Daily Signet

I have this image of joy borrowed from the movie “Immortal Beloved,” an image of a nine-year-old Beethoven floating on his back, naked in a pond on a sultry summer night, staring up into the magnificence of a star-populated sky. The “Ode to Joy” swells in the background as the camera pans back from a close-up of the boy into a 5,000 ft. view where suddenly Beethoven is indistinguishable from the other stars reflected in the water. At once he is swimming in stars and is a star; in one sense, he is swimming in pure joy.                        

Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

Baha’i remembrance of the Ascension of Baha’u’llah into heaven

G. K. Chesterton born 1874 in London, died 1936: writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, lay-theologian, biographer, literary critic
Works: Orthodoxy, The Man Who Was Thursday, Heretics
Quotes: “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”

Daily Signet

At the table, I say “Thank you, thank you, thank you”, “Make me yours”, “Blessed art Thou Oh Lord our God who bringeth forth bread from the earth”….As I life my glass, I say, as does Rachel Remen in My Grandfather’s Blessings, “’L’Chaim—to life’. Not as a prayer for something I don’t have. I have life. L’Chaim is not merely a celebration of life when life gives me good things. No matter what difficulty life brings, no matter how hard or painful or unfair life is, life is holy and worthy; not only worthy of celebration but also worthy of choosing. L’Chaim means that, in the face of all that life brings, I still choose God’s gift of life – joyously.”

Make a joyful song unto the Lord, for we have tongues. Make a joyful dance unto the Lord, for we have feet.                                                                            

Ben Leichtling

Daily Signet

Christuman teaches the importance of the Mind of the Heart, rather than thinking and reasoning to find truth. The Upanishads share this: Love, the first seed of the Soul. The truth of this the Sages found in their hearts; seeking in their hearts with wisdom, the Sages found that bond of union between Being and non-being.  

And from the Enneanean: The perfect synchrony of the profoundly rational mind and the intensely passionate heart, by the presence of the Holy Spirit, makes the Human. Reason alone is an enemy; passion alone is an enemy.

We must go beyond names, labels and separateness to the Unity of the One….Our focus on thinking and reasoning leads to worry, sadness and desperation. The mind of the heart and the focus on oneness leads to eternal joy.

Keep the mind Pure, for what a man thinketh he becomes.

From the Tittiriya Upanishad:  And then he saw that Brahman was Joy: For from joy all beings have come, by joy they all live, and unto joy they all return.

God is love and love is joy. All the universe has come from love and unto love all things return.                                                                                            

Barbara Dalberg    

Daily Signet

Image @vklemen on Unsplash

I have danced my life to such music as saints make.
I have lived in the sun and glinted in its gold.
I've lavished feasts of fire on my soul and
blessed my skin for every touch of wind or
love that came.
I have loved.
I have created stars—
even if they were only little stars;
but they were mine.
O God, thank you! Is Heaven better?                                                   

William Boast

On This Day…

St. Augustine: 1C Archbishop of Canterbury

Daily Signet

In the “Gloria” of the High Service, the Latin of the communion reads: Emitte spiritum tuum et creabuntur, “Send forth your spirit and they shall be created.”  I imagine this “sending forth” as the emission of spirit all around us and up through the root of us and through every vessel of every tissue of us and through every fold and chord of us. Thus, we shall be created anew, anew again. Emitte spiritum, I believe, reaches far beyond the limitations imposed by the censor of the mind, the immaturity of the heart, the narrow experiences of life—and we are created anew. 

Created anew, we sing a new song as no one has sung before. We create stars— even if they are only little stars; they are ours. As we breathe life into the deaths of the least of us, the births of the best of us-- new jobs, new roles, new poems, new friends, new achievements—often calling on heroic breakthroughs to reach such pitch, such intensity, such a sounding, such an intermingling of earth and stars that as the created creator in the image of our Creator, each unites with the Creator in an ecstasy and in a joy each his or her own….Oh sing my God through me, a gloria of life drawn to me, a gloria of life drawn from me.  Emitte spiritum tuum—emit your spirit of joy—et creabuntur—and we shall be created—anew. Amen. 

Benjamin H. Martin

On This Day…

Cropped portrait from The Venerable St. Bede Translates St. John by J. Doyle Penrose (c. 1902)

The Venerable Bede (672-735): monk who influenced English literature, author; called ‘the father of British history’ for his Historia Ecclesiastica, only British Doctor of the Church

Ralph Waldo Emerson born 1803 in Boston, died 1882: essayist, lecturer,poet, leader of America’s Transcendental Movement
Works: Self Realization, Essays, Nature
Quotes: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” “Always do what you are afraid to do.” “The only way to have a friend is to be one.”