Daily Signet

I returned to the hospital room to find Mom seated in a chair, stroking Dad’s head and hands. She told me that when she returned to the room after dinner, she found him with both arms extended out to either side of the bed. We both wondered aloud who he was reaching out to, who had come for him. We sat on either side holding a hand and stroking his head. Mom expressed her gratefulness for his being a good husband and a good father; I thanked him for giving me life, and for all he had done and meant to me and my family over the years.…Mom and I sat there with my father. He was cool to touch but not cold. His face was beautifully at peace. You would never know he had been through so much pain. I cannot tell you how long we stayed there looking at him and telling him “thank you.” Time was irrelevant. 

After a while, Mom looked at me and said, “It’s okay. I can go now.” She gave Dad very long tender kisses to his mouth and to his forehead. I followed with a long kiss to his forehead and stroked his hair for the last time. We sought out the nurses and aides to thank them for everything they did for Dad and for us, and as we walked out of the hospital, we commented to each other that we hoped it would be a very long time before we had to cross this threshold again—we can only pray this is so.                  

Earl J. Behnke

On This Day…

Vaisakhi: ancient Hindu festival celebrating the solar new year and spring harvest

Arnold Toynbee born 1889 in London, died 1975: historian, philosopher of history and author.
Works: A Study of History, Mankind and Mother Earth, Choose Life
Quotes: “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” “The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.”

Daily Signet

And so here, in our cycle of time, we are returning round to a season of renewal, to the Mystery of Death and Resurrection. The potency of death and regeneration were not exclusive to the Christian belief; in fact, many argue that there is much borrowed from earlier renditions in the mystery religions. “Every mystery religion, being a religion of redemption, offered means of suppressing the old man and of imparting or vitalizing the spiritual principle. Every serious mystic approached the solemn sacrament of initiation believing that he thereby became twice-born, a new creature and passed in real sense from death unto life by being brought into a mysterious intimacy with the deity.” This was true of the Orphic, of the cults of Isis, Attis, Dionysos, and Mithra. This is true of the Christed-human being born into humanness not attained by the first birth. We are steeped in a traditional belief of regeneration that calls on the Christian metaphor of Christ’s death, burial and resurrection as an ideogram connecting us to a universal truth found in so many of the major religions through all time. For in a sense, we are the world’s only chance to be—God’s only chance to reawaken in this slumbering lump of genetic code a spiritual charge and vitality that can light the hearts and minds of those around us and of generations to come. Like the initiates of old, may we each individually become renewed creatures and pass in real sense from death unto life by being brought into a mysterious intimacy with the Divine. May it be so.                                                

Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

Eudora Welty born in 1901 in Jackson, Mississippi, died 2001: photographer, writer, recipient of Pulitzer Prize.
Works: The Optimist’s Daughter, One Writer’s Beginning, Delta Wedding
Quotes: “A good snap shot stops a moment from running away.” “The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.” “Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, in stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life.”

Daily Signet

We do not reveal ourselves in comfort and ease, in safety or security, nor in affluence, nor in our bliss, but in our crises. Toynbee said it was challenge—appropriate response to challenge—that raises civilizations, but never comfort or affluence….It is only by our deaths—or the threat of death—that we overcome our ego-self. And it is only when we overcome that ego-self that we discover that we are alive.

William Boast

On This Day…

Beverly Cleary born 1916 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

Oh Hephaestus,

Teach me of binding, of loosing.

Instruct me how to choose bonds
Proper to the need:
Silken filament
Supple cord
Sinewed shackle
Iron manacle

Impart to me the knowledge of right-binding
For
nurturing
protecting
strengthening

Help me to know
When to release
And how….
Gradually, thread by thread
Or instantly, utterly.

Let me see the multitude of mindless ways
I bind myself, my fellows,
And the needing times I fail to do so.

For life is created
By bind/release
The alternation-play between
Spins out our world,

One giving birth to the other,
Only to be born from that one again.

Donna Leichtling

Photo by @austinban on Unsplash

Daily Signet

O Beloved Spirit, 

The time changes.  The sunlight extends.
And we see more of the day—earlier and later.
What was dead, only dormant, 
buds into a spray of color.
New ground broken.
Where there were but hard surfaces, now new sprouts.

The last season—cold and fogged-over skies—
we watched as a loved one’s memory
slipped into un-rightable tangles.
And we learned how much of who we are
is in the connections we make: 
the contact with eyes,
the recognition of heart, 
the link from the days gone by
with the link to the hopes for tomorrow.

In this season of renewal and regeneration, keep us holy-hearted. 
May we make sacred the meal, 
the breaking of bread, the laughter of friendship.
Help us escape the cliché of skimming what is most important
in our hasty preoccupations.

Break new ground in us.
Push us up through hardened surfaces
and let us grow green, be raised again,
that what has deadened in us
will return to a newness of life
and flower again.  

In Your Image. Amen.                                                

Benjamin Martin