“This day was honored centuries ago as the feast of Saint Nicholas, progenitor of Santa Claus. Whatever your stance toward mythic Christmas figures, Nicholas also deserves notice as the patron saint of weavers, bakers, and sailors – all people who work with nature intimately, shaping it to their own ends.

Weavers take the raw fibers of the wild and shape them into recognizable patterns, seeing to one of the our most basic needs. Bakers combine grains and other harvest goods with spices and herbs, firing the mixtures until they provide sustenance and flavor our lives. And sailors roam the horizons, testing the limits of our lives and bring back their own harvests from the deep.

Even if Saint Nicholas doesn’t bring presents anymore, he brings us plenty by reminding us to appreciate those craftspeople who help us make the most of this world.”

From Earth Bound: Daily Meditations for All Seasons by Brian Nelson

“Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.”

Wu-Men, Chinese Zen Master (1183 – 1260)

“A very great vision is needed, and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.”

Crazy Horse, Lakota leader (1840 – 1877), born on this day

“I say religion isn’t about believing things. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.”

Karen Armstrong, founder of the Charter for Compassion, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection

“For though my faith is not yours
and your faith is not mine
if we are each free to light our own flame
together we can banish
some of the darkness of the world.”

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

From The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich

“Spiritual space, silence, the emptiness from which things can be born – these spaces worry us. We are fretful to fill them. As Christmas approaches, we can be pulled into cycles of gift-buying, into hectic socializing, and so abandon the empty spaces that our soul needs so badly…

Creating spiritual space is an art. Consider the forbearance of the artist who stops when the picture is finished rather than painting in yet more, inessential detail. Our own spiritual space needs the same kind of forbearance, needs patience and deep listening for revelation to be made manifest: a wondering O in which profound realizations can dance and sing.”

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

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.
In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.
Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn’t have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
“Shihab”—“shooting star”—
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”
He said that’s what a true Arab would say.
Today the headlines clot in my blood.
A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.
Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root
is too big for us. What flag can we wave?
I wave the flag of stone and seed,
table mat stitched in blue.
I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air:
Who calls anyone civilized?
Where can the crying heart graze?
What does a true Arab do now?”

Naomi Shihab Nye

“Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth. I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.”

William Blake (1757 – 1827), born on this day

“for years we have been told that home is where the heart is
~ but I don’t think that’s true
home is where our lungs are my love,
whenever I get lost in the wilds of the world
and I can’t find my way
I inhale
so slowly
~ so deeply
and suddenly I’m right back at home
because I was born out of the holy breath of the Divine
as were you, my love, as were you
the breath of Mystery is our eternal home
the place we existed long before we ever existed
an angel once told me that we were formed so carefully
while we rested in the gusting womb of the Great Love’s sacred gale
our home is the place where Source gently exhaled us into existence
we were created out the of holiest of thin air to become dandelion seeds
moving in the currents of adventure
carrying us from one horizon to the next
~ and whenever the storms of this world become too much for us to endure
~ whenever the woods become so dark that we can no longer see the sky
~ whenever we get so lost in the wilderness that the compass we are holding
turns into sand between our fingers
~ whenever we find ourselves so homesick
that we can’t remember what it feels like to be safe
we can just breathe a big fat breath and hold it
in our chest for a couple moments and suddenly my love,
~ so very suddenly we return home we go right back to where we first started
to the gusting cottage of God’s endless love for us
because the same air that passes through our trembling lips and into our lungs
is the exact same air that Creation breathed on you
when you sparked out of the void
so, my love, when you lose your way out here in the swirl
and you’re so desperate to return home
~ to the familiar place where you felt so safe
~ to the warm dwelling where you knew everything about yourself
~ to the cradle where nothing could ever harm you
you don’t have to click your heels or buy a plane ticket or make a wish
you just have to breathe with purpose
and treat the air inside of you as if it were a prayer
and when you exhale that held breath oh my love,
when you exhale you’ll come back home”

John Roedel, contemporary poet