What if there were a prayer like an incantation, one to be recited, or sung—if you could carry a tune— echoing around the world like the wood pigeon’s call, five notes radiating as light rays fill the sky announcing: “Morning has arrived”.
What if, I ask, because I wonder what might bloom in our hearts if we held five words to lift us into the dawn— could they luminate our path through starless nights of change, surprise, and dread where daily news suspends us in silent, trembling pause?
Focus. Sing out. A clear message.
One that says: Lift your hearts today. Let love be your guide. My joy illuminates.
Could we, in unison, each in our own language of hope, sing until certainty rises that dawn has arrived, and all are bathed in new light.
Could we sing together and dispel the darkness that seeps through shadowed corners, permeating rooms of despair? Could we try?
There lies hope: Our one honest prayer of life. Together we could light the universe.
The heart aches for what it desires while lost in the shadow of dissatisfaction.
When we fall will we rise with more clarity?
Will our hearts open to our lives with honesty?
Will we dare to change the trajectory and risk a new path?
We face the questions as we seek to know our human potential— the hidden gift of life on earth.
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Human potential at its best is to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.”
-Vitor Frankl
“Human potential is the same for all. Your feeling, ‘I am of no value’, is wrong. Absolutely wrong. You are deceiving yourself. We all have the power of thought — so what are you lacking? If you have willpower, then you can do anything. It is usually said that you are your own master.”
My most recent work, Heart Coherence, took a blue ribbon award of excellence at the five county Image Show put on by the East Central Regional Arts Council in central Minnesota. What an honor!
I have not had much time to paint this year due to many many things happening but to get me moving, I took a twelve week abstract art course on line and this inspiration came during the short teaser course before the full course started. I used acrylic, pencil, and ink. After the framing and the show, I am happy to have it at home. I will enjoy it for a while and decide if it is for sale. Some are just hard to let go of. 😊
After the count and the claim, I wake to dense morning fog. Buried in a cloud, I surmise through memory what is before me, as what is now present does not reflect my vision.
Confusion, wonderment, and disbelief fill me, while the soft glow of morning light cuts through the haze into the beauty of the trees, the sky, and the rough shadows of a day touched with mystery.
I do not need to understand. I do need to love, laugh, and live in beauty. One reality does not abolish the other. They merely dance out of step, as I polish my heart to get a clear view.
“One common mistake is to think that one reality is the reality. You must always be prepared to leave one reality for a greater one.”
-Mother Meera
“You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.”
-Margaret Atwood
“Dear friend, your heart is a polished mirror. You must wipe it clean of the veil of dust that has gathered upon it, because it is destined to reflect the light of divine secrets.”
Hidden in the depths, we seek to know the light that shines within to the life that unfolds out. To make whole, to make one, we dive in, then return with a jewel found here, a gem unearthed there. Scattered on the ocean floor, waiting to be gathered, wanting to be brought home— all one through love. No longer within or without. Simply eager to be lived.
“You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth”
– Henry Louis Mencken
”Like the sea itself, the unconscious yields an endless and self-replenishing abundance of creatures, a wealth beyond our fathoming.”
– C.G. Jung
“The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.”
Take a break, grab your bestie, go outside, lay on the grass, look at the clouds and giggle out loud. There’s one that looks like an elephant, one a goose. Then giggle some more until you can’t stop laughing and your bladder’s going to burst. Remember those days? When you laughed with abandon? When you laughed so hard you started to cry? We need it now— our joy and our tears, from the heart, the tender heart that is ready to break. Break open! Live the connection, friend to friend, us to clouds. The heart knows the One. The One in the All. Where love is all One.
“The highest state is laughter.”
– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
“We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.”
– William James
“Everybody laughs the same in every language because laughter is a universal connection.”
I stand at water’s edge, with trees above, mirrored below. Like friendship— a reflection seen, yet not the same. Conveys who I am, similar, yet different. At once solid, yet fluid. Challenging, yet joyful. Colorful, yet peaceful. Encouraging, playful, inspiring. Friendship allows. Connection to the heart. Flows on to thee
“Life is but a mirror looking back at us, uncovering the layers we’ve neglected to see.”
-Bayu Prihandito
“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
-Thomas Merton
“The way we experience the world around us is a direct reflection of the world within us.”
We wait patiently for peony to bloom, to open and shine in all her glory. Might she feel the excitement in being all that she is, the anticipation as stem grows stronger— stands taller reaching for the sun. We too wait for blossoming, not always patient, wanting to be all that we are. We forget that each moment of loving and being arrives at the next, until next is lived, and then next, and on until our heart petals open in joy and we arrive within to all that is
“How does the meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.“
William Wordsworth
“If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?“
Once I thought prayer was magic:
If I pray hard enough
God will give me what I desire. I was young and did not yet know
grief and despair.
I grew in knowledge of sorrow and joy,
and found no being who could
change the course of the many things
that bring us suffering, as was told, when
once I thought prayer was magic.
Nor did outward prayer give me
what I yearned for, which may
conflict with another’s longing.
Who does this being listen to?
If I pray hard enough,
I am told, if I am good enough,
follow the rules, listen to authority,
learn to be pure like the saints,
deny myself,
God will give me what I desire.
Then I learned to go within:
to know prayer as silence,
to focus, allow, listen, sit in peace,
open to universal wisdom. Not taught to me when
I was young and did not yet know:
the connection is within the seed of the divine inside of me.
All consciousness, open to love, forgiveness, and grace
changes me; I then join with others as
we open to joy, and ease that which is our
grief and despair.
(Thanks to WP friend, David, for his teaching of a ‘cascading’ poem.
“It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without heart.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself.”
St. John Vianney
“God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.”
A big THANK YOU to the art collectors who purchased these paintings during the Common Ground Art and Poetry Exhibition. It is heart filling as an artist and author to be able to witness the connection that others feel to my voice and expression. These works have found new homes and I wish the owners years of happiness.
