Daily Signet
From revival meeting to boardroom, every community shares a lexicon of words that in turn reveal their patterns of beliefs and loves. The word "apophatic" has become a marker for me that well describes the song of Christuman. We use the tension of apophatic theology to fuel our quest for the divine, undefinable. I am drawn to the words of Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite. The words sing to mystery and secrecy of the divine. And how easily that patterns of Christuman come into my heart; how easily I could echo the song on this page. And yet, there is a downside to the apophatic. Such an approach can lead us to write off the possibility of the material, a product of our postmodern age which considers reality a "construct of our minds." In principle, I do not believe that Jesus came so that I could go to heaven. And so it would be easy to dismiss the incarnate god, just as quickly as I do Ward and June Cleaver, as a product of its time. Just a myth. But that would be a mistake. For god incarnate is a perpetual story. From Gilgamesh, to Mithra, to Jesus, the Buddha-God was made flesh. God was born as one of us. Does the universal story point to a universal truth about the God within us or to the divinity that can be substantiated through even the most advanced physics? Perhaps it is in the tension between the apophatic sun and the cataphatic earth that we find the spirit wind. The spirit that connects the two into something more grand than either could be on its own.
Jamie Ziegler
On This Day…
Coptic New Year which commemorates martyrs and confessors in Coptic Orthodox Christianity
D.H. Lawrence born Sept 11, 1885 in Eastwood, England: novelist and poet, died 1930
Works: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love
Quotes: “But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition or repetitions.” “Life is a traveling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.” “I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.”
O Henry (Richard Sydney Porter) born Sept 11th, 1862 in North Carolina: writer of cryptic short stories, died 1910
Works: The Ransom of Red Chief, Cabbages and Kings, The Gift of the Maji
Quotes: “We may achieve climate but weather is thrust upon us.” “A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.”