If You were born an amazing creature, and You were,You were also born with the ability to to close you soul and feel safe in this world because God gave You that choice. But when the time comes and You see what it is inside you God also gave You the ability to chose to open back up and spread Your wings!
– P. Ciavardone
-P. Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain.com All rights reserved
-P Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain.com All rights reserved
You know what its like to sit unnoticed between the road and the edge of peaceful waters. To watch the small children run by, not even a glance. To the clouds in the sky you ask “Why am I here?”
“To teach”. You know, but what and how? Your movement through their lives is so slow they can not even perceive it. You are a perfect creature of the Universe and you obey its every command. To be totally still unless moved by the wind. To shelter whatever creature chooses to tear a hole in your being. To teach the children about joy even as they break your own young limbs. And as you grow to be taller and stronger then you ever imagined that even they could be, you pull them up into your heart so that they can experience the joys of watching the world dance around them while hidden in you invisibility.
And when they come to walk their own children by you, again without noticing you, you shower them with all of the beautiful colors they could never have imagined, until you are worn and naked, and face another winter exposed and alone but dreaming of spring.
Then once again after many years she strolls by, but now, with bittersweetness, she slows and turns towards you and rests her weary bones on your legacy to be one with the earth through you again. And through her you are taller than the mightiest tree still standing, as your soul joins with her’s to reach from the rooted earth to her heart and on to heaven because you have taught her that. And without her ever noticing.
-P. Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Easy to be sad,
Easy to be lonely,
Easy to give up,
Better to wait for tomorrow, because if its not there today, tomorrow’s almost here.
-P. Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Sometimes just living life feels like clinging to that last slippery rock on the edge of what seems to be a great waterfall, in a driving rainstorm. You can’t see past the edge where the water drops off but you can hear the crashing water, so loud it almost drowns out the thunderous storm swirling above your head and conspiring to help push you over that edge.
Between the rock and the safety of the shores on either side, everything that passes heads earnestly over that edge. A myriad of creations, not thinking, not struggling, but you watch as that log slides just past the edge, dips its root end down and its arms reach once again to the sky, briefly celebrating the life it lived. Then it quickly disappears beneath the horizon that is the waterfalls’ edge into the frenzy of the nothingness below. You know nothing of that “nothingness” except your fear of it and you wonder “if that great old man of the forest succumbed so easily, what can I do?”
Your little hands clasped about the rock, while the rest of your body is pulled and tugged towards the inevitable and in a moment of terror you feel the base of the rock loosen just a little. You know any control you think youhave over this decision is running out. Your hands can’t hold to the rock forever, you are only human. Even so, if faced with an eternity of just holding on, is that what you want?
The rock you cling to is battling the rushing water rising from the storm, beaten by debris and pulled by your anchor, it cannot hold you forever. The storm that rages above will subside but others will follow and some will be even fiercer. And on either side, even the shores that cannot be reached may have meadows but surely they also have their own dark nights, hungry beasts and perilous cliffs.
So the path that is laid before you is to let go and trust. All the frightful sounds you hear ahead of you are undefined except by the stories in your own head. You have all the power to let go of the stories you have told yourself about those unknown sounds ahead and let them be what they are, which is the sound of God’s story. And the Universe is asking you to trust and be a part of that Great Story. Like the beautiful tree had shown as it flowed ahead of you and into God’s story, celebrating what it had become. Because once you find the peace to let go of the certainty ,hat only exist in your head, and flow with the waterfall, what is on the other side becomes a story between you and God.
– P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
While awakening to our own ability to create better reality for ourselves, people seem to be moving away from the word Hope. Maybe because the word implies the possibilities of struggle and set backs. No matter how much we think we get it, we will continue to face struggle along the way. Hope is still a beautiful word in my book. Hope is what catches us when we are falling and Believing is what gives us the wings to get off the ground.
– P.Ciavardone 
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
To touch the sky,
to breath the wind,
to laugh at the sun,
and tickle the birds.
Paradise.
– P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Define success…then let it go. Like a minnow in the stream, who knows where it will go or what it will feed, but like everything else born in the stream it is part of the flow.
Build your alters in the stream, for the stream, to the steam and those too will flow away when the storm comes. Some to rest on the bottom in blissful peace and some to tumble on to be part of the next monument.
What is success? The minnow that swims with the flow of the stream? The peaceful stone awash on the bottom, looking through and feeling the flow of the water? Or the lives and the monuments we build that will ultimately also belong to the flow of the stream.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
When we let ourselves evolve, that doesn’t make our past selves any less valid. All of our experience, emotions, adventures and misadventures have bought us to where we are. Stepping stones to the self that you have become and the soul you are still becoming. There is nothing to forgive and nothing to forget and everything to continue to grow towards.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Determination. That’s our part. The Universe will give us all the help we need but determination is up to us. 
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Even when it seems impossible, the ordinary rises to touch the sun and the sun reaches back to touch the ordinary and then we realize this has happened again and again every second of every day forever before and forever after. We often just fail to see it and it is in the seeing that the ordinary becomes the Extraordinary.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Is it the coming night?
Is it the breaking dawn?
Or is it NOW?
The infinite potential that is ours to dream then endure or embrace?
– P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain.com All rights reserved
I asked the mountain ” Why am I here?”
The Mountain answered “to Learn”
I asked the mountain “What can you teach me? What have I journeyed all this way to learn?”
Powerfully the Mountain stood Still. The Mountain stood Silent. The Mountain stood Mighty. And the Mountain whispered “How to fit your littleness into your bigness”.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
In my minds eye I saw myself muddy, in the rain, sitting under a leafless bush, scratchy branches poking at my head. I was delighted to see St. Francis, my guide for peace and humility, sitting beside me, also muddy and barefoot in a simple cloth tunic.
I asked St. Francis if he could help me find peace in my simpleness. I asked what my role is when I am unable to make others see and feel the gift of inner peace. Why do I feel compelled to do something I can never accomplish. Please teach me how to feel the joy of just Being and Trusting God to use me how He chooses. To affect or not effect according to how He chooses.
He took my right hand and held it gently on my knee and asked “What if you were the most beautiful flower God had ever created but you existed obscured deep in the bushes beside the road, never to be seen by anyone from bloom to decay? Would that make you a lesser creation of God because you had no role other than to just be that creation of God?”
My answer was ” No because God makes no lesser creations.”
St Francis then asked ” And what if God made you a magnificent butterfly that danced about from flowers to children to weary traveler bringing joy just by being such an amazing creature of God? Would that make you a greater creation of God?”
My answer was “No because if God makes no lesser creations he makes no greater creations.”
And as that magnificent butterfly could you find the humbleness in your heart to match the humbleness of the beautiful flower never seen?”
I didn’t think I had it in me to truthfully answer yes because my joy would be so great I might forget that it was God who created the gifts I would be sharing.
St. Francis leaned in and softly said “Then remember that you are the beautiful flower, hidden in the bushes, that feeds the magnificent butterfly, that you also are. Remember that we are all one as God’s creations designed to nurture each other just by being what God created us to be. That oneness under God’s design makes us all greater and humbled at once, in God’s eyes.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
