“Nothing ceases to exist – there is no example of this in nature.. .There is an entire mass of things that cannot rationally explained. There are newborn thoughts that have not yet found form. How foolish to deny the existence of the soul. After all, that a life has begun, that cannot be denied. It is necessary to believe in immortality, insofar as it can be demonstrated that the atoms of life or the spirit of life must continue to exist after the body’s death. But of what does it exist, this characteristic of holding a body together, causing matter to change and develop, this spirit of life? I felt it as a sensual delight that I should become one with – become this earth which is forever radiated by the sun in such a constant ferment and which lives – lives – and which will grow plants from my decaying body – trees and flowers – and the sun will warm them and I will exist in them – and nothing will perish – and that is eternity.”

Edvard Munch (1863 – 1944), painter, born on this day

International Mountain Day

“Well, I have discovered my mountain – its weathers, its airs and lights, its singing burns, its haunted dells, its pinnacles and tarns, its birds and flowers, its snows, its long blue distances. Year by year, I have grown in familiarity with them all.

But if the whole truth of them is to be told as I have found it, I too am involved. I have been the instrument of my own discovering; and to govern the stops of the instrument needs learning too. Thus the senses must be trained and disciplined, the eye to look, the ear to listen, the body must be trained to move with the right harmonies. I can teach my body many skills by which to learn the nature of the mountain. One of the most compelling is quiescence.

A 4 am start leaves plenty of time for these hours of quiescence, and perhaps of sleep, on the summits. One’s body is limber with the sustained rhythm of mounting, and relaxed in the ease that follows the eating of food. One is as tranquil as the stones, rooted far down in their immobility. The soil is no more a part of the earth. If sleep comes at such a moment, its coming is a movement as natural as day. And after – ceasing to be a stone, to be the soil of the earth, opening eyes that have human cognisance behind them upon what one has been so profoundly a part of. That is all.
One has been in.”

From The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd, 1947

Human Rights Day

“The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole.”

Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852), mathematician, born on this day

“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven…

“Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king.”

John Milton (1608 – 1674), poet, born on this day

“I put my trust in you, O God, as best as I am able.
May I be strong. May I not be afraid
May all who open their hearts
hear your voice and know your love.
Lead me, teach me, help me to trust.

You are gracious to us, O God
You guide us, you forgive our clumsy ways
You help us prosper.

When I am sad and anxious
I school my heart to trust
I act with integrity and uprightness
And hope to feel your touch in my heart.
May it be so for all the peoples of the earth
Who call you by many names.”

Psalm 25 Trust by Christine Robinson

“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