Saturday ~ February 23, 2019

I believe in the ordinary day
that is here at this moment and is me
I do not see it going its own way
but I never saw how it came to me
It extends beyond whatever I may
think I know and all that is real to me
it is the present that it bears away
where has it gone when it has gone from me
There is no place I know outside today
except for the unknown all around me
the only presence that appears to stay
everything that I call mine it lent me
even the way that I believe the day
for as long as it is here and is me

(W.S. Merwin, b. 1927)

Friday ~ February 22, 2019

There is only one history of any importance, and it is the history of what you once believed in, and the history of what you came to believe in.

(Kay Boyle, 1903 - 1992)

Thursday ~ February 21, 2019

If you had to bet everything, you have in whether there is a God or whether there isn't, which side would get your money and why? When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore? If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in 25 words or less? Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you the happiest to remember? Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for? If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it? To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become.

(Frederick Buechner, b. 1926)

Wednesday February 20, 2019

A gossip is one who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.

(Lisa Kirk, 1925 - 1990)

Tuesday ~ February 19, 2019

A faith that creates no community of faith and a faith that assumes no definite form is not only a protection against any explicit faith, it is probably also a protection for a hidden idolatry of blood or state or economic interest, a protection for some kind of tyranny. It is not the faith of the free. The faith of free persons must tangibly make them free in a community of human dignity and equal justice.

(James Luther Adams, 1901 - 1994)

Monday ~ February 18, 2019

Knowledge abounds on every hand by which my steps may be guided. Facts, facts, facts... They are everywhere about me. I know with my mind the meaning of many choices that I make. Besides, there are many sources upon which I may draw for information that will be the raw material of my decisions. But facts are not the heart of my need. I need wisdom. The quality that will make clear to me the significance, the relatedness of things that are part of my daily experience - this I lack again and again. I need wisdom to cast a slow and steady radiance over my landscape in order that things, choices, deeds may be seen in their true light - the light of the eternal and the timeless.

(Howard Thurman,  1899 - 1981)

Sunday ~ February 17, 2019

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

(Diane Ackerman, b. 1948)