“Oceans embrace a continent.
Space welcomes the sun.
Embrace yourself this generously.

Form your arms into a circle
And cherish the arising of serenity.

Attend the birth of something new.
Thoughts dissolve into peace.
As you become the One who embraces All.”

Lorin Roche, The Radiance Sutras (translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra)

“We are finite and infinite at the same time. We are like waves in the ocean; the wave is the ocean and yet not the ocean. There is not any part of the wave of which you cannot say, “It is the ocean.” The name “ocean” applies to the wave and equally to every other part of the ocean, and yet it is separate from the ocean. So in this infinite ocean of existence we are like wavelets. At the same time, when we want really to grasp ourselves, we cannot — we have become the infinite.”

Swami Vivekananda, born on this day in 1863

“Know first who you are and what you are capable of…
We are always learning, always growing. It is right to accept challenges. This is when we progress to the next level of intellectual, physical, or moral development. Still, do not deceive yourself: if you try to be something or someone you are not, you belittle your true self and end up not developing in those areas that you would have excelled in quite naturally. Within the divine order we each have our own special calling. Listen to yours, and follow it faithfully.”

Epictetus (55 – 135 CE), Greek Stoic philosopher

The Sacredness of Ordinary Life by Father Daniel O’Leary,

“God is always incarnate,
always just below the surface
of our daily lives.

Every moment of every authentic experience
carries the felt message for us
of divine grace.

God is the energy
that sustains all our human happenings
and emotions.

To become more aware of God’s earthy,
hidden dynamicall around us,
we need to
Look more intensely,
Think more imaginatively,
See more deeply,
Feel more attentively,
Love more freely.

Ordinary life
is very sacred indeed.”

“The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project.”

Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex, born on this day in 1908

“To be humane, we must ever be ready to pronounce that wise, ingenious and modest statement ‘I do not know’.”

Galileo Galilei, who discovered Io, Europa and Ganymede, moons of Jupiter, on this day in 1610

For Those Who Have Far to Travel: An Epiphany Blessing by Jan Richardson,

“If you could see the journey whole,
you might never undertake it,
might never dare the first step that propels you
from the place you have known
toward the place you know not.
Call it one of the mercies of the road:
that we see it only by stages as it opens before us,
as it comes into our keeping,
step by single step.
There is nothing for it but to go,
and by our going take the vows the pilgrim takes:
to be faithful to the next step;
to rely on more than the map;
to heed the signposts of intuition and dream;
to follow the star that only you will recognize;
to keep an open eye
for the wonders that attend the path;
to press on beyond distractions,
beyond fatigue,
beyond what would tempt you from the way.
There are vows that only you will know:
the secret promises for your particular path
and the new ones you will need to make
when the road is revealed
by turns you could not have foreseen.
Keep them, break them, make them again;
each promise becomes part of the path,
each choice creates the road that will take you
to the place where at last you will kneel
to offer the gift most needed—
the gift that only you can give—
before turning to go home by another way.”

The Winter Woods by Parker J Palmer,

“The winter woods beside a solemn
river are twice seen—
once as they pierce the brittle air,
once as they dance in grace beneath the stream.

In air these trees stand rough and raw,
branch angular in stark design—
in water shimmer constantly,
disconnect as in a dream,
shadowy but more alive
than what stands stiff and cold before our eyes.

Our eyes at peace are solemn streams
and twice the world itself is seen—
once as it is outside our heads,
hard frozen now and winter-dead,
once as it undulates and shines
beneath the silent waters of our minds.

When rivers churn or cloud with ice
the world is not seen twice—
yet still is there beneath
the blinded surface of the stream,
livelier and lovelier than we can comprehend
and waiting, always waiting, to be seen.”

“Blessing Our World Now

Sometimes when we look out, the world seems so dark. War, violence, hunger and misery seem to abound. This makes us anxious and helpless. What can I do in my private little corner of life that could have any effect on the march of world events? The usual answer is: nothing. We then decide to do what we can for our own, and leave the great events to their domain. Thus, we opt out, and join the largest majority in the world: those who acquiesce. Believing ourselves to be helpless, we hand over all our power to forces and systems outside us that then act in our names; they go on to put their beliefs into action; and ironically, these actions are often sinister and destructive. We live in times when the call to full and critically aware citizenship could not be more urgent. We need to rediscover the careless courage, yet devastating simplicity, of the little boy who in the middle of the numbed multitude, in naive Socratic fashion, blurts out: ‘But the emperor has no clothes.’ When spoken, the word of truth can bring down citadels of falsity.

Real presence is the ideal of all true individuation. When we yield to helplessness, we strengthen the hand of those who would destroy. When we choose indifference, we betray our world. Yet the world is not decided by action alone. It is decided more by consciousness and spirit; they are the secret sources of all action and behaviour. The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force-field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself towards transformation.”

From Benedictus by John O’Donohue, who died on this day in 2008

“Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, born on this day in 1892