Daily Signe

And so here, in our cycle of time, we are returning round to a season of renewal, to the Mystery of Death and Resurrection.   The potency of death and regeneration were not exclusive to the Christian belief; in fact, many argue that there is much borrowed from earlier renditions in the mystery religions.    “Every mystery religion, being a religion of redemption, offered means of suppressing the old man and of imparting or vitalizing the spiritual principle.  Every serious mystes approached the solemn sacrament of initiation believing that he thereby became twice-born, a new creature and passed in real sense from death unto life by being brought into a mysterious intimacy with the deity.”  This was true of the Orphic, of the cults of Isis, Attis, Dionysos, and Mithra.  This is true of the Christed-human being born into humanness not attained by the first birth.  We are steeped in a traditional belief of regeneration that calls on the Christian metaphor of Christ’s death, burial and resurrection as an idiogram connecting us to a universal truth found in so many of the major religions through all time.  For in a sense, we are the world’s only chance to be – God’s only chance to reawaken in this slumbering lump of genetic code a spiritual charge and vitality that can light the hearts and minds of those around us and of generations to come.  Like the initiates of old, may we each individually become renewed creatures and pass in real sense from death unto life by being brought into a mysterious intimacy with the Divine. May it be so.                                                Benjamin H. Martin

On This Day…

Ordination date of Benjamin Martin