For Further Reflection:

Below are the quotes from the talk and some additional quotes for you to take this theme further.

David Whyte: 

"Time and each hour of time is a season, almost a personality, with its own annunciation, its own song, its whispering of what is to be born in us. Its appearance like a new conversation in which we are privileged to overhear ourselves participating."

Christine Valters Paintner from her book called Sacred Time: 

 "Honouring the cycles of the moon means cultivating a familiarity with, and even a love of, the darkness. Just as each breath begins and ends in emptiness, just as each day emerges from the nighttime, the moon widens and grows smaller again until she disappears."

"We live in a culture of productivity, where we value the energy of dawn and midday much more than dusk and night. We want to be always waxing or full, and we often resist the waning and the emptiness. But what if we were to view those dark hours and barren seasons as integral to our wholeness? What if the exhaustion we chronically feel is a sign that we need the gift of deep rest and to follow the moon’s guidance? How might our own faith be cultivated by tending these cycles, so that we grow in trust in both the waxing and the waning and know that neither is the end of the story?"

She describes the new moon as "the place of darkness and stillness from which life emerges" and she describes the night sky in this way: "This black, fertile expanse is the sacred container for what is to come. Before we anticipate the blossoming, we must sink deeply into the gift of rest that beckons from the night."

Philippians 4:12,13, 

“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want."

David Whyte:

"To make friends with the hours is to come to know all the hidden correspondences inside our own bodies that match the richness and movement of life we see around us. The tragedy of constant scheduling in our work is its mechanical effect on the hours, and subsequently on our bodies, reducing the spectrum of our individual character and color to a gray sameness. Every hour left to itself has its mood and difference, a quality that should change us and re-create us according to its effect upon us."