Late Summer
Posted: July 30, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Mindfulness, Yoga | Tags: Carrie Fountain, compassion, kindness, love, Mindfulness, Summer, yoga 2 Comments…
Out for a walk tonight,
the dog is throwing all her weight
against the leash, lunging toward
the fat tomcat
licking his black ankles
with a delicious, solemn attention
at the top of the neighbor’s steps.
Because this is what the dog
was made to do.
Because for some lucky animals
the space between the body
and what it wants
is all there is.
The Summer Ends
Posted: September 4, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: culture, cycling, Fall Harvest, Identity, love, Omaha, passion, Poetry, Prose, social media, Summer, Wendell Berry 3 Comments…
The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth’s green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand.
Evening on the Lawn
Posted: August 28, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: Buddhism, Buddist Boot Camp, gardening, Gary Soto, gratitude, Labor Day, Lawn, love, Omaha, passion, Poetry, Summer, yoga, Zen 2 Comments…
I sat on the lawn watching the half-hearted moon rise,
The gnats orbiting the peach pit that I spat out
When the sweetness was gone. I was twenty,
Wet behind the ears from my car wash job,
And suddenly rising to my feet when I saw in early evening
A cloud roll over a section of stars.
It was boiling, a cloud
Churning in one place and washing those three or four stars.
Excited, I lay back down,
My stomach a valley, my arms twined with new rope,
My hair a youthful black. I called my mother and stepfather,
And said something amazing was happening up there.
They shaded their eyes from the porch light.
They looked and looked before my mom turned
The garden hose onto a rosebush and my stepfather scolded the cat
To get the hell off the car. The old man grumbled
About missing something on TV,
The old lady made a face
When mud splashed her slippers. How you bother,
She said for the last time, the screen door closing like a sigh.
I turned off the porch light, undid my shoes.
The cloud boiled over those stars until it was burned by their icy fire.
The night was now clear. The wind brought me a scent
Of a place where I would go alone,
Then find others, all barefoot.
In time, each of us would boil clouds
And strike our childhood houses
With lightning.
Liberation : Front :
Posted: July 11, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: blogging, compassion, cycling, exercise, family, fitness, free range, freshly pressed, friends, gluten free, GONG Ride, happiness, health, hope, kindness, life, love, lululemon, marathon, meditation, motivation, natural, nature, Omaha, paleo, passion, perspective, running, social media, Summer, trail running, writing, yoga, Zen 5 CommentsIf you’ve got nothing to dance about, find a reason to sing-
There are an infinite amount of wellness, exercise, health, fitness, yoga and “whatever” blogs, websites and apps that offer endless advice opportunities to improve ourselves, although until we learn how to love our true selves, and nurture these fragile new shoots? It’s unlikely we’ll find the love we seek. When we approach our search for self-love as an intimate journey, and not as a Strava race against time, a punishing series of new workouts or some extreme mud run, everything changes.
…
In the last five years of seeking a relationship with myself (you read that correctly – some dude learning to love himself … Not a cool thing to admit now isn’t it?), I have spent an incalculable amount of hours looking for love in places that lacked love: Battering my body early every morning in the gym and trail running until exhaustion before bed, using “extreme” and “trendy” training methods I read about online that had little to do with self-love. Concealing all traces of my unseemly need to be someone who I was not … I was endlessly engrossed seeking to be the best. However, as it turns out, this path led me a life of pain and ruin.
As much as we are led to believe that finding self-love and accepting who we really are is all about maxing out each and every rep, improving our appearance in yoga class, or beating every goddamn person in this marathon … It’s ultimately our inner spirit that lets us find and keep real, lasting love. When we learn to bring our inner spirit into the ways we search for self-love? This is when the real changes begin to happen in our lives.
Daily Meditation:
Through exploring and finding our own deeper insights, we transform and deepen our search for self-love … I have finally come to believe that these moments of self-reflection move us more quickly to finding self-love than anything else we will read about today.
Thank you Claudia for the recent award and for inspiring me to finally publish this post.
Midsummer Night
Posted: July 10, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: blogging, Carol Ann Duffy, life, love, meditation, musings, nature, Omaha, passion, Poetry, Summer, writing, yoga 9 Comments…
Not there to see midsummer’s midnight rose
open and bloom, me,
or there when the river dressed in turquoise
under the moon, you;
not there when stones softened, opened, showed
the fossils they held
or there, us, when the dark sky fell to the earth
to gather its smell.
Not there when a strange bird sang on a branch
over our heads, you
and me, or there when a starlit fruit ripened
itself on a tree.
Not there to lie on the grass of our graves, both,
alive alive oh,
or there for Shakespeare’s shooting star,
or for who we are,
but elsewhere, far. Not there for the magic hour
when time becomes love
or there for light’s pale hand to slip, slender,
from darkness’s glove.
Not there when our young ghosts called to us
from the other side
or there where the heron’s rags were a silver gown,
by grace of the light.
Not there to be right, to find our souls, we,
dropped silks on the ground,
or there to be found again by ourselves, you, me,
mirrored in water.
Not there to see constellations spell themselves on the sky
and black rhyme with white
or there to see petals fold on a rose like a kiss
on midsummer night.
CultFit 