“All you need to do is focus your attention on your in-breath and out-breath, recognize it, and smile to it. Bring aware that you’re breathing in means you’re really there. Your presence is a wonder and a miracle. Breathing like that, you bring your mind back to your body and become truly presence in the now. Treasuring that moment, your dwell in peace and freedom. Each breath is a miracle. Each breath has the power to nourish and to heal.”

From Peace Is This Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh

Zero Discrimination Day

“The human spirit is resilient and that truth—no matter how long you abuse it and how long you try to crush it—will, as Dr. King would say, rise up again, and in the final analysis will prevail. From the point of view of the poor, the hungry, the disenfranchised, the wretched of the Earth … there will never be peace until their condition has been alleviated and until their humanity is in full bloom.”

Harry Belafonte (1927 – 2023), musician and civil rights activist, born on this day

Ramadan Begins

“The poplars shimmer sunlight again
The ceanothus is a cloud of indigo
While an azalea in my garden
Is more hues of magenta than you can imagine
The sun is gentle these long fasting days
Some an endurance test
They still lend me more discipline than I naturally possess

The orchid cascades alabaster blossoms
Over the windowsill in the kitchen
Pots of basil and coriander
Have been snipped a bit thin
To garnish harira and salads
For fast breaking

My son stumbles from bed
To eat suhur bleary eyed
I try to pack enough nutrient dense calories in
To support spiritual and physical growth spurts
And pray for our protection and guidance
In this labyrinthine plane of reality

He’s better at fasting than me
I am insomniac
wide awake in these short nights
Until fajr rolls in
I need to nap
Cat-like in the day

Some manage to pray all night
I just try to survive the ride
Of circadian rhythm disruption
And learn from the alteration
Of feast and famine
Hopeful some of the blessings of the month
Will settle upon me all the same
Part of the miracle
Is the routine breaking
No matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient
Making you view things from a different perspective
creating space for reflection

The brokenness of people and the world assails me some days
There is so much pain and trauma
on the news
woven into the web of relations we are part of
We must be here to alleviate some of this
We must be here as healers
For ourselves and one another

Yet the flowers and trees are perfect
Plane trees unabashed in their majesty
Horse chestnuts resplendent in full candled canopies
Jasmine an explosion of perfumed symmetry
Roses impossibly exquisite
Acers fractal in their colour and delicacy
While clouds tell vast stories across the horizon

The moon is full now, veiled by wispy cloud
Still visible in the coolness of early morning light
In a lull of quiet
before the dawn chorus strikes up
Having measured the days with illumination
It starts to wane again
As days slip away
With the imminent departure
Of our trusted friend
who never fails
to shake us up
And embrace us in blessings”

Magenta by Rabia Saida

“Tonight I am asking for your help. I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being to prove that we are a human race. To prove that our love outweighs our need to hate. That our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame. That our sensitivity to those in need is stronger than our greed. That our ability to reason overcomes our fear. And that at the end of each of our lives, we can look back and be proud that we have treated others with the kindness, dignity and respect that every human being deserves. Thank you and God bless.”

From her 1993 Academy Award acceptance speech by Elizabeth Taylor (1932 – 2011), actress and activist, born on this day

Maha Shivaratri

“Mahashivratri is the day of Shiva. Wherever there is beauty, truth, and benevolence, there is Shiva. And, there is no place where the Shiva-principle is absent. But, Shiva is not a person. It is that principle which is the summum bonum of the whole creation and pervades the entire universe. This principle, called the Shiva tattva, is the quintessence of life and is present deep within every living being.

On Mahashivratri, we celebrate the Shiva tattva by going deep within us, meditating, and rejoicing in the Shiva energy. There are certain days and time frames in a year when one’s mental health and spiritual faculties are enhanced and Mahashivratri is one such precious day…

Today we pray with our heart and soul for peace in the world, peace and progress in society, progress of knowledge, and happiness for every individual.

The divine accepts you however you are. If you feel like you are like a thorn, you are still accepted. If you are like a leaf, you are accepted. If you are like a fruit or a flower, you are accepted. However you are, and whatever stage of evolution you are at, the one divinity accepts you, and that is truth and that is beauty.. Shiva is benevolence, truth and beauty, and the three are inseparable.

Tonight is the celebration of nature rejoicing the presence of benevolence, truth and beauty.”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Art by Kartick Dutta

“When fallowness strikes, it is important to place it in the context of the creative cycle. After the period of conception – an exciting period during which we sparkle with ideas – comes the time of gathering and preparation, when things get moving. This is followed by a period of growth, which cannot be hurried, and then by the moment of ripeness, when the idea must manifest or the project get off the ground. This is followed by a time of enjoyment and appreciation when we can share our manifest idea or plan with others. Then we must let our idea go to make its ways through the world. After all that has happened, we come to the time of fallowness.

To honor our own creative cycle and patterns, we must respect this period and learn to be as empty and receptive as we can. After any birth and manifestation, we are too tired to immediately reconceive: we need this time of rest when we lie as fallow as the unplowed field that the farmer sets aside for several seasons to regain its fertility. Let us honour our fallowness, our uncreating emptiness, by cutting ourselves some slack and giving mind and heart time to recover their former savour in a new season. Fallowness is the ground of our conception: when the soil is ready, the seed will fall and germinate.”

From The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year by Caitlin Matthews

“What should I say about your tendency to doubt your struggle or to harmonize your inner and outer life? My wish is ever strong that you find enough patience within you and enough simplicity to have faith. May you gain more and more trust in what is challenging, and confidence in the solitude you bear. Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right in any case.”

From Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.
Clocks move alongside our real life
with steps that are ever the same.

Though we do not know our exact location,
we are held in place by what links us.
Across trackless distances
antennas sense each other.

Pure attention, the essence of the powers!
Distracted by each day’s doing,
how can we hear the signals?

Even as the farmer labours
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work. It is Earth who gives.”

Sonnets to Orpheus I, 12 by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926)

“The greatest gift in life is consciousness. Not positions, not the dollar, but that the Almighty Spirit gives us life and we have a rational mind with which to see all the wonders of the universe…

I would not forget that the pale-faced missionary and the hoodooed aborigine are both God’s creatures, though small indeed their own conceptions of Infinite Love. A wee child toddling in a wonder world, I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. Here, in a fleeting quiet, I am awakened by the fluttering robe of the Great Spirit. To my innermost consciousness the phenomenal universe is a royal’ mantle, vibrating with His divine breath. Caught in its flowing fringes are the spangles and oscillating brilliants of sun, moon, and stars.”

Zitkála-Šá (also known by her Anglicized and married name, Gertrude Simmons Bonni), Lakota writer, musician and activist (1876 – 1938), born on this day

“What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.”

Nina Simone (1933 – 2003), singer-songwriter and civil rights activist, born on this day