Daily Signet

Sitting at the table up on the mesa, Bill explained, “Everything that you know is contained within this small circle,” which he drew on a piece of paper. “Everything that you can hope to learn can be contained within this slightly larger circle,” and he drew another circle around the outside of the first one. “And everything that you do not know is on the outside of that circle,” and the space of that unknown stretched out infinitely. He looked up from the paper. “Your circle of knowing can never encompass all that can be known."

It was at that moment that I began to understand that it is by the very fact that I cannot know the All that I am allowed the freedom to risk, to create, to love.

The power of an apophatic point of view is acknowledged in Christuman in the first line of the Credo, “…our God, Ineffable and Divine.” We do not presume to think we can entrap the Sacred Mystery within our little circle of knowledge, or bring down the Divine with our stunted nouns and adjectives.  I find that there is great joy in the effort to speak poetically of that which is Sacred, to dance to It, or sing with It, in such a way as to open our hearts and minds to all that is unknown. But the power is in the energy of the activity itself, not in any explanation or details the effort might try to produce.                                                              

Alexis Drabek