Nelson Mandela

"There is no passion to be found in playing small- in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."  Nelson Mandela

We Have Come To Be Danced

We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
The strip us from our casings, return our wings
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into
The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I?
Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
The olly olly oxen free free free dance
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced
Where the kingdom’s collide
In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced
We have come.

by Jewel Mathieson

Life

"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit."

Dawna Markova

Today

TODAY

I

Do not

Want to step so quickly

Over a beautiful line on God's palm

As I move through the earth's

Marketplace

Today.

I do not want to touch any object in the world

Without my eyes testifying to the truth

That everything is

My Beloved.

Something has happened

To my understanding of existence

That makes my heart always full of wonder

And kindness.

I do not

Want to step so quickly

Over this sacred place on God's body

That is right beneath your

Own feet.

As I 

Dance with

Precious life

Today.

Hafiz

Spirtual Adventure

"I had been on an adventure, searching for a genuine and fearless kind of spirituality.  Id didn't want to become anything more than my most vibrant, peaceful and grateful self.  I wanted to find a sacred path through the fullness of life in the real world -a daily discipline that reached into the heavens even as it dug deeply into my psyche, helping me to overcome resistance, falseness and mistrust."  Elizabeth Lesser

The Warrior's Way

"A self-sacrificing way,
but also a warrior's way, and not
for brittle people, easily broken, glass bottle people.
The soul's tested here by sheer terror,
as a sieve sifts and separates
genuine from fake.
And this road is full of footprints!
Companions have come before.
They are your ladder
Use them!
Without them you won't have the spirit-quickness
you need.  Even a dumb donkey
crossing a desert
becomes nimble-footed
with others of its kind.
Stay with the caravan.  By yourself,
you'll get a hundred times more tired,
and fall behind."  

Rumi

Searching

"The critical step on the spiritual path, and one that we will take over and over, is to let ourselves experience spiritual hunger long enough and deep enough to follow it to it's source.   Unless we do that, we will never get the chance to taste the true nourishment that is indeed available, closer to us than we think."  Elizabeth Lesser

Searching

"No matter where my searching takes me, it always leads me back to my need to face my own true nature, and since I am a human being, my human nature.   It doesn't matter which path we take.  If we bypass our humanness, each path leads back to the same question; WHAT ARE WE HIDING FROM IN OURSELVES AND IN EACH OTHER?

Security

"Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.   Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.   Life is a daring adventure or nothing."  Helen Keller

Adventure

"Instead of sacrificing a self I hardly knew or loved, I turned my attention to self-understanding and self-forgiveness.  Instead of accepting a straight-and-narrow route to someone else's concept of God, I set out on my own adventure."  Elizabeth Lesser

Spiritual Adventure

"I had been on an adventure, searching for a genuine and fearless kind of spirituality.   I didn't want to become anything other than my most vibrant, peaceful and grateful self.   I wanted to find a sacred path through the fullness of life in the real world - a daily discipline that reached into the heavens even as it dug deeply into my psyche, helping me to overcome resistance, falseness and mistrust."  Elizabeth Lesser

Discovery

"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.   Andre' Gide

Fear

"We cannot escape fear.  We can only transform it into a companion that accompanies us on all our exciting adventures.   Take a risk a day...one small or bold stroke that will make you feel great once you have done it."  Susan Jeffers

Risk and Dreams

"But if a person has had the sense of the Call -- the feeling that there's an adventure for him -- and if he doesn't follow that, but remains in the society because it's safe and secure, then life dries up. If you have the guts to follow the risk, however, life opens, opens, opens up all along the line. I feel that if one follows what I call one's "bliss" -- the thing that really gets you deep in your gut and that you feel is your life -- doors will open up. They do! They have in my life and they have in many lives that I know of." ~Joseph Campbell

Inspiration

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Rilke
Book of Hours, I 59

Risk

‎"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far
they can go." (T.S. Elliot)

Wholeness

"Most of us are dragged
toward wholeness
We do not understand
the breakdown of what has gone before.
We do not understand.
We cling to the familiar,
refuse to give up our habitual lives,
resist our growth.
We do not understand rebirth
do not accept the initiation rites.
Most of us are dragged toward wholeness."

Awakening

"When your soul awakens,you begin to truly inherit your life. You leave the kingdom of fake surfaces, repetitive talk and weary voices and slip deeper into the true adventure of who you are and who you are called to become. The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown. Yet we are afraid of the unknown because it lies outside our vision and our control. The normal way never leads home.

Once you start to awaken, no one can ever claim you again for old patterns. Now you realize how precious your time here is. You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language. You see through the roster of expectation which promises safety and the confirmation of outer identity. Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself in the way of change. You want your work to become an expression of your gift. You want your relationship to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells. You want your God to be wild and to call you to where your destiny awaits. When you begin to sense that your imagination is the place where you are most divine, you feel called to clean out of your mind all the worn and shabby furniture of thought. When your inner senses are blurred, you can see nothing in or of yourself; you become a respectable prisoner of received images. On this journey, you begin to see how the sides of your heart that seemed awkward, contradictory and uneven are the places where your treasure lies hidden. You begin to become truer to yourself. The journey shows you that from this inner dedication you can reconstruct your own values and action. You develop from your own self-compassion a great compassion for others. You are no longer caught in the false game of judgment , comparison and assumption. More naked now than ever , you begin to feel truly alive. You begin to trust the music of your own soul; you have inherited treasure that no one will ever be able to take from you. At the deepest level, this adventure of growth is in fact a trans-figurative conversation with your own death. And when the time comes for you to leave, the view from your death bed will show a life of growth that gladdens the heart and takes away all fear."

Gift Me

 GIFT ME

Gift me with your presence
Show up fully, but only when you really want to
Not out of obligation or fear of disappointing.

Gift me with your stories
Of joy and pain, for through them you grow
To love life and learn wisdom
And in hearing them from you, I deepen too.
Tell it all, every detail...
What was said, felt and discovered
And how it changed you

Gift me with honesty
Tell me when I hurt or disappoint you
When I make you proud or just that you love me.
Tell me the truth, as you see it,
In me, the world and life
As the unfolding Mystery


Gift me with forgiveness
An honest attempt to give
Not only me, but all you meet
The benefit of the doubt
That even in my faults and frailties
You see the inherent worth and Light of God
Most of all...

Gift me with a chosen silence
When it would be easier to judge
Or you feel you can't resist the urge
To share with another the latest amusing, confusing
Insane thing you saw me do...or refrain from
For time has a way, of bringing all things full circle

Gift me with a compassionate, listening ear
When I seek a witness to my life and experience
And open your heart even wider,
That it may take it ALL in
And love me even more when I most confuse you

Gift me with a place at your table
A phone call just because
An invitation to adventure
And the assurance that
Not a day goes by without a smile lifting your lips
In fondness for memories we have yet to create

Gift me with patience
As time slows my steps
And mind's edges dull
Allow me the dignity and freedom of which I am capable,
But if the time comes that I am not safe or sane enough,
Care for me, as I tried to do for you
when you still fit in my arms
And needed a shoulder to sleep on.

Valerie Wilkins Alder  

Life's Adventure

"We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us.   The labyrinth is thoroughly known.   We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.  And where we had thought to slay one another, we shall slay ourselves.   Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence.   And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world."   Joseph Campbell