“To have humility is to experience reality, not in relation to ourselves, but in its sacred independence. It is to see, judge, and act from the point of rest in ourselves. Then, how much disappears, and all that remains falls into place.

In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.”

From Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld (1905 – 1961), UN Secretary-General and Unitarian, born on this day

“What we call the highest and the lowest in nature are both equally perfect. A willow bush is as beautiful as the human form divine.”

Beatrix Potter (1866 – 1943), writer, artist and Unitarian, born on this day

“The awareness of being a child of God tends to stabilize the ego and results in a new courage, fearlessness, and power. I have seen it happen again and again.

When I was a youngster, this was drilled into me by my grandmother. The idea was given to her by a certain slave minister who, on occasion, held secret religious meetings with his fellow slaves. How everything in me quivered with the pulsing tremor of raw energy when, in her recital, she would come to the triumphant climax of the minister: “You – you are not n*ggers. You – you are not slaves. You are God’s children.” This established for them the ground of personal dignity, so that a profound sense of personal worth could absorb the fear reaction. This alone is not enough, but without it, nothing else is of value.”

Howard Thurman (1899 – 1981), quoted in Christian Mystics by Matthew Fox

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humourless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quick-sands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”

From Island by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963), born on this day

“In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining.”

Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958), chemist, whose work contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA, born on this day

“The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home and love, and understanding companionship.”

Amelia Earhart, aviator, born on this day in 1897, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on 2 July 1937

“When we know how to nourish our love, we can heal ourselves and those around us. When love grows, it naturally embraces more and more. If your love is true love, then it will continue to grow until it includes all people and all species. Your love will become a river, wide enough to nourish not only you and your beloved but the whole world. This is love without limits, a heart without boundaries and discrimination.”

From Peace Is This Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The New Colossus (poem for the Statue of Liberty, New York, 1883) by Emma Lazarus (1849 – 1887), advocate for Jewish refugees fleeing the Russian pogroms of 1881, born on this day

“Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961), born on this day

“”Each man is in his spectre’s power
Until the arrival of that hour
When his humanity awake
And cast his own spectre into the lake.” William Blake

Long before Freud and Jung, William Blake coined the word spectre to signify the illusory self that, by its appetites and desires, overrules and dictates to the true self. The illusory self becomes our personal image, the projected likeness we want others to see.

The spectre is fed by our patterns of appeasement, by our fear of authority, by our need to be perfect. Lest it take hold of our lives, we have to return to our essential humanity, to the core of our being, to the soul within us, and clarify by the soul’s mirror what constitutes self and illusory self. In everything we do, we need to determine whether we are acting out of the core of our integrity or at the dictates of the spectre.

Where mind and heart, reason and compassion are separated, there Blake’s spectre roams hungry and unchecked through our life. Casting off our illusory self is an act of maturity that strengthens the light of the soul. Acting out of our own heart, rather than out of projected self, we come once more to the true likeness with which we have been endowed.”

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