With these outflowings, river-like, with deltas

that spread like arms to reach the open sea,

with the recurrent tides that never cease

will I acknowledge you, will I proclaim you

as no one ever has before.

— Rainer Maria Rilke from the poem Dedication translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

The Rainer Maria Rilke Archive – A collection of over 200 excerpts of Rilke’s poems and quotations from as variety of English translations.

Video and Music With Rainer Maria Rilke Quotations

Video – The Beauty of Nature

Winter Feast for the Soul starts today.

January 15 — February 23

The inspiration for the Winter Feast of the Soul came out of a three-line Rumi poem:

What nine months does for the embryo,
Forty early mornings
Will do for your growing awareness.

Based on the success of the first Winter Feast in Idaho (2008), the interest that it generated across the globe, and the need for peace efforts at this time in our history, the founders decided to extend the outreach worldwide.

To learn more, visit the Winter Feast of the Soul website and watch their YouTube video.

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Amid the Falling Snow – Enya  Song (video)

lyrics:

How I remember sleepless nights
When we would read by candlelight,
And on the windowpane outside
A new world made of snow;

A million feathers falling down,
A million stars that touch the ground,
So many secrets to be found
Amid the falling snow.

Maybe I am falling down.
Tell me should I touch the ground?
Maybe I won’t make a sound
In the darkness all around.

The silence of a winter’s night
Brings memories I hold inside;
Remembering a blue moonlight
Upon the fallen snow.

Maybe I am falling down.
Tell me should I touch the ground?
Maybe I won’t make sound
In the darkness all around.

I close my window to the night.
I leave the sky her tears of white.
And all is lit by candlelight
Amid the falling snow.

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A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people’s; but he meets his accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not concious of riding in the cart; neither is he concious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear and the like cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existence. If such security is to be got from wine, how much more is to be got from God?

– Chuang Tzu  (Taoist Text)

Daoist Perspectives

Age of the Sage – Taoism and Chuang Tzu

1691 – Death Day of Englishman George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, more commonly known as the Quakers. He believed that an inner light was communicated directly to individual souls by Christ. He was born in July 1624.

Biography – keep scrolling down until you reach the text. It is not immediately visible.   Another biography.

Contemplating the Inner Light of the Quakers

George Fox’s description of his revelation (in 1646):

When all my hopes in them [that is, in priests] and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,’ and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy.

Thus when God doth work, who shall hinder it? And this I knew experimentally. My desire after the Lord grew stronger, and zeal in the pure knowledge of God, and of Christ alone, without the help of any man, book or writing.

For though I read the Scriptures that spoke of Christ and of God, yet I knew Him not, but by revelation, as He who hath the key did open, and as the Father of Life drew me to His Son by His Spirit.

Then the Lord gently led me along, and let me see His love, which was endless and eternal, surpassing all the knowledge that men have in the natural state, or can obtain from history or books; and that love let me see myself, as I was without Him.