The first 50 years are for learning the second 50 years are for living. – awesome truth overheard by Joan Jacobs
Listen to Ed Sheeran sing Thinking Out Loud http://youtu.be/f6Cswdm601A
Photo found at www.pinterest.com/al513
life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “soul and spirit”
mediocrity…never…the battle is on!
Feeling empty and unstrung
I wake from my dream
warnings of being unwilling to change
of being stuck in one place
unwilling to do things different
I sit at my desk
afraid
because this dream was not about you
it was about me
and it scares the hell outta me
that it is what I will allow.
I know
the tractor beam of mediocrity is on –
will my shields hold?
Will I stay out of the pig pen,
or just give up and wallow in the stinky mud?
The comfortable parking space calls me..
All this,
and the glaring monotony,
the forced prison,
of my day
stares at me.
how will I break this day open?
how will I know I have
reached beyond my need for security?
how will I battle my own resistance?
how will I stay focused on my own need,
and not distract myself with yours?
I open poems by Mary Oliver
The Moths is all it takes!
I feel the door of freedom swing open wide.
I write
I post
I say ‘thank you’
for these, and all the other words.
Within the hour I get a comment from Oriah, whose poem,
The Invitation,
was a life changer
and I know life
has answered my need to know
that I am connected to the whole
I feast
on bacon
with a side of strawberries n cream & passion fruit Godiva truffles
knowing there is always
more goodness
than I could ever eat up
my cup is overfull and sticky
from all that honey
from all those
beauti-ous bees.
🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝
AL (Oct 2013)
Listen to Willie Nelson sing This Face http://youtu.be/_79LW9_OIUA
😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
Find photo sources at www.pinterest.com/al513
The mind must
set itself up
wherever it goes
and it would be
most convenient
to impose its
old rooms—just
tack them up
like an interior
tent. Oh but
the new holes
aren’t where
the windows
went.
🏡🏠🏠🏡🏠🏡🏠🏡
New Rooms by Kay Ryan
water ditty’s
Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.
VI: Sabbaths 2001 [Sit and be still] by Wendell Berry
There is only one way, aging beauties,
to go down this river,
to hear the water’s music over the rocks,
to find a loving I, Thou, Who.
I say, spring out of the boat,
jump in naked, tender,
with your ferocious heart torn open.
💧💧💧💧💧💧💧💦
Hear the Water’s Music by Tere Sievers
Listen to Keb Mo sing I’ll Be Your Water http://youtu.be/jTvsHvd0Mkk
a poem a day
All poems are not equal
Just like grades of meat
and paper towels,
there are poems that are tough to chew on, stringy even
then there poems that melt into your mouth and soul, like velvety cream
some poems are flavored to perfection
and lots of poems with no salt
There are sturdy poems which mop up the spills of your heart
and thin poems, flimsy, ones that fall apart when you try to use them
There are poems that move and feel good in your hands
and poems that make your skin crawl when you read them.
No, all poems are not equal –
sometimes I wonder
why I like this thing called ‘poetry’ at all.
At other times I know exactly
why I have fallen so passionately
in love.
❤️
AL
Listen to Stephen Burt at TEDx on Why We Need poetry http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_burt_why_people_need_poetry
Listen to John Denver sing Poems, Prayers and Promises http://youtu.be/M6PEsa36SRY ❤️
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
❤️
for you…
joy…now
What if this is as good as it gets?
What if THIS very day is the best life will be?
What if this is your last chance to sing?
What if this moment is what you are called to?
What if this moment is your purpose?
What can you do to find the joy in this moment?
How can you be happy and satisfied right now?
What are the miracles that are happening for you as you read this?
What joy-filled cloud is hanging in the air above your head,
ready to splash all over you?
What gifts are being offered,
if you just receive them,
allow them to tumble all around you?
Maybe, just maybe, these questions hold the true secrets of life.
Maybe, living life in joy-fullness right now –
not waiting for some distant glory dream to come true –
Not holding back till your illusion of happiness materializes.
But, right now, sitting in whatever circumstance you are in,
this very given moment,
you look around and begin
to let go –
to find the avalanche of joy jewels
you’re walking on NOW.
Maybe this is the best, and only, secret…
DON’T WAIT FOR HAPPY!!!
It is available now,
and every minute
of this,
and every,
day.
😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
AL
It doesn’t make sense to those who can love deeply when others turn away. But not everyone is ready to keep the heart gate open to other humans. Not everyone can handle the vulnerabilities and risk. Some prefer substitute forms of love to the real thing. Perhaps they find it safer to channel their love toward a theoretical God that can never really hurt them, to a pet that will never trigger their memory of human disappointments, to a job that will gratify them economically without touching their hearts. There are so many substitute gratifications on this planet, most of them a covering over of our deep longing to connect with each other. If you are one who is truly ready to love, better to attach to those who can truly meet you there. There is the love-lit world of genuine vulnerability, and there is the love-avoidant world of seeming security. Different worlds altogether…
😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
– Jeff Brown (~an excerpt from the soon to be published ‘Spiritual Graffiti’)
😘😘😘😘😘😘😘😘😘😘
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
🌳
I wonder, walking in these woods,
along stone walls so purposefully laid,
what it was like to clear the land,
by hand and oxen, long ago,
and pry the stones out, lift
the smaller ones, and heft them up,
the bigger ones with tools and
chains and wheels, with all
their solid weight pushing down against
you, against your hands, your will,
stone after stone,
to clear it out.
How right and good it must have seemed
to see the walls set out,
the fields enclosed.
How hard and fine, and no less work
to lift away my bitterness, my fear,
and clear an open, gentle space.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
holy ground
There is grace on ground like this…
we can say that every step we take
of every day we live
Wherever we are is sacred ground
every bush we see burning with holy
every rock singing glory
every bird testament of abundance
every flower testament to extravagant love
every waterfall
every rainbow
and moonbow
and drop of the summer rain
shimmers with promise
rocks standing firm in the faith
glittering in sunshine
every person you meet has the same value
the same source
we are all made of stars
held together with mud
breathing the breath of the creator
the matter of the universe
life and death our greatest gifts
the space between can be our heaven
or the darkest shades of hell
we choose our path with every decision
free will is our constant companion
love, and connection, our greatest needs
choices are most important
wake up and guard them well
AL
Listen to Amos Lee sing Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight http://youtu.be/9xt8dVLPLFc
👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
what will you choose?
Just like everyone alive
Your days will be full of events –
threads, as it were,
weaving your life into a tapestry
There will be days of great joy and ones of overwhelming sorrow
Good days
Bad days
Medium days
Average days
Snow days
Hazy days
day after day after day
until they end
and you move on
All your days you will have circumstances to accept and embrace
or reject and avoid
to stay or leave
to fly or fear
Some to let go
some to overcome
some to enjoy
some to live through
Life is not about being fair
Life is about winning with the cards you hold
Winning doesn’t mean being rich, famous
or being born with a pedigree
Winning means living up to your own very unique, personal best
Winning means experiencing and inhabiting
love, peace and joy
You’ll be as happy as you decide to be
You will be as healthy as is possible based on what you decide to do
and the genes you were born with
You’ll choose to accept or reject what is offered
You’ll do what you want to do
Go where you want to go
Keep holding on to what is most important to you
– no matter if it makes you better –
or if it destroys you –
You’ll love who you love
Be who you are
You will be worth as much as you decide you are
You will judge others based on your own insecurities,
and your unchallenged beliefs
You will have as much love as you allow inside you
You will have as much of God as you seek to find
You will inhabit your life –
or not
All this will have nothing to do with your circumstances
It won’t matter how much money you have,
your gender,
or the color of your skin
It will all be about your choices
Always,
and only,
about your choices
AL
Listen to Misty Edwards sing Soul Cry http://youtu.be/b-IDAqxCZ7I
😇😈😇😈😇😈
Photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
dancing…
Music is playing,
music with an aim, produced,
music of collusion and desire,
insistent and sexual.
Hard not to move with the music.
Hard not to fall into the rhythm,
seduce and be seduced.
But don’t slip on the blood
on the floor.
Other music plays,
silent, within.
Different feel, different band.
Music of a beating heart,
melody of tumbling water,
lullaby whispered for a lifetime,
song of hearts set free.
The Beloved cuts in.
“May I have this one?”
No one to impress, only to offend.
No one to dance for, only with.
Dance.
Let joy move you,
even in the face of evil,
let love move you.
Before the guns,
behind the prison bars,
on the gallows, dance.
Dance on your own grave.
When they threaten you, dance
the other dance that at last
will consume them as well.
Unseen, though you know within,
the Beloved takes you in steady arms.
Dance.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻
the story of your name is written in my book, your beginning, the moment where you felt you ended and I begin. That is your beginning, child.
You begin where you end and I begin.
And the story keeps writing, child. After beginning there is adventure. After beginning there is trust and falling and catching and believing and choosing and waiting. There is much waiting and beginning again.
Your story running right off the page with Me. – Loop Devotional from Gather Ministries
💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻
Listen to Lee Ann Womack sing I Hppe You Dance http://youtu.be/RV-Z1YwaOiw
💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
soul listening
The intellect wants a summary meaning – all well and good for the purposeful nature of the mind. But the soul craves depth of reflection, many layers of meaning, nuances without end, references and allusions and prefigurations. All these enrich the texture of an image or story and please the soul by giving it much food for rumination. – Thomas Moore
You’ll know you’ve made the right decision when there is peace in your heart. Stop listening to what the world says you should do. Start listening to your own heart. There are only a few people in this world who will stay completely true to you, and YOU should be one of them. Listen to your own voice, your own soul, too many people listen to the noise of the world, instead of themselves. Deep inside, you know what you want, let no one decide that for you. — Unknown
Where does that singing start, you know,
that thin sound—almost pure light?
Not the birds at false dawn or their song
when morning comes, feathered throats
warm with meaning. A different kind of music.
Listen, it is somewhere near you.
In the heart, emptied of fear,
stubbornly in love
with itself at last, the old
desires a ruined chorus,
a radiant bloody choir.
Where does the singing start?
Here, where you are, there’s room
between your heartbeats,
as if everything you have ever been
begins, inside, to sing.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
A Summer’s Singing by Lorna Crozier
Listen to D. H. T. sing Listen to Your Heart http://youtu.be/C4HJ0zfZ-EM
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
photo sources found at www.pinterest.com/al513
questions that don’t go away…
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories
who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions that have no right
to go away.
🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂
Sometimes by David Whyte
Listen to Norah Jones sing Things You Don’t Have to Do http://youtu.be/mdyQCRgtDhM
🍂🍃🍁🍃🍂🍁🍃🍂🍁🍃🍂🍁
Photo sources found on www.pinterest.com/al513
life: acoustic & amplified 