“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.”

Mātā Amritanandamayī Devi

INTERNATIONAL MOON DAY

“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.”

From Dog Songs by Mary Oliver

“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.”

Nelson Mandela, born on this day in 1918

“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

“Life is a gift which we have not earned and for which we cannot pay. There is no necessity that there be a universe, no inevitability about a world moving towards life and then self-awareness. There might have been … nothing at all. Since we have not earned J. S. Bach – or friends or crocuses – the best we can do is to express our gratitude for the undeserved gifts, and do our share of the work of creation.”

Robert R. Walsh (1937 – 2016), Unitarian Universalist minister, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison… If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible…

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.”

Henry David Thoreau, Transcendentalist Unitarian writer, born on this day in 1817, who was imprisoned briefly for refusing to pay his poll tax as a protest against slavery.