“Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world.” – St. Francis of Assisi
You might try it today.
Touch with intention.
Draw in the wonder around you.
Let your fingers experience
The flow of life
The beauty of being.
Connect your soul.
Through touch
And rejoice.
It is.
You are.
I Am.
Amen.
[quotation of St. Francis of Assisi, p. 40, in Love Poems from God by Daniel Ladinski]
[photo by Jens Dahlia per cc 2.0]
Physics is right.
The way you look at things makes all the difference.
The looking, itself, changes reality.
When I look with generous eyes,
Willing to see wonder,
Searching for hope,
Watching for moments of grace,
My edges of my days are softened.
When others look at me with generous hearts,
Looking for reasons to love and affirm,
Rather than pointing to my warts and worries,
I am made whole.
What a gift to have friends
Who intentionally see the good in me,
Who hug me into my better self.
Perhaps that is the definition of a friend:
Someone who holds the mirror for your better self,
And calls it forth to play.
I am grateful, today, for friends like these.
They fill my life with grace.
They help to make me who I want to be.
After all, it’s not so much what you look at.
It’s what you see. It’s what we see, together.
Thank God.
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4:8
[photo by Khalid Al-Haqqan per cc 2.0]
The rain today is a slow drizzle
The kind that sinks gently into your soul
Filling the deep cracks that have yearned for its coming
Drawing the broken pieces whole
As I go about my day
Doing the dailyness; tidying and futzing with the debris of my week
The rain is there, in the background
Filling my holes.
What persistent grace you give
Working its way when I notice, and when I do not
Seeping down between each grain of sand
To firm it up, to allow it to hold its shape
You are the rain of my soul
The filler of my holes
The holder of my tiny fragments of self
The moisture that feeds the dry with hope
The tiny wildflowers that sprout across the pasture in delight of drizzle
Give testament to that persistent grace
And to the seeds of gifts within my frame
That you call forth within the quiet patter of an afternoon.
[photo by jenny downing per cc 2.0]
Good morning, Holy One.
Thank you.
For the morning.
For the quiet.
For the hope of a new day.
For the beating of your heart deep within mine.
For your call, like the pull of the ocean current, unseen, irresistible.
For life – full of fragile beauty.
Thank you. Continue reading
I pause at the edge of the day,
Like the sun upon the horizon,
Peeking over the edge of the earth,
Expecting to see something beautiful. Continue reading
Quiet Hope 