“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

“The particular mind of the ocean
Filling the coastline’s longing
With such brief harvest
Of elegant, vanishing waves
Is like the mind of time
Opening the shapes of days.

As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.

Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.

The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.

The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.

Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination.”

John O’Donohue

“I learned this wisdom from my fathers: There are two things it is forbidden to worry about; that which it is possible to fix, and that which it is impossible to fix. What is possible to fix – fix it, and why worry? What is impossible to fix – how will worrying help?”

Rabbi Yechiel Michal of Zlotchov

“If you are a true seeker of liberation you’ve got to be willing to stand alone. At the moment of Liberation everything falls away…everything. Suddenly the ground beneath your feet is gone, and you are alone. You are alone because you have directly realized that there is no other, there is no separation. There is only you, only Self, only limitless emptiness, pure consciousness.

To the mind, the ego, this appears terrifying. When the mind looks at limitlessness and infinity, it projects meaninglessness and despair. To the ego Absolute Freedom can look terrifying. But when the mind is let go of, the view changes from meaningless despair and fear to the unending joy and wonder of Liberation.

In Liberation, you stand alone. You stand alone because you need no supports of any kind. You need no supports because you have realized that the very notion of a separate you no longer exists; that there is nothing to support; that the whole ego experience was a flimsy illusion. So you stand alone but never, never lonely because everywhere you look, all you see is That, and You are That.”

“I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline
and every shoreline has a tide
that is constantly returning
to wake the songbirds in our hands,
to wake the music in our bones,
to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that new born river
that has to run through the center of our hearts
to find its way home.”

Andrea Gibson

“Friendship is a precious gift that can’t be bought or sold. Its value is greater than mountains made of gold. If you shall ask God for a gift, be thankful if he sends not diamonds pearls or riches, but the love and trust of friends. It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.”

Marlene Dietrich, born on this day in 1901

“Let no ungenerous thought be in our minds today, no intent that is hurtful to another, no purpose that has harm in it. Touch us, O God, with the sweet simplicity of Christmas joy, and may its gentleness and loving-kindness fill our hearts.”

A. Powell Davies

“Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice – it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances – but it the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat holds the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And I still believe you will
come, Lord; you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that I am really speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.”

Mary Oliver