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Reflections on an upside down world

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

BibleProject video about the upside down kingdom: https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/gospel-kingdom/

Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come. — Rumi

The world is upside down, it’s going to take a lot of hands to turn it right side up.— Leymah Gbowee

Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out. ~ Hafez

Some of us aren’t meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it — Elizabeth Lowell

Just go on dancing with me like this forever and I’ll never tire. We’ll scrape our shoe on the stars and hang upside down from the moon. — Stephen King

The best path between two points is upside-down, between, then inside-out and round again.— Lulu

Here at the bottom of the world, everything was upside down.— Lesley Howarth

The world has not just “turned upside down”. It is turning in every which way at an accelerating pace.— Tom Peters

Let us keep the discoveries and indisputable measurements of physics. But … A more complete study of the movements of the world will oblige us, little by little, to turn it upside down; in other words, to discover that if things hold and hold together, it is only by reason of complexity, from above.— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Look at everything upside down.Take absolutely nothing for granted. — Dick Francis

When nothing makes sense and the world seems upside down, listen to your heart, it will never lie about your true feelings. — Leon Brown

SONGS about UPSIDE DOWN and BACKWARDS:

It’s crazy I’m thinking
Just knowing that the world is round
Here I’m dancing on the ground
Am I right side up or upside down?
Is this real or am I dreaming?
~ Dave Matthews, Crush (song lyrics)

Who’s to say what’s impossible
Well, they forgot this world keeps spinning
And with each new day
I can feel a change in everything
And as the surface breaks, reflections fade
But in some ways, they remain the same
And as my mind begins to spread its wings
There’s no stopping curiosity
I want to turn the whole thing upside down
I’ll find the things they say just can’t be found
I’ll share this love I find with everyone …
— Jack Johnson, Upside Down (excerpt)

Meditations on
UPSIDE DOWN WORLD

What if I should fall right through the center of the earth… oh, and come out the other side, where people walk upside down. — Alice in Wonderland

Our world spins upside down and sometimes we have to lose our grip on the things we value in this life in order to grab on to true life. — Jon Foreman

I’m always trying to turn things upside down and see if they look any better. — Tibor Kalman

Learn to see things backwards, inside out, and upside down. — John Heider

I like to turn things upside down, to watch pictures and situations from another perspective. — Ursus Wehrli

When everything gets turned upside down, it only leads to better quality stuff. — John Krasinski

It’s a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way. — Christopher Morley

Life is a funny thing, the minute you think you’ve got everything figured out something comes along and turns it all upside down. — Zayn Malik

Bottom is bottom, even if it is turned upside down.— Bill Vaughan

All it takes is a second and your whole life can get turned upside down. — Jodi Picoult

I guess I’ve always lived upside down when I want things I can’t have. — Tom Waits

If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight? — Eduardo Galeano

Passion is what makes life interesting, what ignites our soul, drives our curiosity, fuels our love and carries our friendship, stimulates our intellect, and pushes our limit…. A passion for life is contagious and uplifting. Passion cuts both ways…. Those that make you feel on top of the world are equally able to turn it upside down — Jon Krakauer

I’m interested when things are upside down – because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed. — Anna Deavere Smith

I wish I had the power to flip my reality upside down like an hourglass, and that life wasn’t a finite affair, but rather a perpetually recurring passage through a hole in time. — Anne Fortier

The ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation; logic is more important than love; mind is more important than heart; power over others is more important than power over one’s own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy. —Rajneesh

If you take a frown and turn it upside down, the person you are holding by the ankles will soon pass out. — Woody Allen

This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust! — Friedrich Nietzsche

The world of the commodity is a world upside-down, which bases itself not upon life but upon the transformation of life into work. — Raoul Vaneigem

I swim in a shaft of light, upside down, and I can see myself clearly, through and through, from every angle. Perhaps I stand on the brink of a great discovery. — Jamaica Kincaid

Comedy is a socially acceptable form of hostility and aggression. That is what comics do, stand the world upside down.— George Carlin

Art and education may refine the taste, but they cannot purify the heart and regenerate the individual.  His (Christ’s) words were simple yet profound.  And they shook people, provoking either happy acceptance or violent refection.  People were never the same after listening to him….The people who followed Him were unique in their generation.  They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up.  The world has never been the same. — Billy Graham

Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind. — Shania Twain

Remember that hate is not the opposite of love as people think.  Hate is love standing upside down; it is not the opposite of love.  The real opposite of love is fear.  In love one expands, in fear one shrinks.  In fear one becomes closed, in love one opens.  In fear one doubts, in love one trusts.  In fear one is left lonely.  In love one disappears; hence there is no question of loneliness at all.  Love is when you have known your inner sky.  There is no higher religion than love. — Rajneesh

Reading the Bible Backwards

— Eleanor Wilner

All around the altar, huge lianas

curled, unfurled the dark green

of their leaves to complement the red

of blood spilled there—a kind of Christmas

decoration, overhung with heavy vines

and over them, the stars.

When the angels came, messengers like birds

but with the oiled flesh of men, they hung

over the scene with smoldering swords,

splashing the world when they beat

their rain-soaked wings against the turning sky.

The child was bright in his basket

as a lemon, with a bitter smell from his wet

swaddling clothes. His mother bent

above him, singing a lullaby

in the liquid tongue invented

for the very young—short syllables

like dripping from an eave

mixed with the first big drops of rain

that fell, like tiny silver pears, from

the glistening fronds of palm. The three

who gathered there—old kings uncrowned:

the cockroach, condor, and the leopard, lords

of the cracks below the ground, the mountain

pass and the grass-grown plain—were not

adorned, did not bear gifts, had not

come to adore; they were simply drawn

to gawk at this recurrent, awkward son

whom the wind had said would spell

the end of earth as it had been.

Somewhere north of this familiar scene

the polar caps were melting, the water was

advancing in its slow, relentless

lines, swallowing the old

landmarks, swelling the

seas that pulled

the flowers and the great steel cities down.

The dolphins sport in the rising sea,

anemones wave their many arms like hair

on a drowned gorgon’s head, her features

softened by the sea beyond all recognition.

On the desert’s edge where the oasis dies

in a wash of sand, the sphinx seems to shift

on her haunches of stone, and the rain, as it runs down,

completes the ruin of her face. The Nile

merges with the sea, the waters rise

and drown the noise of earth. At the forest’s

edge, where the child sleeps, the waters gather—

as if a hand were reaching for the curtain

to drop across the glowing, lit tableau.

When the waves closed over, completing the green

sweep of ocean, there was no time for mourning.

No final trump, no thunder to announce

the silent steal of waters; how soundlessly

it all went under: the little family

and the scene so easily mistaken

for an adoration. Above, more clouds poured in

and closed their ranks across the skies;

the angels, who had seemed so solid, turned

quicksilver in the rain.

                                     Now, nothing but the wind

moves on the rain-pocked face

of the swollen waters, though far below

where giant squid lie hidden in shy tangles,

the whales, heavy-bodied as the angels,

their fins like vestiges of wings,

sing some mighty epic of their own—

a great day when the ships would all withdraw,

the harpoons fail of their aim, the land

dissolve into the waters, and they would swim

among the peaks of mountains, like eagles

of the deep, while far below them, the old

nightmares of earth would settle

into silt among the broken cities, the empty

basket of the child would float

abandoned in the seaweed until the work of water

unraveled it in filaments of straw,

till even that straw rotted

in the planetary thaw the whales prayed for,

sending their jets of water skyward

in the clear conviction they’d spill back

to ocean with their will accomplished

in the miracle of rain: And the earth

was without form and void, and darkness

was upon the face of the deep. And

the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters.

Reflections on an upside down world
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