“Why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table, when men has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life?

There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968), born on this day

“The touch, sure and light, fixing something of the passing moment.. ..memory is the true, imperishable life, that which has sunk without trace and been forgotten was not worth experiencing, the sweet hours, and the great and dread, are immutable. Dreams are life itself – and dreams are more true than reality; in them we behave as our true selves – if we have a soul it is there.”

Berthe Morisot (1841 – 1895), impressionist painter, born on this day

“The white herons invisible in the snow. The beer can crushed by the roadside.
The crunch of your shoes in the snow, magnified by the winter stillness. The devastation wrought be an ice storm, throwing cars and lives off the road.
The crackle of icicles as a squirrel runs along a tree branch.
Is it all equally precious? Can we embrace both the beautiful and the terrible? What do we gain from it? Robert Penn Warren writes, “We must try to love so well the world that we may believe, in the end, in God.””

From Earth Bound: Daily Meditations For All Seasons by Brian Nelson

“Problems are not solved on the level of problems. Analysing a problem to find its solution is like trying to restore freshness to a leaf by treating the leaf itself, whereas the solution lies in watering the root.. When the problem of suffering – physical or mental – has to be tackled, it must be tackled at the root cause in order to produce lasting results..”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918 – 2008), born on this day

“Know first who you are and what you are capable of… We are always learning, always growing. It is right to accept challenges. This is when we progress to the next level of intellectual, physical, or moral development. Still, do not deceive yourself: if you try to be something of someone you are not, you belittle your true self and end up not developing in those areas that you would have excelled in quite naturally. Within the divine order we each have our own special calling. Listen to yours, and follow it faithfully.”

Epictetus, Greek Stoic philosopher (55 – 135 CE), quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection

“This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water
and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to
where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else
which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful myself.”

Poem of the One World by Mary Oliver

“To sing is to love and affirm,
to fly and to soar,
to coast into the hearts of the people
who listen
to tell them that life is to live,
that love is there,
that nothing is a promise,
but that beauty exists,
and must be hunted for and found…

To sing is to praise God and the daffodils,
and to praise God is to thank Him,
in every note within my small range,
and every color in the tones of my voice,
with every look into the eyes of my audience,
to thank Him.
Thank you, God, for letting me be born,
for giving me eyes to see the daffodils lean in the wind,
all my brothers, all my sisters,
for giving me ears to hear crying,
legs to come running,
hands to smooth damp hair,
a voice to laugh with and to sing with…
to sing to you and the daffodils.”

Joan Baez, born on this day in 1941

“”Do you wish to have love?
If you wish to have love, then you must leave love.”
Mechtild of Magdeburg

Letting go is a lesson all the mystics teach us. Mechtild reminds us of a deep paradox: we sometimes must leave love to have love. We need to let go of everything eventually, at some time, and so we need to develop the art of letting go. We will even, Mechtild is saying, at times need to let go of love. Ask yourself: What are my experiences of letting go? What follows after that? Have I had to let go of love? Why? Under what circumstances? How did it change me, deepen me, transform me? To let go can be to grow.”

From Christian Mystics by Matthew Fox

“The way to spiritual maturity is through personal and interactive experience. We travel to wisdom along the roads that our soul is drawn to explore, eventually evolving a map that we begin to understand. Even within formal religions this journey must take place; otherwise, spiritual stasis sets in.

In the old language of craftspeople, there are three aspects to the spiritual path: first we are the apprentice, painstakingly learning the basics of our craft; then we become journeymen, trained apprentices who are able to travel from place to place practising our craft; finally we become masters of our craft and are honoured as repositories of skill. Our journey to wisdom, to a mature spirit, must go through all three phases. And even when we have arrived spiritually, we face the devastating revelation that the spiritual path is just that – a path, not a destination.

This is a lonely realisation for many, yet we are not unaccompanied on our path. Upon it we encounter others who are travelling our way, some of whom will become close personal friends because they are spiritual kindred. These encounters and spiritual friendships mould our understandings as soul calls to soul, bringing new insights and concepts. By working with such friends, we realise that the validity of our journey, we absorb new concepts that modify our own, we become more practical and less theoretical, and we change and grow in spirit.”

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

Feast of Epiphany

“Find the door of your heart, and you will discover it is the door to the kingdom of God.”

St. John Chrysostom (c. 347 – 407)