Saturday, August 31, 2024

August Twenty-Twenty-Four

 

Whether we travel a block away or a continent over, to go anywhere on Earth is to arrive as a guest in a place touched by God. What would it look like to travel as tourists while finding satisfaction in the things that should matter most to us as pilgrims, principally love of neighbor?  – Ezra Craker, Sojourners Magazine 


if you don't read anything else this month below, read my toast to the woman I met in Taizé named Maria (pictured above in the bottom center and right photos): https://celebrate-2day.blogspot.com/2024/08/a-toast-to-maria.html


As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance, may your imagination continue to evoke horizons. 
- John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

Yet though the music of the heart may grow faint, there is in each of us an unprotected place that beauty can always reach out and touch. When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of the mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness take us over… When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth… the heart of vision is shaped by the state of the soul. When the soul is alive to beauty, we begin to see life in a fresh and vital way…When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and sanctuary.  -  John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
 

When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see. ― John O'Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace  


May I have the courage today to live the life that I would love, to postpone my dream no longer but do at last what I came here for and waste my heart on fear no more. – John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us 

May you be blessed with good friends.  May you learn to be a good friend to yourself. May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness. May this change you. May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you. May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging. May you treasure your friends. May you be good to them and may you be there for them; may they bring you all the blessing, challenges, truth, and light that you need for your journey. -John O’ Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom


May you recognize in your life the presence, power and light of your soul. May you realize that you are never alone… May you have respect for your own individuality and difference. May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful and eternal happening. May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.
-John O’ Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us 

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. -Winnie the Pooh



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