“To bring about change, you must not be afraid to take the first step. We will fail when we fail to try.”

Rosa Parks, civil rights activist, born on this day in 1913

“How ought we to live in the world?
Do all your duties, but keep your mind on God.
Live with all – with spouse and children, father and mother – and serve them.
Treat them as if they were very dear to you, but know in your heart of hearts that they do not belong to you.”

Sri Ramakrishna (1836 – 1886)

“An Irish triad tells us that of the three candles that illumine every darkness: truth, nature and knowledge. Nature is our guide to the common law; knowledge is our guide to the reservoir of received law; but truth must be the discriminating force by which everyone illumines dark places.”
Caitlin Matthews

“Winter had settled over me,

The frost sealing my eyes, my mouth;
My bones as ice,
Stilled
Beneath frozen water.

You came
And planted your sun like a seed in me,
Warm,
Precious,
Pearl of light,
And my being became the song of snow-melt,
A river-burst of birdsong
Rising.

At your touch my body is a garden
Of snowdrops;
This tender blooming
The greening of my soul.”

Maria Ede-Weaving

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, interfaith writer and mystic, born on this day in 1915

“It is the action, not the fruit of the action, that is important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there will be fruit, but that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”

Mahatma Gandhi, assassinated on this day in 1948

“The ultimate objective of spirituality is not to remove the existence of evil or humanity’s negative traits. Instead, we must confront and transform these dark forces, for it is only through the struggle of transformation that we ignite the spark of divinity within us.”

The Zohar (Jewish mystical text published in 13th century Spain)

“The secret of success is… to be fully awake to everything about you.”

Painter Jackson Pollock, born on this day in 1912

Holocaust Memorial Day – survivor Susan Pollack MBE (born Zsuzsanna Blau in 1930), reflects on her experience in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. You may find this testimony distressing.

“Once I entered the camp all of my faculties, emotions, fears and hopes diminished. I was dehumanised, and in a different world. I had entered a place that was unknown to anything I could imagine. My emotions seized up and the experience shut me down, and shut me off from the world. I survived by behaving as a robot…

With the Allies advancing, the prisoners were forced on a death march to Bergen-Belsen. On 15 April 1945 I was liberated by the British army. I crawled towards my liberators, unable to walk and close to death. I was hospitalised for tuberculosis, typhoid and severe malnutrition, and was sent to Sweden to recover. I was left with nothing – no family, no education, no money, and only speaking Hungarian.

After liberation, I found that [my brother] Laci was the only member of my family to have survived: more than 50 of my relatives had been killed during the Holocaust… During his time at Auschwitz-Birkenau he had been forced to work in the Sonderkommando, moving bodies from the gas chamber to the ovens. He suffered with mental health problems caused by this experience until his death in 1995.

After the war, I lived in Sweden before moving to Canada, where I met and married a fellow survivor. Together we had three children and six grandchildren.

How do you get over such an experience? Is it possible to walk away and learn to live with all of this? How do you find the strength? Life is precious – you can go in one of two ways – up or down. I chose to walk away and rebuild my life. There was no revenge, and no justice.

In my case I think I rebuilt my self-esteem through the joy of having children and building a family. I also chose to exercise my free will. I find that trying to make a positive contribution to society, such as through volunteering, helps greatly. I now live in London and continue to share my testimony in schools across the country.”

“You’re the Creator.
You’re the Sustainer.
You’re the Destroyer of all.
You’re my lover.
You’re my partner.
You’re my teacher of all.
I bow to you.

You’re the earth from which all things grow.
You’re the water, the eternal flow.
You’re the fire that glows on and on.
You’re the air I breathe in for this song.
I bow to you.

You’re the sweetness that embraces me.
You’re the all-pervading truth and beauty.
You’re the infinite love, bestower of grace.
You’re the compassion, the healing space.
I bow to you.”

From the song Bow to You by Ananda Yogiji and Jaya Lakshmi