Happy Birthday, Jesus

How many observe Christ's birthday!
How few, his precepts!
O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.

        Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack

 

 

 

No one left out

Christmas: It’s the only religious holiday that’s also a federal holiday.
That way, Christians can go to their services,
and everyone else can sit at home and reflect on
the true meaning of the separation of church and state.

        Samantha Bee, Reader’s Digest 2008

 

 

 

 

Changing seasons

To be interested in the changing seasons is,
in this middling zone,
a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

        George Santayana, The Life of Reason

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quiet hours

Do not hurry too fast in these early winter days—
a quiet hour is worth more to you than anything you can do in it.

            Sarah Orne Jewett, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wonder

Remain in wonder if you want mysteries to open up for you.
Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning.
Questioners sooner or later end up in a library.
They end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers.
And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.

        Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh), The Book of Wisdom

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: The Shortest Day

So the shortest day came, and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

        Susan Cooper 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time well spent

The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened, it's just wonderful. And … the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.

Douglas Adams, responding to the question "What is it about science that really gets your blood running?" Quoted by Richard Dawkins in his 2001 eulogy for Adams