DON’T MISS YOUR OWN PARTY

 

You know that feeling, when you have daily cleaned, cooked and prepared for a big family get-together or party?

You bustle around doing everything and making sure everyone has a wonderful time and when you finally do get the chance to sit down and relax with your guests, it’s home time...

Don’t let that be the metaphor for your life.

Don’t let the moment you finally relax be a moment too far...

I guess what I am trying to say my friend is, don’t miss your own party because you wanted everyone to else to have the best time.

Now is the time to sit down, take a beat and chat with a friend or loved one.

Now is the time to eat, break bread and be merry.

Now is the time to be fully here.

Fully present.

Enjoying.

Experiencing.

Living.

Not after, not when ‘everything is perfect’.

The dishes can wait, this is your party, your life.

You’re invited too.

Donna Ashworth

From her new poetry book ‘LIFE’: https://amzn.eu/d/9Y6E6kz

Art by Inge Löök Oy Ab.

Memories

 

Kristin Corley ~ Your Beautiful Life

 

Painted Shores

Jeff Victor is one of my favorite pianists. I listen to his CD Secret Places often when I'm in my car.  His compositions are very relaxing and thought provoking.

Nikki Giovanni

Most of us love from our need to love, not because we find someone deserving. Most of us forgive because we have trespassed, not because we are magnanimous. Most of us comfort because we need comforting. Our ancient rituals demand that we give what we hope to receive.  ~ Nikki Giovanni

I love you because no two snowflakes are alike, and it is possible, if you stand tippy-toe, to walk between the raindrops.  ~ Nikki Giovanni

I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try. ~ Nikki Giovanni

I am from Appalachia. The Tennessee mountains with the early evenings and that great morning light made storytellers out of all of us. ~ Nikki Giovanni, Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid

John Denver - Take Me Home, Country Roads (from The Wildlife Concert)

AS TIME GOES BY

As time goes by,
You will loosen your grip on that rock,
The one you always thought was home,
And you will realise that home is not a place,
It’s a state of mind.
Let it go.

As times goes by,
You will learn to see yourself more clearly,
The girl who was always too much of one thing,
And too little of another, was actually
Everything she needed to be.
Let her out.

As time goes by,
You will let the simple things become the big,
And you will allow the big things to become the simple,
And that readjustment will be,
The day you really start to live,
Let it be.

As time goes by,
You will be forced to say goodbye many times,
And your soft little heart will shatter but,
It will still beat and that will bring you,
All the purpose you need.
Let it beat.

As time goes by,
You will stop choosing wealth over peace,
You will stop choosing money over time,
And you will see that the treasures you need,
Are in the smiles and the laughter.
Let them in.

As times goes by,
The moments you remember when your life flashes past,
Are never the awful memories my friend, it’s the joy,
The summer nights, the lazy days with loved ones,
The midnight chats and the morning hugs,
Let them happen.

Let them all happen.

Donna Ashworth
Author of Life, Love, Loss: https://amzn.eu/d/9Y6E6kz
Art by Autumn Skye ART

Kansas - Dust in the Wind (Official Video)

When the Frost is on the Punkin

 

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,

And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,

And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,

And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;

O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,

With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere

When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees,

And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;

But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze

Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days

Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,

And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;

The stubble in the furries—kindo’ lonesome-like, but still

A-preachin’ sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;

The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;

The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover over-head!—

O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps

Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;

And your cider-makin’ ’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through

With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too! ...

I don’t know how to tell it—but ef sich a thing could be

As the Angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me—

I’d want to ’commodate ’em—all the whole-indurin’ flock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

Step by Step

 

My grandmother once gave me a tip:
In difficult times, you move forward in small steps.
Do what you have to do, but little by little.
Don't think about the future, or what may happen tomorrow.
Wash the dishes.
Remove the dust.
Write a letter.
Make a soup.
You see?
You are advancing step by step.
Take a step and stop.
Rest a little.
Praise yourself.
Take another step.
Then another.
You won't notice, but your steps will grow more and more.
And the time will come when you can think about the future without crying.

Author-Elena Mikhalkova
Shared from The Sisterhood of SHE on Facebook
(Image of Tasha Tudor, American Illustrator 1915-2008)

Listen to the Whispers

 

YOU MAY WANT TO FORGIVE

Friedrich Nietzsche

This grouping  was borrowed from Poet's Corner / Esquina Poetica on Facebook

I am several.
There are crowds in me.
At the table of my soul
sit many,
and I am all of them.

There is an old man,
a child,
a sage,
a fool.

You'll never know
who you're sitting with
or how long you'll stay
with each of me.

But I promise that,
if we sit at the table,
in this sacred ritual

I will give you at least
one of the many that I am,
and I will take the risk
of being together on
the same plane.

First of all, avoid illusions:
I also have a bad side,
a bad side,
which I try to keep imprisoned
and which,
when released,
embarrasses me.

I am not a saint,
nor an example,
unfortunately.

Among so many,
one day I discover myself,
one day I will definitely
be myself.

As has been said:
dare to conquer yourself.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Silence

A day of Silence
Can be a pilgrimage in itself.
A day of Silence
Can help you listen
To the Soul play
Its marvelous lute and drum.
Is not most talking
A crazed defense of a crumbling fort?
I thought we came here
To surrender in Silence,
To yield to Light and Happiness,
To Dance within,
In celebration of Love's Victory

~ Hafez, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy

Let Me Age

 

Let me age
For I have earned
the pleasure of home
in skin too loose.

Let me age
For I have much toiled
to absorb the peace
which follows the noose.

Let me age and let me be
the way I am
at last
for that did not come easy my friend

and I am grateful
for the years behind me
and the precious days ahead.

Let me age
and don’t wish me to be younger
don’t wish me to be smoother
don't wish me to be faster
don’t wish me to be perfect.

Many moons waned
and many suns rose
before I learned
that perfect is not found
in unspoiled skin
or the racing limb
it is found in the love
and nowhere else.

So let me age
I do not fear
the spoiling of the flesh
for it signifies
the rising of the soul.

Let me age,
let me change,
let me ascend.

by Donna Ashworth
Art by Crystal Charlotte Easton

SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL...

 

SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL...

... but she didn't know what that meant.

When she was a little girl

they told her she was beautiful
but it had no meaning
in her world of bicycles
and pigtails
and adventures in make-believe.
Later, she hoped she was beautiful
as boys started taking notice
of her friends
and phones rang for
Saturday night dates.

She felt beautiful on her wedding day,
hopeful with her
new life partner by her side
but, later,
when her children called
her beautiful,
she was often exhausted,
her hair messily tied back,
no make up,
wide in the waist
where it used to be narrow;
she just couldn't take it in.

Over the years, as she tried,
in fits and starts,
to look beautiful,
she found other things
to take priority,
like bills
and meals,
as she and her life partner
worked hard
to make a family,
to make ends meet,
to make children into adults,
to make a life.

Now,
she sat.
Alone.
Her children grown,
her partner flown,
and she couldn't remember
the last time
she was called beautiful.

But she was.

It was in every line on her face,
in the strength of her arthritic hands,
the ampleness that had
a million hugs imprinted
on its very skin,
and in the jiggly thighs and
thickened ankles
that had run her race for her.

She had lived her life with a loving
and generous heart,
had wrapped her arms
around so many to
to give them comfort and peace.
Her ears had
heard both terrible news
and lovely songs,
and her eyes
had brimmed with,
oh, so many tears,
they were now bright
even as they dimmed.

She had lived and she was.
And because she was,
she was made beautiful.

~ Suzanne Reynolds, © 2019

Photo credit: Nina Djerff
Model: Marit Rannveig Haslestad 

Paulo Coelho, Closing Cycles

 

This grouping  was borrowed from Poet's Corner / Esquina Poetica on Facebook

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters it to leave in the past the moments of life that we have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened.

You can tell yourself that you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned to dust, just like that. 

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your spouse, your friends, your children, your sister.

Everyone is finished chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will feel bad for seeing you at standstill.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be), to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home.

Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. 

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them.

Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. 

Do not expect anything in return. Do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, or your love to be understood.

Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows you how much you suffered from a certain loss.

That is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting loving relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that always put off waiting for the ‘ideal moment.’

Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. 

Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person. Nothing is irreplaceable; a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. 

Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because it no longer fits your life. 

Shut the door, change the record, 

clean the house, shake off the 

dust. 

Stop being who you were, 

and change into who you are."

Paulo Coelho, Closing Cycles

Big Daddy Weave - "Jesus I Believe" (Official Music Video)

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

This grouping  was borrowed from Poet's Corner / Esquina Poetica on Facebook

Happiness is in the quiet,

ordinary things. A table, a chair,

a book with a paper knife stuck

between the pages.

And the petal falling from the

rose, and the light flickering as

we sit silent.

~ Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe authored several of my favorite quotes:

• Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting and -- if at all possible -- speak a few sensible words.
• The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
• There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

The grouping below was borrowed from Poet's Corner / Esquina Poetica on Facebook and prompted this post. 

The world is so empty
if one thinks only of mountains,
rivers and cities; but to know
someone who thinks and feels
with us, and who, though distant,
is close to us in spirit,
this makes the earth for us
an inhabited garden.”

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Artwork Ingrid Tusell

About

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. Wikipedia

Born: August 28, 1749, Goethe House, Frankfurt, Germany

Died: March 22, 1832, Weimar, Germany

Buried: March 26, 1832, Weimarer Fürstengruft, Weimar, Germany

Dr. Mia Hetényi on Facebook

 

There is a caged one living inside each of us.

One that was first caught in the wild of our culture and placed in a corner. Slowly over time, we've continued to place this one in the corner until that corner became a cage.

A cage for the wild one, the too much one, the not enough one, the one whispering inconvenient truths to others, to ourselves and to the world around us...the one we cannot make money off of, control or change, or gain from in the worldly ways so disparate and disconnected from the satisfying life that we were designed for.

This caged, wild one within is treated in our inner planes the way the wild is treated in our world.

It is not respected.  It is slaughtered, commodified, wrangled into domestication or dissociation, manipulated for profit, milked of wisdom that is then painted into a picture of depth rather than honoring the intimacy of what its depths are truly rooted in.

Underneath our chronic dissatisfaction that makes so much stress in our body, beneath the chaos of confusion and rage, this caged wild one roars with a grief that wants to wake us up.

A grief that IS love itself releasing her holy roar for the sake of breaking the heart open to what has been done. To open the door of the cage, to let love roam wild, caring, compassionate, kind, open and free.

Grief has a voice that has been domesticated, dominated by our cultural narrative that she belongs relegated in the shadows. Permissible for short amounts of time when someone we love dies. Denied the reality of all the big and small ways this animal body, this divine heart that loves so deeply, lives in the tidal waves of loss and gain on a daily basis.

Impermanence is the spiral of life.

We dance in and out of loss and gain, mystery and knowing, grief and utter aliveness.

Yet, when this caged, wild one is ignored, we dampen our access to aliveness.

Our fear of death and our fear of really opening to the life that wants to live through us become simultaneously terrifying. Because, opening the caged door, roaring our grief of our treatment of the wild within, represents not only an ego death, but the death of domestication we have mistakenly called culture, civilization or playing God when we are truly, actually afraid of God, of the depth and breadth of our innate alive, erotic nature.

The sacred, the holy is wild, unpredictable, flowing nature herself.

We are wild.

When we ourselves have caged up the wild soul within us, we paint a domesticated, saintly, flowy picture of the divine that wears costumes of the cultural, perhaps "new age", norm..that is commodified and pushed into forms we can make money off of. Selling to pain points we can never make enough money from because it gaslights us to the cause of this true, deep pain we haven't been able to explain.

The grief of the wild, caged on yearning to break free within.

Because our grief is love, it is the wisdom of the heart that cracks us open to the lived wisdom of the body that often goes against the grain of everything we are sold.

We forgot that our mind longs to serve the wild one within, to forge a deep, respectful partnership in order to steward something that cannot currently live in the stratosphere of culture, of what we call "living," that we absolutely must allow to die. And it is, dying right now.

When this way of living cracks open, we can no longer turn a blind eye to how we treat the wild around us.

How animals are abused or made money off of. How our oceans are choking and we fear being alone in the wild, as though the divine would stalk us and want to hurt us. It is not the divine that wants to hurt us, but our culture that wants to cut the life off of the wild nature of life that wants to spill out through us.

Divine isn't just saintly and pretty, but wild and raw too. Roaring not only with rage or anger, which our society has actually made more acceptable than grief, but with grief. We turn away from grief. We have been taught to fear it, because when we pay attention to grief, ours or others, our hearts open and we are changed.

We cannot unsee its truth.

The roar of grief is the love, howling and reclamation of sanity and respect and honor for what truly gives us our life force, our creative potential, our genius and our capacity to turn this ship around before it's too late.

Grief is a holy living force inside love.

To love is to grieve.

To grieve is to love.

To rage with grief is to open the door of the cage.

To howl with grief is to wake up all that's been dormant and domesticated by false days and nights.

To moan with love is to pull the love and grief up through the heart, to open our bodies, our wildness, back to life again.

Grief wakes us up to what really matters.

It gives us the power to stand in truth, to fight for what we believe in.

It reminds us that life is precious.

Life is wild, unpredictable, liminal in nature.

It is wisdom that longs to co-create with us.

Life is longing for us as much as we are longing for life.

Our grief is the opening within this longing, a longing for what we have been taught to fear.

Our grief helps us work out our fear and mistrust of the divine, to remember it's not the divine that's hurt us but misguided wild of other humans so afraid of the divine they try to be God themselves.

Our grief opens our hearts back up to loving the wild within, to feeling the power of this aliveness, this love, this passion, this clear seeing of this one precious life we've been gifted....one in which we are guided by the stars and the earth is quite literally constantly speaking to the wild within us to guide us back to living in sane balance with all that is.

Your grief heals you back to life.

Dr. Mia Hetényi on Facebook

Art by Jennifer Bruce

Old Moss Woman's Secret Garden

 I borrowed this one from Old Moss Woman's Secret Garden on Facebook.  Love the sentiment that led to the picture.

Tomorrow is ever the most curious of places, isn't it odd that yesterday is the best place to grasp this.

Casting Crowns - Scars in Heaven (Official Music Video)

NO WAITING ROOM

 

What if you didn’t wake up tomorrow and your soul is watching down thinking of all the things you didn’t get to do yet because you were too scared, or too shy, or too worried about money. And all the things you told yourself you weren’t good enough for, swam in front of your eyes, fighting for a place in the line, beside the words you didn’t say and the joy you forget to have.

My friend, there is absolutely no room for anything in your day, other than acceptance. You will never have enough money, or time, and you will certainly never have that perfect body the world told you you need to be happy.

And before you say it’s too late to embrace this thing we call life, no it is not. You can do it right where you are. Right this minute. Get outside, breathe, look at the trees, put your bare feet on the grass - hand on your heart to feel that pulse - and that’s it.

You’re living.
Keep that up.

Wait up for the moon sometimes or get up early to see a sunrise, just because.
Jump in the lake. Run and skip.
The things you need to feel alive are free and all around my friend.
You just have to see them.

Let in opportunity and say yes to the invitations that scare you a little, in a good way.
Say no to some of the things you force yourself to do, knowing they rinse you of your peace.

Life was never supposed to be a waiting room, it was supposed to be a hillside, with paths leading in every direction and mountains as far as the eye can see, hiding adventures and new friends behind them.

Don’t let yourself get to the end of this ride without having stopped to smell those beautiful roses.

That’s the only thing you need to fear in this life.
Everything else is all part of it.
It’s all just a messy, complicated, beautiful and terrifying part of it.
Chin up, throw your arms wide open and let it be so.

Donna Ashworth
From my new book ‘LIFE’: https://www.amazon.co.uk/.../ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp...

Art: Lisa Asiato

The Velveteen Rabbit

 

Someday

This one really speaks to me. 

Humans of New York

Artwork: Marcos Montes Duque

“This might be the first conversation I’ve had in years that lasted more than five minutes. There’s a woman in the grocery store, at the checkout stand, that I see once a month. She’s very nice and very kind. I always look forward to seeing her. We’ll have a two, or three minute conversation. That’s probably the person I talk to the most. I’m retired, and I live alone.  I read somewhere that the average lifespan of a New Yorker is 75. And I’m 74. So I’m constantly hearing the ‘tick, tick, tick.’ At home I have this whole movie memorabilia collection on my walls. Posters from the forties: Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland. All the female actresses that appealed to the gay men of my time. Who is there to give it to? I’d hate for somebody to just throw it away when I’m gone. I probably shouldn’t care, but I do care. It’s little things like that. Little things that creep into my head about death, and dying, and what’s going to happen. Tick, tick, tick. But when I’m out on the street with my camera, I get away from all that. I get away from myself. It all becomes about observance. And I find that it’s much easier to be alone when I’m among people. The distance makes it comfortable for me. I find it’s easier to relate to people when it’s not intimate. Normally I’ll choose solitary people to photograph. Sometimes I’ll approach them. But more times than not, I’ll shoot uninvited. But even when I don’t ask permission—I feel closer to that person. When I get a photo that I really like, I’ll post it to my Flickr account. Every once in awhile people will leave a comment. And that’s icing on the cake. That also feels like a connection in some way. And I need that. I need a connection of some sort for me to feel human. For me to not feel like I’m just in my own head all the time. For me to feel like I’m somehow part of the world.”  

-----------------------

You can find Lawrence's Flickr Account here: https://bit.ly/lawrenceflickr

I have been following Humans of New York for a long time on Facebook and sometimes their posts seem to mirror my thoughts. This is one of those times.

Someone commented: "Much of the self isolation is habit, I find, and that seems normal and comfortable. But we need others and new experiences. You seem to have much to offer in friendship."

That comment is deeply thoughtful in my opinion because she is correct, it is a habit and easy to fall back into our agoraphic tendencies when we spend too much time alone!

Sting - Fragile