Category: Meditations

Mushrooms to me are magical. Not the kind that one takes to take trips on the couch (though they are magical too), I’m talking about the ones that support trees through the underground root system. According to current scientific understanding, mycelium, the network of fungal threads, acts as a way for trees to “talk” to each other by sending chemical signals through the underground network they create, essentially allowing trees to communicate and share nutrients with one another; this network is often referred to as the “wood wide web.”  While science explains this, to me this is nature’s magic. -Aisha Hauser (CLF)

Appreciate a mushroom or a tree today.

My favorite magical words come from the Amazing Mumford, of Sesame Street fame, whose incantation was “a la peanut butter sandwiches!” It reminds me that magic can be found in the simplest things–in nourishing one’s body and caring for another.

Make some simple magic today.

Yesterday, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in a case in which they will decide if states are constitutionally permitted to ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender teenagers using methods allowed for other medical issues. We don’t get political too often on the Daily Compass, but we feel compelled to affirm the rights of every child to grow up to be exactly who they were meant to me. To our transgender beloved and the parents of transgender children: you are magic. You are the magic that makes possible the fullness of humanity. We love you.

Do something today to affirm that you are, indeed, magic, in all of your fullness and beauty.

“I don’t think that magic is anything supernatural. I think it’s part of the natural world that moves in us and through us. A lot of flakes and sinners use it to bamboozle the needy and gullible, but they use faith, love, and hope that way too, and I wouldn’t be willing to scorn those because they are hard to measure and sometimes get used for dishonorable purposes. I’ll keep being open to the deep magic, and practicing it, until I find a way to believe it.” -Meg Barnhouse, from Seeds of a Spirited Life

How can you be open to things you don’t understand?