Daily Signet

“Home is where we start from,” T.S. Eliot observed. Today, a century after he was born, “home” is the place where many women are longing to return, if not literally, then figuratively. 

Begin believing that the time, energy, and emotion you invest daily in the soulcraft of homecaring—carving out a haven for yourself and for those dear to you—is a sacred endeavor.

One afternoon, my then four-year-old granddaughter and I were having tea and watching a video of Peter Pan. She looked at me and said, “Granna, you never grow up in Neverland.” After pausing to put another sugar cube in her cup, she added, “but you do grow up in home.” 

With any luck, my dear.

Donna Leichtling

On This Day…

Qudrat (Power) is the thirteenth month of the Baha’i year

Daily Signet

Home is the place of comfort for the animal of you and the child of you. Home is also where sacrifices have been shared, shared loss and gain, pleasure and pain, to create, sustain and glorify the building of it. Home is also the loam where, when you go there, your animal and child are restored. Your spirit is revived. You are given hope and strength again to become the highest you can be in God’s world.

Ben Leichtling

On This Day…

St. Martin de Porres: 17C son of a freed black slave mother from Panama and a Spanish hildago father. Apprenticed to a barber surgeon before entering a Peruvian Dominican convent as a menial lay person in 1595. Became known for his devotion, spiritual guidance and healing skills.

Oodgeroo Noonuccal born in 1920 on North Stradbroke Island, Melbourne, Australia: political activist, educator, poet. First aboriginal poet to be published in such collections as The Dawn Is At Hand, Father Sky and Mother Earth, and Dreamtime. Died 9-l6-93. Quotes: From her poem We Are Going:
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
 And we are going.

Daily Signet

Come, let us gather round the table,
light the candles. Steward, pour the wine,
it’s dark outside. The streets are noisy.  Madeleine L’Engle

This call to home…it’s a strong one.
It set Odysseus on his way
on his quest for home,
to the remembrance of first places,
first memories,
of first love, nourishment, grace.
The rich scent and deep color of October is gone, 
and in its place, the air of November is chill, 
thin with its gray veil of sky.
And I hear my mother’s voice, calling me in from play,
“Time to get in…it’s getting dark.”
We are in the year’s fall, and the night is at hand
and almost to “the irrational season”, says Madeleine,
and it’s time for supper.
Life around the table—
setting it, clearing it,
the laying out of quilted colors, 
the bringing in of wood,
the doings of homework—
always preparations for the next day.
We are in the year’s fall, says Hopkins,
and the night is at hand, the year is far spent.
This call to home…it’s a strong one.
It set Odysseus on his way…

Come, let us gather round the table.
Light the candles. Steward pour the wine.
It’s dark outside. The streets are noisy.

Teri Martin

Photo by @bevem on Unsplash

On This Day…

All Souls’ Day: intercessions for the dead, a pagan festival of ancient ancestor worship adopted by Odilo, Abbot of Cluny in 988, commemorating all the faithful departed. 1545 Council of Trent directed that prayers and masses be said for those in limbo (purgatory) and required intercession of the living to complete the purging of their sins.

Odysseus Elytis born in 1911 in Heraklion, Greece: writer and Greek patriot; Nobel Prize winner for literature. Died 3-18-1996
Quotes: “If you deconstruct Greece, you will in the end see an olive tree, a grapevine, and a boat remain. That is, with as much, you reconstruct her.” “If a separate personal Paradise exists for each of us, mine must irreparably be planted with trees of words which the world silvers like poplars, by people who see their confiscated justice given back, and by birds that even in the midst of the truth of death insist in singing in Greek and saying, eros, eros, eros.”

Daily Signet

We pay homage to home; it is our temple to the holiness of life and to the good things of the earth, our place of thanksgiving.

Photo by Valentina Locatelli on Unsplash

Despite all the places where we have lived and explored,
despite all the moments when we have conquered and achieved,
it is still Home that calls to our child.
And though the walls be torn down and our parents no longer be akin
to our choices, and brothers and sisters no longer be of like mind,
we are still grateful to the refuge of Home.
Home—where our child first experienced place, 
where we were secured by the love from another to another to another,
where we were nourished by those who cared for us.

 From The Mystery of Thanksgiving and Home High Service

On This Day…

All Saints’ Day:  Celebrating the lives of Christian saints known and unknown whose witness of faith touches the lives of others

Stephen Crane born in 1871 in Newark, New Jersey: author, journalist known best for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage. Died in Germany in 1900 of tuberculosis at age 29 Quotes: “Sometimes the most profound of awakenings come wrapped in the quietest of moments.” “The older I get the less I care about what people think of me. Therefore, the older I get, the more I enjoy life.”

Daily Signet

The bubbe’s kitchen, created by the professed home creator, is an endangered species. One without even placarded protestors or chains to fasten us to our threatened thresholds. And, as Toynbee would point out, the destruction came not from the outside, but from within. For the women have willingly abandoned their homes for the “self-fulfillment” of the workplace. And in our day, there are not even servants to leave behind to provide some semblance of homemaking.

Donna Leichtling

On This Day…

Diwali