Saturday ~ June 9, 2018

Those who would take over the earth and shape it to their will never, I notice, succeed. The earth is like a vessel so sacred that at the mere approach of the profane it is marred, and when they reach out their fingers it is gone. For a time in the world, some force themselves ahead and some are left behind. For a time in the world, some make a great noise and some are held silent. For a time in the world, some are puffed fat and some are kept hungry. For a time in the world, some push aboard and some are tipped out. At no time in the world will one who is sane over-reach, over-spend, over-rate.

(Lao-Tse, 5th century BCE)

Friday ~ June 8,2018

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never did and it never will. Find out what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of justice which will be imposed upon them. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

(Frederick Douglass, 1818 - 1895)

Thursday ~ June 7, 2018

We have a great more kindness than is ever spoken. The whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882)

Wednesday ~ June 6, 2018

What if you feel the invisible tug between you and everything?...
It's a hard time to be a human. We know too much and too little.
Does the breeze need us? The cliffs? The gulls?
If you've managed to do one good thing, the ocean doesn't care.
But when Newton's apple fell toward the earth, the earth, ever so slightly, fell toward the apple as well.

(Ellen Bass, 1947 -   )

Tuesday ~ June 6, 2018

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed.
I have to cast my lot with those who,
age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

(Adrienne Rich, 1929 - 2012)

Monday ~ June 4, 2018

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.  Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth, be ready for the unexpected; change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in seasons.

(Heraklietos of Ephesos, 535 - 475 BCE)

Sunday ~ June 3, 2018

Forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life.
Draw us from trivial content
and set our eyes on far-off goals.
Keep us at tasks too hard for us
that we may be driven to you for strength.
Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying;
make us sure of the good we cannot see
and of the hidden good in the world.
Save us from ourselves
and show us a vision of a world made new.

(Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962)