Think of it as if you’re breathing in God’s Spirit with the oxygen in the air (the Holy Spirit is all around you and inside of you)… Then as you hold your breath you hold your sense of the indwelling Holy Spirit… And then you’re breathing out your anxieties with the carbon dioxide so that you can live freely in God’s loving presence and power… Alternatively, you can think of your exhaling as a releasing of control to God, submitting all your activities and agendas to God... Or you can use your breathing out as an expression of sharing God’s loving presence with others.

https://www.soulshepherding.org/breath-prayers/

The exhalation part of this prayer can serve as a way to practice 1 Peter 5:7.

Outing myself as the dead-opposite of a Genshin rarepair lover to say that my favorite brand of Zhongli/Childe is definitely:

Grandpa's Mid-Life Crisis Retirement Checklist:

✅️ Flawless human disguise (no one suspects a n y t h i n g)

✅️ Part-time side hustle

✅️ Self-planned funeral (the flowers were fire 👌)

✅️ Friends know I'm not actually dead

✅️ Liyue flourishing

✅️✅️✅️ Russian mail order husband

Contemplation not only enlarges the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the thralldom of narrow hopes and fears.

Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

The thinker of thoughts is merely

Another thought.

The one who knows this is

No longer in his own way.

-Wu Hsin

PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION

“Contemplative Photography: Meditations in the Woods”

I am having a photography exhibition at the Levi Heywood Memorial Library, 55 West Lynde St., Gardner, MA. The exhibition will run from March 1st until March 29, 2024.

Artist's Statement:

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention

Be astonished

Tell about it

Mary Oliver “Sometimes”

Mary Oliver’s instructions above have become the guiding principles for my photography. Photography has gained importance in my life since it has become a spiritual practice. I try to spend time in nature on a regular basis. It is a time for meditation and a time to clear my thoughts. With a quiet mind I wait to see what calls to me, what “shimmers”. Then I try to capture the subject in a personal, intimate, and emotional way. I am not interested in simply documenting the world, but trying to reveal something essential about myself and the world around me.

If I have been successful, some of these images will touch you, make you feel something of the beauty, astonishment, and wonder I felt during the time I spent creating them.

Each image is accompanied by a Haiku poem, written to express in a few simple words the connection and feelings that I experienced at the time I made the photograph.

I hope you enjoy the time you spend with these images and their invitation to journey inward, enjoy some serenity, and see the world with fresh eyes.

Four of Swords

The tarot card No. 54 is done. :)

Created with Krita and Blender, Copyright © 2023 Sylvia Ritter.

www.sylvia-ritter.com, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. 

Contemplative meditation house + prayer chamber Marwan Zgheib

Thomas Merton on "knowing God"

God is invisibly present to the ground of our being: our belief and love attain to him, but he remains hidden from the arrogant gaze of our investigating mind which seeks to capture him and secure permanent possession of him in an act of knowledge that gives power over him.

We know [God] in so far as we become aware of ourselves as known through and through by him. We "possess" him in proportion as we realize ourselves to be possessed by him in the inmost depths of our being. ... Hence the aim of meditation, in the context of the Christian faith, is not to arrive at an objective and apparently "scientific" knowledge about God, but to come to know him through the realization that our very being is penetrated with his knowledge and love for us.

Our knowledge of God is paradoxically a knowledge not of him as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on his saving and merciful knowledge of us.

—Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, p.61

Teatime By Jeff Stanford, 2024 Buy prints at: https://jeff-stanford.pixels.com/

Cara @ Daybreak. 46° F. 6:00 am. November 5, 2023. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25)

At the point of death that same breath returns to God. (Ecclesiastes 12:7) As with our birth, the presence of breath is not only equated with biological life but that life is clearly attributed to the Author of Life, our sovereign creator God... That Biblical breath is the Holy Spirit. This is comforting. You have been breathing every day of your life and that very breath is symbolic of God’s spirit with you... Without your being fully conscious of the reality, God’s Spirit has been flowing through you... In the desire to see God’s Spiritual power in bold manifestations, let us not forget the simple, subtle, and profound way we can have the Spirit in the midst of every minute—literally every breath. The best part is, even when we are not aware of it, that powerful Spirit fills our lives in ways we may never fully know or appreciate... When we are least able to take the time to think of God and God’s presence, just like breathing, God is still right there... Imagine the power when we take the time to be deliberate and really give God’s Holy Spirit some serious thought!... Breathe deep. Fill your lungs with the breath that flows from the One who created you and called you Good. It’s worth every breath you take!

https://www.currentargus.com/story/life/faith/2019/07/06/breathe-god-breathes-life-into-humanity/1660340001/

you don't have to fulfill anything or anyone. no inner man, no outer man. you are already fulfilled. detach and disidentify from the stories that say you're not. you're fulfillment itself.

Big Thinker Contemplating The Light- Adrian Cox; 2018

You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind — things that exist only there — and clear out space for yourself: by comprehending the scale of the world; by contemplating infinite time; by thinking of the speed with which things change... the narrow space between our birth and death, the infinite time before, the equally unbounded time that follows.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (9.32)

I’ve been realizing a lot lately.