“Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state – it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle. Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the mind from the preoccupations of daily living. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Celebration is an act of expressing respect or reverence for that which one needs or honours. In modern usage, the term suggests demonstrations, often public demonstrations, of joy and festivity, such as singing, shouting, speechmaking, feasting, and the like. Yet what I mean is not outward ceremony and public demonstration, but rather inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts. Its essence is to call attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living, to rise above the confines of consumption.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907 – 1972), rabbi, theologian and philosopher, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection

“God is in the look of your eyes,
In the thought of looking,
nearer to you than your self,
or things that have happened to you.
There’s no need to go outside.
Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.
A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.”

Rumi

World Soil Day

Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissing the tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant… at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

Margaret Atwood

“Only by dying to ourselves do we encounter our true identity, because our true identity is not in our ego but in the All. We are centred in God as are all other things and beings..
Our ego is a solitary place, and he who rejects suffering and defies death and refuses to give himself, but wants to retain his self, shuts himself out of that Unity of all things which is God.”

Ernesto Cardenal, quoted in Christian Mystics by Matthew Fox

“We think that the past is gone and the future is not yet here. But if we look deeply, we see that reality is more than that. The past exists in the guise of the present because the present is made from the past. If we establish ourselves firmly in the present, touching the present moment deeply, we also touch the past and have the power to repair it. That is a wonderful teaching and practice. We don’t have to bear our wounds forever.”

From Peace Is This Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh

“I’m discovering that a spiritual journey is a lot like a poem. You don’t merely recite a poem or analyze it intellectually. You dance it, sing it, cry it, feel it on your skin and in your bones.
You move with it and feel its caress. It falls on you like a teardrop or wraps around you like a smile. It lives in the heart and the body as well as the spirit and the head.”

Sue Monk Kidd

“Compassion, then, before anything else, is the work of feeling with the other. And it is work – ask any therapist – emotional work, psychic work, spiritual work; we might call it heart work, womb work, gut work. It is work which demands the focusing of attention on the other and thus requires a radical de-centring of the ego; work which often requires a patience and endurance in the presence of the other’s intractable reality. Being with the other in all the different moods of their passion is a costly process.”

Nicola Slee, feminist poet and theologian, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection

St Andrew’s Day

“Here lies our land: every airt
Beneath swift clouds, glad glints of sun,
Belonging to none but itself.
We are mere transients, who sing
Its westlin’ winds and fernie braes,
Northern lights and siller tides,
Small folk playing our part.
‘Come all ye’, the country says,
You win me, who take me most to heart.”

Kathleen Jamie

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

“My sister, our land has a throbbing heart,
it doesn’t cease to beat, and it endures
the unendurable. It keeps the secrets
of hills and wombs. This land sprouting
with spikes and palms is also the land
that gives birth to a freedom-fighter.
This land, my sister, is a woman.”

Fadwa Tuqan, poet of Palestine (1917 – 2003)

Thanksgiving Day, USA

“Life is a thing of many stages and moving parts. What we do with ease at one time of life we can hardly manage at another. What we could not fathom doing when we were young, we find great joy in when we are old. Like the seasons through which we move, life itself is a never-ending series of harvests, a different fruit for every time.”

Joan D. Chittister