mужність *

                  (* courage, Ukrainian)

Yes,

You can 

Live within/

         without

Hope

this country ‘tis of his

 He’s gone to gun store

He’s gone to buy a gun, gone

To buy some bullets

He thinks he’ll kill some 

people, shoot them in the head

Watch their blood flow out

He loves his country,

 loves mom and dad, his sister

Loves his car and bike

He just plans to kill

Some folks, tie with a ribbon

Pretty package gift

Well, that’s that, time to

Go — bye mom, dad, sis, 

Bye you folks soon dead

It’s great to be an

American, so many 

freedoms, good teachers

Models of hatred

Stupidity, bigotry

Lovers of pure truth

that which gathers you

Think of it this way -- we are surrounded by that which is God, however we name God. And yet, in our protective and conditioned enclosure we haphazardly call the "self," it is an awkward travail to transcend and be transformed by something not of our own making, ingestion, or agency. 

Those who recognize their surround as holy, who long to drop away artifice and self-seeking, who suspect that union with God is not something to reach out for, that only emptying oneself is worthwhile practice and contemplation -- this is the desert eremetic life -- whether alone, or alone with others.

It's not psychedelics, it's mysticism, it's the whole surround come alive with insight. 

In the Eastern tradition the highest point is absence of all image and thought, there's no imagination, there's no thought, there's nothing -- there's only this kind of pure presence and pure light that gathers you into God -- all these experiences, let them go...

(--Jonathan Pageau, in conversation with Jordan Peterson, Bishop Barron, John Vervaeke, "The 4 Horsemen of Meaning" @1:12 YouTube)

Some of us have always been hermits. Whether wandering from solitary cell, hiding with others, or returning by way of obscurare poenitentiam -- a faint recollection of one's premier métier -- the obscuring repentance of one's original calling.

Where, in homeless meander, one is taken in, given hospitality, and silently settled.

eating the residue of awareness and spitting it out

We are dying. We are being born. We are dying. We are being born.

Between one and the other is this thought: alive now, I am here; what's to come, I don't know.

Listening to John Vervaeke, PhD, a lecturer at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science and Buddhist psychology. In one piece he talks about zombies and the crisis of meaning in our culture.

I don't know from zombies, but I do experience our republican brothers and sisters in their current state of undeniable hunger to dramatically devour whatever good is proposed from their democrat brothers and sisters.

I no longer think that it is politics we are witnessing these days.

It is the devaluation and denigration of shared value, the obliteration of civil comity, and the cynical obscuring of good that is not partisan or perverted to personal preference.

We'd rather attend a wake and gloat -- than become awake and share the joy of communal compassion.

to keep within bounds or on a course

 Where does it all come from? 

From nothing? From something?

What origin or source lets into being that which was not in being?

The creation of the sun, moon, and stars (“lights in the firmament of the heavens”) on the

fourth day of creation (Gen. 1:14). (The plants are shown to have been already created on

the third day.) Detail of a fresco at Suchevitsa Monastery, Moldavia, Romania, sixteenth

century. (From St. Ephraim the Syrian - Commentary on Genesis)

Our imagination is limited.

But Imagination-Itself is unlimited, infinite and eternal, invisible, and in complete control of everything. 

control 

 

Verb

conduct, manage, control, direct mean to use one's powers to lead, guide, or dominate. conduct implies taking responsibility for the acts and achievements of a group.  conducted negotiations  manage implies direct handling and manipulating or maneuvering toward a desired result.  manages a meat market control implies a regulating or restraining in order to keep within bounds or on a course.  controlling his appetite  direct implies constant guiding and regulating so as to achieve smooth operation.  directs the store's day-to-day business 

 

Noun

power, authority, jurisdiction, control, command, sway, dominion mean the right to govern or rule or determine. power implies possession of ability to wield force, authority, or influence.  the power to mold public opinion  authority implies power for a specific purpose within specified limits.  granted the authority to manage her estate  jurisdiction applies to official power exercised within prescribed limits. the bureau having jurisdiction over parks  control stresses the power to direct and restrain.  you are responsible for the students under your control command implies the power to make arbitrary decisions and compel obedience.  the army officer in command  sway suggests the extent of exercised power or influence. the empire extended its sway over the region  dominion stresses sovereign power or supreme authority.  given dominion over all the animals

--Mirriam Webster

Things are not what seems to be.

"Seems" appears. "Being," essence, thing-in-itself, doesn't appear.

Being is that within which all things are, is that from which all things emerge, that toward which all things travel. As such, Being is, often and easily, forgotten.

Tell me -- have you ever seen the rain -- from origin to end, the whole cycle of interbeing through which everything travels?

Two haiku:

1.

Next to this chair on 

which I sit, the mottled cat

finally settles

2. 

It rains, in dooryard 

Woman, bending over soil,  

will have flowers in

there will be bloodshed, and you know it

 Throwing in towel

They are too cynical too

Cruel, these trumpists 

in it, the world

There are times I wonder if I have not yet even begun to understand about symbolism, myth, and metaphor. 

But the journey...is...mesmerizing. 

Verse of the day 

The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. 

- Psalm 24:1

Voice of the day 

God is Change— / Seed to tree, / tree to forest; / Rain to river, / river to sea; / Grubs to bees, / bees to swarm. / From one, many; / from many, one; / Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— / forever Changing. / The universe / is God’s self-portrait. 

- Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)

Prayer of the day 

God of change, may we follow your patterns of reshaping, and refining to make this evolving earth whole.

(Sojourners, 18may22)

As is, the earth, the world,  the cosmos -- sitting spellbound, awaiting complete attention.

demos crazy

 If all votes are in

No one will be elected

One too few, one more

chirping floats through sunlight at window

 I’ve sleep-walked through much of my life. Lost sight of what is right in front of me.  

5. Ego dormívi, et soporátus sum:

                         5. I lie down and sleep;

et exsurréxi, quia Dóminus suscépit me.

                              I wake again, for the Lord sustains me. 

(-from Psalm 3)

What? Did you say something? 

I can almost hear what is being said beyond this soporific self.

to be part of a chair

At Sunday Evening Practice we listened to Richard Kearney talk about Anatheism, Returning to God After God. 

We had to stretch.

I'm also reading from The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, by Yoram Hazony. 

Another stretch.

Chris from Augusta sends me talk by Jonathan Pageau:

In order for the leg of a chair to be part of a chair it has to sacrifice itself to the higher purpose. It has to. Because it can't just be a leg of a chair it has to participate in the higher pattern, and so, the highest point of the pattern is the negation of identity..." 

(from, The Symbolic World, A Lecture by Jonathan Pageau, you tube, beginning at 1:45:00)

I'm listening carefully.

There's a way, [he says,] that that which is above sacrifices itself for that which is below. The real hierarchy ends in self-sacrifice. That's why the cross is at the top of the hill. (--Pageau)

I stretch. 

Slowly getting up from chair.

Very carefully. 

manifest no

 White people white folks 

white people white people white

Folks — please stop, please … stop

where god’s voice says ‘come in’

 That doorstep where you

Step up, step in through strangeness

Ripe uncertainty 

yes, yes, we see, thank you

 What

Is

After

God

verschwinde mich

 Disappear me now

Drop off mind and body, there’s

nothing left to want

surprise, surprise

 Dallas and Boston

Win handily seventh games —

Playoffs half over

when nothing else dissolves encrusted words of hate

 French monastic nuns

chant morning lauds psalmist tones

alternative news

after reading deathly scroll

 There’s a cheese danish

downstairs, coffee beans, no guns

no hate, no bigots