Daily Signet

There would be no resurrection miracle if Christ’s tomb had been left sealed or if it had been opened up by the guards. The egg at Easter is like Christ’s tomb. An egg broken from the outside brings certain death to what is inside. An egg left unbroken is the sign of death from the inside. Only an egg broken from the inside brings new life. “A pipping at this shell of mine,” we chant in our Creativity service. These seven words are music to me. For Christuman, this is our life chant. We are called to break open the shells we are born in and break open the seals of the tomb that hold us. We are the only ones who can take action when we don’t fit comfortably in our shells any more, when we have gotten too big to be comfortable in the place in which we were once so comfortable, when we have been still too long and need to move. We can’t look to Christ to do this for us. We have to be the Christ.                                     

Jamie Ziegler

On This Day…

Easter Sunday: Christian remembrance of the resurrection of Jesus

Christian remembrance of the day of death for Dietrich Bonhoeffer: 20th C Lutheran pastor who, as a result of his work with the Resistance, and his public speaking after he was forbidden to do so by the Nazi party, was imprisoned, and at the end of the war, executed.
Quote: “Action springs not from thought but from a readiness for responsibility.”

Daily Signet

In order to “satisfy” the unique love God has for me, I must break down the walls I have built up around me. The walls that encapsulate, that entomb my soul, my work, my family life and my spiritual life must come down. Not in predefined order, but with a great shout much like the cries that brought down the walls of Jericho. I pray to God that I may break down the walls that surround me, a thousand times over. Amen.

Nathan T. Drabek

On This Day…

Hana Matsuri: Shinto celebration for the Kami of Flowers

Daily Signet

O Beloved Spirit,

Through the image of the death and rebirth of the Son, 
we come to know the necessity of the transforming fire. 
Our work, our love, our lives
are but a sacrifice, 
food for You. 

In the fires of being forsaken, mocked, betrayed, 
we come to know the possibility of
mixing light into our flesh and blood. 
Through the virile death of Christ comes life, comes light,
our passage to renewal.

Bury us deep
and far, far from our wishing
that we might be raised anew again, again. 

In Your Image. Amen.                                                

Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

Shinto World Health Day: prayers are said for healing

William Wordsworth born 1770 in England, died 1850: poet.
Works: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, Tinturn Abbey
Quotes: “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” “With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”

Daily Signet

The disciples heard Him say,
“I will destroy this temple 
made with hands and in three days 
I will build another made without hands.”
Easier said than done this holy thing of life and death
Re-membering ourselves within a tomb. 
Remembering this temple of living cells, vital bricks,
daily growing inside out, transforming as we go.
Allowing the mystery 
dying to self—
no certainty on demand.

No less a miracle,
no less of a dance of gestation,
resurrection requires no less than incarnation,
a tomb of the womb eternally expectant.
This holy grail of the creative,
therein the taste of immortality,
the eternally sacred chance to be.

Must it be? Oh yes. It must be. It must be.
Let us hither to the garden then, this day
and plant ourselves there as seeds. 
For the deaths of the least of me 
require no less passion 
than the birth of the human soul of me.
And it is easier said than done 
this thing of holy life and death,
transfiguring tomb to womb.                                       

Teri Martin 

Daily Signet

In Holy Week, the Christian world commemorates the Passion of Jesus Christ and the stories of the week leading up to the crucifixion are solemnly recounted: the masses who once were so moved by Jesus, now turn inside out and cry, “Crucify him!”. Here, the cruelty of crowds, of bullies, of their collective phobia—their unleashed rage as they mock him, crown him with thorns and parade him with their scorn. Here, Jesus carries his own cross to a place called Golgotha—the place of the Skull—located near a garden where tradition has it, Joseph of Arimathea owns a tomb. And at Jesus’ crucifixion, mixed into the wine to slake his thirst, a gift once given him by the magi, now offered again by a Roman soldier: myrrh, used to embalm the dead. Here, we feel the length of hours from the sixth hour when darkness descended to the ninth hour, when he at last cries, “My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me.” Here, the mysterious rending of the veil in the Temple. Here, the deep, weighted depression of darkness as it falls over the land and silences even the disbeliever. Is there anything more piercing, more silent than the vacuum of forsakenness? This is the mysterium tremendum of a story of the disintegration and collapse of hope into a tomb that then breaks open with life: the seed in the husk that must die to sprout, the God in the man that must die to resurrect. The mysterium is in the death, the tremendum in the stone rolled away.          

Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

Maya Angelou born 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, died 2014: author, poet, dancer, civil rights activist.
Works: A series of autobiographical volumes, many collections of poetry
Quotes: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”