Daily Signet

All that we can infer is embedded in the cycle of this life.
And we bear witness that there is power and truth in the resurrection—
that in the death of the seed, the bloom of the fruit.
Like our ancestors we carry in 
our essences of faith, hope and love--
unmistakable like the scent of frankincense, myrrh, cinnamon and cloves
and, all we know for sure, is the greatest of these is love
as it sustains and nourishes our soul with body;
and, we pray, will sustain and nourish our soul without body.
For the mystery and the awe-filled beauty 
of the death and the resurrection, we are grateful.                 

Benjamin Martin

Daily Signet

Sacrificing is everywhere in me; sacrificing every moment of every day. Every moment of every day, I’m sacrificing with ferocious intensity some mental and emotional part of me; burning it off, transmogrifying it; the least of me transubstantiating into the best of me. Otherwise. it’s the silliest saunter through life—as Bill Boast often said. So every breath is an intake of fiery spirit that’s Holy, every step is through another fiery doorway so something else is being sacrificed. Through tiredness, footsore weariness; sacrificing and sacrificing and sacrificing, always sacrificing. And so it goes.

 —I realize I am saying it poorly. I don’t sacrifice my personality, I sacrifice letting my personality, my feelings, my emotions and my reasons run my life. My personality serves my Soul’s errand in the world. 

Ben Leichtling

On This Day…

Louise Gluck born 1943 in New York City: poet, Poet Laureate.
Works: The Wild Iris, A Village Life: Poems, Vita Nova
Quotes: “Of two sisters, one is always the watcher, one the dancer.” “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” “Even before you touched me, I belonged to you; all you had to do was look at me.”

Daily Signet

Meditation on the Prasna Upanishad

Remain a year, O Bhargava, live for a cycle of time 
and then we will speak of the power of life,
of the power supreme that is life itself.
Remain a year, a cycle of time
and attune your voice, mind, eye and ear
to the song that is life.
Be the eye that hears, the fire that burns, the sun that gives light,
the song of joy that is the wind, the rain and the thunder
as life sings the mystery of that which is and that which is not.
Remain a year, O Bhargava,
and if you would know the power of life,
watch as Creation itself is quickened again and again in the womb of time.
And when the time comes,
you will know that we are not the consumers of life,
but the consumed,
that each is a poem and truth written by life
born as a gift to the gods.                                            

Teri H. Martin

Daily Signet

Photo by @jeremybishop on UnSplash

There’s no need to remove yourself from the noise of the daily and ordinary scurry of action. Rather, there is the need to silence yourself in the focus of a great vision, to be ever mindful of that great question, “Who is that being that fills me with wonder?” For it is in the most usual creases of a day, that light slips through, openings appear, the most amazing understandings fill you, the most incredible breakthroughs take you to where you never thought you would arrive. It is the wonder of being and that being is the wonder that fills you.

Like the prophet Elijah, standing at the opening of the cave, you discover, that the One who creates is not always in the wind, the earthquake, the fire—not necessarily in the greatest works of generative power, words of passion and hope, nor even the finest iconoclastic thoughts of the mind. The Creator is in the still small voice. So like Elijah, let you stand at the opening of the cave and square the “who you thought you had become” with the voice of Who has always been. It is in this sense of wonderment that you are intersected with the now-moment, where you may hear the still, small, directive voice of holiness. It is in this sense of wonderment that you take a transcendent self and allow it to become immanent in your own self, and say with the sages, “I am One.”    
                                                                                                Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

St. Bernadette of Lourdes:  In 1854 Bernadette Soubrious, a poor French peasant girl, had repeated visions of the Virgin Mary who told her to drink from the nearby spring which then flowed into the grotto below and became the healing spring which still attracts thousands of pilgrims every week

Daily Signet

Image by Daniel Tuttle on Unsplash

If you haven’t seen a baby chick be born, go YouTube it. Once the shell is cracked there’s a lot of unhappy chirping going on and when it emerges it is an ugly mess, a mat of feathers and spindly legs. Emergence requires that we embrace the feeling of awkward and uncomfortable and yes, even ugly. In the words of Isabelle Davis, “Life is about the challenge, isn’t it?” It is not easy. Resurrection never is. For Christuman we celebrate the resurrection right now, in springtime as have people for thousands of years--the barley planters of Mesopotamia, the Teutonic people paying homage to the goddess, Ostera, where Easter came from. This too is our season of remembering and paying homage to one of   sacred tenets: “from the death of the least of me is born the best of me.” But we are we are called to do more than just remember. The Christ in us requires us to participate, to live in a daily litany of breaking out of the shells holding the least of us so the Christ in us can emerge. The chicken lays an egg every day so there is an egg a day, 365 days a year that we must open from the inside. Crack it open, waddle around, rejoice in the best of you.                                                     

Jamie Ziegler

On This Day…

Henry James born 1843 in New York City, died 1916: writer.
Works: The Innocents, What Maisie Knew, The Portrait of a Lady
Quotes: “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind, the second is to be kind, the third is to be kind.” “Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that, what have you had?”