Daily Signet

I have always seen the second of the Ten Commandments—“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…”— translated in a way which led me to believe that God was ordering us not to sit down and with pocket knife and a bar of soap, whip out a little statue of Him (which would, after all, be quite difficult to do, having no model). However, the way Mircea Eliade translates it, “You shall not make yourself a carved image”…makes my mind want to add the word “of” between “Make” and “yourself." Ah! A more sensible idea! Not that we are forbidden to paint pictures of God, or to whack the corners off great chunks of marble, endeavoring to duplicate His appearance, but rather that WE should not sit about as wooden, unmoving, lifeless images of Him, but should be fully alive, animated, experiencing, growing.  For God lives through us. Our play is the learning of God. Our pitches into the mud and descents into the various underworlds we create teach us both, as do our triumphs, our joys.  

Donna Piper Leichtling

On This Day…

Djuna Barnes born 1892 in New York, died 1982: writer and artist and participant in the Paris renaissance of art in the early 20th century
Works: The Book of Repulsive Women, The Antiphon, Nightwood (her autobiography was titled Life Is Short and Nasty – In My Case It Has Merely Been Nasty)
Quotes: “A strong sense of identity gives a man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same thing.” “We are adhering to life now with our last muscle – the heart.” “Dreams have only the pigmentation of fact.”