Daily Signet

The Way of Christuman is a call to an individual ethic of creativity: is a call to grow soul.  Just as neurons and synapses extend our neurological network and advance our intellectual capacity, we look for very personal responses to the call to create and grow the equivalent of synapses and neurons within our soul.  Rich or poor, secure or unhinged, our call is to create.  Political and religious philosopher, Nikolai Berdyaev who wrote so much about creativity said, “Creativeness and a creative attitude to life as a whole is not man’s right, it is his duty.  It is a moral imperative that applies in every department of life…The path of creativeness is a way of realizing the fullness of life….All the products of man’s personality may be temporal and corruptible, but the creative fire itself is eternal, and everything temporal ought to be consumed in it….”  It would seem that what we create may be temporal, but that we create is eternal.  Thus, in all we do, we look to sustain a fire, a creative fire that is eternal.  It is this fire which sustains the firings of our soul, extending it and widening its band of interplay.  

“Act,” says Berdyaev, “so that eternal life might be revealed to you and that the energy of eternal life should radiate from you to all creation.”  I see our community as an order dedicated to creative acts that spring from all of our creative outpourings: writings, classes, dance, music, conversation, cooking, worship, work, relationships, meditations and prayer.  While our creations may be temporal, the eternal element is the creative fire.  In times of despair, in times of disappointment, in times of impending dis-ease and discomfort, we rely on this creative ethic to sustain and grow soul for each individual and thereby sustain and grow soul for the community as well.                             

Benjamin H. Martin

On This Day…

Shinto World Health Day: prayers are said for healing

William Wordsworth born 1770 in England, died 1850: poet.
Works: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, Tinturn Abbey
Quotes: “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” “With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”