“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.”
“The manifold delight I learn to take in earthly things can never drive me from my love. For, in the nobility of creatures, in their beauty and in their usefulness, I will love God…
This is why I bless God in my heart without ceasing for every earthly thing. And this is why God gave us a mouth – to praise God with inconceivable praise in common with all creatures with all our doings at all times…
The truly wise person kneels at the feet of all creatures and is not afraid to endure the mockery of others.”
Mechthild of Magdeburg, 13th Century German mystic
“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
“Make it your daily discipline to lay aside one little thing, a tiny fear, a simple preconception, a useless book, a piece of household clutter, a habit of avoidance, a bit of shame or guilt, a desire that distracts, even a good intention. What will be left is Life itself.”
From The Sage’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for the Second Half of Life by William Martin
“Nothing can live in Love, and nothing can touch her except desire. The most secret name of Love is this touch, and this mode of working rises from Love itself. For Love is incessantly desiring, touching, and feeding on herself, while remaining totally perfect in herself.
Love can live in all things. Love can live in charity towards others: charity cannot live in Love. Mercy cannot live in Love, nor can graciousness, nor humility, nor reason, nor fear. Nor can meanness, nor balance. Nothing lives in Love. Yet Love lives in all these, and they are fed on Love. Love is fed by nothing but her own fullness.”
Hadewijch of Antwerp (13th century poet and mystic)
“These days schoolchildren all learn about continental drift. One only has to look at a globe for half a minute to understand this theory, to see how South America might fit inside Africa’s curve, how Australia might have nestled next to India.
But geophysicists are creating theories even more dramatic. The theory of the supercontinent cycle argues that the breakup of a supercontinent into many smaller masses wasn’t a one-time thing. Instead, this theory advances the unsettling notion that the planet’s land masses keep joining and then separating. Perhaps, hundreds of millennia from now, the continents will merge again to form one giant territory.
Clearly stubbornness can always be overcome; no matter how intractable a situation may appear, over the long haul even the continents themselves shift their positions.”
From Earth Bound: Daily Meditations for All Seasons by Brian Nelson
“The Celtic peoples held birds in high esteem, as the mouthpieces of Spirit. Their flight and calls were widely used in divination. The term “language of the birds” is used to mean the secret knowledge that runs beneath the web of words; it implies an almost magical intelligence that does not depend upon the help of any kind of human communication system. It is innate, subtle, coded knowledge that we can somehow understand.
The idea of the unchanging song of the birds singing in our ears as well as the ears of our ancestors conjures a potent image of the continuation of life – an inheritance so subtle that we must immerse ourselves in the sound of bird-call in order to enter its richness. The oracular calling of birds speaks directly to our hearts, bypassing our minds; it is a mode of divination that both we and our ancestors had to learn – an unchanging language of meaning.
The little songbirds who make the sweetest song, the crows and ravens whose raucous call is the most vocal. The estuary and marsh birds with their lonesome sound, the hawks and owls shrieking and signalling – all have their own language and special symbolism, essential elements of our living world.
If we wish to understand the flight and calling of birds, we must listen, near dawn or in the late afternoon, to their song; and listening, enter a place of stillness within in order to comprehend their message to us.”
From The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year by Caitlin Matthews
Chorlton Unitarians 