そこにいる … soko ni iru … there we are

 Friends visit Japan

Send blossoms

Flowering us

when parental love is the question

 The historian says

When the people expect 

And demand honesty

From their leaders

It will show itself

But when we are

Deceptive opportunistic 

Liars we get deceptive

Opportunistic liars as

Leaders. We create them

Liars love our president

He is made in their image

And even if he pains them

And deceives them they take

Pride in their offspring

Once honesty and truthfulness

Were valued character traits

The ability to manage the good

That hid in plain sight and void

The evil that lurked in shadows

It is us

We parent new life

We foster and adopt

What needs care and love

It is we who shape and sustain

what she wrote

Woman entered shop thirty years ago during conversation.

Next time she came in, she brought this:

altar

 Buddha just sits there

Jesus just hangs there on cross

late at night, right here

heating system cuts in -- no

other, side by side 

ser con dios

what news?

I've quit

Donnie who?

Ha, ha. ha, 

no more

he'll pass

earth

remains

I'll pass

nothing remains

even the Pope

is critical

Salud para ti, Papa

(Health to you, Papa)

whether here or there

ser 

con dios

(Be with God)

snow bowl alive and jumping

 across Hosmer pond 

cold wind at back at face, one

step at a time, walk

never off center

 At center

Where truth resides

No opinion visits

At edges

Left and right

Bellicosity

Don’t let them

Convince you to step

Off middle way

mother nature

Walk with the wind (love)

Native American said

Be where peace steps (love)

unloading and disembarking

 When I jumped from the top floor

of the Actuarial Department of

the New York Life Insurance

building

I landed in a small town on

the Delaware River upstate

I studied and prayed, played

basketball and baseball, hit

tennis balls and pingpong balls

attempted to block a full running

tackle on a kickoff and crawled

breathless to side line nearly dead

It was the early sixties, JFK 

was shot but not yet Martin or

Bobby

Fr. Louis, talk done, would disappear

I was impertinent and naive

slipping past God on a stairwell

in Manhattan during the riots

at Columbia, staggering away

from one life to another, ersatz 

pseudo-

ronin and under-bridge non-saint

I had to learn how to pray

all over, a tug, lines cast off

no one on the bridge, adrift

in night harbor, tide going out, 

as abandoned as abandoning

listing and listless, creaking

through slip and breakwater

stars looking away, no moon

waves lapping at rusty hull

derelict

It sank somewhere miles off 

shore in sudden storm without

fanfare or known coordinates --

and there, depth scuttled by time

broken apart and blanched grey

bottomed and bedraggled

never to feel surface again

unsalvaged

 just the right place to mull

where buoyancy had disappeared

becoming at home in murky depth

far below passing liners and tankers

all going with effective weigh-points

to expectant calls with useful cargo,

gangplanks set and rituals followed

unloading and disembarking, ready

to return and resume passage homeward --

passing over shadow hull fixed firmly

on sea floor of no place else to go --

tucking, if nothing else, the unentered log  

nichts ergibt sinn *

 There's so much sadness 

so much turmoil

an odd president

odd vp odd doge odd fbi

odd dni odd ag odd sec/def

odd gop senate and house

It is an odd time in the USA 

odd

terrifyingly odd

I drink orange juice

eat Breton crackers

watch day dusk

in the silence of this front room

buddha christ and mary on windowsill

altar, they see it, nothing makes sense *

quóniam in aetérnam misericordia ejus

 The new clock from goodwill

Is one minute ahead in red numbers

Nuns from France chant psalm

No place no time I’d rather be

he wants money, pay him, send him away

 Such frumpy foolishness

a blanket over sleight of hand

look over here -- see the hat

see the rabbit see the switch

I think the people will rise up

I think he will be overthrown

down deep the American people

do not suffer fools gladly,  no way

at day's end will we allow a fool

to continue foolishness -- 

just pay him off,

run him out of town

campana

 There it goes

Sliding up from east

Slow dusk

There it goes

Sliding down to west

Fading daylight

Here i am

Between the two

Call me Campana toll

one bullet into a wall and a second

Sometimes a headline of a story just snatches your attention from wandering without focus. 

Today, 2025:

Anne Marie Hochhalter, Paralyzed in Columbine Shooting, Dies at 43, NYTimes, 18feb2025

Anne Marie Hochhalter, who spoke publicly about the long-lasting effects of  gun violence after she was paralyzed in the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine  High School in Colorado, was found dead on Sunday at her home in Westminster,  Colo. She was 43. The police said that officers had found Ms. Hochhalter after they were called for a  welfare check. The Adams County coroner, which initially handled  Ms. Hochhalter’s case, said it had been transferred to the Jefferson County coroner,  “given that her death was likely related to complications of paraplegia associated  with the Columbine shooting.” The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office said that  autopsy results were not yet available.  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/us/anne-marie-hochhalter-columbine-shooting-dies.html

Twenty six years ago, 1999: 

Mother of Injured Columbine Student Kills Herself,  Associated Press, 23Oct 1999

The mother of a student wounded in the shootings at Columbine High School walked into a suburban pawn shop today, asked to see a handgun, loaded it and killed herself with a shot to the head.

The suicide by the woman, Carla June Hochhalter, occurred about six months after her 17-year-old daughter, Anne Marie, was critically wounded and partly paralyzed in the April 20 shootings by two student gunmen, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold.

This morning, Ms. Hochhalter, 48, asked to see a handgun at the Alpha Pawn Shop in Englewood. As a clerk handled paperwork, Ms. Hochhalter loaded the gun with bullets she had brought with her. She fired one bullet into a wall and a second one into her head, an Englewood police spokeswoman, Leticia Castillo, said. 

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/23/us/mother-of-injured-columbine-student-kills-herself.html

And here, the Wikipedia reference:

A school shooting and attempted bombing occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States.^[b] The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher; ten were killed in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently died by suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape.  (Wikipedia)

These stories stop you.

They root you.

Set you pondering.

Any questions?

gelassenheit

6°, I open window

for cold air

Spare

Change

Is all I can manage

Am I praying?

I can’t really tell —

If attention to word

Rare

Strange

Gone to ether after sound.

Like acosmism — the

Philosophy maya, denying

Universe has any absolute

Reality or existence apart from God —

Clear

Range

Stretching thinner than can be . . . seen

again and again it will have to “nichten”

Some philosophical papers are really dense.

An excerpt: 

Anders refers to sexuality to refer to everything enfleshed: “One

is tempted to vary the famous French saying ‘ni homme ni femme, c’est un capucin’ into: ‘ni homme, ni capucin, c’est un Dasein’” (349).

For Anders, the capuchin, the monkishness of Dasein is nothing nugatory: 

Heidegger retires into the cloister of his own Self, in order to become “authentic Dasein”; since he does not know of any way of becoming “authentic” within a definite world, a society; since, on the other hand he can’t help continuing to live in this world which, so to speak, continues “in spite,” it is bound to become “alien” to him: i.e., again and again it will have to “nichten” [vanish]. (345) 

(—p.204, ch.10, Da-Sein’s Pronouns, by Babette Babich, Original version appears in: Patricia Glazebrook and Susanne Claxton, eds., Heidegger, Dasein, and Gender: Thinking the Unthought. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2024. 189-222.)

It does, however, appeal to the difficulty of becoming authentic. And the instinct to “vanish.”

Tonight at conversation we spoke about the word “acosmism.” 

References to A Course in Miracles, the Gita, the Gospels, William Blake, Advaita Vedanta, and the third season of True Detective were made.

And how in dying we “nichten” [vanish].

But return to Brahman, the Supreme Reality.

A mostly unappearing mode of being.

Yet, still, there. 

Still, here.

as words would have it

 In the novel, words: 

“Let tomorrow 

take care of 

itself”

Yes, care, 

of itself

Is what must be taken

Let (allow) tomorrow

It will, or it might, maybe

Show itself (finally)

petit-déjeuner

 Lavrov and Rubio 

Sit for breakfast

Time passes

Coffee cup emptied

Lavrov folds serviette 

Pushes back chair

Rubio, a small crumb,

haphazardly falls to floor

the way of interfaith dialogue in maine

the young baptist pastor

climbed ladder with hatchet

to chop ice from roof

of catholic buddhist woman

after leak dripped onto desk

sure and it is

From an Irish novel I’m reading:

      “He was a man in a suit of many yesterdays who liked to carry today’s newspaper.”

A good sentence.

through the passage up to, within, and through

 It seems a good time to say adios, 

perhaps I'll see you next time 

Not sure I've seen you this time

It's nothing you've done, It's me

I don't see so good, never have

So I say "to God" -- adios amigo

via con dios, go with God, I wish

 I had, gone with God. I don't know

what I went with, but I don't think 

it was God. I seemed always to want

something else, something other than 

God, what-is, haeccitas, (thisness).

So, 'to God' with you, go with God is

my prayer for you, as it is (come to

think of it) my prayer for me. You see

God is what-is, the thisness of this world

the next thing that happens, the last thing

that happened, the arrival, the noticing,

the departure. It is the dance. It is the dance.

But we want something else, something other,

not dancing through the music of transportation

but saying hold it, hold on, making of the tune

a closeted file in a locked safe, for later review.

Something other. Not this. That. Other than itself.

Hence my prayer -- Go with God -- who is always

going, going, gone, gone -- (hmmm) awakening

through the passage up to, within, and through.

Compañera, amiguis, amigo del alma

with all your annoying qualities, foibles

left-over syllables muttered while turning away

God is all that's left to us. We don't know this,

not for sure, but we suspect it. We lament our short-

sighted impatience and ill-conceived aggravation;

returning to bed, shifting for comfortable position

remembering to breathe, forgetting everything else,

not caring what tomorrow brings ... almost ... happy

chapelet

 rosary

for each being

a passing thought

a passing

prayer

for each being

neige moi-même

 Snow falling on Maine mountain 

Each flake a soul materializing

All my relations, all my arriving self

no body home

The other world

The one beyond my experience

Where the dead do what the dead do

Where my ignorance gains no access

A civilization of comings and goings

Beyond me, beyond you, beyond seeing

An address without a number

Door without handle, mail unopened

Dishes in sink, one glove on floor

nite

 A day might come when the thought would arise telling himself it could have perhaps been better to have been more social, less reclusive, a better fit in a crowded room.

He pondered such a thought.

It fell like a cigarette butt dropped onto the sidewalk of a late night street. 

He was no use to anybody. No one held any such illusion. He was useless in company. A potted plant.

And so he stayed for a long time.

And that was that. Which is what he thought.

assez

 Enough for this morning. 

 “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” ( Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh)

Enough for this afternoon. 

tilting heads

More and more

naps are called for

more and more

I pray for happy death

of trump, musk, et al, et al

for my own, but not with

them, not same ferry on styx

-- if fact, no river for me, I'll

ride an old oak leaf in a gust

and drop off as it flips over

letting go, realizing nothing 

falls tumbling into nothing there

a perfect turnover

canadian robin and male cardinal

tilting heads watching nothing at all

touch mezuzah

 It’s a strange thought, I know. But is the current madness of so-called leadership in the United States a sign that we’ve lost touch with the ground reality of existence? 

And what is that?

Love.

Kindness.

Trust.

What is the opposite of these existential realities?

Power.

Cruelty.

Cynicism.

Ours is not a political problem.

It is a deficit of heart and mind.

If we are to move past hatred and revenge we must see the ground we stand on. 

To remember that we stand on sacred ground — love, kindness, trust.

Donald Trump is misguided.

His minions are misfollowers.

Who would not reach for a hapless child wandering into deadly traffic?

Who would permit a toddler to eat razor blades?

The sacred ground waits for us to look under our feet.

The sound of truth pauses as we tilt our head to hear its faint sound.

Let’s start anew.

Lace boots.

Pull hat over ears.

Lower eyes.

Touch mezuzah.

Remember What Is One.

Greet

One-another

As though

We were

One-

Another

from laudes, morning prayer, saturday

Psalm 66

Deus misereátur nostri, et benedícat nobis: * illúminet vultum suum super nos, et misereátur nostri. Ut cognoscámus in terra viam tuam: * in ómnibus géntibus salutáre tuum. Confiteántur tibi pópuli, Deus: * confiteántur tibi pópuli omnes. Læténtur et exsúltent gentes: † quóniam iúdicas pópulos in æquitáte, * et gentes in terra dírigis. Confiteántur tibi pópuli, Deus, † confiteántur tibi pópuli omnes: * terra dedit fructum suum. Benedícat nos Deus, Deus noster, benedícat nos Deus: * et métant eum omnes fines terræ. Glória Patri, and Fílio, * and Spirítui Sancto. Sicut erat in principle, et nunc, et semper, * et in sæcula sæculórum. Amen.

May God have mercy on us and bless us! May he make his face shine upon us, and have mercy on us, That your ways may be known throughout all the earth, and that all nations may share in your salvation! Let the peoples praise you, O God; let the peoples all praise you! Let the nations be glad and rejoice! For you judge the peoples with equity, and rule all who dwell on the earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God, let the peoples all praise you! The earth has yielded its fruit. May God, our God, bless us! May God bless us, and may all the ends of the earth fear him! Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

what is it in us

 In Gaza such pain

Disinheritance suffering

Hardly seems any

Comparison nears —

The awfulness

not haram

My Muslim brothers in prison

Laughed and conversed in circle

All of us immigrants considering

How much trouble we are in

While on table two poems by

ee cummings went unread about

Love and letting all go because

Love are in we, through and throughout 

visiting myself

 Crinkling snow underfoot

after sleet frozen fall

Dog takes long pee

Moon high overhead

Smell of wood fire  

in stove drifts lazily

Doctor says one cancer

Is slow moving, another

Concerns, might want 

surgery — I’ll weigh 

That option, he seems

Surprised that I’d hesitate.

But i do.

Pass my pregnant nurse-

Practitioner in hall, say “hi

Mom”

I used to volunteer here

Cancer care, patient’s rooms

Across parking lot at hospice —

Not now. Now i just have 

appointments, am missed 

Inside chemotherapy room, 

My deactivated badge in foyer

My energy gone for gurney ride

Recounting that slipping fall

Under anesthesia into darkness—

Windshield wipers standing erect

a new rubric

 Too much truth

Dims I-sight

Telling me a lie

Helps my sight

I’m so pleased

To see you

In your

Light

a new language of prayer -- our being is your being

I tell my doctor I study hermeneutics. The signature in their 'thank you' card of the doc who surveyed my pancreas began with a "B" laid on its side looking all the world like cartoon of buttocks. He also does colonoscopies. There was a chuckle.

Reading Merton at Calcutta suggests a similar brush stroke. Some neologism was suggested. Some breath beginning to sound through throats long accustomed to silence. A revolution of syntax, an haruspicy glancing into the entrails of moribund religion to divine the future. A coming to word.  

Thomas Merton’s Closing Prayer

Offered at the first Spiritual Summit Conference, given in Calcutta. Nov.1968

I will ask you all to stand and join hands in a little while. But first, we realize that we are going to have to create a new language of prayer. And this new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions and comes out of the immediacy of love. We have to part now, aware of the love that unites us, the love that unites us in the spite of real differences, real emotional friction.… The things that are on the surface are nothing, what is deep is Real. We are creatures of love. Let us therefore join hands, as we did before, and I will try to say something that comes out of the depths of our hearts. I ask you to concentrate on the love that is in you, that is in us all. I have no idea what I am going to say. I am going to be silent a minute, then I will say something….

Closing Prayer

Oh God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You will dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. Oh God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is in Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen.

If our being is God's being, how speak or communicate such?

It is a prolepsis. 

A time before.

Before coming to sound.

Before coming to word.

Before coming to ourselves.

Before The Divine One comes to ITSELF.

laid to rest

Finishing Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic (2024), by Cynthia Bourgeault.

Two quotes:

“The notion that God is absent is the fundamental illusion of the human condition.” (Thomas Keating)

As the false self diminishes

And the ego becomes a servant,

Everything turns into poetry

And everything becomes a movement of Divine Love.

But, the separate self lingers on.

Once the separate self has been laid to rest,

The Divine Presence alone remains,

And the Creator of all becomes all in all.

 (—stanzas 3 and 4 of his opening poem “Out of a Stone” in The Secret Storm, by Thomas Keating)

Good enough, Thomas!

Good —

Enough!

off road

 Yes, why not, yes

Yes to everything

Even to each no

Why not, then,

No to each and

Every yes

Non-duality is as

Overrated as 

Duality is, both 

Inadequate. What’s

The non-alternative —

No/yes, yes/no?

You tell me

Up against it all

A snowplow

last hello

 She knows

He is leaving

She knows

A kindness

Seeps into

This realization

Each hello

Presages 

Last one

he waves as sound of thunder approaches

When is it better to remember

and when to forget?

we remember those who've killed our family

hating them, wanting vengeance

we forget who we are, sliding into

anesthetic unconsciousness, drifting off

the blankness, no recall, no new imput

do with me as you will -- unwind my body.

but to forget, to drop past into hole in ice

be condemned to the present, surrounded

by only what is here what is now -- alzheimer's 

prison cell of un-referenced non-coordinates

a medical horror of flat non-temporicity

death before death, loss before loss.

And yet, and yet -- to forget, to forget

with clear mind and full consciousness

is the present moment unconstrained

unburdened -- yet opened fully -- there

the uncaptioned arrival of this moment.

These days some say we live subjected

the tyranny of willful wealth and power

making right with might each slight --

cruelty instead of kindness -- despondence

rather than community -- distemper, political

disorder -- a viral disease of wealth ruling --

once we shot the dogs, now we send money

to support their appetite, to feed their habit.

I hear the whispers, one says remember

one says forget. I am a patient etherized

upon a table, someone is cutting into me

there is a house in the dream, and a road

in the dream, he is riding off on motorcycle

he waves, rain is coming, I've been here before

a recurring dream, I am not remembering, I am

returning someplace I have once and future been

the house is white, three stories, on a steep hill

across road is smaller road I've been down before

I know this place but do not remember it, the kitchen

long drive-in to back pole barn and outbuilding

somewhere in Nova Scotia? Or Santa Cruz mountains?

I cannot remember. I cannot forget. I remain still.

Luckily it is night. The snow moon hovers. The cold

contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere

• “Contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere” is a Latin phrase that means “to contemplate and to give to others the fruits of contemplation”. It is a motto of the Dominican Order. (--cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemplata_aliis_tradere) 

• If ressourcement is about revitalization, renewal, then the oft-mentioned, but often misunderstood concept, aggiornamento is essentially a question of a new and wider contextualization, with the aim of finding new ways to rethink and reformulate the fundamental affirmations of the Christian faith in order to more effectively communicate the Gospel.   ( https://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2014/08/ressourcement-aggiornamento-and-vatican-ii-in-ecumenical-perspective.html#:~:text=If%20ressourcement%20is%20about%20revitalization,faith%20in%20order%20to%20more)

Teilhard spoke of

the above and the ahead

the conception of God from 

above or from what is ahead of us

the so-called heaven(s) or

the so-called future

back then or

up ahead

where we've been or

where we're going

just as poets say that translation

of a poem is a different poem

ressourcement and aggiornamento

are different religions different faiths

consider yours -- is God above and back then?

or, ahead and in each next step?

and which calls for a deeper faith?

which throws you into deeper consternation?

I stand on my head

I twirl in barnyard corral 

snow deepens in the slog

ice hangs from roof and thickens

I look back, I look ahead --

the room wherein I sit goes nowhere

being formerly known as god

The Holy-One

The Wholly-One

The Holey-One

The Holdy-On

χρυσάφι του ανόητου *

                       (* fool’s gold)

 Convenience

Much of our lives

Going along to

Get the hell what we want

Conveniently

Giving up integrity

To fawn over the rich

The celebrity, the powerful

My brothers and sisters

We are living a lie

Told by a fool

Surrounded by fools

The laughing crowd 

Foolishly following

For their own

Convenience

A public

Pisseur

λύπη και χαρά

• λύπη και χαρά (sorrow and joy) 

• "Monsters aren't born monsters." (from documentary on Sean John Combs. aka Puff Diddy) 

• Immaculáta Concéptio tua Dei Génitrix Virgo. / Your stainless conception. Maiden Mother of God.   

• Gáudium annuntiávit univérso mundo. / Was a message of joy to the whole world. (Laudes -Versus, Neumz, 11feb.25, Our Lady of Lourdes)

we become what we are by 

beginning with who we are

day by day, choice by choice

evolving into the face now seen

Buddhists say causes and conditions

Catholics say a trace of the first sin

I don't know.

It is beyond my understanding

The Lady showed up in France

Sean showed up in music industry

What we show is what we know

What we know is what we show. 

είναι όλα μέσα σε όλα

 Ο Θεός είναι όλα μέσα σε όλα

    God is all in all

obscure and

hidden

God waits

loud and

performative man

pontificates

if you want

to know God

disappear

within everything

see nothing

abjure 

start fresh

ignore foolishness

renounce

tell God

you are

sunrising

seeing what is to be seen throughout

 what if prayer is

the shining through 

of what is

there

the way first

daylight shines through

hilltop ridge trees 

evergreen, rock ground snow

bare branched deciduous

that brief glimpse of 

what is behind things

seeing through

letting be seen

obscure holography

gazing God

non ego me absolvo

 pale blue

yes

first light

wherever

imagination goes

in dreams, I went

then waking

erases

into this

sitting looking

eastly through

cross, power line

twilight dawn

hill-tree

silhouette 

if ever I

learn how to pray

I will remember

night stepping back

first sight into what 

might [have] be[en], 

the way earth

turns without seeming

to lose balance

I remember 

everyone wronged

by my lack[ing  of] prayer

moonlight

Self realization is

Coming to see

What cannot be seen, 

and

Saying nothing

Until

What is heard is

Seen sound 

walking around poetry

Sitting in car

mainstreet Thomaston

listening to Neumz

monastic cell

trucks passing

latin cadences

a friend visits friend

in new apartment

just after prison

it is peripatetic

this solitude

stroph after stanza

ending earlier with 

For love are in you 

am in i are in we

e.e.cummings, paroles

bringing it home, free,

commuted, pardoned

what dropping away might feel like

 What are you waiting for?

     Me? Nothing

You’re standing inside it.

     I’m dizzy. Everything is turning.

Go in peace! Spin no more.

     I am earth. I turn and spin.

No, you are my imagination.

     I am not . . .

No, you’re not. Now go away.

     [Falling away — As one, disappears.]

before leaving barn

 Quickly, quickly

There’s little time remaining

Day is slowly slowly darkening

If you want to talk, talk indeed

Say it all at once, no punctuation

Oh lord, here comes silence

Don’t look over at it

Go about your pondering

As if nothing were wrong

over and over

Clouds muffle sound of airplane. Clouds drop snow covering and muting everything with descending  flakes and powder.

Looking at clouds from both sides

Now

I’m am a cloud seeing nothing but itself.

Vicissitudes of Sunday morning.

Body impermanent like spring mist;
Mind insubstantial like empty sky;
Thoughts unestablished like breezes in space.
Think about these three points over and over. 

—Godrakpa (1170-1249)

I sleep. I awaken. I sleep. I awaken

There are coffee beans in kitchen next to stove under icon of mother and child.

“Love,” it reads,”is all you need.”

Love is all you.

We need to be what we are, all this and that, we are what we need.

refusing to notice

Finished Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators Who Want To Run The World, by Anne Applebaum.

Brutal, boorish, broadly mendacious, xenophobic. The men who are taking over the world. And the obsequious tagalongs who pilot fish them.

Of course there are those who pooh pooh any concern. These are not serious people. Dehumanizing propaganda, transnational kleptocracy, covert and blatant corruption. The loopholes bypassing democracy.

It is not hard to understand the real estate underground, the crypto currency money laundering stolen wealth that are blatantly transacted and reported on front pages of newspapers.

Telling the truth, honoring facts, resisting disinformation, eschewing false narratives, not echoing the lies  -- these help. 

It seems freakishly amazing how so many of us go about our lives oblivious and disinterested in the ways our country and the world is narrowing power and control into the hands of so few, so brazen, and so self-absorbed.

Perhaps we should forbid historians and astute observers from noticing what they notice and telling what they notice. Perhaps it is better for our emotional health to ignore the danger surrounding us and quietly lay down and sleep through the plague infecting us. 

Perhaps there is benefit in going gently into that dark night.

nowhere else

The suggestion that the-one-we-call-god is head and heels beyond our comprehension is slowly dawning on me.

This:

Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin

---

 

Celebration of Peace

Please read these pages only if you're feeling kind. Then they won't seem unintelligible, and will certainly prove less offensive. But to those who find my language too unconventional, I confess I can't help it. On a beautiful day almost any kind of song can be listened to, and Nature, where it comes from, will receive it back. The author intends to lay before the public a whole collection of similar pieces, and this is just a sample.

The holy, familiar hall, built long ago,

Is aired, and filled with heavenly,

Softly echoing, quietly modulating music.

A cloud of joy sends fragrance

Over the green carpets. Shining in the

Distance, a splendid row of gold-wreathed

Cups stands, well-ordered, full of ripe fruits.

Tables stand at the sides, rising above

The leveled ground. For now in the evening

Loving guests have gathered,

Coming from far.

And with half-shut eye I think I can see

The Prince of the Festival himself,

Smiling from the day's earnest work.

Though you like to deny your foreign origin,

And even when you lower your eye, tired

From the long crusade—forgotten, softly shadowed—

And you assume the appearance of an acquaintance,

Still you’re recognized by everyone; your superiority

Alone almost forces one to his knees.

Being nothing in your presence, I know

You are not mortal. A wise person can

Explain a lot, but where a god appears,

There is different clarity.

        https://holderlinpoems.com/poems/celebration_of_peace1.html 

The words: "And you assume the appearance of an acquaintance, /  Still you’re recognized by everyone;" suggest something to me I'd not thought of before.

Is it part of the incommunicable mystery of God that the appearance and presence of God is mutable?

        μεταβλητός, ευμετάβλητος, ασταθής. -- changeable, fickle, unstable?

And in Hölderlin’s "kindly" sense, when we recognize the face in front of us, when it "appears" to us in clarity, is it actually becoming the presence of God?

We often say we are looking for God. Is Hölderlin suggesting that by looking at, and seeing, the face that appears before us, we are looking at God?

Is God the appearance of presence in whatever form that arrives at our consciousness when it is free from ideas and concepts, opinions and judgments, fantasies and figments?

In other words, is "different clarity" that which appears when we are "Being nothing in your presence" -- nothing but unadorned body and mind dropped away (thereness/hereness) open to what is presenting itself?

Perhaps "God" is nowhere else.

And the question for us is --Where are we? 

else

 There’s no place 

Else

to go.

So why not 

stay

Here?

(When God 

heard

This)

Everything

Else

Disappeared

all I am

I've forgotten your face.

    I have no face.

    I am God.

    I look like the one who is there in front of you.

I can't hear you.

    I make no sound.

    I am silence itself.

    What you hear is the echo of your own heart.

Thank you.

    No need.

    Everything I do is gift.

    Given without expectation of appreciation.

Goodbye.

    Going somewhere?

    I'm not.

    Here is all I am.

care and conscientiousness

Eighty, hmmm. A good age.

A bad meal. 

Sort of what we're being served these days from Washington DC.

The Buddha died in the town of Kushinagara, at the age of eighty, having eaten a meal of pork or mushrooms. Some of the assembled monks were despondent, but the Buddha, lying on his side, with his head resting on his right hand, reminded them that everything is impermanent, and advised them to take refuge in themselves and the dharma—the teaching. He asked for questions a last time. There were none. Then he spoke his final words: “Now then, bhikshus, I address you: all compound things are subject to decay; strive diligently.”

(---from, Who was Buddha?  By Rick Fields, Tricycle, Spring 1997

Diligently. 

A good word. 

dil·i·gent·ly

/ˈdiləjən(t)lē/

 

adverb 

in a way that shows care and

 

conscientiousness in one's work or duties. 

Care and conscientiousness.

Two additional good words. 

a different clarity

We lack clarity these days. 

Being nothing in your presence, I know 

 

You are not mortal. A wise person can 

 

Explain a lot, but where a god appears, 

 

There is different clarity.

(--from poem, Celebration of Peace, by Friedrich Hölderlin, translated by James Mitchell

Perhaps its because we lack nothing.