St Andrew’s Day

“Here lies our land: every airt
Beneath swift clouds, glad glints of sun,
Belonging to none but itself.
We are mere transients, who sing
Its westlin’ winds and fernie braes,
Northern lights and siller tides,
Small folk playing our part.
‘Come all ye’, the country says,
You win me, who take me most to heart.”

Kathleen Jamie

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

“My sister, our land has a throbbing heart,
it doesn’t cease to beat, and it endures
the unendurable. It keeps the secrets
of hills and wombs. This land sprouting
with spikes and palms is also the land
that gives birth to a freedom-fighter.
This land, my sister, is a woman.”

Fadwa Tuqan, poet of Palestine (1917 – 2003)

Thanksgiving Day, USA

“Life is a thing of many stages and moving parts. What we do with ease at one time of life we can hardly manage at another. What we could not fathom doing when we were young, we find great joy in when we are old. Like the seasons through which we move, life itself is a never-ending series of harvests, a different fruit for every time.”

Joan D. Chittister

“Once every people in the world believed that trees were divine … and that deer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools, almost all things under the sun and moon, and the sun and moon, were not less divine … “

William Butler Yeats

“It is not earthly rank, nor birth, nor nationality, nor religious privilege, which proves that we are members of the family of God; it is love, a love that embraces all humanity..

We are all woven together in the great web of humanity, and whatever we can do to benefit and uplift others will reflect in blessing upon ourselves.”

Ellen G. White (1827 – 1915), co-founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, born on this day

“Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was
a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us
as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,
but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.
The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won’t.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.”

Snow Geese by Mary Oliver

“Be helpful when you are at the bottom of the ladder and be the lowest when you are in authority.
Be simple in faith but well trained in manners.
Be demanding in your own affairs but unconcerned in those of others.
Be guileless in friendship, astute in the face of deceit.
Be slow to anger, swift to learn, slow also to speak, as St James says, equally swift to hear.
Be up and doing to make progress, slack to take revenge, careful in word, eager in work.
Be friendly with men of honour, stiff with rascals.
Be gentle to the weak, firm to the stubborn, steadfast to the proud, humble to the lowly.
Be ever sober, ever chaste, ever modest.
Be patient as far as is compatible with zeal.
Be persistent in study, unshaken in turmoil, joyful in suffering.
Be vigilant in the cause of truth, cautious in time of strife.
Be gentle in generosity, untiring in love, just in all things.
Be respectful to the worthy, merciful to the poor.
Be mindful of favours, unmindful of wrongs.
Be a lover of the ordinary man, and do not wish for riches.
Instead, cool down excitement and speak your mind.
Do not envy your betters, or grieve at those who surpass you, or censure those who fall behind, but agree with those who urge you all.
Though weary, do not give up.
Weep and rejoice at the same time, out of zeal and hope.”

Excerpts from Letter to a Young Disciple by St Columbanus (c.540 – 615), patron saint of motorcyclists, whose Feast Day is celebrated today

“Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.”

Rabindranath Tagore

Feast Day of St Cecilia, patron saint of music

“Oh may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better—saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love—
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever.

This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty—
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.”

Oh May I Join the Choir Invisible by George Eliot (1819 – 1880), born Mary Ann Evans on this day

Art by Benjamin West

World Philosophy Day

“God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.”

Voltaire (1694 – 1778), French Enlightenment philosopher, born on this day, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection