my commonplace collection
“A commonplace book is a collection of knowledge, ideas, quotations, and observations collected by an individual.”
“I once spoke to my friend, an old squirrel,
about the sacraments, and he just got so excited.
He ran into a hollow in the tree and he came out holding an acorn,
an owl feather, and a ribbon he had found.
I smiled and said to the squirrel,
”Yes, dear. You understand.”
-St Francis of Assissi
Messenger by Mary Oliver, from Thirst
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
"It does not frighten me to know that the universe has made me a part of its teeming, abundant life; that the same power that is breaking the lilacs into leaf is breaking me into a fuller flower of personality ... I am content to be a brother to the flowers, the trees, and all the strange and beautiful world in which I dwell ... It does not sadden me to realize that for a little while the cosmic urge voices itself in this strange community of busy particles which I call myself. In me, in you, the Universe has spoken."
-John Dietrich, Unitarian minister and
“Father of Religious Humanism”
from “On Life’s Renewal,” an Easter address
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
-Albert Einstein
“You can’t sing harmony alone. Harmony is a sound of unity in difference, a sound of one thing that is possible only when people who differ from each other unite.”
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality;
it is a profound source of spirituality.
When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
-Carl Sagan