A Community of Souls...exploring the mystery of being human
An avatar—an incarnation of God,
A bodhisattva—an enlightened being of God who returns as teacher.
All reveal that god is active upon and activated by the void,
the dark night of the soul
intently filled with nothing,
intensely emptied of everything.
From the Mystery of God Service
The mystery of God is in the God beyond the God—the wholly-other-than-God—beyond what my senses can trap in their limited bandwidth of light and vibration and color, beyond what my eyes can invert and reflect back to my brain and receive via any sense—God beyond all sense; beyond all senses. To be sure, in a way I can experience God, but only the God I can digest, only the God I can tear up with teeth and swallow in small bites and push down narrow passages—yet, this is only a limited taste of the unlimited. No matter how intense is the God I experience, there is more God beyond that. Whatever widening circle I travel, His circle is beyond that. Whatever outreaches of whatever frontiers exist within my soul, His soul extends beyond that. Like the horizon, He appears more accessible at first glance than when He is actually approached. He is ever-beyond and beyond even that.
Benjamin Martin
On This Day…
St. Hildegarde of Bingen: 11-12C abbess and mystic who illustrated many of her visions, philosopher, composer (780 works.) Never canonized
William Carlos Williams born 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey: physician, writer, poet, died 1963
Works: Spring and All, Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
Ken Kesey born 1935 in La Junta, Colorado: founder of The Merry Prankster movement, beat poet and writer, died 2001
Works: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Sometimes A Great Notion
Quotes: “Man, when you lose your laugh, you lose your footing.” “You can’t really be strong until you see the funny side of things.” “People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.”
There is a Higher Being, but his name isn't God.
William Boast
As Meister Eckhart prayed, so do I pray: "I pray God to rid me of God." The mystery of God is in the paradox of this prayer. I cannot rid myself of God without calling upon the power of God, and so to be totally rid of—without God—I must be totally within Him. Only within Him am I no longer buffeted by the winds about God, but I am centered rather, in the very eye of God and therefore, free of any God I might conjure or ignore.
Oh God, rid me of the God I believe in—He is not big enough—and fill me with the God I belove in—He is the well of eternal waters—above, beyond and within all I know. Amen.
Benjamin Martin
On This Day…
The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows: commemoration of the seven most sorrowful moments in Blessed Virgin Mary’s life, the last having been her Son’s crucifixion
Agatha Christie, Dame of the British Empire born 1890 in Torquay, Cornwall, England: prolific mystery writer, died 1976
Works: novels and stories of detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple,
Quotes: “One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.” “But surely for everything you have to love, you have to pay some price.” “The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.”
The eternally crucified, yet risen Christ and the eternally silent, yet awakened Buddha—each creates a powerful black hole of unknowing into which, if we desire to approach, all of our certain, rationalized truths about God ultimately must disappear. Yet, while acknowledging that the existence of the Ineffable is independent even of the trueness of the noblest of truths, be they Christian or Buddhist, I also recognize that the human's existence is not. And so, in all of human history, there have been ways of holiness, of ethical conduct, of mental discipline and intuitive wisdom. In another time and another place, this could have been a “Buddhuman” way. In this time and place it is a Christuman way I seek, perhaps because I prefer ideas of a Golden Chain over a Karmic one, (although they may be the same). All the while, I must never forget that God is, with or without any of our ideas, preferences or understandings. On this Christuman Way, may we acknowledge, with Nicholas of Cusa, that there is but one God and his name is manifold, that he is as many as one and infinity, and that he is neither nor anything else that one can say.
Teri Martin
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
On This Day…
Christian Holy Cross Day: the cross is recognized as a symbol of Christ’s victory over death
Shinto International Day of Peace
