“Befriending ourselves is the quiet revolution. It is learning to sit in the empty moments and find not exile, but home. To listen to the weeds of feeling- grief, anger, joy- as they push through the cracks, asking us to return to what is real. The body, like the earth, is always trying to rewild itself. Feelings rise like nettles and dandelions, insistent and alive, not to destroy us but to make us whole. And when we begin to trust our own company, the descent of autumn and winter is no longer something to fear. The pull inward becomes a homecoming. Silence becomes kinship. Darkness becomes a doorway.”
“At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for some one. She was getting on.”
From The Secret Garden, published 1911, by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849 – 1924), born on this day
“When we pay attention to nature’s music we find that every thing on earth contributes to its harmony. The trees joyously wave their branches in rhythm with the wind; the sound of the seas, the murmuring of the breeze, the whistling of the wind through the rocks, hills, and mountains, the flash of the lightning and the crash of the thunder, the harmony of sun and moon, the movements of the stars and planets, the blooming of the flower, the fading of the leaf, the regular alternation of morning, evening, noon, and night – all reveal to the seer the music of nature.
The insects have their concerts and ballets, and the choirs of birds chant in unison their hymns of praise.. foxes and wolves have their soirees musicales in the forest, while tigers and lions hold their operas in the wilderness. Music is the only means of understanding among birds and beasts. This may be seen by the gradation of pitch and volume of tone, the manner of tune, the number of repetitions, and the duration of their various sounds. These convey to their fellow creatures the time for joining the flock, the warning of coming danger, the declaration of war, the feeling of love, and the sense of sympathy, displeasure, passion, anger, fear, and jealousy – making a language of itself.”
From The Mysticism of Sound and Music by Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882 – 1927)
“After tragedies, one has to invent a new world, knit it or embroider, make it up. It’s not gonna be given to you because you deserve it; it doesn’t work that way. You have to imagine something that doesn’t exist and dig a cave into the future and demand space. It’s a territorial hope affair. At the time, that digging is utopian, but in the future, it will become your reality.”
“Who knows how to bring up a changeling generation? Wave upon wave, they come. Our fear of magic is not theirs to answer for. We had one job. We have one job.
Trick babies, changing faces, changing places all along the way. How will we know the chrysalis for the rest of their iridescent selfhood? To recognize their true forms, we must unclutch rusty fingers and let go, let go, let go. Let them turn and try on all the jewels Turn and see their shifting colors Watch as they hold themselves up to the light Turn, turn, turn – surprised by the beauty By boundless possibility . . . !
We have one job. To bring up a changeling child, you must pur love into an active volcano Tossing food and care into the searing mouth Sometimes falling in. And crawling out. Falling and crawling again and again and again, keeping faith in rich soil for future gardens. You will not survive it on your own. And we cannot survive without them. The world has stolen nothing, has given us the children we need. Earth more generous than we may deserve. Protect these babies: furnace-forged trickster children with sparks in their smiles, chewing metal where we sucked stone. What we called death, they call transformation Where we saw fearful endings, they invite us, laughing, to begin.”
Changeling Generation, from Incantations for Rest by Atena O. Danner, Unitarian-Universalist minister
“The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness.”
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955), theoretical physicist, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection
“Darkness waits apart from any occasion for it; like sorrow it is always available. This is only one kind, the kind in which there are stars above the leaves, brilliant as steel nails and countless and without regard.
We are walking together on dead wet leaves in the intermoon among the looming nocturnal rocks which would be pinkish gray in daylight, gnawed and softened by moss and ferns, which would be green, in the musty fresh yeast smell of trees rotting, earth returning itself to itself and I take your hand, which is the shape a hand would be if you existed truly. I wish to show you the darkness you are so afraid of.
Trust me. This darkness is a place you can enter and be as safe in as you are anywhere; you can put one foot in front of the other and believe the sides of your eyes. Memorize it. You will know it again in your own time. When the appearances of things have left you, you will still have this darkness. Something of your own you can carry with you.
We have come to the edge: the lake gives off its hush; in the outer night there is a barred owl calling, like a moth against the ear, from the far shore which is invisible. The lake, vast and dimensionless, doubles everything, the stars, the boulders, itself, even the darkness that you can walk so long in it becomes light.”
Interlunar by Margaret Atwood, born on this day in 1939
“Love is our true essence. Love has no limitations such as religion, race, nationality, or caste. We are all beads strung together on the same thread of love. To awaken this unity and to spread the love that is our inherent nature to others—this is the true aim of human life. Indeed, love is the only religion that can help humanity rise to great and glorious heights. And love should be the one thread on which all religions and philosophies are strung together. The beauty of society lies in the unity of hearts.”
King Edward Street Chapel 