Daily Signet

Photo credit @v2osk on Unsplash

How often the experience of grace begins in dark, earthy matter, and is stirred awake by the wash of tears – of frustration, joy, sorrow. And yet, from the mix of dark matter and tears, something graceful begins to grows and strengthens and finds its way – even on those days that seem locked in an impasse, close-fisted even and all bound up. Then, suddenly, without warning, in a surprising burst, grace opens up into a multi-petaled, richly colored, intricately-designed bloom with a unique beauty all its own. If we were naïve enough and not desensitized by our need to insulate our direct experience of the world by labeling it with an abstraction such as, “Oh, that’s just a rose” or “a daisy” or “a lotus”, how much more would we directly experience the beauty, the aesthetically pleasing sight of each such flower and the sweet scent, the soft buttery touch of its petal. As Buckminster Fuller, the American futurist, would counsel us: “Dare to be naïve.” For if we were naïve enough, if we were receptive enough, we might receive and experience in our inner sight the realization of a manifestation of grace in some of our darkest moments, the riotous experience of something graceful bursting open into the fruit of the human. If we were but naïve enough how much more would we experience the sight and scent of the bloom of light that is our calling, our joy. The 15th c theologian, Nicholas of Cusa said: “Lord, Thou hast given me my being of such a nature that it can continually make itself more able to receive thy grace and goodness.”  If we were but naïve enough, who knows the unintended effects of our excursions into such floral rewards? How much more of such grace and goodness would we be able to perceive and receive, the pollination unto good of the intricate bloom of still more such grace.  

Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

Birthday of George Washington

Edna St. Vincent Millay born 1892 in Rockland, Maine, died 1950: Pulitzer Prize recipient for her poetry. Works: A Few Figs From Thistle, Love Is Not All, The Ballad of the Harp Weaver
Quotes: “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” “It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another, it’s one damn thing over and over again.”