Daily Signet

In the “Gloria” of the High Service, the Latin of the communion reads: Emitte spiritum tuum et creabuntur, “Send forth your spirit and they shall be created.”  I imagine this “sending forth” as the emission of spirit all around us and up through the root of us and through every vessel of every tissue of us and through every fold and chord of us. Thus, we shall be created anew, anew again. Emitte spiritum, I believe, reaches far beyond the limitations imposed by the censor of the mind, the immaturity of the heart, the narrow experiences of life—and we are created anew. 

Created anew, we sing a new song as no one has sung before. We create stars— even if they are only little stars; they are ours. As we breathe life into the deaths of the least of us, the births of the best of us-- new jobs, new roles, new poems, new friends, new achievements—often calling on heroic breakthroughs to reach such pitch, such intensity, such a sounding, such an intermingling of earth and stars that as the created creator in the image of our Creator, each unites with the Creator in an ecstasy and in a joy each his or her own….Oh sing my God through me, a gloria of life drawn to me, a gloria of life drawn from me.  Emitte spiritum tuum—emit your spirit of joy—et creabuntur—and we shall be created—anew. Amen. 

Benjamin H. Martin

On This Day…

Cropped portrait from The Venerable St. Bede Translates St. John by J. Doyle Penrose (c. 1902)

The Venerable Bede (672-735): monk who influenced English literature, author; called ‘the father of British history’ for his Historia Ecclesiastica, only British Doctor of the Church

Ralph Waldo Emerson born 1803 in Boston, died 1882: essayist, lecturer,poet, leader of America’s Transcendental Movement
Works: Self Realization, Essays, Nature
Quotes: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” “Always do what you are afraid to do.” “The only way to have a friend is to be one.”