Daily Signet

“A pipping at this shell of mine.”

How long an incubation for this death?
How long a tempering for this creation?
I almost wish for sameness.
I almost wish for easy.
I almost wish for always.
Yet I bring death that will make fertile
the new ground.                                                                      

From The Prayer to the Mystery of Creativity

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

Gertrude Chandler Warner born 1890 in Connecticut, died 1979: writer of children’s books.
Works: The Boxcar Children, Surprise Island, The Yellow House
Quotes: “People should always have what they want on their birthdays.” 

Daily Signet

Angels don’t create new. Their work is fixed. They sing the same old, appointed songs of praise. Dead men don’t create. Alive is our only chance to create. You, more than the angels, are appointed to sing a new song, a new song of the eternal, anew each day. Your unique song, born of the love of the Christos in you for the earth of you. How do you accept your human, Godly appointment to create God’s word and will through your efforts on God’s earth? As Charles Dubois, says, “The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”                                                           

Benjamin H. Leichtling

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?” “Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

Daily Signet

Ten thousand years ago the Mesolithic hunters armed with stones and pebbles had already attributed magico-religious forces to materials found in their environment. And, as their descendants began the 1500 year journey to becoming an agricultural society, humans brought forward the idea that material objects could carry a sacred force.

In an age of reason and materialism, it is easy to dismiss the idea that an inanimate object could have any power over the human. But there are 10,000 years of evidence to the contrary and perhaps the most compelling argument comes from the fact that man has consistently destroyed the objects of “other” religions in recognition of their power. The pebbles of the Birsek caves were broken in half to annihilate their force. The Taliban destroyed the statues of the Buddha.  Even Christians “re-engineered” Elijah’s cup to make it their own.

…I am reminded that symbols and ceremonies are created for civilizations and thus can be destroyed by civilizations. What is meaningful is not their existence in context or their “realism,” but rather the truth that is in their creation. For in their creation is power because it is in creation that we find God.                                                   

Jamie Ziegler

On This Day…

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.” “America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.” “The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.”

Daily Signet

Ten thousand years ago the Mesolithic hunters armed with stones and pebbles had already attributed magico-religious forces to materials found in their environment. And, as their descendants began the 1500 year journey to becoming an agricultural society, humans brought forward the idea that material objects could carry a sacred force.

In an age of reason and materialism, it is easy to dismiss the idea that an inanimate object could have any power over the human. But there is 10,000 years of evidence to the contrary, and perhaps the most compelling argument comes from the fact that man has consistently destroyed the objects of“other” religions in recognition of their power. The pebbles of the Birsek caves were broken in half to annihilate their force. The Taliban destroyed the statues of the Buddha.  Even Christ “re-engineered” Elijah’s cup to make it his own.

…I am reminded that symbols and ceremonies are created for civilizations and thus can be destroyed by civilizations. What is meaningful is not their existence in context or their “realism,” but rather the truth that is in their creation. For in their creation is power because it is in creation that we find God.

Jamie Ziegler

On This Day…

Thomas Jefferson born 1743 in Virginia, died 1826: Founding Father ofthe United States and president.
Works: The United States Declaration of Independence, the Jefferson Bible, Notes on the State of Virginia
Quotes: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political worlds as storms in the physical.”

Daily Signet

When you are near death, it’s amazing how clear things become—not answers, but perception and vision.   If after one and a half million years, we have never found a final answer to anything, any question—except to mechanical questions, this should tell us answers are not to be had to nonmechanical questions.

All living things are designed not to answer such questions, but to call us to adapt to the reality of the organic, the vital. (The mechanical has a “reality”, but the vital has a reality of its own.) Adapt. This adaptation is to each individual’s unique perception and requires a unique perception that will never quite apply to any other event. So, there are no answers needed or possible.  Hence, either absurdity or creativity—unique, special and synchronous. Out of the perfect perception and by imagination, creativity can obtain beauty, joy, love, entheos. Answers are not needed, just adaptation.

Some of that adaptation is purely mechanical, but this is the most significant part of adaptation. It can be highly repeatable…but not the ever-changing, the unpredictable, the mystery of each moment. The glory of it.

William Boast

On This Day…

Beverly Cleary born 191, died 2021 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.”