“Now, in our modern scientific age, in a manner never known before, we have created our own sacred story, the epic of evolution, telling us, from empirical observation and critical analysis, how the universe came to be, the sequence of its transformations down through some billions of years, how our solar system came into being, then how the Earth took shape and brought us into existence.. This is our sacred story…

We will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things come into being. Indeed, the universe is the primary sacred reality. We become sacred by our participation in this more sublime dimension of the world about us…

The human venture depends absolutely on this quality of awe and reverence and joy in the Earth and all that lives and grows upon the Earth.. In the end the universe can only be explained in terms of celebration. It is all an exuberant expression of existence itself.. A way is opening for each person to receive the total spiritual heritage of the human community as well as the total spiritual heritage of the universe. Within this context the religious antagonisms of the past can be overcome, the particular traditions can be vitalized, and the feeling of presence to a sacred universe can appear once more to dynamize and sustain human affairs.

We must feel that we are supported by that same power that brought the Earth into being, that power that spun the galaxies into space, that tilt the sun and brought the moon into its orbit.”

Thomas Berry

“A landscape can sing about God, a body about spirit.”

Dag Hammarskjöld

“Light a candle, sing a song
Say that the shadows shall not cross
Make an oblation out of all you’ve lost
In the longest night
Gather friends and cast your hopes
Into the fire as it snows
And stare at God through the dark windows
Of the longest night
Of the year

A night that seems like a lifetime
If you’re waiting for the sun
So why not sing to the night-time
And the burning stars up above?

Come with drums, bells and horns
Or come in silence, come forlorn
Come like a miner to the door
Of the longest night
For deep in the stillness, deep in the cold
Deep in the darkness, a miner knows
That there is a diamond in the soul
Of the longest night
Of the year

Maybe peace hides in a storm
Maybe winter’s heart is warm
And maybe light itself is born
In the longest night
In the longest night
Of the year.”

Peter Mayer

“In silence the conscious thinking mind comes to a stop, and the invisible presence and power are given the opportunity to function. If we really believe that the kingdom of God is within, we should be willing to leave the world until such time as we can reach, touch, and respond to the Father within.

Silence is the secret power of the power of the Hawaiians. Through silence they communicated with nature. The language of silence salutes the divinity in all things. Everything that has life has something of value to share with us, providing we are ready to experience it.”

Nana Veary

“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”

From A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, published on this day in 1843

“I cannot say where it lives, only that it comes to the heart that is open,
to the heart that asks, to the heart that does not turn away.
It can take practice, days of tugging at what keeps us bound,
seasons of pushing against what keeps our dreaming small.
When it arrives, it might surprise you by how quiet it is,
how it moves with such grace for possessing such power.
But you will know it by the strength that rises from within you to meet it,
by the release of the knot in the center of your chest that suddenly lets go.
You will recognize it by how still your fear becomes as it loosens its grip,
perhaps never quite leaving you, but calmly turning into joy
as you enter the life that is finally your own.”

Jan Richardson

“You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.”

Pope Francis, born on this day in 1936

“Know your own happiness. Want for nothing but patience – or give it a more fascinating name: Call it hope.”

Jane Austen, born on this day in 1775

“The saints were capable of seeing through the masks that cover the faces and they saw that the masks are unreal. In the innumerable faces of men they saw only one face: the face of love.”

Thomas Merton

“What makes a place sacred? Is it some hallowed action? Is it the siting of a shrine or temple? Is it the occupation by people who have honoured the spirit of that place? Although there is no part of the earth that is not intrinsically sacred in its own right, our recognition of a place’s sacredness tends to rest upon what other human beings have done at that spot, what they have erected by way of memorial, what holy actions and rites they have conducted to hallow it.

Certain spots draw us to them, there is no doubt. Even if they harbour no ancient monument, if there is no story associated with their borders, we feel somehow at peace or exalted when there. It must be through just that intangible process that our ancestors discovered their own sacred places – places of natural beauty whose potency drew them again and again to spiritual exploration. Some places act as natural thresholds, junctions between this world and the other where we feel in communion with the unseen world and its inhabitants.

Some sacred places can be lost through neglect and forgetfulness; others are lost by a gross act of desacralization. But a place can be rediscovered and resacralized if we attend to the spirit of the place and learn what it is that makes that place sacred. The prospect of the resacralization of the earth is just a lofty idea for many people, but it is one that all of us can foster, in cooperation with the spirits of the earth itself.

Call to mind a place – it need not be recognized by others as a sacred place – where you have felt empowered and uplifted. Dwell upon the qualities and gifts that you associate with that site and how they make connection with your own spiritual path. Take the first opportunity you can to verify your meditation by visiting this place in person. Sense again the spirit of the place.”

Caitlin Matthews