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Tag Archives: Meditations
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The Grapplers
I want to live with the grapplers, not the knowers.
I want to be open to the what-ifs, not the no-nevers.
I want my feet solidly placed on the green grasses of spring
without fighting against the inevitable browning in fall.
I want to trust what isn’t changing in the rocks below.
And,
I want to take flight in my imagination while tethered
to the reality of Being.
What, my friend, does this stir in your wanting?
Anything?
Nothing? Or
Everything in between?
Or do you feel a knot in your throat, a stave in your heart so tangled
and hurt that you can’t hear or see your wants,
or your wants as worthy?
Well, love that too.
Love you with or without wants, or worth, or understanding.
Love this in as small portions as you can, or
be bold
and sit at the feast-table already prepared for you
by the Shepherds.
But love.
Love the grappler and knower in you.
Love the scared and confident you.
Love what is under your feet and above your head, and
everything in between because
you are Loved and Love.
*The Grapplers ©twyatt 2023. A peek at a poem from the next book: Rose Petals.
Nods of Love
We have been home for a week today. I am surprised by what memories come to mind, and which images stand out from the nearly 3,700 photos we took over thirty days in France and Spain.
I am delighted to discover some of the sights and feelings have not faded and that, in fact, some show up with an insistent tenderness for notice and appreciation. Like this one: feeding the crows at Jardin des Plantes on our last full day in Paris.
Continue reading Nods of LoveInside the walls of old Avignon
At lunch today, we talked a little about chores we’d face when home, finished our dessert, then stopped in at our apartment for a short rest.
It’s getting close to that time when there are fewer days than a week before we leave. I notice that funny little butterfly-feeling in my tummy that shows up when saying goodbye to fun new places and carefree, calorie-less (I wish) days of enjoyment. But… we are still here. Now.
We still have time for more late evening walks inside the walls of old Avignon.
Pilgrimage
Reflecting on a day of self-directed pilgrimage to Lisieux, France, and the spaces where St Therese grew up, prayed, became a Carmelite, and died at the early age of 24.
So many statues, chapels and shrines, mosaics and gilded edges, and this is the one that draws me in. Just a damp, cold corner in one of the side chapels in Lisieux Cathedral – the church where St Therese and her family worshipped before she entered the convent at age 15.
Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to be here, but somehow “the show” pales against the story of her life as she shared with us in The Story of a Soul.
These are a few of her words that still speak louder to me, and with more love than what the finest of architects or Popes can display.
– I am your sister and your friend. Forever I’ll watch over you.
– Have confidence in the infinite mercy of the Good God.
– An amiable smile often suffices to make a sad soul bloom.
This Train
It is easy, when you travel, to fall in love with a place and to dream about making a life there. I am reminded of this tug as we train across France.
As I see the charming cream stucco and stone houses, and infinite horizons of yellow rapeseed fields, green meadows and dense woods, I fall into fantasizing how we might uproot and move to one of these hamlets thousands and worlds away from home.
But, I am also reminded to ask if the attraction is not so much to this particular place as it is to the nature of any landscape, slow and different? Or, are these emotional pulls fueled by past and familiar thin-space experiences in England, or Scotland, or maybe even to some degree, fields of Illinois?
I am cautioned to not think too much about all this, or dream so much as to miss the reality of now. This now.
This quiet, slow rocking train presenting spectacular views that I will try to recall in meditation back home in the city.