This award will be given to those that are just nice people, good blog friends and those that inspire good feelings and inspiration! Those that care about others, that are there to lend support, or those that are just a positive influence in our blogging world!

opening the eyes of our soul

words from my morning prayer:

the arms of God wrap around me. enclosing me. enveloping me. telling me i am safe without words. i breathe him in. the scent of his maleness and my beauty combined. sensuous. sensual. becoming one. coming home. just breathe. breathe me in. sense me like a child taking my hand. like a dog who raises his nose to the fresh morning air. breathe me in.

safety. trust. sensual. born to be beautiful. to ache with desire and settle into trust. the pain and the glory. breathe me in. just breathe. so rich, so pure. Yahweh. breath of God. carrying me on the wind. cradled. held. met. no terror. free. free falling. held. lovely. kind. free.

These words from Henri Nouwen followed:

The desert fathers...point us toward a very holistic view of prayer. They pull us away from our intellectualizing practices, in which God becomes one of the many problems we have to address. They show us that real prayer penetrates to the marrow of our soul and leaves nothing untouched. The prayer of the heart is a prayer that does not allow us to limit our relationship with God to interesting words or pious emotions. By its very nature such prayer transforms our whole being into Christ precisely because it opens the eyes of our soul to the truth of ourselves as well as to the truth of God. The prayer of the heart challenges us to hide absolutely nothing from God and to surrender ourselves unconditionally to God's mercy. --The Way of the Heart

Praise be to God. Amen.

photo by bill

Simple as a Love Song

"I was four years old. I was playing, alone, in a thicket of trees and bushes. A moment came when there was sound and silence at the same time. I became exquisitely aware of the breeze through the leaves, of the sunlight dappling across the earth in front of me. I understood that this was an experience of God in me and around me. It was strange and familiar at the same time, and it was the simplest thing in the world." from Tess at Anchors and Masts

Simple as a love song from God. We spend our lives trying to learn the notes of that song. Desiring to be purely seen and heard. To be enwrapped in arms that hold and love us. To become exquisitely aware of all that surrounds and encapsulates who we are. The longing. The desire. Everyone loves a love story. You know the ones…where eyes lock, energy charges and the lovers are known without pretense—without all the if-you-really-knew-me-you-wouldn’t-love-me stuff. In an instant barriers are overcome and magic happens.

It may only be a split second where everything else in the world disappears and you know you are loved. Your heart sings the love song. You experience God’s presence. You know He, She, Me exists. People spend a lifetime searching for that feeling, but it seems that you cannot find it when you work at it. You can only open heart, mind, and soul to the experience. It often comes when and where you least expect it. A stranger on the street. A child. A film or book. The words of poetry. The dancing of butterflies. The breeze through the leaves. A broken heart.

It may take a lifetime to find your own song, but when you experience it you know that you have found heaven on earth and it is something you will never forget it.

“Heaven is right here in front of me: Heaven, Heaven!” It only lasted a moment: but it left a breathless joy and a clean peace and happiness that stayed for hours and it was something I have never forgotten.” –Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

photo by bill

the peacock watched

the gilded cage opened and streams of life drifted outward.
the eyes of the peacock watched intently and knew freedom was at hand.
fire burned all ‘round promising to ignite and threatening to consume,
still the eyes of the peacock watched.

collage by christine @Abbey of the Arts

poem by lucy

The Girl in Yellow

Here's something a little different today.

The girl in yellow follows me in and out of the hours of my days. She catches me by surprise, and when I think of her I see light and sunshine. She emanates a glow and I see her smiling face in a bright yellow dress. She pulls me in. My heart feels light and just as suddenly I realize that her face framed by yellow is not laughing nor smiling. The color does not come from woven threads or gleaming rays of light. The yellow is not bright and sunshiny; it is, in fact, a smear.

The color is spreading and oozing down the dress she has just worn to Sunday school. The look on her face is one of horror and disbelief. At only seven years of age, she cannot understand what is happening. It feels like the time she cut open her arm on the swing set and blood spread over everything—slowly dripping onto her clothes. But this time the “blood” is not red. It does not come from an open wound. This blood is yellow and it slowly spreads across her chest and has splattered onto her arms. This blood, in fact, is mustard from a jar, broken when it slammed into her small shoulder after being hurled across the kitchen by her raging father.

She stands in shock, her face silent and frozen. While she was not the direct target of attack, she has become a casualty of war not much different than the child in a war torn country who suffers from shrapnel wounds because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Time has stopped as her mother, who instinctively ducked to avoid the incoming missile, turns to witness her beautiful young daughter covered in dripping yellow goo. Even her father stops his drunken rampage for a moment; sobered by the sight before him. She is his little princess and while he did not consider shielding her from his verbal attack, he never meant to physically hurt anyone—least of all his precious eldest child.

The girl takes in her parents’ shocked faces and immediately feels as though she is the one who has done something wrong. Shame floods over her and through her. She wants to cry and wail like a wounded animal and it appears as if that is just what she will do when suddenly a very slight movement catches the corner of her eye. It is her little brother, three years old. He has curled up into a ball and tucked himself into the corner of the kitchen.

Before her own tears start to flow, she hears the slightest whimper coming from the tiny boy. She cannot cry now. She must comfort her baby brother. She gently reaches down, takes his small hand into her own and says, “Come on, baby. Let’s go outside.”

The parents stand there motionless. They are incapable of caring for their children. They stand by as onlookers, watching as the seven-year-old moves into the role of protector and mother of both herself and her brother. Slowly and very quietly, the two children leave the room; tiptoeing as if their footsteps might give away their whereabouts even though all eyes are upon them. As they walk onto the front porch, the sunshine hits the front of the girl’s dress. There is a quick flash of brilliant yellow and then the gluttonous mess begins to turn brown and harden over the heart of the fair-haired girl.