by ingrid on August 20, 2010
This post is inspired by a quotation I clipped from the top of the Vineyard Gazette newspaper, and which I have had pinned to my wall for many years as wonderful words to live by:
To let no bird fly past unnoticed… to have the mind a storehouse of sunsets,
requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.
~G.K. Chesterton
Here are a few summer photographs from life here on the Vineyard, mixed with quotations from my One Hundred Fortunes Collection.
We are not separate from Being. We are in it. ~Plotinus
The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.
D.H. Lawrence
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. ~Goethe
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
~Henry David Thoreau
In every human being, there is a special heaven
whole and unbroken.
~Paracelsus
At the center of your being you have the answer.
You know who you are
and you know what you want.
~Lao Tzu
The only wealth is life.
~Henry David Thoreau
by ingrid on July 5, 2010
There is a lotus on our fishpond. In the morning, it opens its petals to drink in the sun. In the evening, it folds its petals in again, like hands in prayer.
This has helped me to consider the naturalness of my own rythms- how I open my petals sometimes, and how I fold them in when it is time to rest.
Blue Serenity…
Beach Plum Flowers at Lambert’s Cove…
Rowboat…
Lilacs…
Solar and wind…
by ingrid on February 26, 2010
The beach in winter has its own beauty. We walked here on three different days this week, each cold, haunting, and with its own colors and moods.
by ingrid on February 5, 2010
I rested into the morning, caressed,
deep pleasure, measureless being,
I rested until I heard
the song of the day call me out.
Come. Take joy. Awake.
Come and see my treasures.
Only then did I rise to take
my pleasure into the world.
by ingrid on October 23, 2009
Last night before the sun set, I ran out with my camera, chasing beauty…
Sometimes, when I can not do a lovely thing just for myself, I am so grateful that I might offer it to you instead.
by ingrid on September 10, 2009
Pause for beauty… Pause for Joy… Allow life to delight you…
by ingrid on July 18, 2009
It was a moment I can only describe as grace. Yesterday, after I had finished my accounting, glued some House Blessings, and surveyed my long list for the next task to accomplish, I took boxes out onto the lawn to paint gold for 100 Fortunes. Having done that, I looked up. Bees were busily feasting in the lavender, a gentle breeze was moving through the trees, a woodpecker was tapping in the oaks, and I heard my inner voice declare, “enough.”
I stood up to take in all that I have been missing, my mind on other things.
The other day, Ivan Granger included this thought in a Poetry Chaikhana mailing:
What we call the ego
is the individual’s particular way
of not being fully present.
Isn’t that well said?
In my book, The Abundance of Grace, I wrote,
Grace is often found in surrendering our plans,
letting go the need for perfection,
giving up impossible ideals,
and humbling ourselves before the mystery…
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff.
As I declared, “enough”, I was able to let go my list. I humbled myself before the mystery, wandered the garden, taking photos, and marvelling at the beauty all around me. And I am so glad I did! I will post more excerpts on grace next.
by ingrid on April 1, 2009
Beauty is Life when Life reveals its Holy face.
~Kahlil Gibran
Everything has beauty,
but not everyone sees it.
~Confucius
There is no creature that does not have a radiance. Be it greenness of seed, blossom or beauty, it could not be creation without it. To be a creature is to be brilliant, beautiful, and on fire.
~Hildegard of Bingen
When it comes to beauty, may we have a beholder’s eye; an infinite witness within, and the ability to see the splendor that exists at every turn. The more beauty we perceive, the more open our hearts will become, and that beauty beheld will venture in, until it lights our luminous souls, sings in our gorgeous ears, and dances like brilliant diamonds in our smiling and radiant eyes…Ingrid
The question is not what you look at,
but what you see.
~Henry David Thoreau
If the doors of perception were cleansed,
Everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
~William Blake
Here is my secret. It’s quite simple:
one sees clearly only with the heart.
Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.
–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Divine Manifestation is ubiquitous,
Only our eyes are not open to it.
~Joseph Campbell
…Viewing the world with the eyes of the heart,
it is illumined by our own inner light…
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
…With an eye made quiet
by the power of harmony
and the deep power of joy,
we see into the life of things.
~William Wordsworth
…I realized that what had changed was not outside
in the trees and streams and birds, but inside me.
As the mystics say, I was seeing the world by the light within. Through years of dedicated endeavor, the lamp had been lit in the depths of my consciousness, and all of nature had assumed an indescribable splendor.
~Eknath Eswaren
What is beauty,
if not the light of
a joy filled heart?
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
Beauty will come in the dawn
And beauty will come with the sunlight.
Beauty will come to us from everywhere,
Where heaven ends, where the sky ends.
Beauty will surround us.
We will walk in beauty.
~Billy Yellow, Navajo Medicine Man
Though we travel the world over
to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us
or we find it not.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Excerpted from the book, JOY, LIGHT, BEAUTIFUL WISDOM
by ingrid on March 16, 2009
God spoke today in flowers,
and I, who was waiting on words,
almost missed the conversation.
~Ingrid G0ff-Maidoff
