Daily Signet

The mystery of God is in the God above the God—the God above all names and images ascribed by all nations and tribes, above all descriptions—even above the apophatic namings: not that, not that and not that.

No label, no name, no role—no I found it bumper sticker can put borders on the nature of God and successfully name God. God is like the thought that forms a word and though the word is dispersed on the page and across the telephone lines and between the satellite dishes, the thought remains. 

God is like a thought that pervades all formulation of words. Though the words convey the thought, they themselves are contained within the thought. Though they carry the thought's image, the thought still precedes them and extends above and beyond them.  

Benjamin Martin

On This Day…

Gregory the Great: 6C Benedictine monk, appointed Pope on Sept. 3rd, 590; an excellent administrator, he wrote, directed and instructed relentlessly, reshaping liturgical practices, setting up programs for the relief of the poor, weeding out recalcitrant clergy, heretics and schismatics.

Sarah Orne Jewett born in Berwick, Maine on Sept. 3, 1875: poet and writer
Works: A White Heron, Country of the Pointed Firs, Deephaven
Quotes: “The road was new to me, as roads always are, going back.” “What has made this nation great? Not its heroes, but its households.” “God would not give us the same talent if what were right for men were wrong for women.”

Daily Signet

To You who has woven yourself
into stone and sea throughout years 
summed into trillions,
to You who blazes into stars
hung in galaxies unbounded, 
to You who splices spirit
with body and mind
that we might reach Human, 
we pay homage to the mystery of the Way. 

And though the mystery be in us, 
it is also beyond us.
And though it be beyond us, 
it unfolds through us 
into a thousand fruits of grace.   

Benjamin Martin

Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash

Daily Signet

There is a burning in my heart…

There is but one God and his name is manifold. 
We call God—Allah, Yahweh, Brahman— 
we call God—Ahura Mazda, Min, Manitou or Mithra. 
God is the nameless with the hidden name. 
So God is numinous, is light, is dark, 
is all—is Omni-Dei.                          

—From the Mystery of God High Service

On This Day…

Edgar Rice Burroughs born in Chicago, Illinois in 1875: writer whose famous creation was Tarzan of the Apes, died 1950
Quotes: “I am alive and a reality, or am I but a dream?” “If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.” “You are here but for an instant, and you mustn’t take yourself too seriously.”

Daily Signet

The I Ching teaches us that great receptivity attracts exceptional results. The interesting thing about the exceptional force of the receptive is it can be subverted by planning. When Spring comes, the grass does not plan to grow. I’m reminded of a poem, “What to Remember When Waking,” by David Whyte, talking about receiving the day compared to planning the day. Here is a snippet of it:

“In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake…
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans….
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep….” From What to Remember When Waking, David Whyte 

Our beloved first Dean, Bill understood the auspicious nature of receptivity and lived it. He spent his dawns, morning, afternoons—in the receptive. He did not measure his success by what he got done in a day. In fact, he would hit you over the head (metaphorically speaking, of course) with an Ipad if you measured the success of your day by the number of tasks completed….Bill was a man for freedom. He dedicated his life to helping us to become free of our goals and best-laid plans, free to receive the dawn, the day and the night as they came. Free from our titles, task lists,…free from what we have always done, free to change and explore new ground. And isn’t that the ultimate freedom…the freedom to change and explore new ground? And isn’t it also true that the only way that this can happen is for us to be receptive?  

Jamie Ziegler

On This Day…

Christian remembrance of the beheading of John the Baptist

Oliver Wendell Holmes born in Cambridge, Mass., 1808, died 1894: physician, poet, polymath
Works: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Elsie Venner
Quotes: “Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” “The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.” “Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.”

Daily Signet

All of the 64 hexagrams in the I-Ching, the Book of Changes, are based on the right actions of the Creative (Yang, Male) and the Receptive (Yin, Female). If either Yang or Yin are so much as a hair’s width from where they belong at a particular time, the I-Ching describes this moment as a “great misfortune.” However, when Yang and Yin are precisely where they belong, the I-Ching describes this moment as being “complete.”

….In Christuman we aim to become the greatest human possible, man or woman, remembering we each carry both. To be less than this is a great misfortune to the Universe which will only know you once. 

Earl Behnke