“I prayed for change, so I changed my mind. I prayed for guidance and learned to trust myself. I prayed for happiness and realized I am not my ego. I prayed for peace and learned to accept others unconditionally. I prayed for abundance and realized my doubt kept it out. I prayed for wealth and realized it is my health. I prayed for a miracle and realized I am the miracle. I prayed for a soul mate and realized I am the One. I prayed for love and realized it’s always knocking, but I have to allow it in.”
“Beltain is a celebration of the potency of the Earth and the forces of Nature. This is the beginning of the most active part of the year and the beginning of Summer. All of life is bursting with fertility, sap is rising, birdsong fills the air and growth is everywhere..
Ask yourself what you wish to give energy to. Where will you put your focus? What can you change for the better? What actions can you make that will help the spread of goodwill and Love in the world? All too soon this highly fertile time will be spent, so make the most of its raw energy for initiating plans and visions. Everything you do now will bring you closer to your goals, as the expansive energy of the moment carries you along.”
“In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it’s related to, and how it’s related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.”
From Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee, Unitarian-Universalist, CERN scientist and inventor of the World Wide Web, launched in the public domain on this day in 1989
“What is music to you? What would you be without music? Music is everything. Nature is music (cicadas in the tropical night). The sea is music, the wind is music. The rain drumming on the roof and the storm raging in the sky are music. Music is the oldest entity. The scope of music is immense and infinite. It is the ‘esperanto’ of the world.”
Duke Ellington, Jazz musician (1899 – 1974), born on this day
“There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having.”
From I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett (1948 – 2015), born on this day
Art: Past and Present No. 2: Prayer (1858) by Augustus Egg
“Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you. Enter eagerly into the treasure house that is within you, and you will see the things that are in heaven, for there is but one single entry to them both.”
“The names of some butterflies suggest an almost military pecking order: the Monarch, the Red Admiral, the Silver Skipper. But these beautiful creatures recognize no such hierarchy. They all began as eggs, one no better than the next. Then they hatched into caterpillars, among the lowliest of creatures, inching along patiently in search of food. Each caterpillar then embeds itself in a chrysalis and bides its time until it can emerge winged.
We think that caterpillars transform only once, but from egg to grub to cocoon to butterfly, they’ve changed three times! Only in the last stage are they considered exemplars of light, beauty, and grace, but they are always engaged in metamorphosis.
If caterpillars are engaged in constant change, how much more so are you, with your varied and complex life? And if caterpillars can become butterflies, think of what you have the potential to become?”
From Earth Bound: Daily Meditations For All Seasons by Brian Nelson
International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace
“Oh Great Spirit, this is a Call for Peace across the land, so it is directed to the only Earth Dwellers who are capable of making war and have done so since their beginning. I thank you, oh Creator for allowing the powerful discoveries that allow two-leggeds to reach into all nooks and crannies, glades, caverns, depths and valleys.
We thank you for the Age of Communication which many of us understand to be the power that will lead to a lasting peace.
No longer can the forked tongued ones, those greedy and power questing two-legged; no longer can they hide all things that reflect the path of Truth. You have allowed talking wires, the voices that sing through the wind, and even pictures of truth that go out into the depth of space and bounce back beyond the rim of the Earth Mother, in order that we will not be deceived. In many lands now, we two-legged are allowed to inscribe our winter counts (books) truthfully as it was when we red two-legged inscribed them upon the hides of our four-legged cousins.
When we see the Red Dawn in the East; you are telling us that each new day will bring knowledge. I thank you for allowing your powers to help us tell what is truthfully happening. We understand that knowledge unaltered and not distorted, can become wisdom and that wisdom can lead to understanding. Through such truthful observation and consideration, we will win out some day and find an everlasting peace.”
King Edward Street Chapel 