“O God, you have given us a beautiful earth—
Grant us the wisdom to use it well.
Lead us to an inner life in which we can rejoice.
Speak peace to us, that we may live in peace.
May your mercy and truth meet together
Righteousness and peace kiss each other,
Surrounding us with your light.
Help us know true prosperity,
And be gentle with your Earth.
Guide our feet in the ways of peace.”

Psalm 85 Peace by Christine Robinson

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.”

Letter to Fanny Bowditch, 22 October 1916, by Carl Jung (1875 – 1961), founder of analytical psychology, born on this day

“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and death, in ebb and flow.. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.”

Rabindranath Tagore

“A rabbi asked his students, “How do you know that night has ended and the day is returning?”
One answered, “Is it when you see an animal in the distance and can tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?”
“No,” the rabbi replied.
Another asked, “Is it when you look at a tree in the distance and can tell whether it is a fig or an olive tree?”
“No,” replied the rabbi. “It is when you look upon the face of any man or woman and can see that he or she is your brother or sister. If you cannot do this, no matter what the time, it is still night.”

Hasidic tale, shared in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection

“In my life I had come to realize that when things were going very well indeed it was just the time to anticipate trouble. And, conversely, I learned from pleasant experience that at the most despairing crisis, when all looked sour beyond words, some delightful “break” was apt to lurk just around the corner.”

From notes made in preparation for her last flight by Amelia Earhart (1897 – 1937), aviator, born on this day

“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and death, in ebb and flow.. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.”

Rabindranath Tagore

Feast Day of Saint Mary Magdalene

“Magdalene
her name means tower
not whore, not sinner, not infidel of the seven devils
they labeled her less-than
because they feared what her tower held:
not sin but scripture
not shame but sacredness
not filth but flame
a tower of truth
but towers fall, don’t they?
when men build stories from stone
and forget the word was born in woman’s body
at the edge of things
cracked open with knowing
she was never the footnote
not the soft epilogue to his ministry
she was his equal, mirror to messiah, goddess to god:
his counter-spell, his mirror myth, his ritual in red;
not whore, not slave, but beloved;
a woman undone by the very thing that made her divine: her desire.
But listen, love— she didn’t break the jar because she was desperate
she broke it because she was called
called to speak when silence was safer
called to stay when the others fled
called to embody the towering truth:
that strength and softness are not separate
that holiness can wear hips
that god grew inside a womb but also walked beside one
loved and worshipped one
when the world bloomed in bruises and blessings
this kind of power will not do
if we let a woman be beloved, be equal, be tower
what’s next? a tabernacle? a sanctuary?
a truth that eclipses all the lies of smallness and inferiority?
so they silenced her with ink and pulpit
turned her hips into heresy, her hair into sin
her hands into something not fit to beckon or bless
they scraped the sacred from her body and called it repentance
scrubbed her clean of her wildness
tried to bleach her into silence
folded her into a cautionary tale
the scarlet stain on holy scrolls
but history is porous and so is the grave
after centuries of redacted gospel
after pulpits built on her silence
she is waking from shadow in boots of fervor
incense clinging to the brazier of her spine
this is not a tale of repentance
this is a story of theft
and now it is a tale of return
another kind of resurrection
the tower stands again, friends
not in lace and halos but barefoot
with red clay on her soles
and a voice like an earthquake
wrapped in linen
she does not walk back into scripture
she bursts through the margins
mud-footed and mythic
pulling the divine back into the body
she has risen again
not with trumpets but with soil under her nails
the rhizome gospel under her tongue
green and feral and determined to grow
she’s coming back
to reclaim every woman called ruin
for daring to know spirit
by touch and tenderness
she’s here to walk the crooked path again
the one where myth and marrow meet
she is not looking for apology
she is looking for fire
in the eyes of humans
who remember
that holiness can wear hips
that sacredness is not silence
and that sometimes the most faithful thing you can do
is stand tall
a tower of truth
a sentinel at the beginning of a new story
rooted in love that outlasts hatred
a tower of belonging that outshines fear”

Magdalene’s Tower by Angi Sullins

Artwork by Lars Doerwald

“All of us are connected by Conscience, which unites us as human beings. If you lose your conscience, your humanity is lost.”

Yusuf Islam (stage name Cat Stevens), singer-songwriter, born on this day in 1948, speaking at the National March For Palestine 2024

International Moon Day

“Here I work in the hollow of God’s hand
with Time bent round into my reach. I touch
the circle of the earth, I throw and catch
the sun and moon by turns into my mind.
I sense the length of it from end to end,
I sway me gently in my flesh and each
point of the process changes as I watch;
the flowers come, the rain follows the wind.

And all I ask is this – and you can see
how far the soul, when it goes under flesh,
is not a soul, is small and creaturish –
that every day the sun comes silently
to set my hands to work and that the moon
turns and returns to meet me when it’s done.”

Alice Oswald

“ “As Plato said, every soul is deprived of truth against its will. The same holds true for justice, self-control, goodwill to others, and every similar virtue. It’s essential to constantly keep this in your mind, for it will make you more gentle to all.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.63

As he wound his way up Via Dolorosa to the top of Calvary Hill, Jesus (or Christus as he would have been known to Seneca and other Roman contemporaries) had suffered immensely. He’d been beaten, flogged, stabbed, forced to bear his own cross, and was set to be crucified on it next to two common criminals. There he watched the soldiers roll dice to see who would get to keep his clothes, listened as the people sneered and taunted him.

Whatever your religious inclinations, the words that Jesus spoke next – considering they came as he was subjected to unimaginable human suffering – send chills down your spine. Jesus looked upward and said simply, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

That is the same truth that Plato spoke centuries earlier and that Marcus spoke almost two centuries after Jesus; other Christians must have spoken this truth as they were cruelly executed by the Romans under Marcus’s reign: Forgive them; they are deprived of truth. They wouldn’t do this if they weren’t.

Use this knowledge to be gentle and gracious.”

From The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman