Thought for the day, Sunday 9th April

“This is what the philosopher and the poet share in common: both are concerned with the marvellous. Amazement is the beginning of philosophy. Wonder is a kind of desire in knowing. It is the cause of delight because it carries with it the hope of discovery.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274)

This artist’s impression shows a supernova and associated gamma-ray burst driven by a rapidly spinning neutron star with a very strong magnetic field — an exotic object known as a magnetar. Observations from ESO’s La Silla and Paranal Observatories in Chile have for the first time demonstrated a link between a very long-lasting burst of gamma rays and an unusually bright supernova explosion. The results show that the supernova following the burst GRB 111209A was not driven by radioactive decay, as expected, but was instead powered by the decaying super-strong magnetic fields around a magnetar.

Thought for the day, Saturday 8th April

“After Jesus is dead his followers do not realize that they are waiting. After all, what else is there to wait for? Everything is over. Perhaps they feel that they are waiting for their own pain to diminish, their own sense of loss and bereavement to become bearable. Only time can do that, but the leaden hours go so slowly to the recently bereaved. Jesus’ followers are sharing that experience with all who have lost loved ones…

Waiting is one of the most difficult tasks we have to face, because it makes us feel so helpless. In most areas of our lives, we are used to being able to make decisions and choices that will make things happen for us. Our day-to-day lives are so full of things to be done, that we imagine it would be lovely to have a period of waiting, where things are taken out of our hands and there is nothing we can do.

But when we are actually presented with a situation where the only thing we can do is wait, we find it intensely difficult. When we or someone we love is ill, there is a lot of waiting – in hospital rooms, waiting for test results, waiting to see if treatment works. This kind of waiting is almost unbearable, because all our choice is taken away. We cannot make things happen by our energy or force of will. This painful waiting is a hard lesson in reality. Facing what cannot be changed is part of the world. Sometimes we wriggle or negotiate things round the way we want them to be, and then to stand and wait is indeed the only service we can give. It is a service to reality and so to ourselves.”

Jane Williams

Thought for the day, Thursday 6th April

“You kneel before me
You remove my shoes and I am exposed
My feet are grimy
full of calluses and cracks
pungent with sweat and toe jam
I’m embarrassed by them
I pull back but you reassure
You’re not offended
I feel welcome in your hands
vulnerable, yet safe
The cleansing begins
I see your reflection in the ripples
I see me, too
Your water brings truth and life
Who I am and who I can be
I am whole and home in the touch of the towel
You look at my neighbour and hand it to me.”

Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia

Thought for the day, Wednesday 5th April

International Day of Conscience

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

From On Justice and the Conscience by Theodore Parker (Unitarian minister and abolitionist), published in 1853