Feast of Saint Melangell, patron saint of hares

“Melangell sails the Irish sea
to the wilds of Wales,
flees a marriage and seeks time
alone among a storm of hawthorn,
feeds on hazelnuts and dandelions,
gathers lady’s mantle each morning
to sip their dew, plunges her hands
in the river, freezing and fresh,
sleeps on moss in the cave-close stone,
delights at birdsong, seeks
the sacred in hunger and rain.
One warm day, her quiet disrupted,
hot breath of men and hounds
approach, jaws wide.
Teeth gleam, foam sputters,
tails swish as they scrabble
for a hare with brown legs
bounding, a great roar of wet fur
and whiskers –
the hare leaps
into the folds of Melangell’s cloak.
Defiant stands the saint,
draws a circle around herself.
Dogs and men can go no further.
Melangell strokes the hare’s ears,
soothes his clanging heart,
whispers “you are safe now”
as howls recede on the wind
and the valley becomes sanctuary.
You can still glimpse it
on sun-sparkled days when bluebells
sway and oak leaves rustle
from squirrel-scurry-scamper
and you take the soft hare
of your life into your arms,
whisper into those long ears
blessings all down her trembling
length and remind her that
she too no longer needs to run.”

Christine Valters-Paintner

“Master of the Universe, grant me the ability to be alone. May it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grass, among all growing things. And there may I be alone in prayer, to talk with my Creator, to express everything in my heart. And may all the foliage of the field awake at my coming, to send the power of their life into the words of my prayer, so that my prayer and speech are made whole through the spirit of all growing things.”

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well…

Do not follow where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and make a trail.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher, poet, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist, born on this day in 1803

“Sometimes, constellations land into our veins,
illuminating their branching networks with ancient starfire.
Stop long enough for a ray of golden light
to slant through trees and trick you out of your skin.
Stay long enough for this love to catch you up.
When it finally does, turn your face to beauty and
surrender to your own weeping.
When that happens, the human skin slides off
as a luminescence lights up cascades of scales, fur,
claws, beating wings, soaring flight, slithering belly.
All that’s needed is a slant of sunlight through trees,
a subtle change in the trickling stream-flow,
to trick a human out of her familiarity,
to land even momentarily into an entirely different realm.
When that happens, nothing is ever the same again.”

Catherine Pawson

“Every relation, every gradation of nature is incalculably precious, but only to the soul which is poised upon itself, and to whom no loss, no change, can bring dull discord, for it is in harmony with the central soul…

Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual fervent means to their fulfilment.”

Margaret Fuller, Unitarian, Transcendentalist, and women’s rights activist, born on this day in 1810

International Day for Biodiversity

“On certain afternoons
the radiance of things
just as they are, requires
no politics, no ideology.
First it rains,
then the sun comes out,
the warming and cooling
of the globe, the rising
and falling of my diaphragm.
Both Winter and Summer
I am free, no more important
than a morning glory.
Most of my DNA
I share with a mouse,
infinitude with gnats.
Endangered herds stampeding
through earth’s wounded valleys
I gather into my marrow,
protecting vast swaths of rain forest
with a single breath.
I’m certain that a weed
in its stillness is awake,
a blossoming forget-me-not.
Rooted in listening, I also flower
with no seed of thought.
The loam is my Being.
Wonder is the incense of my heart.
May my fragrance expand
beyond all gardens.
Come, you lovers of late Spring,
the gates are never closed.
The rain-disheveled azalea
will not begrudge your insouciance,
nor the rose your burning fingers.
Let each dare to whisper
in your own tongue,
“Smell me, I am wild!””

Fred Lamotte

“All gifts of nature and of grace have been given us on loan. Their ownership is not ours, but God’s.. Treat all things as if they were loaned to you without any ownership – whether body or soul, sense or strength, external goods or honours, friends or relations, house or hall, everything. For if I want to possess the property I have instead of receive it on loan, then I want to be a master.”

Meister Eckhart

The Last Bee by Brian Bilston – a poem for World Bee Day

“After the last ee
had uzzed its last uzz,
the irds and the utterflies
did what they could.
ut soon the fields lay are,
few flowers were left,
nature was roken,
and the planet ereft.”

Thought for the day, Friday 19th May

“We have no word except kindness for the love that we use every day. Kindness is a courtesy that we owe to all, an act of inclusion that notices the human condition and its needs, however rushed we may be. But kindness is not a custom that comes naturally. Concern, politeness, attention – all these have to be noticed and learned as we grow up.

Those who are most often with us can become so much a part of the furniture, so much an extension of our life and household, that we often forget the basic courtesies of kindness, treating them with the same kind of forgetfulness that we may have for ourselves. This may trigger the revelation that we have little self-respect, only a cold contempt that arises from a deep personal unworthiness. If we feel that we stand beyond the inclusive circle of regard, we will not be capable of generating much kindness toward others.

Loving-kindness is not innate. It has to be practised with everyone we meet, friend or stranger. The obligation of humanity is to give respect to those to whom it is due; each of us, though, has someone who stands outside that circle, someone whom we exclude as unworthy, some group or association that we feel does not merit our kindness or attention, never mind our love.

Whom do you include within your circle of kindness? Whom do you exclude? Where is respect due to yourself; where do you stand in the circle?”

Caitlin Matthews

“Iba’che NaNa, Womb of Creation,
She Who Gave Birth to All Things,
From your dark depths the first spark came into Being.
Your luminous Egg exploded in the midst of eternal night,
is joyous dance formed the great lights.

You Who Gave Us Sun and Moon, Earth and Sky, Body and Spirit,
Awaken from your sleep, Deep Night.
Lift your eyelids and see our plight.
The children of Earth are in need of your guidance;
they await the feel of your hand.
They roll their eyes in great suspicion,
in anger and fear they strike out.
Their hearts are hard, their hands are trembling.
Amidst the rubble of war, they cry out.

Hear me Great Mother, hear your daughter.
Open your starlit thighs. Draw us back into you.
Mix us, stir us, roll and squeeze;
mold our heads,
pat our behinds.
Change us, every cell and spirit ’til Peace possesses our minds.
Blow your perfumed breath upon us,
wash us in the deep blue sea.
Suckle us on milk and honey,
oil us with the balm of love.

Return us then to this green garden,
Oh Beautiful, Generous Mother,
but this time
give us also the wisdom to see your reflection in each other.”

Luisah Teish