“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

Roald Dahl

A Meeting by Mary Oliver,

“She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.

The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.

She leans her long neck and tongues it
between breaths slack with exhaustion

and after a while it rises and becomes a creature
like her, but much smaller.

So now there are two. And they walk together
like a dream under the trees.

In early June, at the edge of a field
thick with pink and yellow flowers

I meet them.
I can only stare.

She is the most beautiful woman
I have ever seen.

Her child leaps among the flowers,
the blue of the sky falls over me

like silk, the flowers burn, and I want
to live my life all over again, to begin again,

to be utterly
wild.”

“Do not be misled by those who claim there is no purpose.
They may know life, but not the bowels of its fountain.
They may know darkness, but not its meaning.
They may have wisdom, but they cannot reach higher, to a place beyond wisdom from which all wisdom began.
They may reach so high until the very source from which all rivers flow. To the place where all known things converge, where all knowledge is one. But they have not touched the Essence.
At the Essence there is nothing—no light, no darkness, no knowledge, no convergence, no wisdom—nothing but the burning purpose of this moment now.”

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

“If you inherently long for something, become it first. If you want gardens, become the gardener. If you want love, embody love. If you want mental stimulation, change the conversation. If you want peace, exude calmness. If you want to fill your world with artists, begin to paint. If you want to be valued, respect your own time. If you want to live ecstatically, find the ecstasy within yourself. This is how to draw it in, day by day, inch by inch.”

Victoria Erickson

“Effortlessly,
Love flows from God into humans,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings —
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.”

Mechthild of Magdeburg

““The breath of life”…of course that is Its name. And the breath, or course, goes in a cycle. We breathe, and the trees breathe. We breathe in what the trees breathe out. So we breathe each other into existence: We, and the galaxies, and the arrays of science and the codes of law and the plays of music, we are breathing each other into existence.”

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

“Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.”

Muhammad Ali, who died on this day in 2016

From The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche, a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, c. 7th century India

“The One Who Is at Play Everywhere says,

There is a space in the heart where everything meets.
Come here if you want to find me.
Mind, senses, soul, eternity – all are here.
Are you here?

Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart.
Listen to the song that is always resonating.
Give yourself to it with total abandon.
Quiet ecstasy is here,
And a steady, regal sense
Of resting in a perfect spot.

You who are the embodiment of blessing,
Once you know the way,
The nature of attention will call you to return.
Again and again, answer that call,
And be saturated with knowing,
“I belong here, I am at home.””

“As we live and as we are, Simplicity – with a capital “S” – is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.”

Frank Lloyd Wright

“The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else’s eyes.”

Voltaire, who died on this day in 1778