Beauty, reflection....oh, and an award

'The nature of love is this, that it attracts to beauty and links the unbeautiful with the beautiful.'
(Marsilio Ficino)



Only when the clamor of the outside world is silenced will you be able to hear the deeper vibration
(Sarah Ban Breathnach)

Paris has kindly honoured me with the Blogger Reflection Award. Thank you, I am seriously chuffed.

Here are my 5 reflective winners (this was not an easy task - there are so many good blogs that provide daily L5 musing:

Jen's word's and pictures feed my soul and nourish my heart like no other blog. What Jen has been through has claimed better souls than mine, but she is a remarkable human whose work always inspires and whose wisdom from struggles has been clean air in a world where most of the air is too angry to breath. She is out there on her own, no-one comes close

Pip is the Godfather of L5, deep, provocative conversations and reflections (like the one today 2 Aug 07 - if this doesn't draw you to the divine with tears, well, you don't have a pulse) that leave you breathless. He is my friend and mentor. I love him.

The Father is a dear dear human who, in truth, doesn't blog enough - but as musicians will tell you - when it comes to greatness, sometimes less is more. He is a sensitive, kind heart whose insight into the road less travelled is a constant inspiration to me.

Dana (aka awareness) is a Canadian fireball with the compassion of a carpenter who spoke love in riddles - she kind of does the same thing - A beautiful soul...

Anna is a remarkable talent - her pictures constantly evoke departures, take me on a journey of belonging and questions of beauty and love....sometime we don't need words


Now it's up to the five of you to nominate five deserving winners. The Blogger Reflection Award rules are: "This award should make an individual reflect upon five bloggers who have been an encouragement, a source of love, impacted you in some way and who have provided a Godly example. In other words, five dear bloggers whom, when you reflect upon them, you are filled with a sense of pride and joy... of knowing them and being blessed by them.”

Once you have chosen five bloggers, write at least a paragraph about each one; link this post, so others can read it and the rules; leave your chosen bloggers a comment, informing them of their award and place the award icon on your website

Inspired by my lovely friend, I re-read a book by Father O'Donohue that I liberated from his house last year.....

here is the wisdom of this remarkable mystic....

"While beauty gladdens our hearts, it makes us lonely too for what cannot be. True beauty is woven through the heart of life and is ever engaged with forces of ignorance, darkness, ugliness and negativity; yet domination and power are not beauty's way. beauty works from within these conflicts of forces and her brightening may or may not appear.

Where beauty seems absent she is often hidden and still at work in the slow industry of transformation. So much of beauty is not immediately apparent and indeed it could take a long time before it becomes visible. it often takes a lot of struggle and committed attention and generosity, even sacrifice, in order to create beauty. This work of beauty is slow and patient; it is the transformation through which the darkness of suffering eventually glimmers with the learned refinement of true radiance.

Ths soul that struggles for the emergence of beauty reaches towards God and labours on that threshold between visible and invisible, time and eternity."

Oh, to have insight like so.....the promise of possibility. I guess Dostoevsky had it right....'Perhaps it is beauty that will save us in the end.'


The boy above is Amos, he was seven when I took this photograph - he was one of the young boys who survived in the village i spoke of in my last post...he is beautiful, and one day may just live up to his names sake - i hope so......


It seems i have been nominated for another award...will be back later to comment and honour 5 others.....see told you i would