Daily Signet

As the bodhisattva walks down the trail, he begins leaving the “ways” of his self (a former life) along the path much like a pilgrim divests himself of possessions along the path. This is only the beginning though, something more is required and yet, there is no guidance forthcoming from others or the Divine. “Stand in this complete darkness,” the bodhisattva is told. Here is a black void where all light is extinguished long before it ever reaches the center. “You are alone, naked, without any thing.” There is no hope here. There is no love here.  In fact, he is told there is no need—whatsoever—for him. “Remove and discard every opinion, achievement, need, desire, etc. from yourself.” 

This is done in the same way you would remove bricks from the walls of a building, one brick at a time, one level at a time until the bodhisattva stands naked in this void, without protective walls, alone. There are no words of encouragement nor is he told that everything will be okay. It is at this point of total surrender and a complete removal of every thing, he finally dies and of course, awakens in the bath of love and acceptance that is Nirvana.  He is quite content to stay in this place; however, he is told he must return. Grace enables him to see indiscernible patterns and shapes—potentials of the future. He returns understanding his choice and a feeling of responsibility to those shapes and patterns and other bodhisattvas and the Divine.

…In Christuman, as with the bodhisattvas, here and now is Nirvana. It is by first going into that death of the least of me that the best of me is born and we may become at one with all that is human and with all that is divine. However, don’t stop there, the world is desperate for your light and your model.

Earl Behnke

On This Day…

Week of prayer begins for Christian Unity

Ruben Dario born 1867 in Nicaragua: poet. Works: Los Raros, Songs of Life and Hope, Azul.  Died, 1916.  Quotes: “Sweet as sweetest Grecian honey will the song be when I sing, O Beloved, in the season of the spring.” “I seek a form that my style cannot discover, a bud of thought that wants to be a rose.” “Love beauty. It is the shadow of God on the universe.”

Daily Signet

Oh Holy Spirit,

Etch the star upon our foreheads, 
sign the star in a blessing of invocation, 
Call out in us our dust from stars 
to fill out this human instance
so we may intersect the miracle of birth and rebirth, 
of animal made human 
and human intersecting divine.  

Oh Holy Spirit,
Etch the star upon our foreheads, 
sign the star in a blessing of invocation.
Let us awaken to a Holy Night 
where spirit combines with conception 
and grows in the womb 
to be called out into life 
where a name is given and gifts abound.

Oh Holy Spirit,
Etch the star upon our foreheads, 
sign the star in a blessing of invocation.
May that star rise above our manger—
our trough of straw—our work, our words—
and signal a place for the Christ to be born anew.

 In Your Image.  Amen.  

Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

Hispanic Catholic Christian Blessing of the Animals

Pedro Calderon de la Barca born 1600 in Madrid: dramatist, poet and one of the foremost writers of the Spanish Golden Age. Works: plays; Life Is A dream, The Phantom Lady, The Great Theater of the World. Died, 1681. 
Quotes: “When love is not madness, it is not love.” “One may know how to gain victory and know not how to use it.”

Daily Signet

How far can we transcend? I often contemplate the physical and spiritual limitations of life, of human existence in its entirety. I find it exhilarating that we are able to master the laws of science and escape the bounds of this earth. Suddenly, astronauts can “transcend” the light of this world to find themselves in the vast darkness of space. Imagine this journey. For decades we would perfect the science of space and time with constant training, study and work by numerous teams of some of the most brilliant minds in the world. Smitten with our accomplishments, we would finally “transcend," only to encounter an incomprehensible void of nothingness. So vast, so unknown that it would overwhelm us and remind us that we know so little.

Likewise, can we not transcend within our spiritual selves to a place beyond the light, a silent place where creation comes from nothingness?  While playing with the symphony, I have been reminded of what comes from nothingness. The rhythmic time of music is so precise, yet the true music, the real creativity comes from the nothingness between each beat. There, one has a lifetime to place their personal emotions and color upon a note that makes it come to life. The ability to create tension while still remaining in tempo with the music is what makes music so compelling. One has no time for thought and the music just comes into being.

From darkness comes the light of creativity, the essence of God that is in each one of us. As we transcend beyond the visible light of this world we reside in darkness. We pray to God that out of this darkness, out of this unknowing that we may find a way to amplify our creativity to shed true light upon the world.                                                                         

Nathan Drabek

Daily Signet

I am grateful to all those who throughout human history have reached with their minds to God, tried to reach all of the way. Who reached without expectation, without attachment, reaching only from the need to reach, the joy of reaching, who tried to reach all the way. During this season of the star, we give thanks to those who first experienced this gift of mind as if epiphany, to those who first saw the idea, the eidos, the shape of a spiritual cosmos and man’s place in it. “A sighting that had nothing to do with telescopes or observatories – one that could only be made in the depths of the human soul.”

In this season we think of the teachers who teach and what was waiting in us becomes real…
We think of the magi who saw a star, a potential, a world’s chance to be…
Who didn’t know what the particular potential of the star was…
Who didn’t know what world’s chance to be it was…
But they, beloving, revealed their believing and came to worship… 

During this season of epiphany may we receive the gift of pure vision and if we see a star in the East, may we have the courage to load up the camels. Today.
May we be seers and not mere spectators and reach for the star, try to reach all of the way.
Because Advent is over and so is the season of waiting.                               

Teri Martin

On This Day…

Birthday of Martin Luther King, Junior: born 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia

Daily Signet

Why so much joy in light? Because it reveals what I did not see before and it unveils a mystery that expounds into a greater mystery, only now veiled in light. In the “ah-ha” of the creation, the light magnifies what the darkness can no longer hide—beauty to behold but not to be understood, beauty at which to marvel but not to grasp. An expounded-upon mystery, revealed in light to be a greater mystery than the mystery hidden in the dark.  St. John says of the Christ, “All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”  This Word, this Son of God, this ever-present, eternal light of human imagination and creation, infuses the creation. And in this, Light—the joy of life.

Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

Osip Mandelstam born 1891 in Warsaw: poet, essayist. Works: Stalin Epigram, The Noise of Time, Journey to America. Died in a Russian gulag, 1938.  Quotes: “My turn shall also come, I sense the spreading of a wing.” “Only in Russia is poetry respected – it gets people killed.” “Everything is moved by love.”