“The ‘kingdom of heaven is within,’ indeed, but we must also create one without, because we are intended to act upon our circumstances.”

Florence Nightingale, raised Unitarian, born on this day in 1820

“You are ever close. You are inside, outside, in every vein, in creepers and leaves, immanent and transcendent… All are God’s children. There is no question of high and low. He extends His hand towards anyone who wants His lap… Once the right action starts there is no fall..

What does it mean to enter your own nature? It is what it is. Permeated in every thing, every form and every way. That which is self-effulgent. There, language and speech do not work. The ultimate reality in true sense is formless. Can this be expressed in any language? Indeed, there is only He.”

Shri Anandamayi Ma (1896 – 1982)

“People are the measures of God’s principles; our morality the instrument of his justice, which stills alike the waves of the sea, the tumult of the people, and the oppressor’s brutal rage. Justice is the idea of God, the ideal of humanity, the rule of conduct writ in the nature of humankind. The ideal must become actual, God’s thought a human thing, made real in a reign of righteousness, and a kingdom – no, a Commonwealth – of justice on the earth. You and I can help forward that work..

You and I may work with Him, and, as on the floor of the Pacific Sea little insects lay the foundation of firm islands, slowly uprising from the tropic wave, so you and I in our daily life, in house, or field, or shop, obscurely faithful, may prepare the way for the republic of righteousness, the democracy of justice that is to come…

You and I may help deepen the channel of human morality in which God’s justice runs, and the wrecks of evil, which now check the stream, be borne off the sooner by the strong, all-conquering tide of right, the river of God that is full of blessing.”

Theodore Parker, Unitarian minister, transcendentalist and abolitionist, who died on this day in 1860

“May, and among the miles of leafing,
blossoms storm out of the darkness—
windflowers and moccasin flowers. The bees
dive into them and I too, to gather
their spiritual honey. Mute and meek, yet theirs
is the deepest certainty that this existence too—
this sense of well-being, the flourishing
of the physical body—rides
near the hub of the miracle that everything
is a part of, is as good
as a poem or a prayer, can also make
luminous any dark place on earth.”

Mary Oliver

“We are at a unique stage in our history. Never before have we had such an awareness of what we are doing to the planet, and never before have we had the power to do something about that.. Surely we all have a responsibility to care for our Blue Planet. The future of humanity and indeed, all life on earth, now depends on us.. Real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.”

David Attenborough, 97 today!

“Through compassion human beings imitate God… We find these two things, compassion and justice, in all the works of God.”

Thomas Aquinas

“I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all encumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.”

Henry David Thoreau, Unitarian and Transcendentalist, who died on this day in 1862

Happy Vesak (Buddha Day)

“With a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, suffusing the whole world with unobstructed loving-kindness.”

Metta Sutra

Thought for the day, Thursday 4th May

“People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.”

Audrey Hepburn, born on this day in 1929

“There’s a wonderful parable in the New Testament: The sower scatters seeds. Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don’t grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don’t grow. But some seeds fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply a thousandfold. Who knows where some good little thing that you’ve done may bring results years later that you never dreamed of?”

Unitarian Universalist singer-songwriter and activist Pete Seeger, born on this day in 1919