life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Winning”
It is for freedom that Christ sets us free. Galatians 5:1
Happy Freedom Day!
Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic.
– John Henry Jowett
It’s my sixth Annual Freedom Day
I have reached home
I have stood up against many demons and bullies
I have not settled or compromised
I have won battles against comfort and discomfort
I have done my work – I am whole and healed from the inside out.
I have slain scarcity – I live where wealth and abundance flow.
I stand tall and am walking brave
I go where the boat takes me
God’s hand holds me
My Jesus guides
The spirit glows warm within –
breath by breath
I drive towards the church
excited
and realize how hungry I am
I feel led to trust again
Give all I have this morning
a gift of great gratitude.
To see the salvation of God
is my joy.
I look in my wallet
as I pull into Dunkin’ Donuts drive thru
Do I give this to church?
Then a flash back to 6 years ago
A Dunkin’ Donuts in Woburn, MA
A 100$ bill given in a tip jar of thanks
for my safe deliverance.
and I know this is my place this chilly, wonderful winterful morning.
I order
Then explain to the young girl taking my last 100$
This is my Freedom Day!
Don’t ever settle for less than you are worth!!
The manager and others hurry over to hear more,
to cheer me and say thank you.
I drive away so very happy –
hoping whoever needed that message got it!
Yes, it is Freedom Day!
It is for freedom we have been set free –
Pass it on!!!
xoxo
AL 2/16/14
the power of choosing creative forces
As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation – either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
absorbing grief
Have you sat with grief?
Have you let it wring you dry?
Leave you swollen and exhausted
in it’s wake?
Allowed the pain from the inner depths of hell,
deeper than you knew existed,
to ooze out,
bubble up into your heart,
so that your tears could begin
to wash you clean?
So it can absorb into your highest self,
and make you all you can be?
Have you asked yourself
the questions with no answers?
can you allow them to just co-exist with you,
knowing for sure that life is good,
finding space for gratitude
even in the unanswerable?
Have you walked, and talked,
with death and your losses?
Your innocence murdered
by anger and hate?
Precious time stolen
by monsters and ogres?
Heart trampled
by words of violence and sarcasm?
Are you familiar with vulnerability?
With allowing your deepest feelings,
painful feelings,
raw feeling,
real feelings,
to come out of the grave
where you try to hide them?
Exposing your wounds,
old and new?
I know how hard it is,
I know.
I try to avoid it too.
I also know the truth.
It must be done.
It is the broken road to healing.
To life!
The more we feel,
the more we can feel.
Go deep, my friend
Open up wide.
Sit a spell and let it bubble.
Feel it all.
It will feel rotten for a while,
then comes the morning
you wake up good as new!
New and improved.
I promise you won’t regret it.
Just trust me on this one.
I am well acquainted with grief.
I am intimately familiar
with the process.
AL 4/1/13
nothing but love
God is love; sin is denial of love:
denial of God’s love for us,
of our love for one another,
of love’s power over all other powers.
We deny the Lord, we say “I do not know you,”
when we substitute deserving or order,
efficiency or security for love.
Our denial of love can only lead us
to violence, to evil, to harm.
Ah, how we wound each other
trying to be Safe.
But in the face of our violence
the Gentle One comes to show us the way,
the way of love, the triumphant way of love.
His friends misunderstand him,
fail him, deny and betray him;
and he loves them,
and gives himself to them.
People accuse him and humiliate him,
assault and arrest him;
and he loves them, and heals them.
They judge him and condemn him,
attack him in a mob, beat him
and torture him to death;
and he loves them and forgives them.
He will not deny them love.
Nothing can overcome his love.
In the end their righteousness fails;
their evil and its power,
even death and its power
are swallowed up in his life-giving love.
This is resurrection.
He has already won the victory
and we are still fighting him.
We wrench ourselves away from God
and one another, but love still holds us anyway;
our rebellion comes to nothing.
Even our deepest evil is overcome,
and we are left helplessly, completely
and purely beloved.
In the end we are left with nothing at all
but love.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
To live an extraordinary life, you must resist an ordinary approach. – Frank McKinney
What’s your approach?
stay aware
Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.
– Elizabeth Gilbert
with open arms
The world today needs people who have been shaken by ultimate calamities and emerged from them with the knowledge and awareness that those who look to the Lord will still be preserved by him, even if they are hounded from the earth.
– Father Alfred Delp (condemned as a traitor for his opposition to Hitler, Delp, a Jesuit priest, wrote these words from a Nazi prison shortly before being hanged in 1945)
life: acoustic & amplified 