When soft water
Turns to heavy snow,
The strongest trees
Learn to bend and bow.
P. Ciavardone
Copyright 2014. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Category Archives: Insights
The Wall
As she stood against the wall,
Standing straight. Standing tall.
Smooth as glass, she could not climb,
She must ascend, can’t look behind.
The birds had grown their wings to serve,
When they could no longer live bound to Earth.
Her wings were just thoughts within her mind,
Wings she could grow from the other side.
She looked past the Owl, who dared dream by day,
But then heard her own voice “Here you must stay.”
So gently she knelt beside the wall,
Kneeling soft. Kneeling small.
Mute as the mountain she struggled to pray.
She must descend, she cannot stay.
The birds sing songs to find fellow souls,
When songs turn to prayer they will heal and console.
Her wounds still thoughts fresh in her mind.
Wounds she could heal, from some other side.
She reached towards a sparrow who dared to be plain.
But she heard her soul speak “You can’t hold her pain.”
Yearning she’d reach up to the sky,
Reaching out. Reaching high.
Without her wings she longed to leap,
But bound to earth her roots ran deep.
Angels stand ready to lift broken Ones,
When unlived dreams leave songs unsung.
Her dreams and songs this life denied,
Visions she could seek, from some other side.
She imagined her Angels, who dared trust The One.
And she heard in her Heart “The Soul dies to none”
P. Ciavardone
Copyright 2014. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Fly
When our Angels grow their wings and fly free from the flock, remember their journey will always be Blessed with the same Angel wings that had brought them to us.
P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2014. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Contrails
As she raked her fingers across the sky, she imagined the contrails were the scars she left in heaven when she asked her angel to take her pain away. From her humble perch the scars were beautiful accomplishments on a scale she never imagined she could touch. They were in God’s hands now.
P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain.com All rights reserved
Alone or Lonely
Alone I feel the earth through my feet, the world through my heart and the Universe through my thoughts. As one single piece of the infinite creation, I am Alone, but with Everything.
Loneliness is to stand on the earth and not touch it. It is to not see the world around you through your heart or feel the other souls passing through this same space of Everything. Loneliness is to make yourself the Lone thought in your own creation.
– P. Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain.com All rights reserved
Beneath the Veil
-P. Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain.com All rights reserved
Her Legacy
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 (sometimes)
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
Hope & Believe
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
Flowing
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
Determination
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
Is It Now?
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
And in that Moment…..
I remember scary. I remember it everyday. When the sun comes up and I have to do it all over again, that’s scary. Until I realize the air I breath is still there and still as sweet as God’s own breath, and I hear the beautiful songs that the birds are singing to the sun. They may go hungry today or face a fierce storm or lose a hatchling but for this moment they sing to the sun because that is their gift to God’s gift. Returning their joy to be soaked up by all who will stop and listen, in that moment, And in that moment which is all that exist, joy trumps scary because joy is everything God gives us and scary is just an impulse in our brain.
Then comes the next moment and here comes scary again. Maybe bigger and harder this time. We all face it. But do you choose the joy in the moment that God gives and will always give back whenever you stop and breathe it in or do you let scary take that moment away? Honor the battle but Honor more the joy that is yours to live.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved.
Soaring
Her spiral took the hawk further and further up with each ascent, never once having to flap her wings, sailing only on winds warmed by the sun. Head held up pointed to the sky, wings and body opened and angled to receive. Receiving higher and higher. Accepting effortlessly.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
Full Soul
There are some teachers that have hurt me just by being human in their actions towards me. There are some teachers that have lifted my head above the water then up to the sky just by being soulful in their actions towards me.
Remember we are all teachers. Lead with your soul and you will heal the human in both of us.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
After 9-11
Written 09/11/2002
Who would have thought I would have noticed the lack of contrails in the sky or the absence of air traffic noise. The world had become a surreal place overnight. The passengers on the train uncharacteristically acknowledged each other as if silently comforting each other, but no words were spoken. We were just together.
When I was a little girl I asked my mother what hell was. I couldn’t reconcile myself to the Idea that the God I grew up with would hurt or torture people. My mom’s answers was simply that hell was the lack of the presence of God. That didn’t sound too bad to me as a child. As a child I couldn’t comprehend what that meant but it was an answer that seemed like a more gentle consequence. A choice already made by the souls that ended up there. After 9/11 I finally understood. I had never realized that God was a constant presence in my life. A part of every second of every day and I had just taken that presence for granted.
On 9/11, for the first time in my life, I felt the absence of God. He had totally left us as if he had never existed. It was the most painful, empty, frightening, lonely feeling I had ever experienced. I remembered what my mom had told me as a child and now it made perfect sense to me.
Several days later God came back to me in a sunset, a way he often shows himself to me, and started to help me heal from his absence. A slow process for all of us. I never want to be in hell again.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
The Mightiest Noise
The mightiest noise,
It’s the cricket when you are trying to listen in the night,
The cicada when you are trying to hear rustle of the leaves,
The waves when you are waiting for the ebb of the ocean,
The thunder when you are trying to catch the lightning,
And the earth when you are trying to heed the stars.
We lose the awesomeness of the whole when we disregard the ordinary amazingness all around us.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved
GUIDE ROPE
We have points in our life when we feel like we’ve almost reached the end of that guide rope we hold onto and all of the sudden we have dropped the rope and now we are lost, again. We all want our angel to put that rope back in our hands so we can get to the end sure we have gone the right way because like good children, we have followed the path laid out for us.
When we’ve lost our grip on that rope is the answer to gently probe the area already staked out for us or is it an invitation to be our own guide? How else do we learn to live as free spirits, to run or fly or swim if we can’t let go of the rope. That rope will always be there should we need it and our angels will always be happy to put it back in our hand or even hold our hand if we need. But if that help doesn’t come as soon as you’d like, consider that you angel may be challenging you to take that walk into the forest and learn by adventure.
-P.Ciavardone
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved.
Dragonfly Dreams and Better
Dragonfly Dreams and Better
We’ve all done this. Once in a while we’ll ask for a special experience in a dream. Maybe a chance to feel what it’s like to fly or to speak with a lost loved one. Once in a while we’ll be inspired to ask for a special indulgence, To experience something outside of what we can fully experience in our waking life, because sleep is where we are allowed to experience all possibilities without having to answer to logic. My special request had to do with the artist in me. I was feeling stagnant and stuck. I could paint a pretty picture but felt unable to create art that would inspire anyone to feel anything on an emotional level.
During a before bed meditation and prayer I put out a dream request to experience what it is like to see through the eyes of a dragonfly. Dragonflies have a 360 degree field of vision. They see a much greater range of colors than humans starting at orange (no red but that’s not one of my favorite colors anyway) all the way up the range of UV light not visible to the human eye. What a magnificent world they must see! To experience that just briefly in a dream could teach me to see like an artist again. The first and most important part of being an artist is to see through the eyes of an artist. Any technical skills are mechanical and can be learned, or not, depending how you chose to express yourself.
When I woke up the next morning from a very sound sleep I couldn’t remember any of my dreams, let alone a dragonfly dream, but not to worry. Answers almost never come when and how you expect. Just stay open and you will recognize it later, when you are not looking for it.
Later that day we had gone through another series of earlier evening thunderstorms that were quickly dissolving as the sunset became visible. What was left of the storms created a deliciously fluffy kaleidoscope of colors. Bright burning orange cottony clouds piled along the eastern horizon, bordered by beautiful blue, purple and gray frosted outlined clouds occupying different places in the atmosphere. At first I just wanted to sit back and enjoy because it was wonderful just watching the colors and shapes change. Part of me wanted to grab my camera because I would probably never see those colors again but my logical mind said “Why bother? In 10 minutes there are going to be ½ a dozen pictures of the same clouds on face book. Any more there are an infinite number of pictures of magnificent clouds on the internet”. But something deeper inside told me the pictures were an important part of holding onto the inspiration.
The next day I downloaded the photos onto the computer for a closer look. It was then that I realized I had lived my Dragonfly dream, confirmed by the dragonfly caught very clearly flying through a photo against the brightly burning clouds in the background.
– P.Ciavardone
click pics to enlarge
Copyright 2013. Face the Mountain. All rights reserved.