“You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that.”

From Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl (1916 – 1990), born on this day

“I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark of a stone, a flickering

in metal. Both candle,
and the moth crazy around it.

Rose, and the nightingale
lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,

and the falling away. What is,
and what isn’t. You who know
Jelaluddin, You the one
in all, say who

I am. Say I
am You.”

Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273)

“Spirituality emerged as a fundamental guidepost in Wholeheartedness. Not religiosity but the deeply held belief that we are inextricably connected to one another by a force greater than ourselves–a force grounded in love and compassion. For some of us that’s God, for others it’s nature, art, or even human soulfulness. I believe that owning our worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred. Perhaps embracing vulnerability and overcoming numbing is ultimately about the care and feeding of our spirits.”

Brené Brown, research professor and writer

“Perhaps this is the deepest impression left by life in India, the sense of the sacred as something pervading the whole order of nature. Every hill and tree and river is holy, and the simplest human acts of eating and drinking, still more of birth and marriage, have all retained their sacred character… In the West everything has been “profane”; it has been deliberately emptied of religious meaning… It is there that the West needs to learn from the East the sense of the “holy,” of a transcendent mystery which is immanent in everything and which gives an ultimate meaning to life… Then everything is sacred. That is what one finds in India; everything is sacred – eating or drinking or taking a bath; in any of the normal events in life there is always a sacred action… We have lost that awareness… this sacramentality of the universe. The whole creation is pervaded by God.”

Bede Griffiths, aka Swami Dayananda (1906 – 1993), monk and yogi, quoted in Christian Mystics by Matthew Fox

“Animism is the way humanity has been deeply connected to the land and its seasonal cycles for millennia, in rapport and conversation with the animals, plants, elements, ancestors and earth spirits. The opposite of animism is the “cult of the individual” so celebrated in modern society, and the loss of the animist worldview is at the root of our spiritual disconnect and looming ecological crisis. Human beings are just one strand woven into the complex systems of Earth Community, and the animistic perspective is fundamental to the paradigm shift, and the recovery of our own ancestral wisdom.”

Pegi Eyers, curator, visual artist and writer

“Perhaps this is the deepest impression left by life in India, the sense of the sacred as something pervading the whole order of nature. Every hill and tree and river is holy, and the simplest human acts of eating and drinking, still more of birth and marriage, have all retained their sacred character… In the West everything has been “profane”; it has been deliberately emptied of religious meaning… It is there that the West needs to learn from the East the sense of the “holy,” of a transcendent mystery which is immanent in everything and which gives an ultimate meaning to life… Then everything is sacred. That is what one finds in India; everything is sacred – eating or drinking or taking a bath; in any of the normal events in life there is always a sacred action… We have lost that awareness… this sacramentality of the universe. The whole creation is pervaded by God.”

Bede Griffiths, aka Swami Dayananda (1906 – 1993), monk and yogi, quoted in Christian Mystics by Matthew Fox

“The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and unerringly a new revelation can enter us, and the more we can make it our own. Later on when it “happens” – when it manifests in our response to another person – we will feel it as belonging to our innermost being.”

From Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in A Year with Rilke by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

“Over the infinity of space and time, the infinitely more infinite love of God comes to possess us. He comes at his own time. We have the power to consent to receive him or to refuse. If we remain deaf, he comes back again and again like a beggar, but also, like a beggar, one day he stops coming. If we consent, God puts a little seed in us and he goes away again. From that moment God has no more to do; neither have we, except to wait. … On the whole, however, the seed grows itself. A day comes when the soul belongs to God. When it not only consents to love but when truly and effectively it loves. Then in turn it must cross the universe to go to God.”

Simone Weil (1909 – 1943), French philosopher, mystic and political activist, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection

“What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them.”

Jane Addams, pioneer social worker, women’s suffrage campaigner and pacifist (1860 – 1935), born on this day

International Day of Charity

“When our left hand is injured, our right hand immediately comes to its aid—to caress it and apply medicine if needed. This is because it does not see the left hand as different from itself. If we have spiritual understanding, this is how we will react when we see others suffering.”

Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, known as Amma