with the storm,
for it is peace with all of life.
This peace is also agony for our sisters and brothers.
It is care that we are perishing.
But it is care, not fear. It is deep peace.
And in that peace we shall awaken.
Not fear but our sister’s and brothers’ cries awaken us.
We rise, as Christ rises, always in hope.
In deep peace, not in fear or anger,
we will rise and stand in the storm.
The winds will whip us.
The waves will batter us. But we will stand,
because Christ stands in us.
We will cry out to the storm,
and cry out to our sisters and bothers
with a peace stronger than the storm,
“Peace! Be still!”
The wind will still lash us, the waves batter.
Fear will react; anger will rise like new waves.
The wounds will retract and hide, afraid to be touched,
the wind afraid to be named.
But in the storm we shall stand in that peace that is love,
cry out with that peace that is anguish,
hold fast with that peace that is courage,
endure with that peace stronger than the storm.
And there shall be peace.
Peace. Be Still.
Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
No, my friends
darkness is not everywhere
for here and there
I find faces illuminated
from within.
Japanese lanterns
floating
among dark trees
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
Light by Carole Ann Borges
Listen to Cat Stevens sing Morning Has Broken http://youtu.be/e0TInLOJuUM
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn’t hear the stars
Singing, they didn’t believe him. They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
When nearby houses have turned off their televisions,
When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
Are between crossings, when the wind
Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence where the inside jokes
Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
My fair share of the music of the spheres
And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
Through their exiles in the desert.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌙🌟
The Silence of the Stars by David Wagoner
Listen to Ella Fitzgerald sing Stella by Starlight http://youtu.be/xDQ-Erg3KlQ
🌟🌙🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
I, may I rest in peace—I, who am still living, say,
May I have peace in the rest of my life.
I want peace right now while I’m still alive.
I don’t want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg
of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair
right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my peace now.
I have lived out my life in wars of every kind: battles without
and within, close combat, face-to-face, the faces always
my own, my lover-face, my enemy-face.
Wars with the old weapons—sticks and stones, blunt axe, words,
dull ripping knife, love and hate,
and wars with newfangled weapons—machine gun, missile,
words, land mines exploding, love and hate,
I don’t want to fulfill my parents’ prophecy that life is war.
I want peace with all my body and all my soul.
Rest me in peace.
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
I, May I Rest in Peace by Yehuda Amichai
For all whose lives have been taken by war,
grant your mercy O God.
For soldiers, civilians, those wounded and neglected,
grant your mercy, O God.
For earth despoiled and living beings sacrificed,
grant your mercy, O God.
For our glorification of war and violence
and our willingness to hurt others
to defend ourselves,
grant your mercy, O God.
We give thanks for your beloved
whom we have sacrificed;
we ask blessing for their loved ones,
confess our need for your grace,
and pray for the redemption of society.
Spirit of compassion and gentleness,
in the name of the One who was sacrificed,
save us by your grace,
and grant us your mercy.
Amen
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
🇺🇸 happy Memorial Day
Listen to Garth sing We Shall Be Free http://youtu.be/13s9eciFDzA
Quote photo sources found at www.pinterest.com
When you send forth your spirit, we are created
—Psalm 104.30
Holy One,
breath of the big bang,
idea of creation,
you who make spring come forth,
who make life out of nothing,
breathe yourself into me.
Create me.
you are the flame,
I am your light.
You are the nerve,
I am your muscle.
You are the Word,
I am the story.
You are the song,
I am the singing.
I am one with you
and one with all Creation.
One Spirit,
one flesh, many forms.
In your Spirit
I am we.
Holy One, live in me;
I am your body.
I remember,
and I live.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
🌌🌄🌅🗻🌈🗾🌋🌠🌍
my words my world my earth my sky
you are them all
my notes my music my score my song
you are them all
my heart my soul my mind my life
you are them all
my blood my breath my skin my bones
you are them all
everything I am everything I hope to be
you are them all
AL
Listen to Amos Lee sing Learned A Lot http://youtu.be/wgzFPP-Fa8o
🗾🌠🗻🌄🌍🌈🌌🌋🌅
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
[God] seems to delight in using the unexpected, the least likely, or the weakest link to turn our lives upside down and inside out . . . and fulfill the plan he has had in mind since the beginning of time.
~ Thelma Well
💞
life: acoustic & amplified 