Tag: gratitude

Choose to Live

Excerpt from Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again

“M continued, “It doesn’t matter if your steps are small. It doesn’t matter if you trip and fall. When you stumble forward, dare to rise and take another step. Each time you rise and courageously face your suffering, you look to the future and signal to your mind and body you choose to live. Don’t count the times you stumble, Ray. One day you’ll wake up and realize you’re walking without stumbling. You’ll stop walking or doing whatever you’re doing and give thanks to God. Until the moment arrives, continue to stumble forward. Keep acting on that choice. There’s a short Chinese proverb that’s very fitting for you right now, ‘Talk does not cook rice.’”


Dancing Alone: Learning to Live Again is available in print and eBook formats worldwide. eBooks can be downloaded from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, iBooks, Kobo and eBooks2go.com

I Am That ~ Poem by Julian of Norwich

I Am That

I am that.
I am that which is highest.
I am that which is lowest.
I am that which is All.

Julian of Norwich

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud ~ Poem by William Wordsworth

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

William Wordsworth

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

“Song of Joys” Poem by Walt Whitman

Song Of Joys

O to make the most jubilant song!
Full of music-full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments-full of grain and trees.

O for the voices of animals-O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!

O the joy of my spirit-it is uncaged-it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.

O the engineer’s joys! to go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the
laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.

O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh
stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the
forenoon.

Excerpt from Song of Joys by Walt Whitman

retrieved from: https://www.poetseers.org/early-american-poets/walt-whitman/whitmans-poetry/a-song-of-joys/index.html

 

“What Is To Come” Poem by William Ernest Henley

What is to Come

That what has been was good—was good to show,

Better to hide, and best of all to bear.

We are the masters of the days that were:

We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered . . . even so.

Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?

Life was our friend.  Now, if it be our foe—

Dear, though it spoil and break us!—need we care

            What is to come?

Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow,

Or the gold weather round us mellow slow:

We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare

And we can conquer, though we may not share

In the rich quiet of the afterglow

            What is to come.

Stars – Poem of Gratitude by Sara Teasdale

Stars

by Sara Teasdale

  Alone in the night

   On a dark hill

  With pines around me

   Spicy and still,

  And a heaven full of stars

   Over my head,

  White and topaz

   And misty red;

  Myriads with beating

   Hearts of fire

  That aeons

   Cannot vex or tire;

  Up the dome of heaven

   Like a great hill,

  I watch them marching

   Stately and still,

  And I know that I

   Am honored to be

  Witness

   Of so much majesty.