“Everything has its season.
All is change and decay:
In each blossom
is contained the russet browns
foretelling the year’s end…

Take each day, each hour, each second,
the only certainty change
and within each dying minute
our reverent acceptance of
the harbingers of renewal.”

Richard Bober, Unitarian Meditation Fellowship, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection

“When psalms surprise me with their music
And antiphons turn to rum
The Spirit sings: the bottom drops out of my soul
And from the center of my cellar Love, louder than thunder
Opens a heave of naked air…

The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them when
All their silence
Is on fire?

Be still
Listen to the stones of the wall
Be silent, they try
To speak your
Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?”

Thomas Merton (1915 – 1968), Trappist monk, theologian, social activist and poet

“The Four Conditions of Happiness:
Life in the open air,
Love for another being,
Freedom from ambition,
Creation.”

Albert Camus, writer, philosopher, dramatist, journalist and political activist (1913 – 1960), born on this day

“Don’t trust in your reputation, money, or position, but in the strength that is yours – namely, your judgments about the things that you control and don’t control. For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and powerful.”

From the Discourses of Epictetus (50 – 135)

“This is the very thing which makes up the virtue of the happy person and a well-flowing life – when the affairs of life are in every way tuned to the harmony between the individual divine spirit and the will of the director of the universe.”

Chrysippus, Greek Stoic philosopher (279 – 206 BC)

“This is the work
of the Sabbath.
All creatures flowering
out of themselves, a rose,
star pollen galaxy,
blue-green egg
in a well woven nest,
the little earth
in its swirl of distances.
This the work
of the effortless.
A prophet does not see
into the future.
A prophet sees
deeply
into the present moment.”

Fred LaMotte

“Drifter, on your feet, get moving!
You still have time, go look for the Friend.
Make yourself wings, take wing and fly.
You still have time, go look for the Friend.

Charge your bellows with breath
like the blacksmith taught you.
That’s how you turn your iron to gold.
You still have time, go look for the Friend…

I trapped my breath in the bellows of my throat:
a lamp blazed up inside, showed me who I really was.
I crossed the darkness holding fast to that lamp,
scattering its light-seeds around me as I went.

Wear the robe of wisdom,
brand Lalla’s words on your heart,
lose yourself in the soul’s light,
you too shall be free.”

Lalleshwari, aka Lal Ded, Kashmiri poet mystic (1320 – 1392)

“As we slowly tread towards winter,
let us learn how to befriend darkness.
May we find our way in the night and welcome the shapes we see.
Let us honour the voices of our ancestors,
and the faces of friends lost through death or conflict.
May we hear their whispers of wisdom,
of laughter and of love.
May their courage to live life fully
provide energy for our dance on the edge of fear.”

John Harley, Unitarian minister, quoted in Fragments of Holiness for Daily Reflection

All Saints’ Day

“My life is made worthwhile by fighting bravely on
for those ideals I hold most great and holy.
Though evil winds may blow, they will not rock the calm
in my soul, which remains both quiet and lowly.
For heaven waits for those whose spirits have won through,
but I am sure that my life was worth living.
And they will find the sun whose minds have let them rise
and stand against the darkness and the mayhem.
I might be disappointed, I might fall in the fight,
but I am sure that my life was worth living.
The life which is to come has been my holy shrine,
I trust that I have lived a life worth giving.”

My Life Is Made Worthwhile: a hymn written by Norbert Fabian Čapek on March 31 1942 at the concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. Norbert was a Unitarian minister who founded the Unitarian church in Prague and was executed by the Nazis for treason.

Samhain / Halloween

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”

To Autumn by John Keats, born on this day in 1795