at lori’s birthday

 God gives birth

You find earth

Good for you

Good for us too

pore over this

 If you’re

Self absorbed

You are a wet and

Laden sponge

If you have

Let go all you carry

you sit high & dry

As sage of sink —

Squeezed empty

Ready to cleanse

Soul asks for enough

Water to wipe away 

Accumulated fear

useless remnants

To begin again

To remember origin

he stands for something

 Good going, 

Senator Booker,

Thanks for

Speaking for

US

playing one's hand

Trying to decide whether to immolate myself in front of the Federal Post Office, or, to open the second container of Coffee Milk by Oakhurst. It's a hard decision. Someone could take a photo of my burned body next to the sign "This Toast is for Trump" and try to sell it to the Nebraska Sentinel and Morning Post for big bucks. 

On the other hand, I could put off the coffee milk for another time and put off the conflagration for never and continue listening to Peter Baker and Susan Glasser's book The Divider (c.2022). It is, nevertheless, hard to imagine a less qualified, more morally and characterologically flawed human being as president than the one from 2016 and 2025. 

Even the zippo lighter and red gasoline can understand the futility of trying to make a statement when there are no ears or eyes interested in anything said or done. They hide themselves behind the dumpster and look for a vw beetle gas tank and an open pack of Camels to put their lives back on the path to meaning. Surely, they think, the price of a first class piece of mail will drop, and pizza will no longer think pineapple or anchovies are seemly adornment for what goes into a large "You've tried the rest, now try the best" pie box.

They say spring has come

And the sky is filled with mist,

Yet on the mountains,

No flowers, only snow.

Ryokan (1758-1831)

Dog snores by chair.

Paul G. Tremblay's Cabin at the End of the World (c.2018) paperback sits on passenger seat of truck. It was 75% off at GoodWill, a steal for 26 cents. Stephen King's blurb said he really liked it. We need a more palatable horror than that of Pennsylvania Avenue. 

The grey Volkswagen turns into driveway.

The pot's right. Go ahead, deal 'em.

Let's get this game under way.

I'll have a sarsaparilla, barkeep. 

Keep the change, honey. 

I'm feeling lucky. 

Count me some chips please.

Ain't it great to be alive!

april, first

 fool

me

once

and

again

I 

am 

foolish . . .

April come

she will

the intersection of itself

 Sociopaths

Gathering other

Sociopaths

No conscience

Emulating

No conscience

Uh oh —

All goes to

Willful greed

The deviousness

Of separation

Into othering..,

Can wholeness

Re-emerge can 

holiness reincarnate

Can mind, heart and

longing (will) 

Intersection one another

Crossing (momentarily

and finally) that which

seemed separate & suspect

This intersecting reality

holding no opposition, no

sameness, as through-ing

(Yes), through-ing,

The movement through

one as other as one

Having to see, having to

feel, having longing-being

turning with what is turning…

No sociopath can abide

What is turning through

The intersection of Itself

We need to name, need 

learn to pronounce what-is

Emerging through (yes)

This 

(Yes)

Love

turn turn turn

“Awareness of being is happiness.” (—Rupert Spira)

Being is happiness in awareness.

Happiness is being-awareness.

“Is” happiness awares being.

go ahead, reach for it -- ha

 the lyric went: "Nothing's

gonna change my world"

We missed it. They were 

singing "Nothing" is gonna

change my world. As it does,

does nothing, it changes

everything in ways that

somethings never can

Jai Guru Deva, Om all across

the universe, nothing changes

everything, everyone, everyplace

glorifying (divine) teacher

ask it, ask it now

 Myanmar suffers earthquake

Gaza suffers hamas and Israel

Ukraine suffers putin and Russia

America suffers trump and maga

I suffer you, you suffer me

What if Being were our conscious joy

words, words, as if all worlds were there

 World

Is made of

Words

Speak well

A world of

Peace

Speak poorly

A world of

Tears

Become

A poet, save

The world

   Cf, A Token, poem by Robert creeley)

into the light of the dark bright night

 No need to know where 

you’ve been, 

you were never there

Redwing blackbird, a brief 

while on bare branch

Flies off eyeing feeder

La vie est drôle

We never been nor seldom are

Where thought thinks we’ve been

or are --

It’s a magic trick, memory, presto

chango, hoc est corpus meum, hocus

pocus —

When we realize this, there is no there

There

Nor, hardly, any here 

Here

Smoke and mirrors, in Hebrew

“I will create as I speak,

Aramaic "I create like 

the word" (אברא כדברא),

avda kedavra  – “what is 

said must be done.”

Given time, everything is

Spoken into existence

Everything spoken out of

Existence

Speak now, 

Then,

Be silent

The world comes

The world goes

Blessed be 

the surrounding

Breath 

sounding 

Itself

Into appearance, 

then

Disappearance

 

You were only

 

Waiting for 

this moment

To arise

When you 

think 

about it

What

Really

Is

There

Here

 cf  https://youtu.be/7epRPz0LGPE?si=7CB2arHz3ZTiUYu6

does anyone want to know the answer

 Is there really

An invisible god

That cares about 

This world?

kommer til orde

 odd to think

at center of

stone is word

split the stone

release sound

pronouncing

if you practice

silence you 

emerge word

creation isn't

done, it awaits

pronunciation

the truest words

let things be

as they are

with the arising of this, that arises

What the hell, it's Saturday. Snow fell and will again tomorrow.

Dependent Origination walks into room with brown and white St Bernard/Border Collie mix freshly bathed yesterday still smelling of shampoo.

Why not look at it.

• Saṁyutta Nikāya
• Connected Discourses on Causation

12.41. Five Fearful Animosities (1)

At Savatthī. Then the householder Anathapiṇḍika approached the Blessed One, paid homage to him, and sat down to one side. The Blessed One then said to him:

“Householder, when five fearful animosities have subsided in a noble disciple, and he possesses the four factors of stream-entry, and he has clearly seen and thoroughly penetrated with wisdom the noble method, if he wishes he could by himself declare of himself: ‘I am one finished with hell, finished with the animal realm, finished with the domain of ghosts, finished with the plane of misery, the bad destinations, the nether world. I am a stream-enterer, no longer bound to the nether world, fixed in destiny, with enlightenment as my destination.’

“What are the five fearful animosities that have subsided? Householder, one who destroys life engenders, on account of such behaviour, fearful animosity pertaining to the present life and fearful animosity pertaining to the future life, and he experiences mental pain and displeasure. Thus for one who abstains from destroying life, this fearful animosity has subsided.

“One who takes what is not given … … who engages in sexual misconduct … who speaks falsely … who indulges in wine, liquor, and intoxicants that are a basis for negligence engenders, on account of such behaviour, fearful animosity pertaining to the present life and fearful animosity pertaining to the future life, and he experiences mental pain and displeasure. Thus for one who abstains from wine, liquor, and intoxicants that are a basis for negligence, this fearful animosity has subsided.

“These are the five fearful animosities that have subsided.

“What are the four factors of stream-entry that he possesses? Here, householder, the noble disciple possesses confirmed confidence in the Buddha thus: ‘The Blessed One is an arahant, perfectly enlightened, accomplished in true knowledge and conduct, fortunate, knower of the world, unsurpassed leader of persons to be tamed, teacher of devas and humans, the Enlightened One, the Blessed One.’

“He possesses confirmed confidence in the Dhamma thus: ‘The Dhamma is well expounded by the Blessed One, directly visible, immediate, inviting one to come and see, applicable, to be personally experienced by the wise.’

“He possesses confirmed confidence in the Saṅgha thus: ‘The Saṅgha of the Blessed One’s disciples is practising the good way, practising the straight way, practising the true way, practising the proper way; that is, the four pairs of persons, the eight types of individuals—this Saṅgha of the Blessed One’s disciples is worthy of gifts, worthy of hospitality, worthy of offerings, worthy of reverential salutation, the unsurpassed field of merit for the world.’

“He possesses the virtues dear to the noble ones—unbroken, untorn, unblemished, unmottled, freeing, praised by the wise, ungrasped, leading to concentration.

“These are the four factors of stream-entry that he possesses.

“And what is the noble method that he has clearly seen and thoroughly penetrated with wisdom? Here, householder, the noble disciple attends closely and carefully to dependent origination itself thus: ‘When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases. That is, with ignorance as condition, volitional formations come to be; with volitional formations as condition, consciousness…. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering. But with the remainderless fading away and cessation of ignorance comes cessation of volitional formations; with the cessation of volitional formations, cessation of consciousness…. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.’

“This is the noble method that he has clearly seen and thoroughly penetrated with wisdom.

“When, householder, these five fearful animosities have subsided in a noble disciple, and he possesses these four factors of stream-entry, and he has clearly seen and thoroughly penetrated with wisdom this noble method, if he wishes he could by himself declare of himself: ‘I am one finished with hell, finished with the animal realm, finished with the domain of ghosts, finished with the plane of misery, the bad destinations, the nether world. I am a stream-enterer, no longer bound to the nether world, fixed in destiny, with enlightenment as my destination.’”  

https://suttacentral.net/sn12.41/en/bodhi?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false

Something has wanted arising. 

So, suffering arises.

If something unarises, will suffering unarise?

If we are finished with hell, is hell finished?

look, no, further

 walking dog

in woods

he stops,

contemplative stare,

snow falling

everywhere

trees bedecked

ground squeaking

it occurs: this is

all there is,

(not in Peggy

Lee sense) but

this is all

there is

the silence, the snow

the watchfulness, 

each step a completion

of no journey, just steps

closing yurt door

closing fence gate

returning to barn

noticing footprints

from bookshed, 

plants watered

ski poles leaning near

five sticks of firewood

nearing transience

 An eclipse, they say

Is taking place

Alarm sounds

Somewhere

Thank god

I’m oblivious

Besides, 

It’s snowing

And birds

Are singing

Whatever

It is

I’m not

Supposed

To look

Upon

I don’t

I can’t

This is

What mercy

Looks like

As plow passes

we have forgotten god has forgotten us

 I sorrow 

For Gaza

I sorrow 

For Ukraine

I sorrow

For America

For people

Suffering

For terrible

Behavior

Devastating

Humankind

me pretending not to be

 baseball season 

began yesterday

I missed it

I was preaching

the gospel, using

no words

(Doris sends Norman

quoting Francis on this)

I really wasn't

preaching, I was

simply unconscious

pretending not to be

dawn cafe

morning birdsong 

comes up through 

window 

seed feeder in first 

light sets table 

readies sunflower 

nut special 

for early 

arrivals

as already done or existing

Listening to Nones from France, and reading about Wolfhart Pannenberg. 

One about not losing confidence. The other about all will be made clear at the end.

This meander, through prayer and scholarship, an attempt to reside well in the day. 

Of course, Pannenberg added, the history in which God is made known is not any isolated little bit of history, but the totality of history. The truth about anything comes out in the end, not along the way, and the truth about God will come out when God’s work is completed at the eschaton—the climax of history.

This insight is the key to all of Pannenberg’s theology. He defined God as “the all-determining power” and declared that as long as all things were not manifestly determined by God, God’s reality and identity were dubious. As he notoriously phrased it in his early book Theology and the Kingdom of God, “It is necessary to say that, in a restricted but important sense, God does not yet exist.” This rather drastic way of making his point was attractive to process thinkers, panentheists, and Hegelians of various kinds, with whom he disagreed but welcomed dialogue. In some ways, he spent the rest of his career either buttressing, nuancing, or—as in at least two cases in the 1990s when I heard him give public lectures and respond to questions—seeming to almost retract his claim that “in a restricted but important sense, God does not yet exist.”

Christians, even academic theologians, can hardly be expected to wait until the end of the world to find out if their God-talk has any warrant. But Pannenberg insisted that “only with the consummation of the world in the kingdom of God does God's love reach its goal and the doctrine of God reach its conclusion.” Picturing all of reality, including its temporal succession, as a unified whole, Pannenberg pointed to its final totality (“the eschatological consummation of history”) as the location of God’s demonstrated reality. Crucially, once that reality and totality are achieved, it will turn out that history not only was always moving toward it but was in fact determined by it all along, though retroactively. And the final “retroactive permanence” of God’s all-determining rule is present to us here in the course of history through Jesus Christ. In Christ, God is truly present and he makes available in advance what will be experienced in the future. This concept, known as prolepsis, is thus the juncture point of Pannenberg’s theology: We have in Christ’s resurrection the reality of God himself acting in history. The theological destiny of the world lives among us now as we make our way to the final resurrection. Pannenberg argued that his account of prolepsis “combines the concept of the kingdom of God with the Platonic idea of the good to the effect that the temporal structure of the latter is emphasized.”

        (--from, The Strange Legacy of Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, by Fred Sanders, Christianity Today 

Good in time. God in eternity. Jesus in time. Christ in infinity.

A challenge to prayer. Are we praying that what-is-true be true now? Or are we praying that we might have the strength to live with what-is-false now so as to be recipient of what-is-true when time is fully complete and we are risen from and through its limitations and illusions?

Or, are we meant to become the truth that is beyond time here in time so as to encourage our fellow travelers as we make our way through this veil of shadows and sorrows toward and through the torn open veil revealing light and joy?

Prolepsis, here:

prolepsis (n.)

1570s, "anticipation, the taking of something anticipated as already done or existing," also "the assignment of something to a too early date," from Latin prolepsis, from Greek prolēpsis "an anticipating," etymologically "a taking beforehand," from prolambanein "to take before, receive in advance," from pro "before" (see pro-) + lambanein "to take" (see lemma). A word used variously in philosophy and rhetoric. Related: Proleptic; proleptical; proleptically.

also from 1570s

Perhaps it is necessary to become a proleptic christian, or a proleptic buddhist in order to be a true christian or true buddhist.

It's a matter of time. 

The time within which we live. Oftentimes a difficult time full of worry and doubt. A time when others claim time belongs to them and you are meant to serve it and them simultaneously.

Is this why some practice a "spiritual" or "meditative" life? To breakthrough the restrictions and demands of time while nurturing and nourishing the proleptic fullness and completion of time with its promise of final totality, '(“the eschatological consummation of history”) as the location of God’s demonstrated reality.'

Is that the promise?

Is that the invitation of the religious, spiritual, meditative, contemplative life?

As I consider this, I attend the prayerful reminder:

    Lectio (Nones)

Nolíte abjícere confidéntiam vestram quæ magnam habet remuneratiónem; 

         Do not lose your confidence, which has a great reward.

patiéntia enim vobis necessária est, 

          For it is necessary for you to be patient, 

ut voluntátem Dei faciéntes reportétis promissiónem.

            so that, by doing the will of God, you may receive the promise.

At least, for today, I'll look a little more carefully at time, now and then.

A friend in prison calls it "Uncle Al". Here's what AI says about it:

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" is a biblical saying from Matthew 6:34, meaning each day has enough trouble of its own, so don't worry about the future.  

see flowers and hear birds

How foolish to be reduced to words about experience/reality instead of becoming the reality one is with.

How foolish to rail against perceived injustice and illegal arrests instead of throwing one's body into the fray.

How impotent to see what is going on and not know what to do about it.

What does Dogen have to say about the tension concerning writing and directly engaging that is there??

Jiŭ shè rénjiān wú aìxī 

        Living in the world for so long without attachments,

Wénzhāng bĭyàn jì pāo lái 

        Since giving up using paper and pen.

Jiàn huā wén niao fēnqíng shăo 

        I see flowers and hear birds without feeling much,

Zhà zài shān yóu kuì bù cái  

        Living on mountains, 

        I am embarrassed by this meager effort.

                 (An example of Dōgen’s Chinese poetry,  Association for Asian Studies)

Surely I am missing something.

Mountain behind me, mountain across road, they know I have not listened well to them.

lost in one place

I wonder what the small defect will be when the United States looks up, again, at fiery light raining down death and destruction on its invulnerable belief in its majestic superiority.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Nor the sudden slap in the face for impertinence and insulting behavior.

He had three choices: firstly, drop the bomb on Kokura without clear visuals; secondly, switch the mission to a different city; thirdly, dump the Fat Man out to sea.

Sweeney called for another update from his superiors and circled for the eleventh time. The cloud was, he felt, dissipating. H was sure he would have visuals shortly. The fuel line dropped further. He looked out the window into an unexpected wall of cloud.

The call went through on the radio and the coordinates were switched.

There were, Sweeney was told, no clouds over Nagasaki.

            169

The plutonium core of the Nagasaki bomb was the size of a throwable rock.

            170

And we think the myths are startling.

            171

Often Rami thinks of this: but for an accident of cloud vapor -- a small defect in the weave of atmospheric weather -- seventy-five thousand lives were lost in one place and preserved, then, in another.

(--pp.78-79 in Apeirogon, A Novel, {2020} by Colum McCann) 

Whenever I drive down the two-lane I am constantly grateful drivers going the other way are paying attention, following the rules, and are not suffering a medical emergency while our combined speed of 100mph hurtles us past one another in our trusting contentment of our mutual safety.

These days, in different lanes, that trust is fracturing as the eighteen wheelers of this administration's joyride barrel senselessly over narrow roads weaving and bobbing across median line forcing aghast drivers off the road into poles and ditches as the big guys go speeding by with no apparent recognition of the devastation they leave behind them.

Kokura was cloudy. Nagasaki clear. Death and destruction was moved two hundred kilometers (124 miles) that day. A haphazard change. A good day for one city, a bad day for another.

The September 11th humiliation offered us a lesson in humility. We took that offering and threw it in the face of Iraq, destroying a country that had nothing to do with the attack on the US. Lies and revenge, retribution and personal vendetta prevailed. I wonder what we learned.

Today lies and revenge, retribution and personal vendetta are prevalent again. 

It is no way to deal with the national and international community. We seem a bit petty, a little smug and officious, brazen and confident no one can touch us while support structures like national health networks, international trade agreements, domestic and foreign economic safeguards are chiseled and sawn from their moorings and left dangling from piers and front porches hither and yon.

There are very few persons, I hazard, unaware of the seemingly malicious and certainly brazen moves made by MAGA Republicans in all three branches of government. The cocky ones who sneer their dominance, the cowardly ones who slink away from their constituents, the useless ones who stick their finger up to see which way the wind is blowing.

On the other side of the political spectrum, having been dealt poor hands, the Democrats at the table waver between seeing the raise and folding meekly no matter what their hole cards read. Never have mumbled words been so indecipherable and sheepish.

It is a strange time.

The weather overhead is cloudy, the atmospherics vaporish.

The descending ICE agents and threats -- to everyone within the president's tour of decimation against law firms, universities, libraries, government assistance agencies, news media, local health care facilities, governors of states who point out nakedness, and all the rest of us who look up to see what covering is overhead -- is taking its toll on the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of the populace paying attention to the ungluing of democracy and the replacing with whatever it is to be called by those with self-assumed naming rights of the new, if not damaged and damaging, reality of this country.

Myths, yes, are often startling, no matter how vital. And, yes, always, stretching credibility.

But the story being enacted these days is more than haphazardly disappointing. 

It is downright terrifying.