Daily Signet

Our signing of the star, not the cross, invokes the sign of the Christed Human, not the crucified God. We are not about laying our sins and burdens at the cross but of the death of the least of us that the best of us might blaze through: As Rumi says: “Suddenly in my bosom, A sun shone clear and bright; All the suns of heaven, Vanished in that star’s light." Rumi embodied the star. In every service, we say, “The star is the world's chance to be.” The Christed human, a fully anointed life is an amazing “chance to be”—the fully Spirit-enthused life that encompasses all regions of life, the inner and the outer, the body and the birth family, the emotional, the intellectual, the generative, the relationships both within and without.

On This Day…

Thomas Merton born 1915 in France: Catholic writer, mystic and Trappist monk. Works: Seven Storey Mountain, A Man in the Divided Sea, The Contemplative Life, and many more. Died, 1968. 
Quotes: “Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” “Art enables us to find ourselves and to lose ourselves at the same time.” “The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.”

Daily Signet

Image by Juniper Photon on Unsplash

We live on the shore of stars.  We can walk out and stare up (as Ovid coaches us) into the immensity of the unfathomable depths of sky. We can experience the startling realization of oh how small we really are.  And yet, we can fill up with stars and affirm our up-rightness, our one chance to be fully human.  And we can swell in a bigness like a womb at conception where an all-at-onceness implodes and everything is aligned and we are moved toward the magnificent insecurity of a death and the magnificent insecurity of a rebirth, towards a newness of life.  And though we are firmly planted here on the observatory of the earth and fully committed to the manger in which we were born and in which we work, may we always remember to face towards and up into the stars for in them the birth of the world’s chance to be – the world’s chance to be through and out of each of us. And through that birth – a Christuman for the ages.  Amen

Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

St. Thomas Aquinas: 13C priest and Doctor of the Church

Detail from Valle Romita Polyptych
by Gentile da Fabriano (circa 1400)

Daily Signet

Image by @a_mfelipe at Unsplash

In our Prayer to the Mystery of Enlightenment, we remember all the special and great teachers through moving time whose teaching keeps alive the biography of human mind and spirit…of flame lighting flame.  And it is not the analytical assessment of their teachings that we seek to recall. We aren’t simply trying to remember the rules of rhetoric espoused by Isocrates or Quintilian but rather their excellence of practice. Hand in hand with the rules of rhetoric they taught, we pay homage to the spirit and power of their lives unto good, to their roles, in creating those amazing epiphanous moments, albeit scarce, when teaching and example resulted in a magnanimous human spirit. We remember the great teachers as lights themselves as well as the great light of their teachings…both of which make us more than we are by the vitalizing power of their lives that help us learn to See.                                                                

Teri Martin

On This Day…

Lewis Carroll born 1832 in Dorset, England: writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican Deacon and photographer. Works: Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Hunting of the Snark. Died, 1898. 
Quotes: “I can’t go back to yesterday – because I was a different person then.” “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end, then stop.” “Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”

Daily Signet

At my worst moments, I live in the tank of what I think “they” must be thinking – the tank of second guessing, faltering in expression, anticipating without listening, jumping in necessitated by “shoulds.” At my best moments, I am inhabited by the rich manifestations, epiphanies of God through Delight.  I seek those dips in the Jordan River where I baptize what I thought I should do/should be and raise up out of the waters with the divine delight dancing through me in winged thought and with a visceral knowing that I am a Beloved Son. For if there is a cliché out there, it is "God is within" and just because it is a cliché doesn't mean it's not true but it doesn't unleash itself, pierce the soul with its power until I experience in the heart of my heart, in the breath of my breath that I am Beloved and I am the Beloved and that the Spirit of Delight, enthusiasmos (meaning God drenched) is taking up its place in my consciousness both night AND day and it is dancing through me through my sights and insights, through my hearings and tastings, to my very core.            

Benjamin Martin 

On This Day…

St. Timothy: 1C companion of Paul, Bishop of Ephesus and martyr

Daily Signet

I am grateful to all those who throughout human history have reached with their minds to God, tried to reach all of the way. Who reached without expectation, without attachment, reaching only from the need to reach, the joy of reaching, who tried to reach all the way.  During this season of the star, we give thanks to those who first experienced this gift of mind as if epiphany, to those who first saw the idea, the eidos, the shape of a spiritual cosmos and man’s place in it.  “A sighting that had nothing to do with telescopes or observatories – one that could only be made in the depths of the human soul.’

In this season we think of the teachers who teach and what was waiting in us becomes real…
We think of the magi who saw a star, a potential, a world’s chance to be…
Who didn’t know what the particular potential of the star was…
Who didn’t know what world’s chance to be it was…
But they beloving, revealed their believing and came to worship… 

During this season of epiphany, if we see a star in the East, may we have the courage to load up the camels. Today.
May we be seers and not mere spectators and reach for the star, try to reach all of the way.
Because Advent is over and so is the season of waiting.

Teri Martin

On This Day…

Christian Conversion of St. Paul

Caravaggio, c. 1600-01

Somerset Maugham

Somerset Maugham born 1874 in Paris: playwright, novelist, poet and short story writer. Works: Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, The Razor’s Edge.” Died, 1965.  Quotes: “We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” “To refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.” “People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.”