MONDAY, JANUARY 28
WISE PLANTING: A PRAYER
What we are, we have reached
because of other people's planting. The thoughts, the values, the ideas and the
feelings we possess are articulate because we have been the recipients of
knowledge, kindness, love and understanding. And above all, the mystery we call
Life, we owe to a Presence yet unknown but still very near to us. For these
gifts not our own we give thanks.
And now, O God, may we
have the faith in life to do wise planting that the generations to come may
reap even more abundantly than we. May we be reminded of the wise ones of old
who admonished, “If you plan for one year, plant grain; if you plan for ten
years, plant trees; if you plan for the centuries, plant men.” May we be bold
in bringing to fruition the golden dreams of human kinship and justice. This we
ask that the fields of promise become fields of reality.
—
V. Emil
Gudmundson (born January 28,
1924)
© 1982: The Estate of V. Emil Gudmundson. Used with
permission.
CULTIVO UNA ROSA BLANCA
I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his hand frankly.
And for the cruel person who tears
out the heart with which I live,
I cultivate neither nettles nor thorns:
I cultivate a white rose.
—
José Marti (born January 28, 1853)
TUESDAY, JANUARY 29
ON REVELATION
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation
that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is
necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an
account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and
though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me
to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I
have only his word for it that it was made to him.
—
Thomas
Paine (born January 29, 1737)
SEEKING GOD IN CREATION
Contemplating the universe, the whole system of creation, in this
point of light, we shall discover, that all that which is called natural
philosophy is properly a divine study — it is the study of God through his
works — it is the best study, by which we can arrive at a knowledge of the
existence, and the only one by which we can gain a glimpse of his perfection.
Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of
the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the
unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want
to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills
the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not
withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to
know what God is? Search not written or
printed books, but the Scripture called the Creation.
—
Thomas
Paine (born January 29, 1737)
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Experience is the inward light, and it will satisfy each soul in its
own way. All eyes are not helped in the same way; too much light blinds as
certainly as too little; but God puts a taper, a candle, a star, a sun, a
heaven of suns into the souls of his
children, just as they need or can bear more orless. The glow-worm's
light guides its mate as well as the morning star guides the dawn. Not what
your soul, but what my soul needs, not what would satisfy you, but what
satisfies me, is the heart's rightful demand; and this is just what religious
experience, when it comes, gives to every soul.
If people would only believe in just that little original religious
experience which each of them possesses, if they would only trust the light
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, how soon they would find it
increasing and shedding ever more satisfying illumination on their way.
— Henry W. Bellows (died January
30, 1882)
THE REALIZATION OF A TRANSCENDANT MYSTERY
Not as I will, but as Thou wilt. We may repeat these words upon
occasions, in hours of bereavement. But do they suggest anything more to our
minds than a silent submission to the inevitable? They have a far, far deeper
meaning.
To accept them as expressing the supreme abiding law of life, from a
heart overflowing with their full significance, is the greatest act of which
the soul of man is capable.
It is not the annihilation of the human will, it is not the mere
passive submission of it to a higher Power. It is the realization of a
transcendent mystery of our being: the exaltation of the human will to an
identity with the Supreme Will.
To realize this mystery in one's self, to be con- scious that one's
own will is identically the Divine Will is to be made conscious of the
imperishable Life and Love and Power of the Supreme Nature, and consequently,
of a profound sense of being in harmony with the whole world of things, of a
Peace, the Peace of God, down deep in the heart, that
nothing can reach to destroy.
Would that we all might know this great truth from our own experience!
We all shall know it, if not now and here, yet hereafter.
— William H. Furness (died January
30, 1896
THURSDAY, JANUARY 31
UNICORNS
With Unicorns we feel the nostalgia of the infinite, the sorcery of
dolls, the salt of sex, the vertigo of them that skirt the edge of perilous
ravines, or straddle the rim of finer issues. He dwells in equivocal twilights;
and he can stare the sun out of countenance. The enchanting Unicorn boasts no
favoured zone. He runs around the globe. He is of all ages and climes. He knows
that fantastic land of Gautier, which contains all the divine lost landscapes
ever painted, and whose inhabitants are the lovely figures created by art in
granite, marble, or wood, on walls, canvas, or crystal. Betimes he flashes by
the nymph in the brake, and dazzled, she sighs with desire. Mallarmé set him to
cryptic harmonies, and placed him in a dim rich forest (though he called him a
faun; a faun in retorsion). Like the apocryphal Sadhuzag in Flaubert's cosmical
drama of dreams, which bore seventy-four hollow antlers from which issued music
of ineffable sweetness, our Unicorn sings ravishing melodies for those who
possess the inner ear of mystics and poets. When angered he echoes the Seven
Thunders of the Apocalypse, and we hear of desperate rumours of fire, flood,
and disaster. And he haunts those ivory gates of sleep whence come ineffable
dreams to mortals.
He has always fought with the Lion for the crown, and he is always
defeated, but invariably claims the victory. The crown is Art, and the Lion,
being a realist born, is only attracted by its glitter, not the symbol. The
Unicorn, an idealist, divines the inner meaning of this precious fillet of
gold. Art is the modern philosopher's stone, and the most brilliant jewel in
this much-contested crown. Eternal is the conflict of the Real and the Ideal;
Aristotle and Plato; Alice and the Unicorn; the practical and the poetic;
butterflies and geese; and rare roast-beef versus the impossible blue rose. And
neither the Lion nor the Unicorn has yet fought the battle decisive. Perhaps
the day may come when, weariness invading their very bones, they may realise
that they are as different sides of the same coveted shield; matter and spirit,
the multitude and the individual. Then unlock the ivory tower, abolish the
tyrannies of superannuated superstitions, and give the people vision, without
which they perish. The divine rights of humanity, no longer of kingly cabbages.
— James G. Huneker (born January
31, 1857)
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1
THE MASK OF CHURCH-GOING
We hear much said in recent days about the irreligious tendencies of
people as manifested in the multitudes who do not go to any church; and the
prospect is in some respects bad. Yet, to my mind, there is a thousand-fold
more ground for solicitude concerning the moral and spiritual welfare of
society, in the fact that there are so many habitual church-goers who are no
more religious in their characters and lives than if they had no contact
whatever with religious institutions, and to whom religious habits have only
become a convenient cloak, not only to cover the want of real moral and
spiritual earnestness, but to conceal decently from the public eye positive
moral deformity and rottenness. To such an extent does the insincerity prevail,
that it is a wonder the maskers, as they meet in their Sunday pilgrimage to
their respective churches, do not peep out from under their masks to laugh at
each other's attempt at pious deceit. The deceit, however, has a sort of
conventional success. At least the mask answers its purpose of advertising
where the wearer is, and in what social circle he may be found. As to
character, it cannot be said to vouch for, nor perhaps to impeach that.
— William J. Potter (born February
1, 1829)
INVENTION
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating
out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be
afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into
being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of
those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the
story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on
the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning
ideas suggested to it.
— Mary Shelley (died February 1,
1851)
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2
ON EVIL
The sufferings of humankind fall into two groups: those arising from
natural causes, such as disease, floods, famine, earthquakes, and volcanic
eruptions; and those which are the result of human ignorance or wrongdoing,
selfishness, greed, cruelty, persecution, warfare. It is only the latter group of ills which can
be called evil, in any moral sense, for moral considerations arise only on the
level of human personality. A cat
tormenting a mouse suffers no qualms of conscience, and there is nothing
immoral in the sweep of a devastating hurricane, though it drown scores or
hundreds of people in its path. … The
ills due to natural causes proceed from conditions inherent in the constitution
of the universe, which we cannot change or abolish but to which, with the
growth of knowledge or foresight, we can better adapt ourselves. …
Moral evil is of a different order and has been explained in a variety
of ways in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
It has been attributed to the entrance of evil spirits or devils into
the hearts of men and women; to Satan, “the adversary” of the good God in the
struggle for control of the world; to the existence of two antagonistic realms
of being, the inherently evil realm of matter and the holy realm of the spirit;
to the fall of Adam in the garden of Eden. …
The inquiring mind today has a wholly different understanding of the
source of both the good and the evil in human nature. … Evil comes from failure to control
instinctive reactions so that they may work for the common good, either because
willful, self-seeking desires, checked only by fear of retaliation, override
all other considerations, or because people have become so committed to some
doctrinaire theory of action that they are blind to its consequences and become
ruthless in enforcing it.
— Henry Wilder Foote (born February
2, 1875)
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 3
A PRIMEVAL GRANDEUR
The traditions of all nations point to a primeval grandeur of the
human race, whose glory shines through the mist of ages; a golden age, when the
gods could visit mortals — when wisdom and innocence were one — when there was
no discord in our nature, hut freedom was order, to know, to will, to do, were
one; when human brotherhood was a present fact — when there was harmony
between man and creation, between man and the Creator.
A gleam of this bright vision comes to us through the records of every
nation; it shines through the mystic writings of the East, through the poetic
fables of the West, through the wild sagas of the North; and the eye of faith
gathering up these scattered rays, bends them on the Garden of Eden, where in
beautiful radiance we behold the first man, Adam and Eve, Heaven-crowned; and
in them we may incarnate our ideal of the Human race; harmoniously blending
beauty and strength, lofty intelligence, powerful action, and purity of soul.
Connected with this universal thought, of the lofty origin of
Humanity, is the high standard which is cherished by every people of the grand
power of our nature — the excellence to which it may attain. The evils of existence, the
poverty of daily life, have never dimmed this thought, this aspiration after a
loftier expression than is seen in actual performance; there is a deep
consciousness in the heart of every people, that at some future time, they
shall reach a higher condition than their present one. A spirit of unseen
beauty broods over them, and thus we behold the effort of man in every age to
express his own ideal — to behold his own faculties raised to their highest
power …
Observe how in all ages our ancestors have endeavored to express their
ideals by beautiful forms, through which the spirit might freely shine ; they
saw more
clearly than we do, that the condition of our present life is the
union of body and soul, that we cannot live as disembodied spirits, but must
necessarily express ourselves through a material frame — that our aspirations
are often limited by the body, and that the condition of our material
organization reacts most powerfully upon the soul. They saw that weakness,
ugliness, and disease, deaden our power, cripple all our activities, and render
our lives discordant — therefore they figured their gods and goddesses and
heroes, under forms of surpassing beauty; their bodies were well proportioned,
the features regular; every muscle had a
living development, every sense a vigorous organ: and all these forms though
perfect, were infinitely varied — the beauty of Juno was not the beauty of
Diana — the perfection of Jupiter differed from that of Apollo — it was not the
beauty of material form as an end, that they aimed to reach, but the grand
truth that the loftiest qualities of the soul find their highest expression in
corresponding beauty of form.
See how beautifully the harmonic development of one phase of womanhood
was expressed in the ancient myth of Athena, the stately deity of Attica. Her
mother was the wisest, her father the most powerful of the celestials, and
these attributes of wisdom and power were blended in her character with that benignant
protecting care which marks the maternal character in woman. She was the
protectress of the state and of social institutions, and of all that gives to
society its highest prosperity. She was the inventor of the plough, the rake,
the bridle; she created the olive tree, instructing men in the cultivation of
the land, and the taming of animals. The inventions ascribed to her, were such
as required thought and meditation — the science of numbers, the art of
navigating, the use of fire, were taught by her, and the elegant works of
women. She maintained law and justice, and when judgment was divided in the
case of an accused person, she gave a casting vote on the side of mercy. She
was the protectress of the defences of the state, the walls, fortresses, harbors,
and her warlike character is assumed for the welfare of the people — she is
represented as sitting by the side of Jupiter, supporting him by her counsel.
The expression of her countenance is thoughtful and earnest, her face oval,
with luxuriant hair combed back from the temples, and floating freely down
behind; the figure is majestic and strongly built, clothed in the Spartan tunic
and cloak.
— Elizabeth Blackwell (born
February 3, 1821)
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| Barbara J.R. Gudmundson and V. Emil Gudmundson |
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