The video below provides ten minutes of beautiful images, wisdom filled words, and a simple and profound perspective that may change your days. Take a minute (well, ten minutes). I promise it will be worth it…
Time and a sense of wonder. Amazing what depth they bring to your hours and your sense of gratitude.
Time and wonder – I hope you can give those gifts to yourself today.
“I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting as it were, into the system of beings, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Everywhere water is flowing, moving, seeking new adventures. Awakening the earth, trees, sprouts, bushes and bears. The melting brings a sweet song and a green promise.
What will you make of the promise of Spring?
“Because when the spring comes,
it melts the snow one flake at a time”
-Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
“Spring rain conveyed
under the trees in drops”
-Matsuo Basho
“Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Teaching barren moors to smile,
Painting pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths
Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
The morning stars were resplendent as this new day unfolded.
Remembering that we all live in creation’s dawn is rejuvenating, exhilarating and liberating! We can always start anew bringing our best and most creative selves to this newest dawn.
“…I also live in ‘creation’s dawn.’
The morning stars still sing together,
and the world,
not
yet half made,
becomes more
beautiful every day.”
-John Muir
“Morning has broken like the first morning, blackbird has spoken like the first bird. Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning!”
–Morning Has Broken (Song Lyrics, Cat Stevens)
“Every morning the world is created. Under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again and fasten themselves to the high branches—and the ponds appear like black cloth on which are painted islands of summer lilies. If it is your nature to be happy you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imagination alighting everywhere. And if your spirit carries within it the thorn that is heavier than lead—if it’s all you can do to keep on trudging—there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what is wanted—each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray.”
-Morning Poem, Mary Oliver
April!
Full of rain showers and promise, budding possibilities, growth in every molecular moment!
The earth is singing of new life. Trees radiating their energy. Water flowing. Melting, absorbing, being….
Time to get immersed in the wonders all around.
Uncomplicate. Be amazed. Feel the majesty.
“Maintaining a complicated life is a great way to
avoid changing it.”
-Elaine St. James
“There are years that ask
questions and years that answer”
-Zora Neale Hurston
“Keep walking, though there is no where to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings.
Move within, but don’t move the way that fear makes you move”
-Rumi
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the
things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw
off the bowlines. Sail away from safe har
bor. Catch the trade
winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream.
Discover.”
-Mark Twain
There is so much wonder and mystery in the world… and so much we can never know. We desperately want the “knowing” of answers to life’s big questions and work toward that end with studying and learning. Because we are seekers, the continuing unknowns and mysteries can be unnerving – all those big questions are pressing to be solved.
I believe though that there can be calm in the face of the unknown. Peace even within the space of all that can’t be understood. Safety in what comes next. Trust in the process of life’s unfolding. Where there is connection and a oneness it is enough. There can be sanctuary in the midst of the mystery.
As the Lakota say, “When you see Mystery, call it Mystery”.
The more these words are contemplated, the more they seem to be the most respectful and honoring of the possible ways to celebrate the enormity of all that can’t be known or named or understood. It is all just too big to be contained in human constraints. Feeble attempts to find words for these wonders make them small and limited. Better to let the power remain unnamed; call it mystery and feel the awe.
There is peace in the surrender to not knowing. Not knowing and still trusting. Loving without explaining. Feelings without words. Falling into the wonder…
“Once again I accept that life is uncertain and that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next.”
-Elizabeth Lesser
“Great Mystery, teach me how to trust my heart, my mind, my intuition, my inner knowing, the senses of my body, the blessings of my spirit. Teach me to trust these things so that I may enter my sacred space and love beyond my fear, and thus walk in balance with the passing of each glorious sun.”
― American Indian Lakota Prayer
“Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question”
― Tennessee Williams
Oh, sweet Spring, welcome.
She brings her volatile mix of winds, snow, rain, gropple, melt, growth, buds, fawns, raven babies, and the bright greens of new grass in the meadow, aspens and larch.
Rebirth and sprouting and earth’s bounty are bubbling with heated passionate energy to be expressed.
Bring it! Bring it all!
“It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.”
-John Galsworthy
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Spring’s sweetness is so close! We awaken again to this glorious season of rebirth.
Time again to nourish our true self.
This poem by John O’Donohue eloquently expresses the longings that come with the unfolding of Spring.
Now, I am Impatient….!
Once you start to awaken, no one can ever
claim you again for the old patterns.Now you realize how precious your time here is.
You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language.
You see through the rosters of expectation which promise you safety and the confirmation of your outer identity.
Now you are impatient for growth,
willing to put yourself in the way of change.You want your work to become an expression of your gift.
You want your relationship to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells.You want your God to be wild
and to call you to where your destiny awaits.
-John O’Donohue
Living in San Francisco many years ago, I often spent time in Rev. Cecil Williams’ Glide Memorial Church to hear his inspiring message, and to get absorbed in the uplifting voices of the choir. What soaring voices they have! The choir’s immense talent and passion took me for an exhilarating ride on an uplifting wave of gratitude. Those moments brought patches of peace during a difficult time.
Rev. Williams starts his message very quietly, with the words; “listen, listen, listen”…..
long pause.
Just that reminder put me in a quiet, reflective, tuned in space.
There is so much to hear when we listen! The silence. Our inner voice. Guidance. The wind…
True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
~William Penn
With the same letters of the word LISTEN another word can be formed… SILENT. We must be silent to listen.
Listen to silence…
…listen to the guidance, listen to the breeze, listen to your heartbeat, listen to your heart’s song, listen to nature’s beauty, listen to peace unfolding.
“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep!”-Rumi
Ah, the full moon pulling at the inner spaces with its questions and mystery.
Tugging the tides.
Illuminating the darkness.
Searching the soul.
Waking me from a sound sleep to come outside and feel the moonshine.
Now,
basking in the night’s light.
Here is profound simplicity infused with magic.
Here is wonder.
“This place of mine never is entered by humans for conversation. Only by the mute moon’s light shaft which slip in between the trees.”
-Saigyo
“
“The moon stays bright when it doesn’t avoid the night”
-Rumi
“Watching the moon, at midnight, solitary, mid-sky, I knew myself completely, no part left out.”
-Izumi Shikibu
Each day has its treasures, each hour its wonders. When I find myself in the mind swirl of things to do and stuff to worry about, I am choosing more often to find something wondrous to put into focus instead.
That wondrous thing/person/feeling is always there.
Always.
Refocusing is possible with….
-a long, sweet breath of thanks-giving, of gratitude for being here, alive, at this moment;
-absorption in na
ture while saying thank you out loud. Wait for it… The raven will grace you with a low fly-by, the trees will rustle and sing in the breeze, the sound of silence will illuminate the moment;
-a peek into a treasured book while watching for the uplifting words that will shine forward and then into your be-ing….
These are tiny movements that create immersion into a calm and gratitude filled space.
Each day brings more learning in taking an active role in moment to moment happiness.
Deepening into the simple life.
“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.”
-Mohandas K. Gandhi
“Smile, breathe and go slowly”
-Thich Nhat Hanh
Time out is a good thing. You can shift to Paradise in the next breath, and a sense of wellness and timelessness will be the wonderful result.
Cheryl Melody
