“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

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

“I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow.”

Dorothea Dix, Unitarian social reformer, born on this day in 1802

“You can’t solve the world’s problems, so don’t try. Instead, focus on what you can do each day to leave this place a little better than you found it.”

Jane Goodall, born on this day in 1934 – happy birthday Jane!

“Music is one of the closest link-ups with God that we can probably experience. I think it’s a common vibrating tone of the musical notes that holds all life together.”

Marvin Gaye, born on this day in 1939

““What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.” Yiddish Proverb

“Dear washers-up: Please rinse the teapots and then stand upside down in the sink.” Notice in the kitchen of Unitarian New Meeting, Birmingham”

From Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection, edited by Catherine Robinson

“To learn the scriptures is easy,
to live them, hard.
The search for the Real
is no simple matter.
Deep in my looking,
the last words vanished.
Joyous and silent,
the waking that met me there.”

Lalla Ded (1320 – 1392), Kashmiri poet and mystic

“No matter how bad things become, they will eventually get better. In the end, the innate desire of all people for truth, justice and human understanding must triumph over ignorance and despair. So if the Chinese oppressed us, it could only strengthen us.”

From Freedom in Exile by the Dalai Lama, who fled to India and was granted political asylum there on this day in 1959

“in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and
the

            goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee”

E.E. Cummings

“Water soundless, a wandering stream skirts bamboo forest. And west of Bamboo, wildflowers delight in gentle spring.
Facing all this under thatch eaves, I sit through the day not a single bird. No song. Mountain quiet goes deeper still.”

Wang An-Shih (1021 – 1086)