Tag Archives: Nature

Sweet Breathing

Meditations on Summer – A Gallery of Photos

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(*You can click onto any individual image to see a full size version, and then click the right hand arrow to see all images in full size.)

“The summer night is like a perfection of thought.”

-Wallace Stevens

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Then followed that beautiful season… Summer….
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.”

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

 

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Sweet Breathing

Everything Real

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Sometimes you read something that resonates as if you had written it yourself!  When I read this quote it was surely one of those times.

I think Victoria and I would get along famously!

*I’d have to add books and wine though!

“I just want to live in a world of mountains,

coffee, campfires, cabins and golden trees,

and run round with a camera and a notebook,

learning the inner workings of everything real.”

-Victoria Erickson

My living with coffee, campfires, cabins, golden trees, cameras and a notebook represented in photos below.  Living the dream… (you can click onto any image for a full size version, then hit the arrow to see each image in turn).

Sweet Breathing

Grace

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May we be unified in Grace…

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”
-Anne Lamott
“Grace is not part of consciousness; it is the amount of light in our souls, not knowledge nor reason.”
-Pope Francis
“For me, every hour is grace.”

-Elie Wiesel

“Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

Sweet Breathing

To Be Found

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“The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the center of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.”

-Margaret Atwood

Sweet Breathing

You Are This Flower

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“The breath is coming in and out now, whether you believe you are worthy of it or not.

The earth is unconditionally supporting you. She is holding you whether you believe you deserve to be held or not. Rest in her presence.

The breath will be gone at some point, usually much sooner than we’d all like. Breathe deeply now. Breathing is only now. There is no “breathing in the future.”

“No matter what is happening in your life – maybe you have lost hope, you’re confused, your heart is broken, or an old dream has died. Or even if you’re experiencing some joy, some peace, if things are going okay. It is not an ordinary moment. It is never ordinary inside your heart.

The only thing we know for sure is that we will be returned to the vastness soon. Let us not forget what is most important, never apologize for the yearning in our hearts, and not wait any longer to be fully here.

Let us renew the vow we once made to not abandon ourselves, our emotions, our vulnerability, our bodies, our sensitivity. With the sun, the moon, and the stars as our witness, we will no longer pathologize pure feeling and the longing that has been placed inside us.

Let us take a risk on this new day, like a flower who cannot hold back any longer from erupting with color, with fragrance, with life, with her song. You are this flower. Attune to what is truly happening here. This world needs you now more than ever. Please don’t forget what you are.”

-Matt Licata

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Wiser and Wilder

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“There comes a day, somewhere in the middle of every woman’s life, when Mother Nature herself stands behind us and wraps her arms around our shoulders, whispering

It’s time.

You have taken enough now. It’s time to stop growing up, stop growing older and start growing wiser and wilder.

There are adventures still waiting on you and this time, you will enjoy them with the vision of wisdom and the companionship of hindsight, and you will really let go.

It’s time to stop the madness of comparison and the ridicule of schedule and conformity and start experiencing the joys that a life, free of containment and guilt, can bring.

She will shake your shoulders gently and remind you that you’ve done your bit. You’ve given too much, cared too much, you’ve suffered too much.

You’ve bought the book, as it were, and worn the t-shirt.

Worse, you’ve worn the chains and carried the weight of a burden far too heavy for your shoulders.

It’s time, she will say.

Let it go, really let it go and feel the freedom of the fresh, clean spaces within you. Fill them with discovery, love and laughter. Fill yourself so full you will no longer fear what is ahead and instead you will greet each day with the excitement of a child.

She will remind you that if you choose to stop caring what other people think of you and instead care what you think of you, you will experience a new era of your life you never dreamed possible.

It’s time she will say…

to write the ending, or new beginning, of your own story.”

-Donna Ashworth

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Sweet Solstice, Sweet Summer!

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“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

There is a rapture on the lonely shore

There is society, where none intrudes

By the deep sea and music in its roar

I love not man the less

but nature more.

-Lord Bryon

Sweet Solstice!  The nectar of summer absorbed by all of the senses…

The layers of myriad greens, the sensuous breeze, the fragrances of pine and honeysuckle and wild roses, the raven song, the textures of grass under bare legs…. these small yet large, simple yet complex pleasures feed my soul.

Happy Summer, Happy Solstice, Happy Long Languid Days!!