waiting to learn to flow…

She says take what you are and use it.
She’s a junkyard artist, crafting beauty out of the broken. She’s a magician, melting scar tissue into silk. She’s a miner, fingering greasy lumps of river clay for emeralds. She can enter the damaged cells of your life and recreate your liver from a memory of health. She can pass her hands over this torn and stained tapestry of memory and show us beauty, make the threads gleam with the promise of something precious gained.

She will not flinch from anything you have done to keep yourself alive. Give it to me, she will say, I will make it into something new. She will show you your courage, hammered to a dappled sheen by use. She will remind you that you took yourself over and over to the edge of what you knew. She will remind you that the world placed limits on your powers. That you were not omnipotent. That some of the choices you made were not choices.

Use what you are, she says again and again, insistent. You are every step of your journey; you are everything that has touched you. You are organic and unexpected. Use what you are.

More

Love Song

How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I lift
it gently up over you on to other things?
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark
in some quiet unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in the hand?
O sweetest of songs.

Rainer Maria Rilke

When You Love Me

Only Love

Love is a choice.

Soul-Mate

Where You End

In Love

If ever you fall in love, do so without reservation, or rather, if you should fall in love simply give no thought to any reservation.

Moreover, when you do fall in love, you will not `feel certain’ of success beforehand. You will be `un âme en peine’ [a lost soul] and yet you will smile.   – Van Gogh

Heart/breaking

When two people love each other, they don’t love in the same way.
One of them is strong, the other, weaker.
And the weaker is always the one
who loves without reckoning…
without reservation.
It feels now as if I’ve awakened from some kind of dream…
after some other kind of life.

from Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice

On the superficial level, we crave relationships because we don’t want to be alone. We want comfort. But there is a much deeper level that we might not even be consciously aware of. On a deeper level, our souls cry out to be in a relationship that nourishes us to flourish, that encourages us to be the best versions of ourselves. To be fully embraced in the true light of who we authentically are at our core. To be pushed to reach our highest potential… and to do all the same right back for our partner. (More)

To love without reservation means to love completely, fully, without suspicion or distrust, kindly, compassionately and consciously. So many people fall in lust rather than love, or fall in love with the idea of who they think the loved one is. That kind of love is so different from Real love that it is not even a pale comparison. To love consciously is to love with one’s eyes wide open, knowing the faults and foibles of the other person and loving them still. To give love fully one must also love oneself the same way…can you do that? Can you love yourself fully, completely and consciously, knowing all of your faults, foibles and failures?

The problem with love is that we all want it so much and yet it is what we are most afraid of. We want the other to give us complete, unconditional, amazing love but we balk at opening our hearts to receive that kind of love. In a penny-pinching manner we slowly open the coin-purse of our hearts, as it squeaks and releases tiny moths. The moths of self-doubt, fear of failure, fear of rejection, betrayal, anger, heart-ache, depression; they don’t go far. Those moths fly around, waiting for the first hint that the heart will allow them back in.

To love honestly is a different matter and involves complete honesty within as well as with the other person. Dealing with another in truth and honorably brings love to a much deeper level. It is only with that degree of depth that real love can bloom because it removes any doubts and fears.

Not everyone is ready for such commitment to truth, even within themselves. To find one willing to give at that level is so confusing to most people that they run in the other direction…unless that is exactly what they are looking for. When two such people find each other the relationship becomes a real-lasting-ship…of Love. The only way to prepare for such a deep love is to love oneself deeply-to know the Self so fully and completely that one is ready to share that depth of love with another. (More)

“I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer…” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Inspired

 

This is my love

Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that – it lights the whole sky. | Hafiz

Bliss

I have to tell you,
there are times when
the sun strikes me
like a gong,
and I remember everything,
even your ears.

(Dorothea Grossman)

Summer Fairs

Day is done.

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Grace is letting go.

Sometimes you are too sick to be productive.

In my life, sickness has always been the only way to get me to stop, or slow down at least, and rest. Whenever I get too busy, too stressed, and too overworked for too long, I get sick. It’s as simple as that. If I don’t take the time to find my balance, life finds it for me (not always in a pleasant way, either).

So, lying in bed the past four days, doing not much but reading fiction (a guilty pleasure from childhood I rarely indulge anymore), and drinking tea (except for that one day I tried to work from bed: setback #1), I have realized this: I have a really hard time not being productive.

What does this stem from? I could name a million things. I could give a hundred different “psychoanalysis” of my childhood, upbringing, experiences, etc. to prove why it has been drilled into me to always BE PRODUCTIVE. But would any of that help me just, “Let it go.”? No. And that is the crux of it. I have a hard time not being productive because I think my productivity defines me, shapes me, IS me. I like to be in control, or at least think I am. And how can I be in control of my life without being productive, without constantly “striving” to meet some goal, to make some goal, to plan, to dream, to be, do, have more, better, the best…?

This is when it hit me: grace is letting go. Of expectation. Of demands (on yourself and others). Of the illusion of control.

My life hasn’t worked out as I planned or expected. In fact, many of the things I have “planned” on succeeding at- even after I have reached the goal, met the challenge, accomplished the feat- it didn’t turn out to be what I wanted anyway. Or it led me in a completely new direction, away from the thing I thought I was working toward. Other “plans” were derailed by events or circumstances I had no control over.

I have long chided myself on not being a more “focused” person, or more “determined”, or more “single-minded.” The truth is, I am all these things, when I am passionate about what I am doing. The truth is also, I have many passions and much to be passionate about. So instead of beating myself up any longer about not being “where I expected to be” or “who I wanted to be” by “this time” in my life, instead of literally making myself sick by trying to be everything to everyone, I am going to live with grace. I am letting go.

And I am starting with things.

Inspiration: 
http://guynameddave.com/2011/01/so-what-exactly-is-the-100-thing-challenge/

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or find to be beautiful.” -William Morris, 1834-1896

New View: Inspiration

“Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.”- Hardy D. Jackson

Inspired by this post today: 
http://zenhabits.net/ignite/

Ask yourself this: what inspires me?

Then do it.

I love to write. Lately, I have not been feeling having the urge to express myself verbally…(those who know me, know this is a rare thing indeed… – )…perhaps because I haven’t easily been able to find words for the feelings I am experiencing right now. Perhaps because I have always been most comfortable verbalizing thoughts and ideas, but am now finding myself immersed in emotions I am trying to connect with rather than stifle or ignore.

For as long as I have loved writing though, I have also been obsessed with the interplay of word and image. Now, new camera in hand these past few months, I find it easier to capture expressions of my feelings in the images around me. Sometimes an image matched with a particular song or a poem evokes a strong response in me. Sometimes the image stands alone.

I find myself more inspired these days in capturing images that call to me: in using the camera as a new way to view the world around me. In truth, I have always seen the world in this way, but sometimes fail to focus on the details in the way photography allows me to focus. Something about capturing the image in a still shot brings clarity and helps me see the beauty in everything around me. As always, I find myself drawn to people, water, and sky…wide open spaces, active energy in all it’s forms…

I just moved into a new apartment this past week and am settling in now. With this upheaval comes new inspiration- in part, in the opportunity to simplify my life further, weed out the extraneous wastes of time and energy that existed in things I didn’t need, and bring myself closer to aligning my daily life with my values and interests and loves; in part, in the fresh energy that always accompanies re-organization of my living space and revitalizes my life while lending new perspectives to everything in it- in this way, change is good; and in part, in the chance to “start fresh” with a new space.

I realized the other night that what I love most about writing (for I adore the old fashioned pen and paper sort over computer writing still…) is the chance for a fresh start that every blank sheet of paper represents. Perhaps it’s the perfectionist in me that so anticipates this “clean slate” experience so much, but I love it in all it’s forms: whether a blank canvas to start a new painting on, a fresh piece of paper to write or draw on, a new space to organize and decorate, or a new day to re-create yourself anew!

Tonight: I will take a break from unpacking and take some time to focus my intentions on who and what I am, who I want to be, and aligning the energy of my new space with these intentions.

Every morning is a chance to be the newest version of the best person you can be. Let go of the past, start fresh, and be inspired!