Daily Signet

Tis a season when the boundaries grow thin between kairos, deep time, and chronos, linear time, between the possible and the impossible. It’s a season of pondering; when words point, but can never explain—when truth rings in bells, flickers in candlelight, is carried in the fragrance of evergreen. Tis a time to ponder the mystery of the dance between life and death called “incarnation”—of words made flesh, of gardens, Gethsemane and Eden. It is a time where what cannot be, is and where what cannot merge, does: past and future, transcendence and immanence, the womb and tomb. 

During this time of signs and wonders, I can’t help but ponder the import of Christuman and its significance in our lives. Tis the season to open our inner eyes and look up into our soul’s December night sky where a star stands over us and we know that the Holy Spirit is still at play in the world. That we, like Simeon, the old servant of the Temple of Jerusalem to whom Mary presented the Christ child, are witness to the presence of a child of the spirit in our midst, a child we call Christuman. In this season of hope, this child of the spirit announces that within each of the most ordinary of moments is the potential for the extraordinary: that in this matter-of-fact world, we can grow soul that matters.  

As did Mary listening in astonishment to the pronouncements of Gabriel, we may ask, “How can this be?” How can we believe that in the midst of so much ordinary, that such extraordinary can occur?  Christuman is both the source and object of hope and beloving, the belief that God eternally and universally reveals Himself through the Holy Spirit. That just as have been so many who have gone before us, we are called upon to participate in a dispensation of Holy Spirit in our time and place, a dispensation we call Christuman—where a star becomes a world’s chance to be.

Teri Martin