International Youth Day

“Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the path of our fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one,
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.”

Initiation Song from the Finders Lodge by Ursula K. Le Guin

“Only the strongest people have the pluck to change their minds, and say so, if they see they have been wrong in their ideas.”

Children’s author Enid Blyton, born on this day in 1897

“Action that is in accordance with duty, performed without attachment and aversion, and done without desire for rewards, is action in the mode of goodness.”

Bhagavad Gita (Song of God) 18:23, composed in India in around 200 BCE

International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

“In a culture of gratitude, everyone knows that gifts will follow the circle of reciprocity and flow back to you again. This time you give and next time your receive. Both the honour of giving and the humility of receiving are necessary halves of the equation. The grass in the ring is trodden down in a path from gratitude to reciprocity. We dance in a circle, not in a line… We are all bound by a covenant of reciprocity: plant breath for animal breath, winter and summer, predator and prey, grass and fire, night and day, living and dying. Water knows this, clouds know this. Soil and rocks know they are dancing in a continuous giveaway of making, unmaking, and making again the earth… The moral covenant of reciprocity calls us to honour our responsibilities for all we have been given, for all that we have taken… Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice, and vision all offered up on behalf of the earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world. In return for the privilege of breath.”

From Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Professor of Environmental Biology and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation

“Our culture often frowns on crying, seeing it as weakness or a loss of control. But tears, like all water, cleanse and purify. When our faces are wet with tears we have been baptized in a way – a natural baptism, sometimes performed for us without our even asking. And our tears also contain the salt of the ocean. In a time of sadness, our bodies will not let us forget our ancient origins. Let tears flow when they must – they are the touch of the great mother, from whom we all sprang when the world was young.”

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

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.”

Rabindranath Tagore, died on this day in 1941

“As we solemnly mark today’s anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, it is heartening to note that the most enduring symbol of healing is a symbol from nature. Centuries ago, Japanese civilization began venerating the crane, and the image of thousands of cranes became common in artwork. The crane was known for long life, and origami cranes became a gift to wish each other health and well-being.

Some cultures also believe that cranes pray every morning. Perhaps whenever we focus on nature, we are praying as well. Prayer is intentionality and resolve, strengthened when its roots run deep in the earth.”

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

“Man cannot long separate himself from nature without withering as a cut rose in a vase. One of the deceptive aspects of mind in man is to give him the illusion of being distinct from and over against but not a part of nature. It is but a single leap thus to regard nature as being so completely other than himself that he may exploit it, plunder it, and rape it with impunity..

This we see all around us in the modern world. Our atmosphere is polluted, our streams are poisoned, our hills are denuded, wild life is increasingly exterminated, while more and more man becomes an alien on the earth and fouler of his own nest. The price that is being exacted for this is a deep sense of isolation, of being rootless and a vagabond. Often I have surmised that this condition is more responsible for what seems to be the phenomenal increase in mental and emotional disturbances in modern life than the pressures – economic, social and political – that abound on every hand. The collective psyche shrieks with the agony that it feels as a part of the death cry of a pillaged nature.”

Theologian, mystic, and civil rights leader Howard Thurman (1899 – 1981)

“Where there is justice, there is love. And sometimes, where there is love, there is justice.”

From the Zohar (masterpiece of Kabbalah), first printed on this day in 1558

“The cave and rock paintings of the ancient world depict bison, mammoth, horse, and deer, all of which have a powerful presence not found in domesticated animals. These wild creatures who prefigure a primal world of nature are figurative of more than meat and hide: they hold and mediate spiritual powers greater than the present consumerist mentality can evoke. The spirits of animals open gateways to deeper worlds of understanding, shared worlds in which people and animals learned from each other.

We do not know what rituals attended the painting of these creatures in ancient times, but looking at comparable cultures extant today, we can see that among the aboriginal Australians, for example, the rock and cave paintings are retraced by subsequent generations. This is a method of honouring and reconnecting with spiritual presences drawn by ancestors.

The power to re-evoke the spirits of animals with whom we once shared our world more equitably is still with us, if we will set aside the time and space. Retreating to our own dark cave, lit only by the torch of our willing understanding, we come again to the ritual kindling of spiritual vision wherein the animal powers speak to us, creature to creature, in the dance of life.”

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