A saint is someone
Who knows and does
What is holy
Even if you do not
Know it, yet do it,
You are a saint
Maybe you do not do it
But know there’s a way to be
Holy, you are a saint
If you neither know or do
The holy, but look life in the eye
With deep interest, thus holiness
The fool who wanders through
The sunshine and raging storm —
Unknowing what to be or do — is blessed
As God is odd
Do not think
You are other — you're not
Inmate sends email
yesterday morning
“are you coming in?
no, we weren’t.
“no worries, get well”
our prison friends
keep tabs on us
the incapacitated
looked after
by the incarcerated
they used to say
only when you’re sick
of being sick
will you no longer
be sick
now I say
that’s not true
only when you’re sick
of being sick
will sickness continue
until you give up
turn to stairs
go up to bed
turn on heating pad
and fall asleep
Of course I’m not going to buy an MB baseball hat just because it could stand for Meeting Brook.
The Milwaukee Brewers and everyone else would see right through my self-serving patronage.
Children are murdered
In Gaza
In Ukraine
In Bend, Oregon
I’m not sure
We care
Repeat, I’m not
Sure we care
Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was one determined woman. Today is her feast day.
3.
The history of religious men and women contains significant names and attempts to counteract the somnambulance of professing individuals seeking their once sincere attempts to enter a realm of dedication and fidelity to their spiritual conscience and public exemplifcation. Their fates and treatment by peers were often harsh and cruel.
It’s an odd occupation to attempt to achieve some sort of integrity and fidelity to the practice of spirituality in a publicly declared, albeit, cloistered way.
These days, it seems a contrarian methodology might be in order:
What was the last line of “The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger?
"Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." [1]
light
at night
doesn’t go
out
it goes
within
rests in
dark
while
what is
to be seen
composes itself
Someone has taken my energy. Walking out barn with Ensô’s morning gruel, placing it on ground, bowing to him, I walk down to close gate by road. Something snatches my energy and each step feels like a meander at edge of cliff in a time of mudslide. I count my steps back up dooryard so that I might remember what number I was at when the tumbling slide off into free-fall might draw me down.
It’s like that these days. We have no ring bell on barn door so it’s hard to figure who or what is clubbing me with fatigue as I pass through the cluttered narrow pass-way into autumn sunshine after forty eight hours of rain. The new gutter atop barn roof seems to work nicely.
I’ve been thinking about assisted (so-called) suicide. The excellent medical staff doing somersaults arranging ct scans, specialized chemo medication, and taking more blood than I have, are not yet aware I might ask their approval of such a desire. It is a consideration especially after a bad night when I’m sure I died but woke up astounded the distress and turmoil within had subsided and I was looking out at the faint grey of civil dawn.
I hear the Pope has lung cancer. We wish him well. The other hermitage dweller here has begun the process of placing her sailboat on the hard after a long season of sails taking cancer sufferers, survivors, their families, their caregivers on Respite Sails into Penobscot Bay, her islands and shorelines. She also twice took resident-inmates and correction officer off into the wind and sun. She and her wonderfully accessible volunteer crew made the season a joy and highlight for so many.
I’m uncertain how far I wish to push through these sloughing and energy-less days. My steps up Ragged Mountain have resigned and turned back to clear out their desk and headed for the elevator banks sixty three years ago in that tall insurance building where i'd probably have retired as a company vice president were it not for the insanity of attraction to seraphic vows and simple attentiveness to the contemplation and action engaging to world, reality, and soul of each being therein at an early age.
For meetingbrook, some thirty years later, poverty, chastity, and obedience morphed the early nineties into contemplation, conversation, and correspondence -- promises renewed yearly on the anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death.
Looking back I see how absurd my life has been. Perhaps how absurd most our lives have been. The pretense of planning and control, the well-meaning attempts at betterment and improvement, the late realization that we are vassals of the rich and powerful who take what they want, the corporations and the state, compelling the rest of us to do their bidding.
And now, the obscene behavior of the president, congress, and Supreme Court stripping power from the people and abjuring democracy, all laws, and the people. It is now corruption, greed, and delusional intent that hovers over the land. There is precious little the people can do in response. “Vote” we’re told, "that’s the power.” While the conspiring collaborators of chaos make plans to subvert and invalidate votes the people look to the knowledgable few who see the perversion, talk about it, and seem equally powerless to thwart it.
Planet earth is such a small place. The learning and technology, the art and poetry, the joyful celebrations of life and the aspirations of enlightened awakening are small accomplishment in such a small place.
Earth is a tiny speck compared to the vastness of the cosmos, where the scale shifts from thousands of kilometers to billions of light-years. [1]
Earth vs. The Solar System
Earth vs. The Milky Way Galaxy
Earth vs. The Observable Universe
Spinoza (1632-1677) was right.
The main philosophy of Baruch Spinoza is pantheism and rationalism, famously summarized by his Latin phrase Deus sive Natura ("God or Nature"), meaning that God and the physical universe are one and the same single, infinite substance.
Metaphysics. Spinoza writes in Part I that only one substance is absolutely infinite, eternal, and self-caused (causa sui): "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature"). The whole of the universe therefore consists of one substance (God, or, what is the same, Nature) in an example of substance monism. Spinoza's entire mature philosophy, including his views on the mind, knowledge (epistemology), psychology, ethics, politics, and religion, unfolds from this metaphysics.[133]. wikipedia
I think I died
Through the night
Suddenly a cool breeze
I can breathe again
Surely some revelation
Is at hand
This surprise
I’d given up
No understanding
These words
The observable universe contains an estimated 2 trillion galaxies and roughly \(10^{22}\) to \(10^{24}\) (10 sextillion to 1 septillion) stars. [1, 2]
And yet, and yet …
Such exquisite and unexplainable silence!
used to be
we’d be in Cape Breton
for Celtic Colours
on Canadian Thanksgiving
a week of fiddles reels step
dancing glowing hills
and the overall loveliness of
Canada and her people
this year we stream the concerts
once was is always
I no longer travel
but I am there -- the hikes
tenting, campfires drives around
island, the lure to live there --
these days, the refuge
comes midnight
this day prepares
for eight bells
someone will replace you
give your watch away
go to your bunk
below deck, wellies
off, feet under covers
giving up, going under
They walk passed gate. I hear them. I cannot see them.
Words.
Words cannot express things;
Speech does not convey the spirit.
Swayed by words, one is lost;
Blocked by phrases, one is bewildered.
Mumon
They don’t look in. They don’t see me. There don’t know I’m there.
Words.
The voices walking road by gate do not know I am listening for the few seconds of their pilgrimage.
Words
They pass me by. I cannot grasp them.
Rien.
no prayer no meditation
what is it being done
no thinking no analysis
what is it going on
silly categories silly outcomes
there’s nothing going on
Thunder rolls in distance
Trump is dangerously insane
Two facts
Stubborn things, facts
Insanity is sad
Especially when ignored
Ah, thunder again
Ah, he’s not gone yet
All that is knowable
is known but not
recognized as such.
Until it is known
the known is
unrecognizable
take a morning room
if you are not there in it
it is unknown to you
once you arrive in it
there is nothing unknown
the dog snores on Patriot’s rug;
along wall on couch stuffed
monkey tilts against stack
of books near stuffed reindeer
stillness looks out
from each work of art
on wall backing barn
I’ve got a theory.
Ninety five percent of what we call reality is, right now, unnamed and unknown, says a physicist.
All the matter we can physically interact with or observe—every star, planet, gas cloud, and human being—accounts for a mere 5% of the cosmos. [1, 2] (NASA)
Let’s call it “through me.”
Reality can be called that which is passing through me.
It rains this morning. Drops of H2O are falling through nitrogen, oxygen, and argon onto my porch roof below. Air also holds tiny solid and liquid particles called aerosols. These include dust, pollen, smoke, ash, and sea salt. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Whatever I am, it all is falling through me.
“What is” whatever that is, is falling through me.
If you are religious, God is falling through you.
Reality is falling through me.
The perforation, permutation, and presentimentation of that-which-is is the unknown making its way through us, me and you, this.
Hence, the phrase “I am only passing through.”
Perhaps the reason for so much nescience and confusion in our current world is due to a cultivated ignorance and unwillingness to be or become what we are.
We are that which is falling through this right now.
Perceptively, perennially, preposterously.
There you go!
The pattern is the same — pull up covers, sleep, dream, awake to pee, sip some water, pull up covers, sleep, repeat through night.
It’s the dream part that this morning catches my attention. Who went there? Where was there? Fading away what there was there? Sunlight through leaves still holding on after yesterday’s wind.
Friends lay yellow in dooryard.
Yearning for friends in my rocky cave,
I am captivated by the singing of small birds;
The wind entering deep into the grotto
Mingles with the voice of the stream.
Awakening from a dream,
This hermit exists beyond the world.
A quiet life, off by myself,
Fulfills my spirit.
—Fugai Ekun (1568-1654)
Spirit, a quiet life, off by itself, awakening from a dream.
More and more, it seems to me, what I have naively called ‘me’ is a fluctuating pattern of dreams arising and departing in unfathomable traverse across and through a thin string of awareness untied at both ends.
Yes, the belt buckle feels solid, the tomato soup creamy, the tonic water cold. The checking account is functionable, the registration sticker is placed on lower right of NOW plate on pickup, night was dark last night, new asphalt roof settles in.
It seems I might be merely passing awareness flowing in and out of physical materiality swirling across an arising landscape twirling October with all its stories of angels and saints, Celtic music in Cape Breton, crossword and wordle, doctor’s appointments and calendar erasures interrupted by naps, blankets, peeing, and the periodic respite of something poetry-like.
All of it…nothing of substance.
All of it…something accidental.
(Thales and Anaximander, Parmenides and Heraclitus, Aristotle and Plato, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre.)
Each of them philosophical fiction writers sorting words into puzzles side by side yielding fantasies of thought encircling our longing for pattern.
Buddha and Lao Tzu, Jesus and Paul, Mohammed and Ibn Arabi, Francis and Clare, Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh — depatterning assembled thought into this and this encounter.
Until…I am what is appearing and departing.
A dream that pees and finally takes mercy on the skulking mewing hungry cats this lovely pattern of October morning.
Departing?
Arriving?
Neither
Morning is here
Once you are here
There
Is no place to go
St. Bruno (1030-1101) founder
Of Carthusians, the grand silence
Tonight here in this room, each thing
Articulating God wordlessly
With great pleasure
Ah, heating pad on back,
Small respites, small moments —
How lovely to be here
Thunder rolls off west
Monday afternoon — friend
Notes bell — joying back trail
At prison this morning
We are played portfolio
Songs written for Berklee degree
There’s no need for anything
Other than listening to one-another’s
unknown becoming known
Morning
Shows up
God
Looks through
These words
Sees
You
Looking
If you
Long to
See God
at end of day
one thing matters
one day nothing
will matter
if you understand
it is end of day
Francis was going blind at end of life
Like Kwan Yin he especially heard the cries of suffering in the world.
Vibrating within
The ear are many voices
But their origin
Has a source which may be called
The sound of no sound.
—Takuan (1573-1645)
No-sound is the mind of creation deeply listening to creation.
Mere presence.
Without anything else.
Rare
Simplicity
Cannot
Imagine
False
Character
Holiness can
Only hear
Twisting
Leaf falling
Yellow from
Top branch
Forgive me my solitude
It’s all I have and nothing
Sunlight through trees
Cool air through window
I will go out to sit
with yellow leaves
Keep watching with mountain,
pray for the passing everything
It is Francis Day
The earth his bible
Each leaf a breath
Reading what is near
Saint Francis and the Sow
Galway Kinnell
1927 – 2014
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
From A New Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell, published by Houghton Mifflin; copyright © 2000 by Galway Kinnell.
If death
Wanders by
Tonight
Tell him
There’s
Chocolate milk
In fridge
It’s his
If he wishes
Ecuadorians shingle roof
put new gutter on front of barn
move ladders, play music,
do fine work for the elderly
who don't climb ladders,
point chimneys, seal skylights
thing about friendship is
it slows and fades into
what once was, not now
Gibran wrote “your needs
answered” and left it at that --
no need to answer, no longer
The premise is Jesus
Someone beyond creation
Becoming creation itself
Then Francis, realizing
Creation, embodying and
Mirroring, imaging itself
The insane replication
Looking into, as, looking
Through What Is Itself
When I didn’t fall unconscious eating
I was reminded of past anesthesias
The dropping off the edge into oblivion —
It makes me wonder, this near drop off
message and
messanger
what are we
being told
listen, can we
listen, just there
something said
an inference
we are being
spoken to
(lovingly)
our name kissed
If you believe
Even if you don’t
There’s a good possibility
You have a guardian angel
Whatever they are
Accompanying you
Throughout your life
Like a leaf tumbling
Between high branch
And solid ground —
October’s fated visual
We say “how lovely”
No encumbrance
Nothing untoward
Just that gasp of breath
When something lovely lands
bunch of angels huddle
hands rise up “let’s go”
run out to field to city street
sidle up their guardianship
glance around ease to side
begin their watch for good
September runs out of hours
October unzips duffle bag --
shirts and sweaters on wood hangers
first hours first day of tenth month
simplicity, they say
shows through what is
merely true
no cynicism
this young woman
loved life and lord
One by one
They fade and fly
Across the edge of caring
What was the name
The way they spoke
What once was the connection
Light breeze
Over Buddha’s shoulder
In window
Stomach grips and clutches
Each simple breath
This end of September
Hermit monk scholar Jerome (c.342-420) is usually depicted in one of two settings — scholarly monk in his study, or hermit in the desert. He translated the Bible into Latin, the Vulgate.
Antonello da Messina’s St Jerome in His Study, painted around 1475, is a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance art
https://christian.art/daily-gospel-reading/matthew-13-47-52-2026/
Republican senators
Questioning special counsel
Jack Smith
Indistinguish themselves
Reminding us of
Our misfortune with them
Pain is only pain
Rain only rain
God is only God
truth only truth
If you and I were wise
We’d live and love the only
I thought this article might be of interest to you. Please feel free to email a response.
Hugh
On the Implications of Truth and Untruth by Hugh J. Curran (pub in "Informed Comment"; "Countercurrents" 9/27/26
In classical Greek, opinion is referred to as “doxa” with a clear distinction between doxa and truth (Alethia). We have a President in the U.S. who gives daily information by way of a news program called “Truth Social”. “Truth”, to him, seems to be transactional, expressed in his assertions that Canada become the 51st state, with additional threats against Greenland, But his “truth” is, in reality, opinion (Doxa), in which his assertions are all too often misleading.
Being misled is the essence of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave which tells a story of people shackled in a cave facing a wall, watching images projected in front of them. Their reality is based on these flickering images, and their comprehension based on opinions(doxa) shared with each other. When one of the shackled decides to free himself he emerges into the light of the sun and realizes that he had been seeing only images, not reality itself. In this allegory, the Sun is a metaphor for Truth and Knowledge.
Mark Twain’s humorous phrase: “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” illustrates how we are easily deceived, even by numbers, which can give a false appearance of objective information. Twain also notes that “Truth is the most valuable thing we have.” The Irish philosopher Edmund Burke used the phrase: “economy of truth”, meaning “prudent management”, while others shifted the phrase to: “being economical with the truth”, implying deliberate untruthfulness.
A Hebrew proverb states “the Truth is a heavy burden that few are willing to carry”. Mahatma Gandhi defined Truth (Satya) as awakening to a deeper reality. To Gandhi “God is Truth and Truth is God”, meaning Truth is the foundational reality behind existence while relative truth is dependent upon conventional views and opinions.
Relative truths are expressed in the story of the “River Lethe” in Greek mythology which portrays souls drinking its waters to forget memories of their mortal life. Yet when the letter “A” “is added “Lethe” becomes “Alethe”, an active process of awakening to truth.
Christian theology defines Truth as a dependable reality and Christ as the ultimate embodiment of Truth, contrasted with self-deception, and spiritual blindness.
Other religions are equally devoted to awakening to Truth. In Buddhism it centers on the practical realities of human existence and liberation, by way of the Four Noble Truths and the Path out of suffering, as well as the doctrine of the Two Truths (absolute Truth (paramartha satya) and relative truth (samvriti satya)
In Islam Muhammad was known as Al-Sadiq (The Truthful) and Al-Amin (The Trustworthy). The Quran urges believers to align themselves with the truthful and stand firmly for justice, even if it goes against personal interests. Hadiths (traditions of the Prophet) teach that truthfulness guides a person toward righteousness, whereas lying leads to moral decay and hypocrisy.
How do these definitions of Truth relate to wars in Iran, Israel and the Ukraine? The oft-repeated phrase that “the first casualty of war is truth” is reflected in the conflicts that are currently afflicting us. Like many conflicts they are emotionally driven with rationalized justifications, and a compulsive need to demonize and dehumanize adversaries.
There is a medieval Welsh legend illustrating truth-telling. It involves Lludd and Llefelys, brothers ruling Wales and France. Three plagues by malicious forces menaced their kingdoms, which were guided by demons capable of overhearing conversations taking place anywhere. The brothers agreed to meet in the middle of the channel to discuss how to handle the plagues, so they constructed a long brass horn so as to communicate without being overheard. But the demons infiltrated the horn and distorted their words so that only hateful, hostile insults could be heard. Llefelys then poured a medicinal wine into the brass horn to cleanse it so that the virtue of the wine flushed out the demons. At that point the brothers were able to communicate without deceptive speech and made plans to save their kingdoms from the plagues.
Miscommunication often results in bitter conflicts, especially those taking place in the Middle East as misunderstandings continue to be fomented. The U.S. has deliberately aligned itself with the government of Israel’s policies, which is intent on expanding a Jewish homeland to be carved out of traditional Palestinian territory. Although both sides accuse each other of bad faith and malign intent, a few Israeli scholars have taken the side of Palestinians, Ilan Pappe, a well-known example who has written a widely read book: “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
As Pappe notes, political bias obscures Truth-telling, making it difficult to discern deeper realities from falsehood. The demons of misunderstanding proliferate, especially since ownership of the land is the most central concern with both sides resorting to historical narratives to prove their claims. Palestinians state that for many centuries they have had continuous habitation and ancestral presence in the region. The Israeli side looks to biblical narratives to support their claims, although it must be said that, although scholars acknowledge the spiritual and inspirational value of biblical scripture, they do not consider biblical history to be a true measure of accurate history.
There is a similar misunderstanding in the Ukrainian-Russian debacle. Ukrainians insist they have been in possession of the land for over a millennium and have a distinctly different history than Russia. Professor Timothy Snyder, an historian, has taught courses concerning the “Makings of Modern Ukraine” and supports the Ukrainian interpretation of history. In this account, Swedish Vikings (known as Varangians or Rus) arrived in Kiev by river routes in 800 CE for the purpose of trading. Oleg of Novgorod, also a Swedish Varangian, in 882 CE captured Kiev and established Kievan Rus. Ukrainians consider this to be the origin of Ukraine, but in the Ukrainian view it maintained its independence of Russia and sustained itself as separate from Russia by its more than two hundred year connection to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the same time a Ukrainian culture and language evolved while the Orthodox churches of Moscow and Kiev developed separately.
According to the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, Ukrainians were a former province of Russia and their lineage is traced to Kiev, the “mother of all Russian cities”. He uses the Kievan Rus’ origin story to insist that Ukrainian sovereignty is fictitious, and that modern Ukraine was carved out by Soviet leaders, although Ukrainian historians, such as Dr Björn Alexander Düben, insist that Ukraine has been through most of its history, independent of Russia.
Truthfulness about the origins of a nation are often obscured by a need to create a narrative to justify possession. When Doxa (relative truth/opinion) is insisted upon, it looks for a coherent theory to correspond to whatever fits into one particular group’s narrative. Yet Truth, on a deeper level, is a search for fairness, clarity and freedom from obscurities.
In Israel, scholars and archaeologists consider the biblical narrative to be an allegorical and spiritual text and not an historical document. Yet the leaders of Israel interpret the biblical narrative to justify expropriating land from Palestinians who have lived there for at least1500 years. Western powers have been supplying weapons used to devastate Gaza, resulting in the slaughter of at least 20,000 children and 55,000 adults by bombing Gaza’s residences, schools and hospitals into rubble. The complicity has been unconscionable, even to the point of allowing the extremist Israeli leadership to label indigenous Palestinians as terrorists, especially when they resort to protecting themselves against massacres.
Eventually, the horrific nature of the mass killings being perpetrated in Gaza will need to be confronted by Western nations. Israeli historians, including Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe, the Canadian scholar, Yakov Rabkin, as well as holocaust and Genocide scholars such as Omer Bartov are making their research available to a wider audience. In this way the enormity of what has taken place will have to be faced by those who were complicit, including the governments of the U.S, UK, and the EU which have helped provide the weapons of destruction. Their studied indifference to the moral wrongs perpetrated upon the indigenous people of Gaza and Palestine will eventually necessitate a powerful reckoning.
Omer Bartov has noted that the moral burden that conscientious Germans have carried for 80 years as a result of the Holocaust, will also have to be shouldered by western powers, due to their complicity in the slaughter of innocents in Gaza, many still buried under the rubble.
Hugh Curran has been teaching courses on Peace & Reconciliation at the University Maine for 25 years.
