Michaelmas: Traditionally in Ireland the day to mark the end of harvest The traditional greeting – “May Michaelmas féinín on you.” – wished for an abundant harvest
The feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, Archangels. Those sent to help or guide us.
Where is the angel
to wrestle with me and wound
not my thigh but my throat,
so curses and blessings flow storming out
and the glass shatters, and the iron sunders?
Denise Levertov, Where is the Angel [extract]
The sailor who does not adjust to the wind conditions will have a difficult time.
One ship drives east and another drives west by the same winds that blow.
Its the set of the sails
and not the gales that determines the way they go.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1850 – 1919, American author and poet.
It’s not the road ahead that wears you out –
it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.
Old Arabian Proverb
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.
If we do not transform our pain,
we will transmit it to those around us.
Richard Rohr
As we grow we tend to increasingly live in the future, and what “may” happen.
A baby smiles between fifty and seventy times a day
and a toddler six hundred times, according to research.
I’m sure some of us have asked ourselves where that smile goes.
What robs us of it?
Goldie Hawn, 10 Mindful Minutes
Wu Wei is like sailing a boat: you don’t push the river, you let it carry you. The skilled sailor adjusts the sails to the wind, but does not try to command the wind itself.
So too in life – true mastery comes not from struggle, but from harmonizing with the way things naturally unfold.
Alan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way
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