“Be grateful for your life, every detail of it, and your face will come to shine like a sun, and everyone who sees it will be made glad and peaceful. Persist in gratitude, and you will slowly become one with the Sun of Love, and Love will shine through you its all-healing joy.”

Rumi

“The first story about humankind in the Bible is about people eating something they’re not supposed to. In this season of bounty, as you sit down to feast, your own relationship with food may pose a similar struggle. Are you conscious of what you’re eating?

The Eden story, in which we claimed free will as we gave up the garden, places our relationship with food at the heart of the matter. Why, with so many other possible laws to create, did God put a form of nourishment off limits? Perhaps it’s because what we take into ourselves does create us anew. Our food’s vitamins, minerals, and nutrients literally compose us. We create ourselves anew with each dinner. Bon appetit.”

Brian Nelson

“I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I’ll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.. Kindness – that simple word. To be kind – it covers everything, to my mind. If you’re kind that’s it.”

Roald Dahl, who died on this day in 1990

Monday Prayers by Carla Grosch-Miller,

“At every beginning,
bless our dreaming
and our doing.

The day lies before us,
full of the mundane and the miraculous,
the known and the unknown.

Be the breath we take before each step.
Be the source from which we draw strength.
Be the end toward which we direct our hope.

Open our eyes to all that is around us.
Open our ears to the song the soul yearns to sing.
Open our hearts to the love that lives through us.
Open our hands to the task the moment requires.

Let us do this one thing,
the thing before us,
as if all creation
and our very life
depend upon it,

as if You are bent over,
watching and listening
and willing us
to do it well.”

“All nature is a vast symbolism: Every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.”

Edwin Powell Hubble, born on this day in 1889

“Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.”

Mary Oliver

“It is so easy to believe that you’ll always be ready to handle everything life presents to you, but a day–many days–arrive and you can’t bear it, you can’t even dream that you have it within you or around you to cope or to survive.
Hold on to that emotional, dreaming person–the one who feels–and keep family and friends and the things you love and the things you live for deep in your head and your heart. Eat and laugh a lot; love deeply; give fully.

It doesn’t just go by fast; it comes at you with alarming speed and stealth and damage. You will not be prepared. You will be knocked off your feet, your foundation. Make sure it’s a strong foundation, and make sure you know how to get back to it and on it and re-build it. No one is ready for what ultimately arrives, but some are lucky and are able to not only survive but to get others through it all. Work on that. Feel more. Laugh a lot. Draw a circle of loved ones around you.”

Marlon Brando

“Whatever you do, do it gently and unhurriedly, because virtue is not a pear to be eaten in one bite.”

Seraphim of Sarov

International Day of Tolerance – from the UN Declaration of Principles on Tolerance

“Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communication, and freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Tolerance is harmony in difference. It is not only a moral duty, it is also a political and legal requirement. Tolerance, the virtue that makes peace possible, contributes to the replacement of the culture of war by a culture of peace.

Tolerance is not concession, condescension or indulgence. Tolerance is, above all, an active attitude prompted by recognition of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others. In no circumstance can it be used to justify infringements of these fundamental values…

Consistent with respect for human rights, the practice of tolerance does not mean toleration of social injustice or the abandonment or weakening of one’s convictions. It means that one is free to adhere to one’s own convictions and accepts that others adhere to theirs. It means accepting the fact that human beings, naturally diverse in their appearance, situation, speech, behaviour and values, have the right to live in peace and to be as they are.”

“I think it’s so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary–you’re happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.”

Georgia O’Keeffe, born on this day in 1887