Tag: Poetryplease

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Take Your Time – and Pray

They say we are directed to where we need to be if our hearts are open. In the last few weeks, I have picked up several different books – novels, autobiographies and a book of essays and musings on the divine. Although they were looking at life from completely different angles, they seemed to have a familiar thread running through them, one that linked deeper thinking with simplicity. Yes, that sounds like a paradox, but I think enlightenment does come from a place of calm and contemplation in these times of intense social media and news bombardment.

It is easy for frustration to settle in our very being as we feel weighed down by events, both personal and in the wider world. Times are challenging. Yet times have always been challenging if we look back in history and will be in the future. What will help us along the way, along our journey through this life? What helped those before us and those that will come after us?

I have read somewhere that if you feel disturbed by something the wisest thing to do is to pray. For many of us, this may be something we have forgotten how to do, or perhaps we wonder how to pray and to who do we send our prayers? Again, simplicity is the key. A quiet place for some time out is all we need. If we calmly gather our thoughts and requests together, our feelings of love for others, our hopes for peace and love to prevail and send them to an all-loving being we can find the light. We don’t need to look for explanations because we cannot know the future. We can spread love though, and send out blessings for those who need them, and we will feel it return to us. And the prayers will know where to go. To God, to the Universe, Mother Earth – whoever waits and looks over you and knows your heart.

Prayer Changes Things

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The Grass Isn’t Always Greener….

Do you sometimes lose focus and wonder about where or when you will be happy next? Life is beginning to move on again and we may find ourselves getting restless. Both my grandmothers married very young and lived in the same places their whole lives. They didn’t have careers and never went far for holidays. I don’t know if either of them ever dreamed of moving to another town or seeing the world, they may well have done, but they always seemed content to me. They were homemakers, and for me as a young girl, I loved the warm and loving welcome they always gave me on my regular visits.

My grandmothers certainly weren’t bombarded with technology and I don’t even remember them having a television when I was small. (Devon granny did get one eventually so that she could watch a royal wedding!). Of course, modern technology brings many advantages and gives us lots of opportunities and a wealth of choices, but does too much choice always serve us well?

Sometimes with so much choice, we can suffer from ‘the grass is always greener syndrome’. We think someone is having a better time elsewhere, or we find ourselves wondering about the ‘next big thing’.

There is nothing wrong with dreaming big of course! Sometimes a new path takes us in the right direction, but what about those days where we forget to be happy because we are fretting about where life is going? These are the days when it’s good to bring ourselves back to the present, look at what we already have and enjoy the moments that are happening right now.

My poem illustrates the fact that it is easy to overlook what is in front of us. The field of diamonds that is figuratively laid at our feet.

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In A New Light…

A while back I noticed a mother and her little girl walking in the park. Actually, the mother was walking, and the little girl was bouncing. She had a pair of sunglasses on, they were pink and glittery. As she bounced along, she kept taking the glasses off and on. She was laughing to herself and I heard her mother ask her why. ‘The world looks different when I look through my pink glasses,’ she said. ‘It’s fun.’  

That was just a small moment in time – I had stepped out for some air in the middle of a busy day, but it was a good lesson for me and one which has stuck with me. The little girl was right and in a simple and fun way had shown me that when you look at things differently, they change.

Maybe it’s why we put our heads in our hands sometimes during stress; if we peek out through the space between our fingers, we don’t have to view the whole picture in front of us – just a few slithers of light that we can cope with.

Sometimes it takes getting farther away from something to see it for what it really is too. How many times do we get bogged down with work and sit grimly in front of a screen trying to figure something out that is taxing us? We feel compelled to keep going because we must be able to get this right! But inspiration and answers don’t come. Yet often if we walk away, have a cup of tea and return half an hour later with renewed energy we can make much better headway. 

It’s an old cliché but it is true that sometimes ‘a change is as good as a rest’; when troubles or anxieties mount up a change of scene can help us re-focus.

At times, we need to have the courage to go our own way – realise we are unique. Seeing what everyone else is seeing is one thing. Seeing things differently from others is something else and seeing things differently from others can produce new ideas and new results. If you look at something from a new angle you may come up with a brilliant idea no one else has thought of. It takes time to see things from a different perspective, but it’s worth taking a step back. We also need to see ourselves in a different light at times. It is easy to be hard on ourselves and beat ourselves up when we make a perceived mistake. Give yourself good feedback today and see yourself in a positive light. Remind yourself you are doing your best. And perhaps have a go with the rose-tinted specs.

   ‘We can’t change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently’.

                                                    Jame Hillman 



I was afraid of the shadows
Casting shapes upon the wall,
Dark and forbidding
They looked ten feet tall.
I crept silently toward them
They made me feel so small,
Yet when I went to touch them
There was nothing there at all.

L.M.H