Category Archives: Beauty

insight into ordinary miracles….

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the alchemy of the mundane…..

Daily
These shriveled seeds we plant, corn kernel, dried bean, poke into loosened soil, cover over with measured fingertips
These T-shirts we fold into perfect white squares
These tortillas we slice & fry to crisp strips This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl
This bed whose covers I straighten smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket & nothing hangs out
This envelope I address so the name balances like a cloud in the center of sky
This page I type & retype This table I dust till the scarred wood shines This bundle of clothes I wash & hang & wash again like flags we share, a country so close no one needs to name it
The days are nouns: touch them The hands are churches that worship the world
…Naomi Shihab Nye

neat & tidy shelves….

this picture of simple, bold awareness touches us when we land in it…….like falling feathers or sunsets….where did the sun go? such mystery….how much do we miss? there may be nothing as sad as feeling stripped of the day….let us know the moments of folding & washing & listening…..

Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.
…Susan Sontag

disappearing into the senses…feel the earth blooming ’round your heart…

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the sensual world

A line can be drawn from simple things of small consequence & no power to an experience of transcendence. Gerald Manley Hopkins, Victorian poet & priest, knew how to release the divine potential that lay waiting, unsuspected, in everything around us. For Hopkins, God’s power is expressed in the infinite variety of his creation, in ‘weather cold & raw, chestnut leaves touched with frost & limp. Sun today.’ When I come to my senses through a practice of sustained attention to my experience, I find myself the subject of an almost unbearable delight. It is as if I were called to give some account of what I have seen today (the musky blue color of a lake, the way the little houses look like studs hammered in swirling patterns in the earth way up from a plane) because the world needs to be made new in perception. It is what I owe to the earth & air & sunlight that sustain me, a way of reversing entropy, in a world that is spending itself prodigiously in every instant. ’It was,’ Hopkins says, ‘for this I came.’……Carl Lehmann-Haupt

when we kiss this sweet life of raw blooming so gently as to mimic a whisper…..we release an innate sensitivity to pure ‘suchness’…..

the sensual response to aliveness, to the evening sun,

to the fullness of stillness…

 After every tide of ecstasy, suffering & balancing, I peer, a strange & wet embryo, into the mirror of current reality. who am I in relation to others, to the universe? Each time I emerge, my vision moves to a slightly more prismatic view, to further comprehension, if only in the futility of human conjecture…..Carolyn Mary Kleefeld

an essential simplicity….pure vision…

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searching for the minutiae of the infinite…

when nothing is missing, a pure invocation creeps up…..an unveiling of perception….like the.mist over ocean & sky that meshes & melts away….

Visual perception sees reality as if for the first time, without accepting or rejecting. There is a kind of standing-still quality where seeing things as they are becomes the real thing. Dharma art sees things as they are….Chogyam Trungpa

the contemplative act expresses a clarity….we have all had these moments….everything suddenly seems brighter, more alive, & this memory of exquisite beauty is embedded deeply….yet it’s not an idea of beauty….it’s undefined, stark & very real…..

emulate precise authenticity through direct experience of your world….

When steady mind, clear vision and soft heart come together in one single moment, ‘Good Eye’ manifests. It is vision that is inherently pure, unobstructed, unblocked, free of depression, free of aggression, free of interpretation. Free altogether. When we synchronize eye & mind, we abandon all concepts & predispositions & become completely present in the moment. The world becomes a magical display of vivid perception…..Julie DeBose

the threshold between regret & soul light

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unlocking soul light

……….The Bright Field……..

I have seen the light break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while & gone my way

& forgotten it. But that was the pearl

of great prize, the one field that had

the treasure in it. I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future nor hankering after

an imagined past. It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush. To a brightness

that seems as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

….R. S. Thomas

our exile creeps up on us with regrets…..showing us the leaky places in our compassionate awareness of ourselves….where does the light hurt? what inner quantitative battle wrenches us away from gentle belonging?

there is a warm light in the window of home…..there is a cool light down the next road….& there is a sweet, hot, neon light in a battered soul…

soul light found in the old crevices of living in the bones…

Beauty is a light that comes from the soul. This is the place in the soul that is eternal. Your time here always inhabits the circle of your soul. All your time is gathered, & your future time waits here for you. Your time is the deeper seed of the eternity that is waiting to welcome you. The soul is the natural shelter around your life. Part of this wisdom of spiritual soulful self-presence is to be able to let certain aspects of your life alone………John O’Donohue

the depth of our roots….

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look up

When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature, I am reminded by the serene & retired spirit in which it requires to be contemplated, of the inexpressible privacy of life; how silent & unambitious it is. The beauty there in mosses will have to be considered from the holiest, quietest nook…..Henry David Thoreau

we are ensconced in sunshine….rooted….digging….swooning in fragrant air….that sweet crunch of boots on twigs & leaves may be the remedy to many disappointments….holding us gently when we need it most…

just being outside….& yet how often are we inside looking out? this awareness of our awareness is lost indoors..

 Everyone searches desperately for happiness, but the price we must pay for it is generosity. When we are born, we are born among a kind of beauty & richness. Every leaf of a tree is a work of art.  A miracle…the path is difficult. The search for beauty is without end, but it is life-giving……Frederic Back

the within of us is the within of us with feet on earth…..an inevitable extension defining who we really are…rooted within earth….
our sweet holy earth…

disillusionment, wandering & a way of knowing

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new eyes...

Seeing does not come from thinking. It comes from the shock at the moment when, feeling an urgency to know what is true, I suddenly realize that my thinking mind cannot perceive reality. To understand what I really am at this moment, I need sincerity & humility, & an unmasked exposure that I do not know…..Jeanne de Salzmann

we perceive through all senses….our wanderings alight….subdued, passionate, astonished….the edge of a star…the end of a dead-end alley…

this presence…a sort of wabi-sabi clumsiness, questioning, & invisible to challenge……

the nonessential clears like sun on windowpane….like warm puppies after heartache….

For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate observer, it’s an immense pleasure in whatever is seething, moving, evanescent…and infinite….Charles Baudelaire

the art of noticing your heart space 

fall in love everyday & why being rational is overrated

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the glow

Seeing the ordinary world clearly is a source of raw material & inspiration. Strangely enough, you don’t need to learn how to be artistic. It is as natural as breathing & the beating of your heart. Nevertheless, natural artistry is often inaccessible because it is concealed. A good analogy is the way the sun constantly radiates light even though you can’t always see it. Artistry arises from mind’s natural wakefulness, creativity, & humor when the obstacles are cleared away. Before you can learn to remove the clouds, you need to understand their nature…..A. Karr & M. Wood

this is why we laugh at ourselves, play outside, fall in love everyday, & eat ice cream…

Beyond rational & critical thinking, we need to be called again. This can lead to the discovery of a ‘second naivete,’ which is a return to the joy of our first naivete, but now totally new, inclusive, & mature thinking…..Paul Ricoeur

 return to joy….

tendrils of beauty in a worn out life

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the cliched yet beautiful rose...

Everything is dying. The phenomenal world resists all our doomed efforts to arrest transience. We humans seem to have designated a few examples of this fact as beautiful: the cherry blossoms that fall almost as soon as they bloom; the brief display of blazing autumn leaves; the bubbles we blew as children, those iridescent spheres that vanished as they floated by. Sunsets transfix us, seem to soothe us with their undeniable evening truth: finished, over, changing into something else. This ‘defeat’ awakens us to the inherent beauty of what cannot be fixed in time. So what might happen if we stepped more fully beyond the bounds of conventional aesthetics? We would see the loveliness of a cracked china teapot, a pile of rusty keys, a broken rocking chair which resists the glue needed to repair it. What if we left the flowers to shrivel in the vase, allowed the peeling paint of a front door to reveal its layers of color, right down to bare wood? What if we loooked in the mirror & appreciated the scar, the asymmetry, the wrinkles & grey hair, the age spots & the sagging skin? What if we lived with a wilderness mind, in which change is the only constant, & the process of decay is recognized as beautiful? Most of us have grown up in a culture devoted to the habits that blind us. We resist, replace, disguise, crave, acquire, hoard, defend against, & throw away. Rather, it is the turning toward, rather than away from, impermanence that relieves us of the burden of our futile attachments & makes a humbled love possible. We become available to the beauty of the moment as it is, & available to one another as we are. What we deemed plain, damaged, or worn out reveals its preciousness…..Joyce Kornblatt

yes, beauty & brokeness entwined in woundedness, shifting a tender aesthetic sensibility toward profound healing…

may we ease up on ourselves & each other….inclusive, open, rebels for the unbeautiful…present, authentic, & courageously sensitive…

love your old house, old jeans, old face, old fears…

ring the bells that still can ring.

forget your perfect offering.

there is a crack in everything.

that’s how the light gets in.

….Leonard Cohen…

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chrysalis moments…

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treasures in an empty nest...

it’s simply a beautiful day for a blank page, a stark canvas, a new journal…

or an empty nest…

not so harsh, not so empty as it is full of possibility….

this is attunement, balance & possibly some shadow work…

to hold the tension of a moment, a fear, a dark potential for rejection…

to call up yourself to be what you are actually doing in this one moment….not picking & choosing…not glossing over….

we’re broken open…emptied…& free to color the page….leave the empty nest to be an empty nest…..

One of the more delicate gifts of soul that can come from the chrysalis is a refined attunement to the here-and-now….

Sue Monk Kidd

your empty nest may be the most beautiful place you’ve ever been…

let it be so….

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extravagant beauty of our days...

Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are & listen to the wind singing in your veins….

John Welwood

When starting out, I wanted so badly to become a poet that I held it in view like some hill I needed to climb to see from. But getting to the top, something was missing, & so I had to climb the next hill. Finally, I realized I didn’t need to become a poet…I was a poet.

The same thing happened with love. I wanted so badly to become a lover, but climbing through relationships like hills, I realized again that I was a lover all along.

Then, I wanted to become wise, but after much travel & study, it was during my bedridden days with cancer that I realized I was already wise. I just didn’t know the language of my wisdom. Now I understand that all these incarnations come alive in us when we dare to live the days before us, when we dare to listen to the wind singing in our veins. We carry the love & wisdom like seeds & the days sprout us……Mark Nepo

We know this beautiful wisdom doesn’t negate the need for real tools on this journey of days, but oh my, doesn’t this just relax the struggle, making things move a little more lightly?

an awakening, a beckoning, & a soft shore….