Category Archives: Notes

1078. Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. ~Kahlil Gibran

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Someday perhaps the inner light
will shine forth from us, and then
we’ll need no other light.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself, though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is welded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing….The gift of the world is our first blessing. ~Excerpt from a book by John O’Donohue

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A man should learn to detect 
and
watch that gleam of light 
which flashes
across his mind from within.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

“…Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.” ~Luke 11:36  ✝

1077. Listening is an art that requires attention over talent, spirit over ego, things other than self. ~Edited quote by Dean Jackson

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Listening is a great way of receiving gifts
of wisdom, intelligence and inspiration,
but we only hear.
~Anonymous

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Only the briefest of moments
When everything is still
When the world is silent
A magical moment
When there’s just you
And everything God has
Created for you

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That moment
Is always there
But the noise of life
The mad rush
Of the day
Is too loud for us
To hear it to see it
To feel it

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Sit back
Let your worries
Drift away
Clear your mind
And just listen
Breathe in the breeze
As it splashes
Over you

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Listen
Not with your ears
But with your Soul
To the sounds of
The leaves rustling
In the trees and
The song of the birds
Rising like a wave

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Listen
Listen with your heart
Listen closely
For there’s only a moment
Only the briefest of moments
And then the magic’s gone
Lost in the chaos
Of the day.
~Edited poem
by Michael Traveler

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let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance– ~Proverbs 1:5

Images via Pinterest

The Identity Crisis…

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In a way this is a reblog of my granddaugter’s post today. It was another great one, and I decided to share it with my followers, but rather that use the graphic she did, I wanted to include pictures of her and her family. Here’s the link to her blog, Living for Christ and Adventure at: https://alwayslivingforhim.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/the-identity-crisis/#respond

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 9.54.38 PM.pngAnd here’s the text of her post today:

Hi, my name is Annie. I am a freshman at the University of Oklahoma. I am an International Business and Marketing double major with a Spanish minor. I am an active member of Sigma Phi Lambda, a Christian, non-panhellenic sorority. I am involved in Cru and go to church every Sunday. I am dating a wonderful guy. Despite being a child of divorce, I grew up in a very supportive and loving family. I love writing, hammocking, drinking coffee, underground bands, painting, and photography. So I guess you could say that I am typical hipster Christian girl. But that isn’t my identity. My identity is found only in Christ, and so is yours.

Growing up in America, I think it becomes very easy to always be searching for “yourself.” We have all probably heard the saying in movies or maybe in real life, “I think I just need to take some time ‘to find myself.’” What does that even mean?? Who you are is not going to be found in something or someone in this world.

I am a daughter of the Most High. You are a child of the Most High. Your identity should be found in Christ alone. I can not stress this enough. Whenever you try to find it in any other thing, you will inevitably always feel a little confused about who you really are.

Sure you may be thinking “yeah I know this already.” I’ve grown up in the church being told this which is so cool, and I’m glad you know. BUT are you really grasping what this truth means? I think that if as Christians, we really understood our identities in being children of God, the world would look very different. Understanding and living out the truth, that the Creator of the universe looks at us and calls us His, is crazy, y’all!!

When you focus on your true identity, you will experience His joy. His desires can truly become your desires. You will not be able to be quiet about His grace that He extends to you by calling you His perfect daughter/son. Truly understanding our identity is a game changer. It makes all of the turns and twists of this life not seem so scary because we know that it doesn’t change who we are at our core.

Native Dreams

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Writing to Freedom's avatarwriting to freedom

Native Dreamssunsets, dreams, native american

majestic patterns explode across the sky

awakening the wisdom of my ancestors

before we lived in buildings that block the sky

and drove monster tractors to harvest the land

when we lived in harmony with nature

observing the skies for signs and portents

harvesting the land with love and respect

inspired by the stars and planets

grateful for the bounties of mother earth

we bridged the space between earth and sky

as stewards of love and life

may we awaken from dreams of power and greed

and return to our native dreams

~

While the reasoning in this story poem is a bit simplistic,  I do hope we learn to live in harmony with nature. 🙂

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Nature is an expression of the thoughts of God

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StopAndPrayTV's avatarStopAndPrayTV

The book of nature is an expression of the thoughts of God. We have God’s terrible thoughts in the thunder and lightning; God’s loving thoughts in the sunshine and the balmy breeze; God’s bounteous, prudent, careful thoughts in the waving harvest and in the ripening meadow. We have God’s brilliant thoughts in the wondrous scenes which are beheld from mountaintop and valley; and we have God’s most sweet and pleasant thoughts of beauty in the little flowers that blossom at our feet. “God giveth us richly all things to enjoy.”

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1076. Dancing faces you towards Heaven, whichever direction you turn. ~Terri Guillemets

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While I dance I can not judge,
I can not hate,
I can not separate myself from life.
I can only be joyful and whole.
This is why I dance.
~Hans Bos

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Dancing is the loftiest,
the most moving,
the most beautiful of the arts,
because it is not mere
translation or abstraction from life;
it is none other than life itself.
~Havelock Ellis

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So why is it that Natalie has seemingly been obsessed with dancing of late? Perhaps it’s because the dance of life has visibly begun again in her yard, and because springtime is one of the things that never fails to thrill her beyond what mere words can express. So she dances, literally and figuratively, and not unlike Zorba the Greek. She read that Friedrich Nietzsche said he “would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.” And she knows that indeed He does because the Lord of the Dance is currently waltzing away here. And will she dance with Him again? Oh, yes, yes, and yes as well as always, always, always! For long ago during one of springtime’s magical dances the resurrected Christ took her in His arms and whisked her away to a “virtual” cross in order to make His offer of forgiveness, salvation, and redemption undeniably clear and real! That’s why now she does her best to offer Yahweh (Yeshua) all that she is and all that she does as well as all the flowers that grow in her garden. For she believes, as did Rabindranath Tagore, that “God waits to win back His own flowers as gifts from man’s hands.”

Nature is God’s first missionary.
Where there is no Bible there are sparkling stars.
Where there are not preachers there are spring times…
If a person has nothing but nature,
then nature is enough to reveal something about God.
~Max Lucado

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Let them praise His name with dancing…  ~Excerpt from Psalm 149:3   ✝

**Images via Pinterest

We are all made in the image of God…

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Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 2.57.31 PM.pngWho and what we are are unique gifts in and of which we are meant to excel and shine. And when we become the best we can in using those gifts, we fulfill an anointed purpose! In so doing as well as striving to live a Godly life, as imperfect as we are, those who don’t know the Lord, Jesus, can see a ray of inner light and perhaps then they too will start to seek, come to follow, and begin to worship Him. 

What is truth

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Julie (aka Cookie)'s avatarcookiecrumbstoliveby

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O’Connor

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(Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia / Julie Cook / 2016)

Truth…
an explanation or reflection of fact
The definitiveness of reality
No maybes, no what ifs, no possibilities
Only black and white
Clear cut
It is what it is….
Nothing more, nothing less.

Yet not all facts, not all reality, not all what it is, is… are welcomed.
Truth can be difficult, even painful.
It can be hard and humbling.
There are those who wish to distort, alter, change Truth…
Making it, the Truth, little and their own.

The Word of Truth was eventually made flesh
The flesh lived in the Word of Truth
There would be, could be, no denying Life as Truth.

Yet the Truth was perceived as difficult and hard…
It was disliked and greatly resented.

However Truth is Truth…
It has a…

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