“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.”

From I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Purpose and Passion by Dawna Markova

“When we feel that we’re fragile, not stable or solid, we can come back to ourselves and take refuge in the earth. With each step we can feel her solidity beneath our feet. When we’re truly in touch with the earth, we can feel her supportive embrace and her stability. We use our whole body and mind to go back to the earth and surrender ourselves to her. With each breath we release all our agitation, our fragility, and our suffering. Just being aware of her benevolent presence can already bring relief.”

From Peace Is This Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh

“God neither heeds nor needs vigils, fasting, prayer, and all forms of mortification in contrast to repose. God needs nothing more than for us to offer him a quiet heart. Then he accomplishes in the soul such secrets and divine deeds that no creature can serve them or even add to them… The divine nature is repose and God seeks to draw all creatures with him back again to their origin which is repose.”

Meister Eckhart (c.1260 – c.1328), quoted in Christian Mystics by Matthew Fox

Image: Repose by John Singer Sargent, 1911

International Day of Living Together in Peace

“Here’s to the bridge-builders, the hand-holders, the light-bringers, those extraordinary souls wrapped in ordinary lives who quietly weave threads of humanity into an inhumane world. They are the unsung heroes in a world at war with itself. They are the whisperers of hope that peace is possible. Look for them in this present darkness. Light your candle with their flame. And then go. Build bridges. Hold hands. Bring light to a dark and desperate world. Be the hero you are looking for. Peace is possible. It begins with us.”

L. R. Knost

Image: Evening Lounging by Jonathan Soren Davidson

“I feel carried away and possessed by an unutterable rapture over the divine spectacle of heavenly harmony.”

German astronomer Johannes Kepler discovers the third of his three planetary laws, the “harmonic law”, on this day in 1618

“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”

From Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

“Our bodies produce a constant rhythm, which may explain why some small children and animals sleep better next to a ticking clock or metronome. Perhaps Shakespeare’s poetry is so timeless partly because its iambic pentameter mimics the steady beat of our own hearts: ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump.
Put your ear next to someone’s heart and listen to the pace of life. Listen to an animal’s heartbeat sometime, and hear the amazing rush of passion and blood within, so similar to our own heartbeats and yet so different. Watch the seasons, the heartbeat of the earth.
There is music all around us, within us.”

From Earth Bound: Meditations For All Seasons by Brian Nelson

“The word cunning is closely associated with the fox. Cunning, like foxes and women, has been given a bad rap. Many have twisted the word’s sacred origins into something manipulative and conniving. But the word cunning arrives from an older Middle English word “ken,” a range of knowledge or sight. A cunning person understands that deep internal sight and wide-range vision leads to building an authentic life. Excavate your deep knowing and trust its messages. This is the way our soul-sight grows sharp, and your instincts return to the untamed power with which you were born. Sharpen your cunning to cut away what no longer serves. No matter your gender, your life deserves the fierce protection that feminine discernment can bring.”

Angi Sullins

“God is not so much a being
as the word we use when confronted
with the totality of all being,
the unimaginable ultimacy of the universe,
and the mystery of love
at work in the human heart.”

Cliff Reed, retired Unitarian minister, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection

“The felling of trees and the destruction of wild green places is always a sorrow. When green life is cleared for housing or landfill sites, we feel strong resentment. Human beings have been clearing the earth for agriculture and habitation from early times. Desertification began to replace habitation long ago.

It is easy to wax sentimental about the loss of particular trees and green places, but the war on the green world is now a world issue, as tree cover shrinks from year to year. It is not primarily our own human survival that is at issue, but that of the many species that rely upon the green world for their livelihood and habitat and the complex food chains that stem from the plants and the soil. For humans and their fellow creatures, it is a question of whether our descendants will have sufficient vegetation to sustain the continuance of life.”

From The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year by Caitlin Matthews