“For myself, solitude is rather like a folded-up forest that I carry with me everywhere and unfurl around myself when I have need…

Solitude is not an absence of energy or action, as some believe, but is rather a boon of wild provisions transmitted to us from the soul. In ancient times, purposeful solitude was both palliative and preventative. It was used to heal fatigue and to prevent weariness. It was also used as an oracle, as a way of listening to the inner self to solicit advice and guidance otherwise impossible to hear in the din of daily life.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Artwork: Forest Solitude, 1879, by Eduard Leonhardi

I.
“We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:—

II.
Or like forgotten lyres whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

III.
We rest—a dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise—one wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep,
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:—

V.
It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free;
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.”

Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822), born on this day

“It is pointless to deny the diversity of the world. Each nation, religion and social group will have its own culture, viewpoint and focus. While at times this diversity may seem to create obstacles to peace and harmony, if we go deeper and embrace the noblest human values, we will see that the very beauty of the world lies in this diversity. Isn’t a bouquet made from a variety of flowers more beautiful than a bouquet of just one kind?”

Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, known as Amma

“And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver (1938 – 1988), short story writer and poet, written when he was dying from lung cancer, and inscribed on his tombstone, died on this day

Lammas / Lughnasadh

“Lammas is the seasonal peak of high summer, and as with all Cross Quarter festivals, it represents a change in the manifest energy. Summer feels as if it will last forever, but now we begin to see the first signs of change and transformation. In the fields the cereal crops have turned from green to gold and are gathered in. The first fruits, nuts and seeds are ripening and we must think about what we wish to gather in, such as seeds and plant medicines that will see us through the winter. This is a time to make the most of the fine long days, travel about, have adventures and walk the land.

Here we begin to assimilate and gather in our own harvest, the first fruits of our active phase now manifest in the outer world – the harvest of our hearts’ desires, and the fruits of our labours. This is a period of assessment as we begin to gather ourselves together again after much scattering of energy. This is often a holiday period, and gives us time to take a reflective look at ourselves. In the spring we planted the seeds of our hopes, our dreams and ourselves. Some things may have manifested and some not. The Lammas assessment helps us to have a deeper understanding of our actions and our selves at this point in time.

At Lammas we count our blessings and give thanks for all that we are harvesting. Being aware of them will help us to see ways to take them forwards into the next part of the cycle.”

From Sacred Earth Celebrations by Glennie Kindred

“Full round apple, peach, pear, blackberry.
Each speaks life and death
into the mouth. Look
at the face of the child eating them.

The tastes come from afar
and slowly grow nameless on the tongue.
Where there were words, discoveries flow,
released from within the fruit.

What we call apple – dare to say what it is,
this sweetness which first condensed itself
so that, in the tasting, it may burst forth

and be known in all its meanings
of sun and earth and here.
How immense, the act and the pleasure of it.”

Sonnets to Orpheus I, 13 by Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in A Year with Rilke by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

“I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense.”

From the 1896 journal of Beatrix Potter (1866 – 1943), writer, artist and Unitarian, born on this day

International Day of Friendship

“A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.”

Saint Basil (330 – 379)

“You are not the oil, you are not the air — merely the point of combustion, the flash-point where the light is born. You are merely the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency — your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end and remain purely as a means.”

From Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld (1905 – 1961), UN Secretary-General and Unitarian, born on this day

“I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense.”

From the 1896 journal of Beatrix Potter (1866 – 1943), writer, artist and Unitarian, born on this day