Ways and Means

It's Thor's day . . . And the mailbox is filled with notes and reminders of explorers of The Way . . .

Like, for one example: Today is the day in 1911 that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team became the first people ever to reach the South Pole on the continent of Antarctica.

Eleven years earlier, in 1900, one of the most radical scientific discoveries of the 20th century – the theory of quantum mechanics – was published by the physicist Max Planck.

It is the birth date of B.K.S. Iyengar. Considered the greatest of Yoga masters, he was born today in 1918, Bellur, Karnataka, India. Iyengar is recognized as having brought and popularized Yoga word-wide.

And, today is the 520th anniversary of Nostradamus' birth near Saint-Remy-de-Provence in 1503, France.

Spiritual warrior

The on-the-spot practice of being fully present, feeling your heart, and greeting the next moment with an open mind … is a beautiful way to claim. . .your spiritual warriorship . . .your courage, your kindness, your strength and can be done at any time: when you wake up in the morning, before a difficult conversation, whenever fear or discomfort arises. – Pema Chödrön

Today is also the “Feast Day” of John-of-the-Cross. The Spanish mystic/poet wrote, among many, The Dark Night of the Soul

Mending the broken world. Our thoughts make a difference. – Mirabai Starr

Swiftly does the future arrive . . .

It's Odin's day and light returns to the “new” moon as it begins waxing toward full at Christmas.

St. Lucia celebrations begin in Sweden today.

It's Taylor Swift's 34th birthday.

Marie Forleo recently interviewed Peter Diamandis ... health/longevity "escape velocity" is closer than we think ... update on the state of the art of science.

Meet the future when it arrives – not before. Learning how to “let go.” – Kimberly Brown

Let Evening Come

. . .

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.

Let the wind die down. Let the shed

go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop

in the oats, to air in the lung

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t

be afraid. God does not leave us

comfortless, so let evening come.

– Jane Kenyon, from Let Evening Come, Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1990.

A house made of light . . .

Today’s post is an extension of yesterday’s consideration of “Entering the liminality”

It's Tew's day … and the Moon has turned its back to the sun.

from The Ponds

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.

— Mary Oliver, in The House of Light. Beacon Press,1992 (later edition). Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1984)