“I am a forest and a night of dark trees.
But he who is not afraid of my darkness,
will find banks full of roses under
my cypresses.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), born on this day

Painting by Elihu Vedder (1836 – 1923)

“Do not love half lovers
Do not entertain half friends
Do not indulge in works of the half talented
Do not live half a life
and do not die a half death
If you choose silence, then be silent
When you speak, do so until you are finished
Do not silence yourself to say something
And do not speak to be silent
If you accept, then express it bluntly
Do not mask it
If you refuse then be clear about it
for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance
Do not accept half a solution
Do not believe half truths
Do not dream half a dream
Do not fantasize about half hopes
Half a drink will not quench your thirst
Half a meal will not satiate your hunger
Half the way will get you no where
Half an idea will bear you no results
Your other half is not the one you love
It is you in another time yet in the same space
It is you when you are not
Half a life is a life you didn’t live,
A word you have not said
A smile you postponed
A love you have not had
A friendship you did not know
To reach and not arrive
Work and not work
Attend only to be absent
What makes you a stranger to them closest to you
and they strangers to you
The half is a mere moment of inability
but you are able for you are not half a being
You are a whole that exists to live a life
not half a life.”

Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931), writer, poet and visual artist

Illustration from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

“Without love, there can be no joy or happiness, no beauty, no harmony in the world.
Even if hundreds of raindrops fall from the cloud, no secret pearls can be found in the sea without the rhythms of love.”

Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, Persian Sufi poet and scholar (1207 – 1273)

“To adore God through his creation particularly his creatures, to praise him by cheerfully helping to leave creation better than we found it, to believe in him by believing in the triumphant end of all those are made in his image. This is saving faith, this is salvation.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866 – 1937), British Prime Minister and Unitarian, born on this day

International Day of the Girl Child

“In the New Testament, the Master reminded His followers that when the merchant had found the Pearl of Great Price, he sold all that he had in order to buy it. That is the parable of Militancy! It is that which the women warriors are doing to-day. Some are truer warriors than others, but the perfect Amazon is she who will sacrifice all even unto the last, to win the Pearl of Freedom for her sex. Some of the bounteous pearls that women sell to obtain this freedom, which is so little appreciated by those who are born free, are the pearls of Friendship, Good Report, Love, and even Life itself, each in itself a priceless boon.”

From The Price of Liberty by Emily Davison (1872 – 1913), suffragette, born on this day

World Mental Health Day

“When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other.”

Margaret J. Wheatley, founder of Warriors for the Human Spirit

“The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence.”

Thomas Berry (1914 – 2009), Catholic priest, scholar of world religions and self-titled ‘geologian’

“Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now..

There can be no peace without equitable development; and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space. This shift is an idea whose time has come…

I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents. Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder.”

Wangaari Maathai, the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace, on this day in 2004

“I have consciously sought during my lifetime to emulate my mother, whom our family knew as a gentle “comforter of the afflicted.” However, when I see innocent people suffering, pushed around by the rich and the powerful, then, as the prophet Jeremiah, says, if I try to keep quiet it is as if the word of God burned like a fire in my breast. I feel compelled to speak out, sometimes to even argue with God over how a loving creator can allow this to happen.

In the Church of Sant’Egido in Rome, home of an extraordinary community of lay people devoted to working with the poor, there is an old crucifix that portrays Christ without arms. When I asked about its importance to the community, I was told that it shows how God relies on us to do God’s work in the world.

Without us, God has no eyes, without us, God has no ears; without us, God has no arms or hands. God relies on us. Won’t you join other people of faith in becoming God’s partners in the world?”

From God is Not a Christian and Other Provocations by Desmond Tutu (1931 – 2021), born on this day

“It says in the Bible, in plain words, that God made a self-portrait. He created man in His own image – man and woman – for God is Love.

Why should we start thinking of a god up in the clouds with wings, if He dwells within us in the spirit of Love?!”

Thor Heyerdahl (1914 – 2002), ethnographer, born on this day