Today, October 2, is Gandhi Jayanti – the birthdate of Mahatma Gandhi and is a national holiday in India where he is revered at the “Father of the Nation.” The world reveres him as one who taught and practiced non-violence.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Can we imagine how this beauty could ever be sullied?
Today is the Feast of Saint Thérèse de Lisieux who is known as “The Little Flower.” So how better to celebrate her than with flowers and a few words from her, one of the three women doctors of the Church.
The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of it’s scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.
― St. Thérèse de Lisieux
Here is an angel, from a fresco in the church of San Domenico in Bologna, receiving St. Dominic’s last will and testament. It reads: “Have charity, guard humility, hold fast to voluntary poverty.”
May I burst with jubilant praise to assenting angels.
Anxious? Go to the sea “When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach–waiting for a gift from the sea.”
To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. When we do it knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, destructively, it is a desecration.
– Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land
Workers at Chrissy Field in hazmat suits cleaning up after the oil spill in the SF Bay after the Cosco Busan had hit the Golden Gate Bridge. Certainly, it wasn’t willful, but it was negligent and mindless. Let us treat nature mindfully with loving care. *by the way, if you look closely, you can see the faint outline of the Golden Gate Bridge, hidden by the fog.
The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.
-Terry Tempest Williams from Talking to God: Portrait of a World at Prayer (anthology)
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