Tag Archives: Sweet Breathing

Sweet Breathing

Promise Yourself

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“Promise Yourself…

To be so strong that nothing
can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity
to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel
that there is something in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything
and make your optimism come true.

To think only the best, to work only for the best,
and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others
as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past
and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times
and give every living creature you meet a smile.

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world,
not in loud words but great deeds.
To live in faith that the whole world is on your side
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.”

~ Christian D. Larson

Sweet Breathing

Take the High Road

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“To every man there openeth a way, and ways, and a way. And the high soul climbs the high way, and the low soul gropes the low. And in between, on the misty flats, the rest drift to and fro. But to every man there openeth a high way and a low, and every man decideth the way his soul shall go.”

-Mehmet Murat Ildan

“If you can live the beauty of the misty mornings, you are the king, you are the queen!”

-Mehmet Murat Ildan

Sweet Breathing

The Extraordinary is Waiting

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The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.”

-Mark Nepo

 

Sweet Breathing

What To Remember Upon Waking

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What to Remember Upon Waking by David Whyte.

I’m endeavoring, and am successful more and more often, to remember to pause, to settle, to be grateful, before moving into the plans and tasks, upon waking…

“In that first
hardly noticed
moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
that closes
the moment
you begin your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To become human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?

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

Sweet Breathing

There Is Only One Question

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Spring continues to unfold,  with the absorbing music of life bubbling just beneath the surface.  I feel it.

Parker J. Palmer’s words resonated deeply with me this morning as he wrote the following words as a prelude to Mary Oliver’s poem – both his words and Mary’s poem follow.   They speak to me of of season of rebirth in northwest Montana and of Love.

“Spring arrived on my patch of the planet last week, but it’s 25° here as I write! To encourage the season to show up more fully, here’s Mary Oliver with her spot-on description of “the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring.”

I’m especially grateful for the profound reminder in the pivotal line of this poem: “There is only one question: how to love this world.”

Oliver illustrates love for the world not with a Valentine sentiment, but with a black bear “just risen from sleep” coming down the mountain with “her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love.”

Wild animals “love the world” because they depend on it for their well-being. We are dependent, too, no matter how arrogantly we pretend that we are self-sufficient.

There’s only one way for us to survive and thrive. We must learn to love the earth and each other with the ferocity of a mother bear—saying “NO!” to everything that threatens that which we love, and “YES!” to all that gives it life…”

-Parker J. Palmer

“Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring

down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of eary spring

I think of her, her four black fists flickering the gravel, her tongue

like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question:

how to love this world. I think of her rising like  black and leafy lodge

to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else

my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting,

all day I think of her — her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love.”

-Mary Oliver