Summer Solstice

“Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone –
and how it slides again
out of blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance –
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love –
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed –
or have you too
turned from this world –
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?”

Mary Oliver

World Refugee Day

“no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city
running as well.
your neighbours running faster
than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind
the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay…
you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.
who would choose to spend days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
unless the miles travelled
meant something more than journey.
no one would choose to crawl under fences,
be beaten until your shadow leaves you..
be pitied, lose your name, lose your family,
make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
with go home blacks, refugees
dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
sucking our country dry of milk,
dark, with their hands out
smell strange, savage –
look what they’ve done to their own countries,
what will they do to ours?
the dirty looks in the street
softer than a limb torn off…
insults easier to swallow
than rubble, than your child’s body
in pieces – for now, forget about pride
your survival is more important.
i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home tells you to
leave what you could not behind,
even if it was human.
no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don’t know what
i’ve become.
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here.”

Warsan Shire (Somali poet born 1988)

“Life is what you make it.. Never waste time and energy wishing you were somewhere else, doing something else. You may not always understand why find yourself where you are, but you may be sure there is a very good reason and that there is a lesson to be learnt. Do not fight against it, but find out what that lesson is and learn it quickly so that you can move on.. As you cease resisting and simply accept the lessons to be learnt, taking them all in your stride, you will find life much easier and, what is more, you will enjoy the changes that take place. A plant does not resist growth or change; it simply flows with it and unfolds in true perfection. Why don’t you do the same?”

Eileen Caddy (1907 – 2006), one of the founders of the Findhorn Foundation

International Day for countering hate speech

“We have begged for peace around the world.
We have fought for peace around the world.
We have contributed funds to peace around the world.
We have given great speeches for peace around the world.
Yet we have failed to make peace with our husbands and wives, our children, and our neighbours.
It is not enough to proclaim peace to the end of the earth.
Unless a man can make peace with those nearest to him, he has not found religion. May we find religion in our daily living.”

Philip Larson (1919 – 1996), Unitarian Universalist

World Day to combat desertification and drought

“I want the future to extend before me like the horizon
widening as I walk. I want the blue sierra that I planted
squatting over the child in my womb
to grow into a thick tangled hedge
rich with blossoms and bees buzzing like crazy.
I want the smell to make someone’s great great
grandchildren
dizzy.

Imagine that we are all born
with the gift of time.”

Ellen Bass

“Before there was a trace of this world of men,
I carried a memory of a lock of your hair,
A stray end gathered within me, though unknown.
Inside that invisible realm,
Your face like the sun longed to be seen,
Until each separate object was finally flung into light.
From the moment of Time’s first-drawn breath,
Love resides in us,
A treasure locked into the heart’s hidden vault;
Before the first seed broke open the rose bed of Being,
An inner lark soared through your meadows,
Heading towards Home.
What can I do but thank you, one hundred times?
Your face has illumined the shrine of Hayati’s eyes,
Constantly present and lovely.”

Bibi Hayati (19th century Persian Sufi poet)

“To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.”

Magna Carta clause 40, signed on this day in 1215 at Runnymede (pictured)

“Half the misery in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly and in a spirit of love.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, born on this day in 1811

“Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower,
but is already there, in relaxation and letting go.

Don’t strain yourself, there is nothing to do.
Whatever arises in the mind has no importance at all,
because it has no reality whatsoever.
Don’t become attached to it.
Don’t pass judgement.

Let the game happen on its own, springing and falling back
without changing anything –
and all will vanish and reappear, without end.

Only our search for happiness prevents us from seeing it.
It is like a rainbow
which you run after without ever catching it.
Although it does not exist,
it has always been there and accompanies you every instant..

Waiting to grasp the ungraspable, you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as your relax this grasping, space is there
open, inviting, and comfortable..

All is yours already.
Don’t search any further..

Nothing to do,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and everything happens by itself.”

Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche (1918 – 1997)

“How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful.”

Anne Frank, born on this day in 1929