Daily Signet

The I Ching teaches us that great receptivity attracts exceptional results. The interesting thing about the exceptional force of the receptive is it can be subverted by planning. When Spring comes, the grass does not plan to grow. I’m reminded of a poem, “What to Remember When Waking,” by David Whyte, talking about receiving the day compared to planning the day. Here is a snippet of it:

“In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake…
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans….
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep….” From What to Remember When Waking, David Whyte 

Our beloved first Dean, Bill understood the auspicious nature of receptivity and lived it. He spent his dawns, morning, afternoons—in the receptive. He did not measure his success by what he got done in a day. In fact, he would hit you over the head (metaphorically speaking, of course) with an Ipad if you measured the success of your day by the number of tasks completed….Bill was a man for freedom. He dedicated his life to helping us to become free of our goals and best-laid plans, free to receive the dawn, the day and the night as they came. Free from our titles, task lists,…free from what we have always done, free to change and explore new ground. And isn’t that the ultimate freedom…the freedom to change and explore new ground? And isn’t it also true that the only way that this can happen is for us to be receptive?  

Jamie Ziegler

On This Day…

Christian remembrance of the beheading of John the Baptist

Oliver Wendell Holmes born in Cambridge, Mass., 1808, died 1894: physician, poet, polymath
Works: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Elsie Venner
Quotes: “Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” “The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.” “Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.”

Daily Signet

All of the 64 hexagrams in the I-Ching, the Book of Changes, are based on the right actions of the Creative (Yang, Male) and the Receptive (Yin, Female). If either Yang or Yin are so much as a hair’s width from where they belong at a particular time, the I-Ching describes this moment as a “great misfortune.” However, when Yang and Yin are precisely where they belong, the I-Ching describes this moment as being “complete.”

….In Christuman we aim to become the greatest human possible, man or woman, remembering we each carry both. To be less than this is a great misfortune to the Universe which will only know you once. 

Earl Behnke

Daily Signet

I have put my feet down. But the challenge is being patient and willing to stand there that I might come to know when I am standing on sacred ground and act accordingly, and finally see the deaths that I must die. Standing no matter how long it takes. As Mother Mary Francis puts it, “We wait for what may come in God’s slow time. God’s slow time. Yes, because it is the only kind he seems to have. He waits for us, as we so often refuse to wait for him. Waiting is at once the sternest and gentlest of arts. It cannot be taught, and yet it must be learned.”                      

Donna Piper Leichting

On This Day…

St. Augustine, Father of the Church

Daily Signet

 The are some traditional forms of yoga, as I understand it, that are considered Yang yoga and the postures in terms of exercise, are geared for increasing blood and energy flow to muscles thereby developing muscular strength and stamina. On the other hand, there are practices that are considered Yin yoga and are seen as developing and strengthening the connective tissues of the body—ligaments, tendons, cartilage, the joints—all with an eye to opening blockages and expanding flexibility. While I think we understand the importance of core muscle strength, sometimes we overlook the importance of this connective tissue health. The connective tissues are what allow our bodies to bend, bow, stand, sit, turn on a dime, soften the blow of bone on bone.  They hold us together, keep us from snapping apart. They allow us to stretch and return to place. And to strengthen them, it would appear we do nothing but surrender, ask in, receive, suffer, allow the stretch in order to clear blockages, open channels of energy—all of which offers us a greater range of responsiveness, adaptability. 

In Christuman, as we seek to marry the vision and the action, how do we strengthen and nourish the connective tissues that allow us to stretch and hold in tension the contraries, the polarity, the paradox out of which is generated newness of life. Just as we look to the Yang, the masculine, as a model of strength and stamina, endurance and sacrifice, likewise we look to the Yin as an archetypal model of this essential connective tissue—flexible, elastic, gracefully responsive—eternally weaving beauty into the ever-changing patterns of relationship, guardian of womb and tomb—the protective, the holding fast, the receptive, the holy anima, the voice of water, the voice of place—the alternating current to the fire.                                      

Teri Martin

On This Day…

Theodore Dreiser born in Terre Haute, Ind., 1871, died 1945: novelist and journalist
Works: Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy, The Titan
Quotes: “Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.” “Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are chaining together the great inaudible feelings and purposes.” “I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence.”

Daily Signet

As we journey this month in our service to and celebration of the Feminine, the Yin, the Shekinah, may it be a sacred pilgrimage as we follow a path (so many to paths to choose but only one to follow) through the wild-ness, the be-wilderness, the mystery, the majesty. For in the feminine aspect of God, whether it be Mountains of majesty or glorious sightings on the inward journey and a creative outpouring of worship and praise, we discover the indwelling divine presence, the emanating glory of God.

Occupy us, oh Holy Hallowed Breath, replenish our minds with heady fumes of the sublime, renew our hearts with oxygenating compassion, recharge our life force, our souls with a breath so enveloping, so engulfing, so animating that we are charged with the Holy and there are no fleshy borders confining us, and there are no stultifying labels and preconceptions separating us, and there are no inhibitions and deprecating mantras minimizing the Hallowedness and the Holiness of your Breath now fully and completely occupying our minds, our hearts, our life force. Occupy us, Oh Holy Spirit, oh Shekinah, Oh divine essence, that we may be One.

Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

Christopher Isherwood born in Cheshire, Eng., 1904, died 1986: novelist
Works: Goodbye to Berlin, A Single Man, Down There On a Visit
Quotes: “One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.” “If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, it is not a world that I want to live in.” “I am a camera with its shutter open.”