Empedocles on Etna

(Primrose, or “first rose,”
one of the earliest spring
blooms, wood engraving by
George Mackley, 1900-1983,
English painter and engraver)

“You must experience it in your own home first. You must make your house, your family, another Nazareth, where love, peace, joy, unity reign. And then you will be able to reveal that and to give it to your next door neighbor.

“That’s why I beg of you: try to find your poor here, first in your own home. Don’t allow anybody to be lonely, to feel unwanted, unloved, but especially your own, especially your neighbor. And then someone who is blind. Just go and read the newspaper, just do some shopping for somebody, just go and clean a little bit, nothing more.”

~ Mother Teresa (1910-1997), Albanian-born Indian Catholic nun, from her talk at the opening of her Sisters’ new center in Liverpool, May 1979, in Daily Readings with Mother Teresa, edited by Teresa de Bertodano

from EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA

Is it so small a thing
To have enjoyed the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought,
To have done;
To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes?

~ Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), English poet and critic