Daily Signet

Ten thousand years ago the Mesolithic hunters armed with stones and pebbles had already attributed magico-religious forces to materials found in their environment. And, as their descendants began the 1500 year journey to becoming an agricultural society, humans brought forward the idea that material objects could carry a sacred force.

In an age of reason and materialism, it is easy to dismiss the idea that an inanimate object could have any power over the human. But there is 10,000 years of evidence to the contrary, and perhaps the most compelling argument comes from the fact that man has consistently destroyed the objects of“other” religions in recognition of their power. The pebbles of the Birsek caves were broken in half to annihilate their force. The Taliban destroyed the statues of the Buddha.  Even Christ “re-engineered” Elijah’s cup to make it his own.

…I am reminded that symbols and ceremonies are created for civilizations and thus can be destroyed by civilizations. What is meaningful is not their existence in context or their “realism,” but rather the truth that is in their creation. For in their creation is power because it is in creation that we find God.

Jamie Ziegler

On This Day…

Thomas Jefferson born 1743 in Virginia, died 1826: Founding Father ofthe United States and president.
Works: The United States Declaration of Independence, the Jefferson Bible, Notes on the State of Virginia
Quotes: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political worlds as storms in the physical.”

Daily Signet

When you are near death, it’s amazing how clear things become—not answers, but perception and vision.   If after one and a half million years, we have never found a final answer to anything, any question—except to mechanical questions, this should tell us answers are not to be had to nonmechanical questions.

All living things are designed not to answer such questions, but to call us to adapt to the reality of the organic, the vital. (The mechanical has a “reality”, but the vital has a reality of its own.) Adapt. This adaptation is to each individual’s unique perception and requires a unique perception that will never quite apply to any other event. So, there are no answers needed or possible.  Hence, either absurdity or creativity—unique, special and synchronous. Out of the perfect perception and by imagination, creativity can obtain beauty, joy, love, entheos. Answers are not needed, just adaptation.

Some of that adaptation is purely mechanical, but this is the most significant part of adaptation. It can be highly repeatable…but not the ever-changing, the unpredictable, the mystery of each moment. The glory of it.

William Boast

On This Day…

Beverly Cleary born 191, died 2021 in Oregon: author of children’s books.

Works: Beezus and Ramona, Mouse and Motorcycle, Ribsy

Quotes: “Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.” “I grew up before there were strict leash laws.” “I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed, they still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.”

Daily Signet

God’s creation requires your unique you. God enters in and reappears in you. You must allow God to be exultant and exalted in and through you.

Each day, morning has broken. God’s new creation and recreation begins anew through you because God’s born anew in and through you in each new day.

Ben H Leichtling

On This Day…

Leo Rosten born 1908 in Lodz, Poland, died 1997: script writer, journalist, story writer and Yiddish lexicographer.
Works: Joys of Yiddish, The Education of Hyman Kaplan
Quotes: “I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.” “Any man who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad.” “A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they’re dead.”

Daily Signet

O Beloved Spirit,
Imbedded in our marble
the impossibility of our incarnation.
Imbedded in our marble
the dramatic passion of becoming Being.
Imbedded in our marble
your image awakened at our conception.
Chip away at the stone.
Chip away at the stone.
Chip away at the stone.

Imbedded in our marble
the ecstatic vision sampling the unseen.
Imbedded in our marble
the terrific joy wired to the five senses.
Imbedded in our marble
the native Word unfolding and infolding.
Chip away at the stone.
Chip away at the stone.
Chip away at the stone.

Imbedded in our marble

The eyes to see as if for the first time.
Imbedded in our marble
the lips to speak from the root of us.
Imbedded in our marble
the heart to circulate a love pure from us.
Chip away at the stone.
Chip away at the stone.
Chip away at the stone.

In Your Image.  Amen.                                                          

Benjamin H. Martin

Daily Signet

It was in a turbulent, whitewater time of change that the beloved Meister Eckhart felt compelled to speak of the blessing that creation is. Born in 1260, Eckhart lived well into that 14th century which Barbara Tuchman describes as “calamitous.”  It was a century marked with apocalyptic upheavals; a time marked by a population explosion accompanied by a contracting economy. The Little Ice Age of the early 1300s and the torrential rains of 1315 created the 14th century’s own climate change problems and reduced crop production.  There was a spirit of discontent: the few rich were getting fewer and the many poor were getting many-er. There was corruption in high places and a decay of credibility in the institutions of the day. Knights, once defenders of the weak, more and more often turned on them. Violent and lawless acts were commonplace. Barbara Tuchman documents the spirit of despair, guilt and end times, and a death wish that took hold in the face of a growing sense of a vanishing future, of the world coming to an end.  The Black Death would add to this hopelessness. “It was,” says Tuchman, “a violent, tormented, bewildered, suffering and disintegrating age….”

Eckhart, however, did not shy away from the world.  In the midst of this very gnarly 14th century world, he continually taught that the purpose of life is not to flee the earth or turn in any way from it, but rather, to creatively return the blessing one has received by blessing other creatures and other human generations as well. Eckhart continually asked himself how he could express the creative word of God that gives birth to the blessing creation is? How could he talk about an eternal life that had already begun? What language should he use for what he called the Good News that first and foremost Christ was a reminder to us that he was a Son of God calling others to be sons and daughters of God; that like Christ, we are each to be creative Words of God. Eckhart sought in his German sermons to give birth to thinking beyond academia, images beyond what the world had to give—to give birth to the “God beyond God”, to the God beyond the ideas we have of God and thus we have his prayer, “I pray god to rid me of God.”

May we take hope from Eckhart and, as if his voice stretches across the days to this another new day of potential and creative possibility, inspire us to courage, to encourage us even in the midst of all that disintegrates and decays around us.                                                                       

Teri Martin

On This Day…

Hana Matsuri: Shinto celebration for the Kami of Flowers