beautiful like you

Beauty is everywhere should we search for it.

Sometimes staring us in face – sometimes asking to be found.

Beauty is all around if we seek and go.

Even in seemingly hopeless places – even in the dark.

Beauty is simple and pure – a language of the heart.

It is not a fragile thing, but strong and fierce – fighting for presence.

True Beauty is honest.  True Beauty can be harsh.

It is up to us to accept it as it is.  Not to change it to fit a mold or manipulate it to look more tame or polished or up-to-date.  It does not decide to be – it just is.

Beauty is a wild, indescribable thing that makes you hurt inside a little bit because part of you identifies with what you see and are afraid to think that you could be that beautiful, too – if only you believed in yourself a little more.

Believe in yourself – be beautiful.

No one can be beautiful like you.

all we have is time

What is your journey?  Do you know?  Are you lost?  Found?  Somewhere in between?  Wherever you are is where you are and there is a peace in that.  There is also peace in deciding to head a certain direction.  The farther you go, the farther you get.  All we have is time!!  Here’s to making the most of it.  :)

searching for grace

I have a couple of jobs – one of which involves teaching different kinds of people (children and adults) how to play different kinds of music.  This post is not about that job.  It is rewarding in ways that I cannot yet fully attempt to express. I will one day, but that day is not today.  Actually, I think it will take way more than a day.  movingon…

My other occupation is that of a guide – a leader of sorts for a group of crazy-awesome teenagers.  This group is a living, breathing community of dreamers and schemers and we’re all on a journey together. A journey into Grace as bright as the noonday sun.  The sparkly kind even.

Part of this journey is a search – a divine scavenger hunt if you will.  This search is for meaning – for purpose – and for God’s presence in their lives.  It is a search for all things good and big and scary and hard to explain, but they explore together knowing that they will “Find”.  That is my mantra.  ”God IS there.  You may not see God or feel God, but God is there.  Look for symbols.  Study and follow the ways of Jesus and you will catch God-hints as you travel this path.  See?  I’m walking with you down a trail that others have walked ahead of you.  Sometimes it is hard to see the way, but just look ahead – even if you feel as though you’re walking in circles”  I say these things as we work, play, and fellowship.  Mostly to convince them – sometimes to convince me – and always to encourage.

So my occupation as a guide entails encouraging people to search constantly for God’s overwhelming love and grace and mercy and Jesus’s ever-present foot steps.  It entails learning from a unique group of people and teaching them, too.  It entails marker throwing, balloon popping, interruptions, questions, answers, too-loud talking by everyone at the same time, wondering if anyone is hearing me, laughter, tears, silly questions, serious questions, yelling, whispering, anger, kindness – every day that I see them I discover new creations.  They become these new people for many reasons, but also because I get to encourage them to search themselves and the world for signs of grace.

That is why I think that we’re journeying toward grace – a bright, sparkly kind.  If you search for grace, you’re going to find it…

 

You’re never to young or old to begin or continue a search.  You may wake up one day and realize that you’ve been searching and didn’t even know it.  I think when you search in earnest you come to see grace in many shapes and sizes and in ways that you never thought you would.  Here is to the search and the finding of grace.  May you keep it and pass it on…

T.V. Killed the Radio Star (It’s a good thing I don’t have a t.v.)

So today, my Lovin’ Husband and myself are being interviewed on one of the local am stations in Kingston Springs.  This is weird for me.  If you know me at all, you know I’m fairly socially awkward and don’t necessary have the gift or random gab.  I have the gift of gab – don’t get me wrong, but the random stuff that makes you sound whimsical and smart and funny and like you have it all together… I don’t do well at the random stuff.  That’s why I’m taking Adam.  He excels at the random stuff.  :)

So if you are awake and feel like it… AM 790 is the place to be at 8 this morning.  We’ll play some tunes and talk randomly – which I will try very hard to appear as though I’m not trying really hard to get that part right.  Should be interesting.

It is so early.  I’m going to go make sure Adam made it out of the shower and then I’m going to drink not one, but two very large cups of coffee and hope that by 8, I can sing.

Hope your day is great!

laughter

“The earth laughs in flowers.”

I think Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best.  Since discovering this quote, I have a new appreciation for flowers.  When I look at them, I see them as expression – some loud, some soft, some understated, some over-the-top.  I could go on and on, but I think I’ve made my point.  There are many different kinds of flowers – there are also many kinds of laughter.  I most love the laughter that is shared between family and close friends.  The kind you have a lot of practice at because you’ve been laughing with those people for so long.  This laugh is perennial – much like the day lilies that grow and spread in the spring laughing in their bright  yellow way.

I have great respect for laughter among sad people – that quiet, hopeful laughter that dances  skittishly from person to person before becoming silent for a time.  I think that when sad people laugh, it is their way of expressing emotion that would otherwise be tears.  This is also a perennial laughter, but more like those flowers that grow deep in the shade of a forest and you only get to see them once in a great while, but when you do, their beauty takes your breath away and you stand silently in awe and reverence while you try to take the beauty of it in.

Then there is the gut-laugh that causes tears.  You laugh so hard that you cry and then you laugh some more.  I wouldn’t say that this is perennial laughter, though, because it is so spontaneous.  I would put this in the annual category and compare it to petunias.  They are so bright and grow so fast, then they slowly fade as summer comes to an end, but you know they’ll be back and it is something you can count on.

These are things that I think about when I drive – I look at the flowers and imagine what kind of laugh they would be.  I think about the people who planted them and wonder if they planted them for the laughter, or the comfort, or the repetitive, meditative work that goes along with them.  I wonder if the people who have the flowers laugh at all or if somewhere along the way maybe they forgot how good it feels to laugh and just let their flowers do it for them.

My most favorite kind of flower isn’t one kind at all, but the kind that surprise you because you’re not expecting them.  Usually they are small and intensely bright and are growing in a ditch or hanging from a vine high up in a tree.  Sometimes they are growing right at the edge of a creek as if they got as close to the water as possible without easing all the way in.  I think the laugh that goes with these flowers is the most organic kind of laugh.  It is an honest, raw, bright, beautiful thing that one is lucky to hear from another because it means that a person trusts you to know that part of them.  Almost an accident, but not quite and beautiful in its honesty and genuine in its tone and bright in its hopes and beautiful in its own, unique way.

So remember:

Remember to laugh – or that you can if you’ve forgotten.  Give it to others as a gift.  Give it to yourself as you would a vitamin.  Laugh well and laugh often and when you see flowers, remember they are laughing, too.

On Searching

I used to think that once a person had searched and then found oneself that the finding process was over.  Like a vision quest of sorts.  You go on this journey and fail and try and succeed and fail and try some more and at the end you’re a new person that can then go through life fully whole.  (Please stop laughing at me – I really thought this and there is a simplicity there that is beautiful – just incorrect.)

I have since gained perspective from watching people grow – actually, not even watching them grow, but realizing that somewhere along the way, they had turned into a different, better version of themselves.  Not that their old selves weren’t great, but that who they are now is a direct result of change in their lives.  Good change, bad change, unwilling change, experiences (chosen or not), other people’s choices (good and bad), and so on and so forth.

I don’t know if all of these people knew they were growing, finding themselves over and over again, but I think a lot of us search.  We search for ourselves amid other people’s assumptions about us and our expectations of ourselves.  We search for the person we were when we were 5.  So sure or ourselves – too young yet to have been told that our dreams aren’t possible or that they are inappropriate or not enough or too much.  We search for the person we know we could be – we search for the person we’ve been told is in there somewhere if only we look hard enough.

I think, though, that no matter how hard we search, many of us wake up one day to find that we’ve found ourselves.  Then the search just begins again…

May you search and find and search again – all while living each day like you’ll never live it again.  Because you won’t.  Hopefully as you find – the new search is truly a new search for a new part of yourself.  Go forward into your life and live it boldly.  Live it as only you can live it – with ferocity, with gentleness, with pain, and with happiness.  As you live, find yourself over and over and over again until the quest to “be” is your life rhythm and the search is the music.

 

p.s. a little searching activity for you Can you find the spider web in the picture??

Present Tense

So I’m walking down the road with Henry the boxer,  Audrey (one of my many sweet sisters), her Copper the boxer, Roxy (a tiny corgie/chihuahua mix), and Zoe (a dog, pyrenees/collie mix, that once lived at our house and then moved to the big city to live with my father-in-law).  We’re a hot mess that day – every car in the neighborhood decides to drive down the road – the dogs on leashes are trying to chase the dogs off the leashes and we just about cut the walk short, but then the stars seem to align just right and we manage to continue in a somewhat organized fashion.  I use the term “somewhat organized” VERY loosely here, folks.

We walk and talk.  The sun tries to reach through the canopy of leaves over the road, but fails mostly and we continue on through dappled shade and the occaisional sunny spot.  Funny the things you talk about when you walk.  Sometimes very serious things that are easier to talk about while you’re doing something else.  Sometimes silly things to fill the space.  Sometimes observations on the things you see around you as you exercise your mind, body, and spirit.  Sometimes, on particular days when you feel hope, you dare to dream with the person you are walking with.

On the way back, Audrey (Miss Attention to Detail) points out this beautiful blue egg.   The most perfect aqua, sea blue egg and it lay on the ground among the leaves and the gravel seeming to know that it wasn’t going to reach its full potential, but it was just going to lay there and be beautiful anyway.  I feel sorry for the bird-that-never-gets-to-Be in that egg – it’s a slight pull in my chest, a regret for something that will never learn to fly.  Some may argue that maybe the inside of that egg never actually became a bird – maybe it got knocked out or something like that, but I argue back that eggs make birds and birds learn to fly.  In my heart, this is an inarguable truth and in my head, all the rationalizing and logic in the world can never convince me not to feel sorry for the bird-that-never-gets-to-Be.

I immediately wish for a camera.  Mine is at home as is Audrey’s phone.  I contain my dismay and we continue on home and through the day and I still keep thinking about that egg – how pretty it was – all blue in a sea of brown, surrounded by clover and gravel.  Just laying there in an elegance that humans cannot reproduce though we try and try.

The next day, I set out on my walk with Henry and my camera and search for the egg and find it there in the same place, the same aqua, sea blue, the same feeling of sadness overcomes me, and my dog is staring at my like I’ve lost my mind.  I snap a few pictures and then continue on with my walk still thinking about that dang bird-that-never-gets-to-Be.  Can’t get it out of my head – just the image mostly – as I go through my day.  So here is what I do when I get home:

Always know that you are deeply loved and that you are a bird-that-gets-to-Be.  Always know that even in the fierce battles of life, there is a calm, quiet strength that, should we choose to lean upon it, makes us soar like eagles – even if we came out of the tiniest of perfect, aqua, sea blue shells.

Don’t forget to fly!!!