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Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing, Travel Adventure, Trees

Focusing on the Light

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“The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.”
-John O’Donohue
Focusing on the light as an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world… Thank you John O’Donohue, thank you to all the heart centered ones around the world doing all that they can, thank you for continuing to focus on the light, the goodness… It is difficult in these days.  Let’s keep trying our best.

 

Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing, Trees

Become Whole Again

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“Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason the woods were the place where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings…The tree brings back all that has been lost through Christ’s extreme spiritualization, namely the elements of nature. Through its branches and leaves the tree gathers the powers of light and air, and through its roots those of the earth and the water… You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things. Why not go into the forest for a time, literally? Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books… ”

-Carl Jung

“Only when I walked into the forest did the world become whole again.”

-Lars Muhl

Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Sweet Breathing

The Winter of Listening

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THE WINTER OF LISTENING (by David Whyte)

“No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire.

What disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.

What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born…

And
here
in the tumult
of the night
I hear the walnut
above the child’s swing
swaying
its dark limbs
in the wind
and the snow now
come to
beat against my window
and somewhere
in this cold night
of wind and stars
the first whispered
opening of
those hidden
and invisible springs
that uncoil
in the still summer air
each yet
to be imagined
rose.”

-David Whyte

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strong, clear and powerful moon on snow at home.

Fall, Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing

The Earth Remembered Me

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I cannot get enough of Mary Oliver right now… her words are buoying me, reminding me of the earth’s deep sustenance and peace.

The earth does remember me and my heart is full of gratitude.  I am deeply embedded in her peaceful embrace today with the rain sweetly softening and nourishing…

Softening and nourishing and sweetening everything including me.

“I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times’
into something better.”
-Mary Oliver

 

Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing

Love All the Things

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How I needed this today – I absorbed these words by David Whythe through every cell, with thankfulness and grace.
THE HOUSE OF BELONGING
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,
this is the gray day
someone close
to you could die.
This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,
the tawny close
grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels
of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun had made.
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
like the house of belonging.”
-David Whyte (The House of Belonging)

“There is nothing like waking in a sunlit room with view, but perhaps nothing better than waking in a sunlit room with a view than waking with a writing desk in a sunlit room with a view. And in the case of this poem, waking in a sunlit room with a writing desk and a view after a passing through a very dark passage in life. ‘What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky? Is it waiting in the fertile sea? In the trees beyond the house? In the life you can imagine for yourself? In the open and lovely white page on the waiting desk?”

-David Whyte

 

 

Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing

Walk Slowly and Bow Often

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When I Am Among the Trees (by Mary Oliver)
“When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
-Mary Oliver
Animals, Glacier National Park, Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing

An Acre, Any Being, Any Waterway

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“When you truly love any acre, any being, any waterway, you love them all and realize you’re intimately connected. You can’t change everything, but you can love it all.”

-Kitty O’Meara (from 4/26/21 blog post “Ordinary Things of Conspicuous Value” – The Daily Round

Ordinary Things of Conspicuous Value

Crater Lake National Park, Glacier National Park, Home, Inspiring Words, Nature, Photography, Sweet Breathing, Travel Adventure

Mountains, Woods, Rivers, Lakes, Beaches – Find Me Inside

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Mountains, Woods, Rivers, Lakes, Beaches….

 

This is the God or nature of Spinoza:

“God would have said:
Stop praying and punching yourself in the chest!
What I want you to do is go out into the world and enjoy your life.
I want you to enjoy, sing, have fun and enjoy everything I’ve made for you.
Stop going to those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and say they are my house!
My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That’s where I live and there I express my love for you.
Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing!
Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy. So don’t blame me for everything they made you believe.
Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can’t read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son’s eyes…
you will find me in no book!
Trust me and stop asking me. Will you tell me how to do my job?
Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you, I criticize you, nor get angry, or bother, or punishment. I am pure love.
Stop asking for forgiveness, there’s nothing to forgive. If I made you… I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies… free will. How can I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? How can I punish you for being the way you are, if I’m the one who made you Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity?
What kind of god can do that?
Forget any kind of commandments, any kind of laws; those are wiles to manipulate you, to control you, that only create guilt in you.
Respect your peers and don’t do what you don’t want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life, that your alert is your guide.
My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step, not a step in the way, not a rehearsal, nor a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing here and now and all you need.
I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues, no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.
You are absolutely free to create in your life heaven or hell.
I could tell you if there’s anything after this life but I can give you a tip. Live as if there is no. As if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist.
So, if there’s nothing, then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is, rest assured that I won’t ask if you behaved right or wrong, I’ll ask. Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?…
Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don’t want you to believe in me, I want you to feel in you. I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.
Stop praising me, what kind of egomaniac God do you think I am?
I’m bored being praised, I’m tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful? Prove it by taking care of you, your health, your relationships, the world. Feeling looked at, shocked?… Express your joy! That’s the way to praise me.
Stop complicating things and repeating as a parakeet what you’ve been taught about me.
The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, that this world is full of wonders.
What do you need more miracles for? Why so many explanations?
look for me outside, you won’t find me. Find me inside… there I am beating on you.”
-Spinoza

 

 
Home, Inspiring Words, Photography, Sweet Breathing

Stained by Ink, Paint, Tears & The Moon

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“A woman may crave to be near water, or be belly down, her face in the earth, smelling the wild smell. She might have to drive into the wind. She may have to plant something, pull things out of the ground or put them into the ground. She may have to knead and bake, rapt in dough up to her elbows. She may have to trek into the hills, leaping from rock to rock trying out her voice against the mountain. She may need hours of starry nights where the stars are like face powder spilt on a black marble floor. She may feel she will die if she doesn’t dance naked in a thunderstorm, sit in perfect silence, return home ink-stained, paint-stained, tear-stained, moon-stained.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes