We are so trained to think of money as our wealth, or ’our capital.‘ But there are so many kinds of ’capital‘ besides money, and some are more available and even more valuable. For example, whenever we gather to make something happen, we need someone who has wisdom capital, and another who has compassion capital; some bring ‘knowledge-of-the-community’ capital, some have time capital, and finally, some contribute financial capital. But it’s only when you combine all that capital that you create true wealth. Then all of a sudden there’s no giver and no receiver, it’s just everybody bringing what they have to the table, and somehow taking away exactly what they need. I have never met someone so broken they had nothing to offer. All of us are broken from time to time, and feel we can’t give back very much. But then, in another season, we find we can once again come to the table, bring whatever we have to offer, and it is more than enough. This is true regardless of how much money we have. Our real capital is the fundamental wholeness of the human spirit.
Wayne Muller
Yesterday was the Celtic feast of Imbolc, celebrated because it is halfway between the winter and the spring solstices. It was marked by the lighting of fires, and this passed into the important Irish feast of Saint Brigid, whose monastery kept alight a sacred eternal flame. In a similar way today’s feast, the Christian feast of Candlemas, traditionally involved a procession of candles and the blessing of candles for use in the home. It would seem that these two celebrations, one older than the other, testify to a need for people to light a fire around this time, to remind themselves of light and warmth around this midway point of winter, to give some encouragement when the cold and darkness may seem to be never-ending. 
We live within a continuum of action and result, in which whatever we do while conscious of doing it leaves a result in the mind. These results may be experienced as the reactions and responses of others, or as effects on our physical well-being, but the deepest result is mental. That is, our actions have a psychological and emotional result that shapes our minds. After all, this is the way we learn: we do something and from the results – from the feedback that other people or our bodies or our own minds give us – we notice whether that action gave us well-being or pain. Through contact, that feedback gets lodged as a memory, a perception or felt meaning. It’s a detail on our psychological road map of how to proceed through life. That detail, a memory, or a piece of behaviour becomes one strand in the weave of our identity. That’s how your mind gets shaped, for good or for ill. And one result ….is the sense of self.
