Thought for the day, Tuesday 25th November

“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.”

Brigit Anna McNeill

Thought for the day, Monday 24th November

“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

Thought for the day, Sunday 23rd November

“Sheltering God,
I hide myself in You.
Head swathed and bowed,
I listen for the still, small voice.

Strengthening God,
in times of tumult and terror,
as the earth moves
and the horizon shifts,
You call me back,
to shelter and to strengthen.

Your song is in the sighing of trees.
Your light is in flicker and spark,
knowing and unknowing.
Your power is in the greening,
and in its passing.

Those with ears to hear, listen.
Those with eyes to see, look.

War and peace,
trembling and tenderness,
all that we create
and all that we destroy
hold a holiness
we do not understand.

Illumine our being,
that our doing
might manifest You.”

Psalm 46 Redux by Carla Grosch-Miller

Thought for the day, Saturday 22nd November

Feast Day of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music

“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)

Thought for the day, Friday 21st November

World Philosophy Day

“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.”

Björk, born on this day in 1965

Thought for the day, Thursday 20th November

Universal Children’s Day

“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

Thought for the day, Wednesday 19th November

“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

Thought for the day, Tuesday 18th November

“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

Thought for the day, Monday 17th November

“Orpheus, do you hear
the new sound,
droning and roaring?
Many now exult in it.

Though the Machine
insists on our praise,
who can listen
with all this noise?

See, it rolls over everything,
weakening us
and taking our place.

Since its strength is of our making,
why can’t it serve us
and not possess us?”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926), Sonnets to Orpheus I, 18, quoted in A Year With Rilke by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

Image: Cigarette Rolling Machine, invented 1880

Thought for the day, Sunday 16th November

International Day for Tolerance

“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.”

Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, known as Amma