Once Upon a Morning...

Jesus: A word that opens the petals of a flower like the winking light 

The dawning day star blesses common dandelions and dog roses bedraggled like tangled seaweed trawling over a mermaid's navel, We fish the seas around, the sun that wakens us. Photot credit Brian Hathcock

when only the eternal...

What of this life will count the day only eternity remains what of the time Ive had the things Ive built, created, made, the fabric of each day displayed Undone and bare as a winter branch beneath transparent touch of truth, A blossom grows silently at the end of a branch, maybe, On that day, I may find the end of myself there too Doodle poem prompt ( in 60 secs or less) courtesy of LL) inspired by this

Thankful for Grace

Slowly, quietly I come. Along this path again. my feet tread, my heart trembles. Like a bird inside my chest. The weeds can look like flowers too you know? Pretty, useful, important. Stuff. Entangles, distracts, turns the soil of my heart to parched clay. I stumble over briers I had not even noticed, I fall and feel, the barren ground of my soul. I need to stop. Turn. Gaze. And let the silence wash over me like a wave of clear, cool, water. These things, this stuff, worthless as dead idols. And I sacrifice to them time and time again, thinking that it's important to pay attention. Plan, organise, structure. Control. And the vine I planted is dying, the fruit is drying on the branch. And all the while I'm watering the weeds and leaving my garden to ruin. But the fragrance, the fragrance of the blossoms he left me all those years ago, Somehow still lingers on the breeze. Reminding me, waking me bleary eyed and sober. So I stand to walk again, along the waters beside the green, green pastures. A little gentler, a little smaller, a little softer, thankful. Always. Thankful for grace. "But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." "Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain." Photo by Emmy

Glimpses through trees

Everyday, the leaves fall more and the branches become a little barer.
I hear the birdsong still, dancing upon the silent bough.

A tree is like a human soul, yet there is perfection there.
Their roots take only what is necessary from the earth. The leaves absorb the whole spectrum of colours from the sun.
With it they make food.
Embracing the toxins of the atmosphere around them, transforming them in to pure air exhaled.
They make an abundant home for all creatures.
Birds, foxes, owls, rabbits...
Even we find shelter beneath their generous canopy in the midst of the storm, whose arms reach only toward heaven as the rain spills.

They provide wood for all needs, from fire to furnishings.
They warm, sustain and provide shelter.

Year upon year the leaves begin to fall.

And with them, the soil is replenished once more. From beauty, to ashes. From death to life.

Bees gather from their blossom in the springtime.
And the memory still lingers faintly upon the air like pollen.

Even now as they become, brittle, stark and naked as deadwood upon the flame of Autumn.
Hands reach quietly, obscurely, embracing the taut, white canvas of the sky.
Immovable, except for the breeze. And they don't resist it's swell.

Something, invisible, eternal, sacred.
Like church spires along the horizon.

They stand in praise of Him who made them.

Photocredit: starbeard

Invisible, Elemental

The soul, he said, is composed
Of the external world.

There are men of the East, he said,
Who are the East.
There are men of a province
Who are that province.

There are men of a valley
Who are that valley....

The Mandoline is the instrument
Of a place.

Are there mandolines of western mountains?
Are there mandolines of northern moonlight?

The dress of a woman of Lhasa,
In it's place,
Is an invisible element of that place
Made visible.

"Anecdote of Men by the Thousand" Wallace Stevens


Lingering thoughts shared here, from here.





Photo: miss604

Finding my life

Still
Be still heart

The storm will not last
don't let the bitter winds
turn you to ice
Come inside.

Sit still and remember
the seed I planted deep inside you long ago...

....As a child you watered it well without even
understanding, you just fell right down and
cupped your little hands into the river's depth

But now there are other concerns
and they grow up like weeds
around the garden of the child
who played among the reeds...

....Sit still a while and remember
where you found me last

I am always here.

"The eyes to see, the ears to hear"

Just sit a while with me,
your own heart is the eye of the storm
that aches in the skies of your thoughts
See my face and not
the wailing rains and swelling tides
they will subside
the waters still
and then you will recognise once more
my reflection upon the
surface of all things


Child, if you can find my heart and my life
within all
...you will find where yours dwells too.

I hear singing...

I hear singing

Her voice a bubble

of certainty

and hope

rising

on the breeze

Into the blue unknown.



Poem doodle (thanks to LL for the idea:)

Just do the next thing

Just do the next thing.

Do it with all the love and purpose you can.

Without thinking further

Off into the distance, where

input must equal output

income balance outcome

and the expectation of something better somewhere

someplace, somewhen ... else

can only ever underestimate

the aching sweet

beauty of the

"just now"

I have here with you.

With the giving... ( A Poem inspired by Mother Teresa)

In an embrace,

In a smile,
In the eyes of a stranger
who stayed
When shame danced
drunk with despair
in the rain.

In the pouring

of dreams to a child's empty bowl,
rattling along the fractured
paths falling
between the broken
seams swelling

where lonely tears
seep into the fabric
of absorbed tomorrows

And yesterdays' concrete -
covered dreams sleep
too deep
to be woken.

mutely softly,
still,

silently stepping

over lines

that divide.

That run aimlessly beneath the surface

Across the brokenness

It's in the touch

of a pencil thin mark
sound like the
one gentle voice
above the white noise

of railway stations and
police sirens
falling change...
....sun drenched rain...

In the seeking beyond

the lush green fields

and a vision
that can reach
a lower kind of ground

crossing rivers that wade
between the currents
of race, creed
colour, sound

till something once lost
may again be found

The precious cradled
gently
un-bound.

It's in the space between

the vapour of breath
where hands cup
emptiness
and call it fullness

this touch
of thankfulness

Yes

the kind of love
that sees the mess

and still loves

and a heart
that can only
grow greater

with the giving

Some Other Summer Day

beneath the soft petaled
veil the past and future lay
bare, trembling
vulnerable, upon the thin
balance between yesterday
and tomorrow
you could call it
faded beauty but
only without the eyes
to see the vision embraced
inside a little green pod within
it's heart
All petals have to fall, all veils
come undone
pollen must fade to memory
and colour absorb into
the ground
before
a life can be reborn
in a hundred different ways
across the grassy plains of
some other summer day.

Infused Memory...

A child stands
upon a chair beside me.

Water splashes memory across
linen and white cotton.

As the morning light
infuses sheets upon the line
Bay and rosemary infuse
through muslin nests
of ladeled warmth
upon the stove.

Sunlight ebbs and flows
reflections from copper,
steel, wood and clay.

Raw materials unrefined.
Residues of older days
rebound from the walls of other rooms
once played in, worked in, slept in...

Yet, somehow, we only knew of true content
in the room from which
we ate.

In the place of sharing, praying, drawing
we learned the basics of living.

A table,
hands passing round

those cotton threads
hemming pieces of fabric.

Meaning, memory, childhood
infused within the tastes,
smells and textures.

Here, hands deep in suds,
Balancing
flavours of a memory
still
tiptoed upon
a chair beside me
there is a child
who remembers.

The morning light
of water splashing memory across
transparent, heavenly,
domestic white linen.

All the while

Collecting
peelings for composting.


Photo credit 3rd foundation

I will choose to linger...

I will choose to linger
on that little face just a little more tonight.
These moments add up.
They are the brush strokes of a bigger picture.
If I choose to rush along, getting things done and forget to linger on those features. They will change and I will have missed them. The way they are, just for today. Tomorrow, somehow
they will be different.
I will deliberately, stroke your cheek and tell you what you mean to me. Look in your eyes for longer than I normally would
as I lay you in your cot tonight.
Your sweet pixie grin and sparkling eyes. The feet that run about all day, so fast
I can't keep up with them.
I will choose to linger
Elongate the time we have on the evening of the 781st day since my eyes first gazed into yours. That difficult birth. You came out blue and barely breathing, your little hand numb from a damaged nerve.
And now, you have so much joy and spirit and energy.
You dance in the sun, and splash in the puddles. You know how to really live!
So now as I sing you a lullaby, I will choose to wait one minute more, take it to another verse.
Because each and every time I let that moment linger.
Time slows down.
And I get the chance to really know who you are just a little bit more.

Remembering what truly matters... "Post it " notes to myself...

Being right with Jesus before I try to be right with anyone else.

Taking off the shackles of the mind. Sinking down into the still waters dwelling in the heart.

Remembering that peace increases with trust, whatever the outside circumstances

Taking life without the frills. Eating simple. Mind, body and soul.

Reaching out to touch the truth in the kind of beauty which comes unadorned.

Not forgeting that it's the the inside of the cup that needs the most attention.

Welcoming the outsider into my heart. The one who opposes me. The one who threatens me. The one who other's reject. See how the reflection in another's eyes is deep within a part of my own self.

Embrace. Love.

pHOTO : My hand after spending a morning planting, painting and play doughing with the girls.
Real, true, unpretty, but touched with the fabric of the everyday life I love and embrace.
Better than a french manicure.

here. now

• Take one moment at a time.
• Dwell in the heart of each moment.
• Still the waters of your mind
• Do not fall beneath their surge.
• Sit with me upon the banks
• do not be absorbed by the currents and swells.
• Take the route I've mapped especially for you
• I will navigate the course.
  

With love for a friend. "The Passion is in the letting go"

The passion is in this letting go.
You will find
yourself again, beautiful, shining
full of life.

A soul grows in the dark
of the earth, giving itself away
piece by piece,

stem, sepal, seed,
Becoming smaller time and time
again, becoming
pollen drifting,

and the gentleness of rain, the warmth
of sunlight in the morning
after a bitter night of frost.

The melting snow, white
petals unfolding,

Opening

Becoming.

True.

Beautiful.

Shining.

Full of life.

When eternity sends an Angel to change our shape....

"What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the angel, who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel,
(who often simply declined the fight),
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Extract from "The Man Watching"
Rainer Maria Rilke

The Invitation...

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to
be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can
disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

The depths about us...

"Cold of the sea is counterpart
to the great fire. Plunging
out of the burning cold of ocean
we enter an ocean of intense
noon. Sacred salt
sparkles on our bodies.

After mist has wrapped us again
in fine wool, may the taste of salt
recall to us the great depths about us."

Denise Levertov
Extract from the poem "The Depths"

A Poem about Light...

The ripples on the water reflect light,
shatter it into shards of heaven,
undulating liquid hills and valleys.

The leaves of trees become transparent within light,
they absorb light and transform it into something life giving,
life renewing.

The dandelions open with a start when light shines upon them,
they respond instantly.
Before releasing their own food for the bees and the butterflies, the soft breeze and the children of another Summer.

Yet concrete absorbs light,
Deflects, rejects, instead of reflects.
Breeze Blocks are porous,
they eat light, turn it into tiny fibres,
Light does not echo, It can only rebound from the dead end irony of a city street, like a soggy football sucker-punching a wall.
And slide aimlessly like a tear stain on a child's cheek, down the beaten steel of high rise windows.

Light has many mansions, each with a colour of it's own.

Am I leaf dancing in the breeze recycling sun and rain in equal measures? The dandelion's, childish hands, attracting butterflies and bees? A glimmer on the wave, signaling to the shore with Morse code?
Saying, " let go, let go, let go.
The only way I can live is to breathe."...

..."Let the light give birth to me."

My Gift

What gift can I bring you Lord,

My hands are empty.

Yet, still I search,

the darkness of this night,

My hand pressed upon,

the frost bitten glass.

My gift melts upon these

fingertips as flakes

of snow,

It folds,

Into the earth

As a sodden leaf.

*

Once golden brilliance

upon the gilded branch,

Of another time.

These words that I offer are,

But a child's prayer,

For anything more is too wonderful for me,

to grasp,

and hold, wrap up,

and keep.

In shiny paper, or a musical box,

Or make,

Or own,

Or know.

Maybe you want no other gift,

But these empty hands of mine.

Cold and frozen

as they are,

You do not flinch,

from their touch.

I hear

Your voice in the soft breath of

dawn light,

The first stirring

of a sleeping babe.

In the vapor

of mist that rises,
From the water's edge,

I hear...

You say, You say

Hold out your

empty hands my child.

They are a gift,

your empty hands.

For only empty hands can

Cradle the babe,

Take mine in theirs to

follow my way.

Recieve the nails,

and cup

the Host,

Embrace

my Love,

Your hands

Enclose

All that I need,

Unwrapped, unclothed

Your poverty,

Your gift to me.

Your gift to me.