“Precisely what does it mean to experience oneself as a human being? In the first place, it means that the individual must have a sense of kinship to life that transcends and goes beyond the immediate kinship of family or the organized kinship that binds him ethnically or racially or nationally. He has to feel that he belongs to his total environment. He has a sense of being an essential part of the structural relationship that exists between him and all other men and between him, all other men, and the total external environment. As a human being, then, he belongs to life and the whole kingdom of life that includes all that lives, and perhaps, also, all that has ever lived. In other words, he seems himself as a part of a continuing breathing, living existence. To be a human being, then, is to be essentially alive in a living world.”
“All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. . . . Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.”
Beatrix Potter, Unitarian writer, born on this day in 1866
“Enlightenment is to stay as you are. Stay as you are without such labels as “I am enlightened”, “I am a free man”, “I am a sage”, “I am a monk”, or “I am a saint”. Simply, don’t give yourself any label. When you get rid of all labels, that which remains is called “freedom” or “enlightenment”. When you give yourself a label you become “someone”. When you have removed all “becomings” and return to conscious being, this is enlightenment. But the word “enlightenment” is also just a concept. In being there is no darkness at all. Only when there is darkness do you need a candle. But here, in being, there is no darkness, so there is no need for any candle to bring forth any light. Only when you become “someone” do you need a light.”
“To our indigenous ancestors, and to the many aboriginal peoples who still hold fast to their oral traditions, language is less a human possession than it is a property of the animate earth itself, an expressive, telluric power in which we, along with the coyotes and the crickets, all participate. Each creature enacts this expressive magic in its own manner, the honeybee with its waggle dance no less than a bellicose, harrumphing sea lion. Nor is this power restricted solely to animals. The whispered hush of the uncut grasses at dawn, the plaintive moan of trunks rubbing against one another in the deep woods, or the laughter of birch leaves as the wind gusts through their branches all bear a thicket of many-layered meanings for those who listen carefully. In the Pacific Northwest I met a man who had schooled himself in the speech of needled evergreens; on a breezy day you could drive him, blindfolded, to any patch of coastal forest and place him, still blind, beneath a particular tree — after a few moments he would tell you, by listening, just what species of pine or spruce or fir stood above him (whether he stood beneath a Douglas fir or a grand fir, a Sitka spruce or a western red cedar). His ears were attuned, he said, to the different dialects of the trees.”
From Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram
“I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. I have tried this experiment a thousand times and I have never been disappointed. The more I look at a thing, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I want to see. It is like peeling an onion. There is always another layer, and another, and another. And each layer is more beautiful than the last. This is the way I look at the world. I don’t see it as a collection of objects, but as a vast and mysterious organism. I see the beauty in the smallest things, and I find wonder in the most ordinary events. I am always looking for the hidden meaning, the secret message. I am always trying to understand the mystery of life. I know that I will never understand everything, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I am content to live in the mystery, to be surrounded by the unknown. I am content to be a seeker, a pilgrim, a traveller on the road to nowhere.”
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”
“My prayer wheel is the turning year, the sun my confessor, my priestess the moon. My daily offices are morning mist, evening swallows, hush of midnight. My scripture, white clouds on blue emptiness; pictograms of geese, pointing South. I gave up theology to watch the bees make honey. My anointing is the mud between my toes. The barefoot poet, Jesus, taught me to mulch and till the heavens into loam. His Spirit is a quietness in my heart. Hope gets in the way; the source is gratitude. Through vaulted arches of hemlock and cedar, a thrush bell calls me to prayer. May the pilgrim melt into her path, the path into the goal, the goal into this moment, and the very first step into Waylessness.”
“O my Beloved, You have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You discern my innermost thoughts. You find me on the journey and guide my steps; You know my strengths and weaknesses. Even before words rise up in prayer, Lo, You have already heard my heart call. You encompass me with love where’er I go, and your strength is my shield. Such sensitivity is too wonderful for me; it is high; boundless gratitude is my soul’s response. Where could I go from your Spirit? Or how could I flee from your Presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in darkness, You are there! If I soar on the wings of the morning or dwell in the deepest parts of the sea, Even there your Hand will lead me, and your Love will embrace me. If I say, “Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night,” Even the darkness is not dark to You, the night dazzles as with the sun; the darkness is as light with You.
For You formed my inward being, You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for You and are to be reverenced and adored. Your mysteries fill me with wonder! More than I know myself do You know me; my essence was not hidden for You, When I was being formed in secret, intricately fashioned from the elements of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance; in your records were written every one of them, The days that were numbered for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your creations, O Blessed One! How vast is the sum of them! Who could count your innumerable gifts and blessings? At all times, You are with me.
O that You would vanquish my fears, Beloved; O that ignorance and suffering would depart from me – My ego separates me from true abandonment, to surrendering myself into your Hands! Yet are these not the very thorns that focus my thoughts upon You? Will I always need reminders to turn my face to You? I yearn to come to You in love, to learn of your mercy and wisdom!
Search me, O my Beloved, and know my heart! Try me and discern my thoughts! Help me to face the darkness within me; enlighten me, that I might radiate your Love and Light!
Psalm 139 from Psalms for Praying by Nan C. Merrill
“Just as one sucks the juice from the sugarcane and spits out the stalk, the religious leaders should encourage their followers to imbibe the essence of religion—which is spirituality—and not give over-importance to the external aspects…
May the tree of our life be firmly rooted in the soil of love. Let good deeds be the leaves on that tree; May words of kindness form its flowers; May peace be its fruit. Let us grow and unfold as one family, united in love.”
“What do you say, Percy? I am thinking of sitting out on the sand to watch the moon rise. It’s full tonight. So we go and the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me shudder, makes me think about time and space, makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven. Thus we sit, myself thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile, leans against me and gazes up into my face. As though I were just as wonderful as the perfect moon.”
Chorlton Unitarians 