This newsletter is a publication of the Mystical Order of the White Rose, a multi-faith devotional and spiritual support organization. We support and share information about mystical, monastic, contemplative and creative ways of living. We encourage prayer, the reading of sacred scripture(s), lectio divina, meditation, journaling, solitude, fasting, silence, kindness, hospitality, worship, simplicity, creativity,active involvement in spiritual and/or religious communities, and loving service to others. You can view past issues here and you can subscribe to it here .
Table of Contents
-- Reflections by Cynthia Kiteley Lee, Administrator, Mystical Order of the White Rose
-- "Simple Living Manifesto--72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life"
-- "Gardening As a Spiritual Path" by Michael P. Garafalo
-- Links of Interest
-- Multi-faith, Multi-Media Daily Devotionals for August 2009
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Reflections
by Cynthia Kiteley Lee
Yes, that's my smiling face in the upper right hand corner of this website. I wanted to add a more personal touch to this issue. I like learning about the people behind the websites, the creators as well as what they create. I thought you might share this curiosity.
About 42 years ago, while living in Brussels, Belgium and attending an American high school there, I started what would be the first of many anthologies of "prayers, poems and precepts." That first one was typed on a manual typewriter I kept on a desk in my bedroom. Several others followed, most of them handwritten. Some people collect stamps or salt and pepper shakers. I collected poems, prayers and quotations. I found and still find great comfort and inspiration in these texts.
In 1994 (15 years ago), I got a strong sense that I should start a more ambitious, more organized and typed anthology that included not just prayers, poems and precepts, but organized them along the lines of: the times of day (morning, midday, evening), the four seasons, monthly multi-faith holy days, and themes such as: love, trust, joy, peace, light, sun, moon, nature, suffering, death, service, meditation... and much more. A large three ring notebook contains the 400+ pages of this anthology, its sections neatly identified with labeled dividers. This was B.C.--before (my first) computer. I used a Brother word processing machine that accepted disks for this big project.
I founded the Mystical Order of the White Rose in January of 2008 and, once again, found myself pulling together--and publishing on the Internet (in the Order's newsletter)--poems, prayers and precepts. But I was also publishing videos, audio clips, photographs, drawings and reference websites along with them.
In one way or another, these elements relate to holy days, solar and lunar events, the season of the year and topics ranging from prayer to the web of life. The Internet is not only an energy system I feel powerfully connected with, it gives devotional materials multiple dimensions, multiple media and multiple layers of experience. Something that seems very 21st century.
Today I purchased my third computer and my first laptop computer. It will enable me to do far more than I could with my six-year old desktop. I was such an artsy-intellectual type in my youth that I never imagined I would venture into technology and electronic wizardry to the extent that I have. If a devout medieveal monk scribe were magically transported to our times, however, I believe he would find himself inexorably drawn into the throbbing, sparkling, humming world wide web.
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Simple Living Manifesto
This is an article, a list and a blog posting all in one. You'll find lots of good ideas, good resources, and food for thought. Click here to read the manifesto.
Simple living is not always simple to achieve, yet few of us question the wisdom or desirability of simple living and simplicity in the arrangements of our lives. Mental and physical clutter are enemies of inner peace and outer productivity.
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Gardening As a Spiritual Path
by Michael P. Garafalo
This link will lead you to a variety of observations, references and quotes about gardening as a path to spiritual awakening. You will find many interesting themes explored and articulated. Even non-gardeners will find much to nourish and stimulate them in this compilation.
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Links of Interest
Video of Juan Loren Zerimar singing The Prayer - Powerful and uplifting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSeKbbOdalo
Video Interview with a survivor of the German White Rose group that opposed the Nazis in World War II. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTO5ZE5DznQ
Video - Brief musical and photo tribute to the members of the White Rose group in Germany, including photos of the founder, Sophie Sholl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foUIVEgPZ64
Super Wisdom - http://www.superwisdom.com/
The Illuminated Rose -- A family business that incorporates art, spirituality, healing and knowledge http://www.illuminatedrose.com/about.htm
Mandala Illumination - Making mandalas is a sacred art and sciene. Let Eileen Rose help you explore it. http://www.mandalaillumination.com/
The Big Picture - Combining spirituality, science and common sense. http://www.kjmaclean.com/
White Roses Video - Tasteful images and music. Relaxing and uplifting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRyCNIi4n7o
Detoxify Now - http://www.detoxifynow.com/mind_detox.html
Imagination's Window - the Art of Erial - mandalas, visionary art, and more.
Great Mystery - http://www.greatmystery.org/
Roses of Light CD - by Ted Andrews: http://www.dragonhawkpublishing.com/roses_of_light1.htm
Thoughts On Voluntary Simplicity: http://www.word-works.com/simple/index.htm
Meditation Is a White Rose Article - http://www.wellnessgoods.com/whiterose.asp scroll down a few inches to find it.
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Daily Multi-Faith, Multi-Media Devotionals
Each day we should expose ourselves to the inspiration of others. Thousands of saints and wise men and women have left us messages of hope and encouragement. Read what is honest. Read the scriptures and the commentaries. Read great literature and poetry. Read the psalms. Read that which expresses the anguish and the exhilaration of experience, and teaches us that we are not alone.
- John McQuiston II, p. 88, Always We Begin Again--The Benedictine Way of Living
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Saturday, August 1, 2009
Lughnasadh - Celtic Pagan /Wiccan/ Neo-Pagan Grain Harvest Festival
One of four "cross-quarter" days that occur halfway between the solstices and equinoxes that are the major holy days and markers of the Pagan Wheel of the Year. Lammas and Lughnasadh are used interchangeably by many, but Lammas has also been celebrated within Christian contexts.
Lammas - Loaf Mass (Pagan/Christian)
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Click here for a glimpse into the history, themes and celebration of Lammas
MYTH*ING LINKS An Annotated & Illustrated Collection of Worldwide Links to Mythologies, Fairy Tales & Folklore, Sacred Arts & Sacred Traditions by Kathleen Jenks, Ph.D. Here's the link for: Lughnasadh & Lammas
a Lammas poem by Blossom Vydrina
corn whispers in the night,
heat waves rise off the fields,
long days at summer's height,
promising harvest yields.
For more info about Blossom, visit the links below:
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Astronomy Photo Of the Day
The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help every one in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation with violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
- Thomas Merton
Conjectures Of A Guilty Bystander, p. 86. Image Books, New York, 1968
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Monday, August 3, 2009
Astronomy Picture Of the Day
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
- Agnes DeMille
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Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god. I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.
-- Annie Dillard
from Holy the Firm
Official Annie Dillard website
"Earth Saint: Annie Dillard" - an article
Short Video of Annie Dillard
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Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
Ezekial excoriates false prophets as those who have "not gone up into the gaps." The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's own home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are clefts in the rock where you cowere to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains, and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps.
- Annie Dillard
Pilgrim At Tinker Creek New York: Harper Magazine Press, 1974
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Thursday, August 6, 2009 Full Moon
Transfiguration of Our Lord (Christian - Orthodox )
Information and Icon: http://www.theologic.com/oflweb/feasts/08-06.htm
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
Transfiguration of the Lord (Orthodox Christian)
That truth, that our lives' deepest meaning will be found in Love, is also the truth tha moves us, from within, to recognize in every neighbor (both human and non-human) an expression of the divine creativity and to reverence each one. It means honoring the integrity of each other person in his or her own path to truth. That truth not only removes the scales from our eyes to allow us to recognize the evils of violence and injustice when we see them but simultaneously gives us hearts of flesh to respond in compassion. That is the truth we would want to speak to the powers-that-be: exposing, naming those evils os systemic poverty, militarism, injustice, discrimination, hatred of someone "diferent," because our hearts ache with the truth that we are all sisters and brothers, we all live from the one Source of life, a God who is Love.
p. 29 'Doing the Truth in Love" by Elaine M. Prevallet, SL from magazine Weavings, a journal of the Christian Spiritual Life Volume XXI, number 3 May/June 2006
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Friday, August 7, 2009
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
Oh Thou, within Whom all creation resides, where art Thou not? We see Thee in the sunrise and sunset; glowing through the heavens, radiating from the starts; weaving Thy robes of mystery in the lakes and meadows; flashing Thy brilliant hues in bewildering arrays of splendour; singing the melody of creation through flying, creeping and walking garbs of Thy Beingness.
Teach us, we pray, to know in every greater measure that it is Thou Who sees thorugh our eyes, hears thorugh our ears, speaks through our lips. Teach us to know that whatever we touch ... This is holy ground.
- Vibratory Attunement Ritual January 16, 1989
Builders of the Adytum copyright 1989
Builders of the Adytum - A Modern Mystery School
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Saturday, August 8, 2009
Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of they peace.
- John Greenleaf Whittier
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Sunday, August 9, 2009
And the day came when the risk it took to remain tightly closed in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom.
- Anais Nin
Photos and Biographical Info about Anais Nin here.
45 Quotations from Anais Nin here.
Highly respected, little known, fascinating journal on contemporary spirituality from a multi-faity perspective. You can visit CrossCurrents here and read articles in current and past issues.
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Monday, August 10, 2009
O ye larks that carol in the heavens,
O ye blackbirds that pipe at the dawning,
O ye pipits and wheatears,
O ye warblers and wrens that make the glens
joyful with song,
O ye bees that love the heather, bless ye the Lord.
O ye primroses and bluebells,
O yet flowerets that gem the marsh with colour
O ye golden flags that deck Columba's Bay with glory, bless ye the Lord.
O ye piled rocks fashioned by Nature's might thro' myriad ages,
O ye majestic Bens of Mull,
O ye white sands and emerald shallows
O ye blue and purple deeps of ocean,
O ye winds and clouds, bless ye the Lord.
O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever.
- E. D. Sedding SSJE, Ascension Day 1947
p. 313-314 Celtic Daily Prayer--A Northumbrian Offfice compiled by Andy Raine and John T. Skinner of the Northumbria Community
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009
I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the
things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve
the last,
but that will be my attempt.
I am circling around God,
around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling
for a thousand years,
and I still don't know if
I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
translated from the German by Robert Bly
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Wednesday, August 12, 2009 Feast Day of Clare of Assisi
Remember that we are all weak, are very easily overcome by passions, and therefore be meek and patient to those who sin against you, knowing that you yourself often suffer from the same infirmity as your brother. Forgive those who trespass against you, so that God may forgive your trespasses incomparably greater than the trespasses of others against you. Be always, calm, patient, kind-hearted, unsuspicious, and firm, and you will always triump over your enemies.
--- Saint John Of Kronstadt, Russian Orthodox Church
from the Eastern Orthodox Church Guide:
2007 Daily Lives, Miracles and Wisdom of the Saints and Fasting Calendar, published by the Orthodox Calendar Company , Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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Thursday, August 13, 2009
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
A destiny awaits you. Your choice of how to fulfill it is always your own, and upon their fathomless, directionless sea of consciousness there remains much confusion. Yet, the love within others shines to light your way, and the light which moves through you from the infinite One is a lighthouse to others. Your being, your essential self, is your main service to the one Creator and to all of those upon your planet.
- A Wanderer's Handbook - An Owner's Manual for ETs and Other Spiritual Outsiders by Carla Lisbeth Rueckert, p. 443 a channeled communication from Qu'o, transcript dated October 7, 1995 p. 2. Used with permission. For additional information: http://www.llresearch.org
There's a lot to browse through here too.
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Astronomy Photo Of the Day
No matter what our emotional storm, or what our objective situation may be, there is always a something hidden in the inner being that has never been violated. We may stumble, but always there is that Eternal Voice, forever whispering within our ear, that thing which causes the eternal quest, that thing which forever sings and sings.
-- Ernest Holmes
p. 33 The Science of Mind
The Official Science of Mind Website can be accessed here.
Very comprehensive website about Ernest Holmes and other New Thought authors and leaders. Click here and have a good rummage around.
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Saturday, August 15, 2009 Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Catholic) -- the Assumption of the Holy Sophia (Gnostic)
Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary (Catholic Christian)
Dormition of the Thotokos (Orthodox Christian)
Be encouraged by the thought that there is an involuntary life going on within you, a healing is taking place, a freeing from dark emotions because you have asked to go the divine way. Let in the light to shine upon your anxieties, to shine upon each problem and be divinely expectant always.
- Mary Strong, Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood
Excerpts from Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood
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Sunday, August 16, 2009
August.
The opposing
of peach and sugar,
and the sun inside the afternoon
like the stone in the fruit.
The ear of corn keeps
its laughter intact, yellow and firm.
August.
The little boys eat
brown bread and delicious moon.
- Federico Garcia Lorca 1898-1936 Spanish poet and dramatist
Poem from p. 310 Earth Prayers
Click here for Photo, Biography and 5 Poems by Federico Garcia Lorca
Earth Prayers At the Center Website
Mother Earth Prayers (Prayers Of Indigenous Peoples)
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Monday, August 17, 2009
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things,
all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
- William Wordsworth
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
It is true that fish stink. It is also true that the river is beautiful. But the river would be beautiful despite the fish. What is noxious remains so.
That is not to say that shit is not useful when buried in a wheat field. Bread made from the field tastes sweet, wine from the arbor sweetest. All things serve a purpose, but that is no reason to glorify what is abominable. A man must still watch where he walks and keep his sandals clearn.
- Normand Ellis, Awakening Osiris--The Egyptian Book of the Dead
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Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Open wide the windows of our spirits and fill us full of light; open wide the door of our hearts, that we may receive and entertain Thee with all our powers of adoration.
- Christina Rosetti 1830-1894
British poet
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Thursday, August 20, 2009 New Moon Feast Day of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (Christian - Catholic)
Holy Stefan the King (Christian - Orthodox) (Gnostic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSTnrYZgjfw
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
What is at present reserved to the mystic whose gaze penetrates through the outer shell to the core of the matter, will anon be the common property of mankind in the state of Redemption.
- Gershom Scholem
Anthology: From Darkness to Light by Victor Gollancz, published by Harper copyright 1956
The Time of Global Shift ---News & Views Earth changes; prophecy, and the cyles of time.
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Friday, August 21, 2009
Mystics truly are out-of-the-ordinary people. We dream dreams, experience visions, and create great masterworks of art, music and literature. We are the metaphysical nonconformists who never fully fit in. Mystics stand apart from the majority of spiritually minded people who seem content to simply go once a week to church or synagogue or wherever their religion meets, listen to the words of their spiritual leaders, say their prayers, make a financail contribution, and then go back to the mundane business of living. By contrast, mystical seekers never feel fully satisfied with the routine of conventional relgion, but rather always yearn for something more--a deeper, more intense, more heartfelt spiritual experience.
There is nothing wrong with either path---the ordinary way or the mystical way. Each path is appropriate for a certain personality type. Just because you are called to walk one path, it does not make the other path "wrong." This is an important point to remember. Just because there are many different ways of approaching spirituality, does not mean that only one way is right and the others are wrong.
- Carl McColman
pp. 41-42 The Aspiring Mystic--Practical Steps for Spiritual Seekers
Visit Carl's marvelous mystical blog at: www.anamchara.com
Rabindranath Tagore - Great Hindu Poet
Video Documentary of Rabindranath Tagore (YouTube)
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Saturday, August 22, 2009
Microcosm
On a wooded hill yet green with summer light
under ten fingers springs the anonymity of grass.
A man may pause here, in a small hollow sheltered,
in some plain cleft of earth harboured; it is needed,
a place to lie, impersonal, unknown and separate.
The valley is asleep in a slow, broad sprawl.
This thin and oval stone, cold upon the brown earth,
is not dumb, nor is the grass, nor the curved stick
lying smooth by the brook's edge; you may listen
and through the unapparent sense learn from them
a new music, secret, and played on no instrument.
Flowing water floods the near meadow, furrows
an unresisting loam to fit its determined shape,
models a smooth channel to take its clear passage.
Across the late summer sky, swift, sun-flashed birds
plunge from flight to flight, shining like knives
arched by a juggler through the pale, blue air.
I have known
all this prone on a small hill in a minor island where
nightly after sundown you may view an endless deep of stars.
- A. L. Hendriks
p. 108 Volume II The Blue Horizons -- Carribean Voices selected by John Figueroa
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Sunday, August 23, 2009
Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jewelled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.
- Ada Louise Huxtable
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Monday, August 24, 2009
The Last Cathar Martyr, Guillaume Belibaste, was put to death August 24, 1321.
More information about Guillaume Belibaste: http://www.cathar.info/120519_belibaste.htm
Mont Segur and the Cathars' Heresy: http://www.russianbooks.org/montsegur.htm
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
Most people express love emotionally and that comes off ike "a wet lick in the ear." Love is a settled heart, a big heart---love is having the compassion to leave things along.
- Stuart Wilde, The Secrets of Life, copyright 1990, Hay House, Inc.
Stuart Wilde is a "wild child" among leading contemporary metaphysicians. While he draws on the Taoist wisdom tradition, his own paranormal experiences have had the most influence in shaping his spirituality and world view. An urban mystic and metaphysical maverick with a breezy, irreverent, British style of writing and speaking, Stuart Wilde is a trail blazer and way shower who has much to teach us. - C. Lee
Excerpt from Wilde's book: God's Gladiators
Stuart Wilde Official Website: http://www.stuartwilde.com/SW_books.htm
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
We would be faithing oaks who, having known the sacrament of defeat, yet stand there withered and weathered, who confound the odds, turn the seasons on their heads, putting forth seeds of hope in autumn and insisting on Easter in midwinter. What is this outrageous grace that makes a fool of infesting Death, and raises up a faithing oak? . . . .
We would be faithing oaks bodying forth the pained wisdom of the survivor, staking our future on the grace of refoliation, resurrection, restoration, rebirthing.
- Robert R. Raines
pp. 4-5 of A Faithing Oak -- Meditations From The Mountain
Robert Raines' Photograph and Biographical Details
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Astronomy Picture Of the Day
I was utterly alone with the sun and the earth. Lying down on the grass, I spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun, the air, and the distant sea far beyond sight. I thought of the earth's firmness -- I felt it bear me up; through the grassy cough there can an influence as if I could feel the great earth speaking to me. I thought of the wandering air -- its pureness, which is its beauty; the air touched me and gave me something of itself. I spoke to the sea: though so far, in my mind I saw it, green at the rim of the earth and blue in deeper ocean . . . I turned to the blue heaven over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite colour and sweetness. The rich blue of the unattainable flower of the sky drew my soul towards it, and there it rested, for pure colour is rest of heart. By all these I prayed . . .
Then, returning, I prayed by the sweet thyme, whose little flowers I touched with my hands; by the slender grass; by the crumble of dry chalky earth I toop up and let fall through my fingers. Touching the crumble of earth, the blade of grass, the thyme flower, breathing the earth-encircling eair, thinking of the sea and the sky, holding out my hand for the sunbeams to touch it, prone on the sward in token of deep reverence, thus I prayed . . .
- Richard Jefferies 1848-1887
The Life And Work of Richard Jefferies
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Thursday, August 27, 2009
It is the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long happy life -- and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is ending, I know that well, but every day that is left to me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown but apporaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my soul glowing and my heart weeping with joy.
- Fyodor Dostoievsky
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Friday, August 28, 2009
Summer
firefly light
the only movement
in trees
dark with summer weighted silence
a lullaby from some bird
long expanse of grass
where it is not hard to lie
moon burned with flame
when the sun goes
we smell for the first time in years
quiet clover, lilac trees,
a belief
in small things aware
of our slight and hesitant moves
as we turn
the moon is so bright
the light bursts within me.
- Ramona Wilson (Colville)
This is the only attribution I had to go with this poem, added to a personal anthology many years ago.
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Saturday, August 29, 2009 Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist (Christian - Catholic)
Astronomy Photo Of the Day
Observe those rich and glorious things;
The rivers, meadows, woods and springs,
The fructifying sun;
To note from far
The rising of each twinkling star
For us his race to run.
A little child these well perceives,
Who, tumbling in green grass and leaves,
May rich as kings be thought.
But there's a sight
Which perfect manhood may delight,
To which we shall be brought.
While in those pleasant paths we talk
'Tis that towards which at last we walk;
For we may by degrees
Wisely proceed
Pleasures of love and praise to heed,
From viewing herbs and trees.
- Thomas Traherne p. 50 "A Tent" Born 1636-- Died 1674
English Mystic and Religious Writer
Click here to Find Out About Traherne's Writings -- And Texts of His Writings
This same website -- http://spiritofprayer.com/spiritoflove/love1.php -- contains texts by John Donne and William Law. Lots of rare and inspiring material.
You can find his biography here.
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Sunday, August 30, 2009
--- Night is drawing nigh ---
For all that has been --- Thanks!
For all that shall be --- Yes!
- Dag Hammarskjold
Dag Hammarskjold Foundation
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Monday, August 31, 2009
We make for ourselves, in truth, our own spiritual world, our own monsters, chimeras, angels, --we make objective what ferments in us. All is marvellous for the poet; all is divine for the saint; all is great for the hero; all is wretched, miserable, ugly, bad for the base and sordid soul. The bad man creates around him a pandemonium... the elect soul a paradise, which each of them sees for himself alone. We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in things. We reward ourselves and punish ourselves without knowing it, so that all appears to change when we change."
- Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-1881) a Swiss poet and philosopher.
For more information about Amiel click here.
