Tag Archives: beauty

chimes

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wind chimesThe wind chimes
Hang outside my window
And when the breeze is low
I can barely hear them.

My ears are deaf
But my heart is held
By their quiet, soft, round tone.
They melt into that hollow.

Every morning
Before the world begins its clamor
And the responsibilities click in place
I am held by unspoken beauty.

Even at noon
When the wind is still
And the chimes hang limp
The beauty of hope remains.

And in the evening
When the cool and breeze return
My heart is reminded.
I find I am held, still.

a small bird

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house wren

Is a bird self-aware?
Does it see its own quiet beauty?
Does it know the part it plays within the whole?

Or does it focus on the beauty that surrounds it,
Making it all the more beautiful,
In its unstudied grace?

Sometimes, I’d like to be a small bird.
Not so much for the flight,
But for the ease of finding the wind.

[photo by Mike Bizeau from the wonderful blog, nature has no boss used with permission]

the whisper

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mysteryThere is a holy whisper in the universe.
Sometimes it is hard for my heart to hear it.
Sometimes I even doubt its presence.
But then, I am overcome by beauty.
And I am reminded.
It is so.

Sometimes it seems I will be pulled apart by chaos.
So much in disarray.
So much violence and anger.
So much pain and terror.
But deep below it all, there is an anchor of truth.
It holds me, still.

I often wish for a different reality.
I even try to make it so.
But my small fictions cannot do the trick.
The real is real.
And the very deepest real,
Is a call to unity – even in the midst of chaos.

Much of that struggle and pain
Is created when my fictions strike up against yours.
Even so, the struggle and the pain are real,
They stretch and tear and bind.
They do hurt – immensely.
But they are not eternal.

How can I release myself to the seeming chaos?
How can I become a part of that deep unity,
Without loosing myself?
So, I continue to construct my fictional self
Out of the rubble of my efforts.
All to no avail.

I fight the inevitable
Like a small child fighting sleep.
I whine and struggle, rock and fidget.
I push against the embrace
Until I can resist no longer
And I fall into peace.

And here is the wonder of it all
I am held in the arms of truth.
The chaos is not random.
It tumbles into patterns of fractal beauty
Where I am both lost and found
And my heart at last can hear that holy whisper.

[photo ashokboghani by per cc 2.0]

[Thanks to Richard Rohr, in his meditation blog, for helping me begin to see.]

off to the mountains

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I’m off to the mountains.
My soul longs to absorb the colors of the wild;
To sit in the presence of the mountain
And let it sink its roots into my heart.

The touch of that deep quiet has faded
And needs to be renewed
So that I, too, might be renewed.
The attention of my soul is too easily distracted
By the flash and dazzle of the market
And the vitriol and terror of the news.

So, I will sink my feet into the numbing cold of a stream
And let my soul sigh before a columbine.
I will relish the quiet conversation of friends
Whose voices carry the whisper of the divine.
I will remember the solid grace of solitude
And the gift of mutual interdependence.

I am grateful to be able to make such a pilgrimage,
In the company of others whose hearts are open to its peace.
There are no guarantees on the mountain,
Except that it is there – deeply, powerfully there,
And its gifts of beauty and grandeur and challenge and grace
Play upon the wind and call me to its depths.

I’m off to the mountains to store up images of hope
To feed my soul and smooth the edges of my anger
And give me a bit of grace to share.
I go in hope and confidence that it still has gifts to share;
That my heart will still be open;
That its terrible beauty will do its work in me, again.

I’m off to the mountains.

[so … no posts for a bit.]

The blessing of punctuation

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sunsetIt can help to mark the endings.
Otherwise, things run together
And meaning gets lost in the tangle
Of next, next, next.

We can lose sight of the full circle.
We can fail to recognize when something is finished;
Completed;
Done.

There is a quiet beauty in the sunset.
In the sigh at the end of the day.
It is a whispered permission
To let go what you cannot hold, anyway.

It is good to give it your best
And it is good to let that be enough.
That is when that period at the end of the day
Is, indeed, a blessing.

[photo by Sunny per cc 2.0]

creation

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tool of the creative

There is a joy in making something.

In watching something come together,
Even with a flaw or two
There can be a beauty that sneaks into the process.

There is a beauty in the motion, in the doing;
A beauty in entering the flow of an eternally creative God
And finding yourself part of creation –
Both noun and verb.

Nouns are easier to see …
But verbs! Ahhh.
That is where the action is.

[photo by Paralog per cc 2.0]

[my thanks to Richard Rohr for encouraging me to see the Trinity as loving action.]

my reflection

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reflection

They say I am made in the image of God.
It is true that I do have some beautiful feathers.
There is an iridescence in some of what I bring to the world.

Of course, there is also a strange awkwardness.
The image I present contains only the smallest hint of that Holy Three.
And when I study my own image, even that becomes blurred.

But none of that changes the gift of the creator
Which rests upon my being
And pours itself into the world.

Would that I could celebrate that gift and simply let it flow
Then, perhaps, I could turn my eyes from a static reflection,
Reflecting, instead, on the greater dance of love.

More than my own image is reflected in this pool.
Even looking down, I can see the trees, the sky.
If I look closely, I can see your smile.

[photo used with permission from Mike Bizeau’s beautiful blog – nature has no boss]

a tiny thread

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by a thread

Oh Holy One,
I am lost in the wilderness.
I cannot see your hand or sense your presence.
My faith is hanging by a thread.

Yet, I desperately want to believe.
Where is my anchor if you are not there?
Where is my hope?
How can I take even one more step?

I take the next step because of beauty –
How it calls to me when it lines up into a resonant whole;
How the pieces answer one another in harmony,
How its fractal presence unites the big and small.

I take the next step because of love –
Because my heart calls to you and is not satisfied until you answer
Because there is a hole that can be filled with nothing else
And so, I must believe, or else I die.

I take the next step because of hope –
And somehow I know that hope is born of you.
It is your continued call, your whisper of promise,
That urges my soul forward.

And, though I stumble,
Somehow, I fall into your arms.
You came to the wilderness before me
And wait to catch me, even here.

[photo by rouge per cc 2.0]

wonder’s dust

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sunset in Marathon

Praise to God, to God, to God
Praise to God, my soul!

I can wiggle my toes into the edges of the ocean,
but never plumb its depths.

I can tickle the skirt of the sky,
and let it wrap me round
and let it enter in at every breath,
but even imagination cannot examine its bounds.

I can lean me back in your love,
and wake my soul to ever-new delights,
but it is more, is more, is more
than I can grasp.

Instead, it grasps me
and holds me
and stirs me to praise.

The edges of wonder dust my days.

I praise
and in the praising, stretch my soul
to gather wonder’s dust in sheer delight of you.

9 29 11

[photo is my own]