Samhain

“In the season leaves should love,
since it gives them leave to move
through the wind, towards the ground
they were watching while they hung,
legend says there is a seam
stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil
earth from the sky in one last pale
wave, as autumn dies to bring
winter back, and then the spring,
we who die ourselves can peel
back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.
Tonight at last I feel it shake.
I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch
move with me, and when I brush
my own mind across another,
I am with my mother’s mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting
self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,
intimate, a waiting bounty.
“Carry me.” She leaves this trail
through a shudder of the veil,
and leaves, like amber where she stays,
a gift for her perpetual gaze.”

Samhain by Annie Finch

“What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practised careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation. When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”

From Beauty: The Invisible Embrace by John O’Donohue

“Eternity can be touched in this present moment, and the cosmos can be seen in the palm of our hand. But we need some mindfulness and concentration to do this. When you practice mindful walking or stretching, you can touch eternity with every movement. If you’re truly mindful, if you’re truly concentrated, if you can release the notion of self, you’re no longer this tiny body. You’re the whole cosmos. Your tiny body contains the whole cosmos in it. All the generations of the past and the future are there in your tiny body, and if you have that insight, it’s easy to touch eternity in the present moment.”

From Peace Is This Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh

“”Did you hear what the fish said,
Floundering among the reeds?
Nature’s wiser than learning.”

Fourteenth century Welsh verse

In the Celtic and world folk traditions, reminders of this important fact emerge time and time again in stories that tell of speaking animals. All young heroes and heroines who are sent out on the road of adventure eventually encounter animal allies who speak to them of deeper wisdoms that those they received at school. These encounters require that the young person treat the animal with respect, share her goods or food with the animal, and listen and act upon the animal’s wisdom. The characters who do these things emerge unscathed; the ones who neglect to respect, share, or listen lose their way and fall prey to dangers. It is for this reason that so many spiritual traditions regard animals as their wisdom-keepers: animals are representatives of the oral, living world of nature – beings who know the implications and responsibilities of their belonging and guardianship.

All people now living have the responsibility of relearning the wisdom of nature, directly from nature: from the trees and hills, the birds and streams, the animals and fields, the fish and seas. Wherever we are, there is an older wisdom singing, which keeps the world in harmony. When we can join in that singing, we will begin to find our true place in nature and be at one with our brother and sister beings.”

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

Artwork by T. Kittelsen, 1900

“Look, with love and faith, not turning sour and cold and bitter, to help others. That is salvation. To give of love inside. To keep love of life, no matter what, and give to others. Generously.”

Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963), poet, novelist and Unitarian, born on this day

“Let me seek then,
the gift of silence,
and poverty and solitude,
where everything I touch
is turned into prayer.
Where the sky is my prayer,
the birds are my prayer,
the wind in the trees is my prayer,
for God is in all.”

Thomas Merton (1915 – 1968)

“If ten lamps are present in one place,
each differs in form from another;
Yet you can’t distinguish
whose radiance is whose
when you focus on the light.
In the field of spirit there is no division;
no individuals exist.
Sweet is the oneness
of the Friend with His friends.
Catch
hold of spirit.
Help this headstrong
self disintegrate;
That beneath it
you may discover unity,
Like a
buried treasure.”

Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi (1207 – 1273)

“Realize that we were taught
to fear the dark.

Consider the seed that splits and unfurls
unseen within the Earth …
Consider the inside of the egg;
consider the place where
the Big Bang exploded …

Unknown and generative,
darkness is unpredictable:
limitless possibility.
We are in the habit
of learning to fear our potential,
but imagine embracing rest and dreams …

We learned early to believe in
the whiteness of certain magic and light
And blackness of certain arts and hearts;
confronted with the sky and its stars, I must reject this entire premise.

Remind me, siblings
to unlearn these bad habits
and accept the gifts I’ve been given.
Darkness is free and abundant;

There is joy in unfurling
from the shadows we were made in.
We need only close our eyes to go home.”

In Darkness, All Things Are Possible, from Incantations for Rest by Atena O. Danner, Unitarian-Universalist minister

Artwork: Closed Eyes by Odilon Redon, 1894

“Leaves are falling, falling as if from afar,
as if, far off in the heavens, gardens were wilting.
And as they fall, their gestures say “it’s over.”

In the night the heavy Earth is falling
from out of all the stars into loneliness.

We all are falling. This hand here is falling.
Just look: it is in all of us.

Yet there is one who holds this falling
with infinite tenderness in her hands.”

From Book of Images by Rainer Maria Rilke

“If we want to allow creativity its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of its raining down. We can put out our skirts to catch as much as we can carry.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, quoted in Christian Mystics by Matthew Fox