“Every light has its shadow, and every shadow hath a succeeding morning.”

Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, born on this day in 1473

“The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.”

Solomon Ibn Gabirol

“On this day in 1917, a street in Baltimore was the first anywhere to be lit with gas. This was the beginning of a curse for astronomers, who would come to revile city lights for interfering with their telescopes. Yet it had its advantages as well. It made the night a safer place and helped bring people together from their isolated hearths to a new appreciation of the evening.

Do the lights that we turn on at night separate us from nature or let us enjoy it in a new aspect? The answer will be different for everyone. Tonight, take a step outside and ask yourself how much light you really need. Soon the days will be longer, so savour the night now – by taking your light into your own hands.”

Brian Nelson

“Where, then, is God? In the conclusion of some argument? The final clause of some syllogism? No, the God you can argue yourself into finding is a God you can argue yourself into losing. The living God is in the life itself. God is in the miseries of the world waiting to be ended, in the comprehension that only compassionate hearts can achieve. God is with the helpless and foresaken, with those who are waiting for renewed humanity. God is in the ventures, difficult and dangerous, in the truth that too few speak. God is in the justice that is waiting to be done.”

Unitarian minister A. Powell Davies (1902 – 1957)

“Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.”

Susan B. Anthony, suffragette, born on this day in 1820

“There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don’t you ?
You feel the separation
from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it
cannot be learned in any school.”

Rumi

“All people are children when they sleep.
there’s no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.
They pucker their lips like small children
and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.
If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.
God, teach me the language of sleep.”

Rolf Jacobsen

“Finding our true song is about relinquishing the burden of ego and the false choruses that it sings. Self-importance causes us to dance to strange tunes that our feet find unnatural. When we act out of self-importance, we trip ourselves up, make Freudian slips, inadvertently revealing to ourselves and others how far we are from our soul’s circuit.

The false songs that we sing are out of tune with our soul; they are merely the responses we have adopted from others, not utterances from our own deep core. Our uncertainty and lack of conviction echo in them. The solution to these false songs is to forget ourselves and concentrate upon what we are doing, refusing to engage with fear and self-disclosure. It is not that we should ignore ourselves, but rather that we should attempt to step out of our own way. The Irish poet W. B. Yeats noticed this for himself: he discovered that whenever he went out of his way to create something beautiful, he sabotaged his poem.

The same is true of our own deep song, which is forever singing its beautiful melody beyond the reach of our ears. When we act sincerely, when we speak from the heart, when our passion is engaged, the true song is heard in all its glory.”

Caitlin Matthews

“All things
Are too small
To hold me
I am so vast
In the infinite
I reach
For the uncreated
I have touched it
It undoes me
Wider than wide
Everything else
Is too narrow
You know this well
Who also live there.”

Hadewijch of Antwerp (13th century Beguine)

“Positively, the best thing a man can have to do, is nothing, and next to that perhaps — good works.”

Charles Lamb, Unitarian poet and essayist, born on this day in 1775