Saturday, October 27, 2018

the “now” with God

The cell is the body.
The monk in his cell sleeps, reads, makes prostrations, prays, and is simply present to God as God is to him, forgetting all the past, not planning the future, but being in the "now" with God."  (-M. Basil Pennington, OCSO)
The “now” is the awareness which enfolds and embraces all beings, all things, all places, all circumstances.

dodgers in the 18th

Turns out I went to bed 10 innings too early.

Friday, October 26, 2018

blinker, turning

So many cars

So lucky

To arrive

Safely

Thursday, October 25, 2018

where shall we look

Zu den Sache selbst

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

watch your words: we are listening

He who lives by the slur will be decried by it.

unobsequious obsequy

For my obituary:

Bill Halpin died as he lived -- he took a nap and, you might say, failed to wake.
He didn't battle cancer, though it accompanied him.
He wasn't plagued with a heart condition, though he looked for his heart all his life.
His diabetes did not slow him down, he was always slow.

He died of life. He always felt that the single greatest cause of death is birth. If there was no birth there'd be no death. And, no. the opposite of life is not death. Life has no opposite. That's a wisdom that doesn't show up in advertisements between innings of the World Series.

Bill Halpin did three things during his 74 (or so) years:
   1. He wore ragg socks and wool berets;
   2. He sat in silence from time to time;
   3. He felt poetry and pondering were the ways we learn about words, the world, and wisdom.

Apart from that, he tried to love those who were part of his life: his son, his companion, those he alienated, his sister's progeny, those he sipped coffee with, those he conversed with in prison, in the elderly residence, in hospital, in hospice, and in the Raimon Panikkar Conversation Kitchen at foot of Ragged Mtn.

He was pretty much a fool. Didn't hold jobs well. Couldn't teach university courses over 30 years worth a lick. Never made a profit in 13 years of harbor-side bookshop & bakery. Never settled in to child welfare, residential treatment centers, alternative high school education programs, training staff for each of these was of suspect worth, and, finally, was an imposter to the helping profession believing that poetry and philosophy were valuable assets in the spy game of mental and emotional health.

He was a categorical and calculative failure through the years.
He pretended to be contemplative.
He couldn't sustain a single prayer or find any trace of God in places listing God's address.

Still, on route 90 Friday mornings on way to maximum security prison for open conversation, he'd hold up his toasted English muffin to the oncoming traffic and say, barely audible, hoc est enim corpus meum, and he believed every word of it true.

And so, he died as he lived, watching breath depart and return. Only, this last breath decided to go off into space for a walkabout, leaving him, wondering: What now?

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Time to buy a hat

Red Sox versus Dodgers.

(everlasting)

Is the Lord just? Will he defend the poor?
   A thousand ages in your sight / Are like an evening gone;   Short as the watch that ends the night / Before the rising sun. 
   Time, like an ever rolling stream, / Bears all our lives away; /    They fly, forgotten, as a dream / Dies at the opening day. 
   O God, our help in ages past, / Our hope for years to come,   Be now our guard while troubles last, / And our eternal home.

               (--from, "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" Hymn, office of readings)

Good men have vanished from our midst.

   It is you, O Lord, who will take us in your care   and protect us for ever from this generation.   See how the wicked prowl on every side,   while the worthless are prized highly by the sons of men.          (--from, psalm12)
 Bald Mountain turns to gold as October leans toward its end.


 Faith, I suspect, is fragile in this age of presidential mendacity and pusillanimous petulance. We are bereft of  enlightened leadership, and receive a strategy of diminishing light and encroaching darkness.

Is God in the lies?

Or have we reinvigorated the ancient teaching that this world belongs to the prince of lies?

May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil, and lead us to life (everlasting), Amen

Monday, October 22, 2018

no teaching authority

I have the stick he used

when he’d sprained his ankle.

It is my zen stick.

He was my father.

His continuation day

Sunday, October 21, 2018

start there

Not anything, I said.

She’d asked about creation spirituality. What was left out?

Not nothing. Not anything.

Just like God. Start there.