High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘reach’

Every minute of every day, new dreams are born.  “Reach!” they say.  “Stretch!  Become!  Do It!” And the world springs into motion.

“Can I? Will I?  Why not!”  the dreamer responds.  And she takes a first step, changing everything.

She imagines becoming a stem, and cell by cell, a stem comes into being.  She imagines leaves and buds and blossoming flowers, and before long she is a flower, laughing beside the mid-springtime stream.

Dreams are the way the Great Yes creates the world.  Hear their music; join their joyful dance.

They don’t think they are courageous.  But they keep on slogging along, too encased by boredom and routine to see that they are growing nonetheless.

Still, something deep inside their souls continues to ask: Are these gifts of mine for nothing?  Show me the promised way.  Let me shine. Let me reach. Let me serve.

The longing keeps them awake at night and gnaws at them in the stillness:  I want to be more.

They are colorless and turned inward.  But they keep on keeping on, wrestling their way through endless  days with pleading hearts: Unfold me! Set me free!

Then comes springtime.  And with one green sweep of the loving cosmic wand, answers come, and the promises are fulfilled.

“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
~Robert Browning

Make the long reach–the one that stretches you just there, a bit farther than you believed you could go, but willed it, and it filled you with triumph.

Up, out, in.  Every direction holds its treasures, its shining rewards.

Reach with your desire, with your compassion, with your forgiveness.

Push beyond your limits; they’re nothing but ideas in your mind that make you small. Go for greatness (and all growth is greatness).

Reach for greater hope, greater faith, greater daring.  What’s to stop you?

Heaven’s not in the attainment, but in the act.

Listening to her heart, she was at ease, although the work was complex and new.  She trusted, not as one trusts a mere belief, but as one trusts from experience, that the next step would make itself known.

Sometimes she had to stretch herself, to reach higher and farther than she knew she could reach.  Often she couldn’t see how things would turn out.  But it was the challenges that made the work interesting and fun.

Just days ago, after all, she was a green bud.  And now, here she was, her petals pink and broad, glistening in the morning sun.

Had you asked her, she would not have been able to tell you how a bud transforms into a flower.  She didn’t even know then that a flower was what she would become.

She only knew that life’s patterns were drawn in wisdom and love and that her task was to listen for the harmonies and to let them be her guide. And so she worked with a wide sense of ease, centered and content and filled with satisfaction and joy.

Now is the time for focus, for crystallizing dreams.  Now: reach for the looming possibilities, the taunting desires. Claim them, name them, hold the vision of them fast.

Shine on them the light of your passion and daring.  Let their structure and details be revealed.

Taste the reality of their potential. Adopt their fulfillment as your mission, your quest.  Let nothing deny you.  Give way to no hesitation or doubt.

Say, “This is mine.  This shall be.” Then vow to make it so, regardless of obstacles, whether you know the way or not.  The way will appear as you walk it.

Trust.  Dare.  Crystallize the dream.  Live it.  Know its joy.

Reaching up, feeling sun, touching sky.
Something comes.

A promise, a potential.
Wait quivering.
Stretch higher.

Taste the dream, whispering “Be!”
Hear it laugh.
Hear it roar across the hours.
Something comes.

Fell it fill you.  Feel it feed you.
Feel it setting you afire.

Feel its fingers touch your body.
Feel its spirit touch your soul.

Wait.  Wait.  Reach up.  Touch sky.
Something comes.
Be ready.
Something comes.

My gift to you today is a quote from Fra Giovanni Giocondo, an Italian architect, engineer and archeologist from the 15th Century.   His message is my own, and I share it with you with deep happiness. . .

“I am your friend and my love for you goes deep.  There is nothing I can give you which you have not got.  But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

“No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today.
Take heaven!

“No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.
Take peace!

“The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.”

Indeed.  Reach for joy.