matutinum

This simulacrum loft in France

Matins, organ baseline, night

Dwelling Christ unknowing

aspire to be, born, at least, once

Om 

    mane 

        padre hum

Behold 

    the jewel     

        in the lotus

Behold 

    what is 

        within without

Behold that 

    which is Christ 

        within what is here.

works and words are windows on something that remains somehow unspeakable

At times the Christian metaphor feels like, in Weil's words, affliction and humiliation. 

There's so much I do not understand. 

INTRODUCTION 

 

“Kenosis” refers to a way of entering the mystery of Christ that is

anchored into a contemplation of the descending movement leading

from God’s glory to Jesus’ coming into the world, then from Incarnation

to the death on a cross, and from the Cross to the depths of the

underworld. The text of reference is of course a passage of the letter to

the Philippians that has become central to all Christological exegeses

(Phil 2: 7-11). Commentators of the Pauline writings have often noted

that this text does not stand as a mere theological proclamation but

comes after an exhortation to show to each other “the feelings that were

in Christ Jesus”: “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in

Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not

regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself,

taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of

men.”(Phil. 2:4-7) In other words, Kenosis, before being constructed as

a concept, is first a lived experience the one of feeling and sharing the

humility of Christ. Some artistic masterworks express in a special way

such lived spiritual experience. The “Mass in B moll” of J.S. Bach

comes to mind, with the melodic and rhythmic continuity which links

into one and the same piece the “Et incarnatus” and the “Crucifxus.” The

“last breath” on which the “Crucifixus” finishes is followed—in one of

the most startling contrasts offered by music—by the vital dynamics of

the “Et resurrexit.” This part of the “Credo” of Bach’s Mass can

certainly be read as a musical meditation on the Kenosis Hymn.

 ...   ...   ...

CONCLUSION 

 

Simone Weil’s thinking on affliction (malheur) cannot be

separated from her stress on humiliation. Particularly noteworthy is her

often-repeated assertion that the experience of humiliation is associated

with the enactment of truth—only those people who are being forcibly

deprived of human dignity are capable of telling the truth, for only they

understand both the roots of human condition and the mechanisms on

which social reality relies for its existence. Weil is certainly one of the

thinkers who has renewed the understanding of the lived experience of

kenosis, and this is certainly through endeavors similar to hers that we

can integrate the lived experience of individuals and communities into

the Christology found in the Philippians, giving it new meaning for our

time.

The works of Chinese artists as well as the stories told by Chinese

Christians are all part of such Christological deepening. By essence,

these works and stories cannot be fully articulated, narrated and

analyzed: they keep open within themselves the wound, the Void that

the experience of affliction and humiliation digs into the one subjected 

 

26 See notably ibid., pp. 124sq.

27 Ibid., p. 168.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., p. 209.Humility and Humiliation in Modern Chinese Painting 101 

 

to it. Works and words are windows on something that remains

somehow unspeakable. The fragments of testimonies emerging from

such kenotic experiences are made much more precious when one

realizes the depths from which, against all odds, they have been

eventually uttered. 

 

School of Philosophy

Fudan University

Shanghai, China 

 

CHAPTER V

HUMILITY AND HUMILIATION: KENOTIC EXPERIENCE IN MODERN CHINESE PAINTING,

AND IN THE HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE OF CHINESE CHRISTIANS

BENOIT VERMANDER, SJ

in Chinese Spirituality & Christian Communities

A Kenotic Perspective

Chinese Philosophical Studies, XXXI

Christian Philosophical Studies, XVII

Edited by

Vincent Shen 2015, https://www.crvp.org/publications/Series-VIII/17-Disjunctions-shen.pdf

Self-emptying, words easily pronounced, nevertheless remain unspeakable across the millennia from old villages in what has come to be called 'the holy land.'

Could it have been that this one man contained all of existence in his being? Emptied it. Then found a way to resurrect, rehabilitate, reincarnate into a new essence of what it means to-be-here? 

our brothers in arms

 Then, there’s this:

Israel’s parliament approved a one-sided death penalty measure to execute Palestinians. It’s one of the most extreme laws in the nation’s history, and will exacerbate the far-right government’s illegal system of apartheid.

Some members of the Knesset, including ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, were seen wearing noose pins in the Knesset on Monday, and celebrating with drinks on live TV after the bill passed. Ben-Gvir said hanging is “one of the options,” as is execution by the electric chair or euthanasia. 

The bill drew international condemnation ahead of its passage, including from the European Union, UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and Amnesty International. Human rights groups have vowed to challenge the bill in Israel’s supreme court.

 https://zeteo.com/p/israel-approves-death-penalty-law-palestinians

I’m listening for America’s response. 

the difficulty of empathy

In prison this morning conversation about AI, evil and good, craving and aversion, truth and illusion, and the fact that “withholding” or secrecy seems to be the practice of everyone, from each of us in the room to every government and corporation in the world.

One man felt there is a dome in the outer atmosphere and no one has travelled to the moon. Another referred to Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva as close cousins to Father, Son, and Spirit. The Native American man emphasized walking in peace.

Returning home, I look into a NYRB article "Indecorous Decorations", by Lauren Kane, (Medieval ideas about sex and love, both rowdy and reverent, are recorded on objects meant for everyday use. March 28, 2026.)

The name Tuchman and the word ‘renunciation’ caught my attention. She mentions the "misapprehension that medieval people were prudish simply because they existed in the past.” I was reminded of a priest back in 1971 dressed in his thirteenth century brown habit who, when asked if he considered a woman we knew from Paraguay to be attractive, responded “Father is lustless” as he sipped a Tom Collins two blocks from the Pacific Ocean.

In A Distant Mirror, her influential 1978 book about daily life in fourteenth-century France, the historian Barbara W. Tuchman warns against the “difficulty of empathy” that results from this misunderstanding:

The main barrier is, I believe, the Christian religion as it then was: the matrix and law of medieval life, omnipresent, indeed compulsory. Its insistent principle that the life of the spirit and of the afterworld was superior to the here and now, to material life on earth, is one that the modern world does not share…. What compounds the problem is that medieval society, while professing belief in renunciation of the life of the senses, did not renounce it in practice, and no part of it less so than the Church itself. Many tried, a few succeeded, but the generality of mankind is not made for renunciation. There never was a time when more attention was given to money and possessions than in the fourteenth century, and its concern with the flesh was the same as at any other time. Economic man and sensual man are not suppressible.  

                                  https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/28/indecorous-decorations-medieval-sexuality/

 Everything is simply itself until you want it.

Desire and craving create objects of attention. Money becomes said object. Material things too. As well as women and men. Then they are no longer ‘itself', they are objects for your possession.

For something to be itself, 自体 Jitai, it requires a corresponding manifestation of each one of us to also be itself, 自体 Jitai.

It is oftentimes difficult to read or speak about renunciation or consider a world free of craving and desire as a way of being-in-the-world. To understand insubstantiality, to not fabricate a culture of accumulation, representative objectivication, and accretion, to practice the poverty of 13th century mendicancy without feeling the need to impose the same upon anyone else -- this is a keen activity.

Ours is a societal culture of reaching for wealth, reaching for sexual conquests, a plague of pedophilia, an orgy of infidelity and criminal acquisition by means of grift and graft, greed and grotesque acts of dominance. Our oligarchs and authoritarians have taken control of liquid assets, mineral and material resources, and our authentic satisfaction in living an authentic life.

There’s a lot of withholding going on. Secrecy, unshared wealth, human and other sentient or natural deprivation. There is a cadre of elite top-percenters hoarding and sequestering their booty.

The three poisons (Sanskrit: triviṣa; Tibetan: dug gsum) in the Mahayana tradition or the three unwholesome roots (Sanskrit: akuśala-mūla; Pāli: akusala-mūla) in the Theravada tradition are a Buddhist term that refers to the three root kleshas that lead to all negative states. These three states are delusion, also known as ignorance; greed or sensual attachment; and hatred or aversion.^[1][2]  

 

In the Buddhist teachings, the three poisons (of ignorance, attachment, and aversion) are the primary causes that keep sentient beings trapped in samsara. These three poisons are said to be the root of all of the other kleshas.^[6][7] The three poisons are represented in the hub of the wheel of life as a pig, a bird, and a snake (representing ignorance, attachment, and aversion, respectively). As shown in the wheel of life (Sanskrit: bhavacakra), the three poisons lead to the creation of karma, which leads to rebirth in the six realms of samsara.^[1][8][9]   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_poisons

This morning: ‘Let’s talk about trees. It’s time to leaf and watch what leaves.’ (The man smiled at his pun.)

Walk, walk away, leave what no longer serves the well-being of each and all!

nothing without nothing within, behold

 No palms

No Eucharist

Just walking sticks

And cups of tea

Circling the field

A tired mantra

Om mane

Padme hum

vibhava-taṅhā

Two out of three ain’t bad.

From the Dīgha Nikāya: 

 

“Desire is threefold: namely, desire for sense pleasures, desire for becoming and desire for non-being.” 

 

So we have kama-taṅhā, bhava-taṅhā, and vibhava-taṅhā. Kama-taṅhā is the desire for sense pleasures. The second, bhava-taṅhā, is the desire for being or becoming, whilst vibhava-taṅhā is the desire for non-being, or not becoming.

(--from Mindfulness and the Cognitive Process, by John Peacock, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies) 

Its a haiku with my name on it:

Sense pleasure 

becoming 

non-being

 Don’t ask me where I’ve been in my life. After reflection I’d probably respond “It has been my pleasure to become non-being.”

Where would that leave me?

Probably right 

where 

I am . . . 

 

Is

somewhere 

unaware 

 

Without 

knowing

how or why

to life, do we even remember what that means

"Sometimes, with a little imagination, you have the chance to see what’s right in front of your face.”

 ( --Sheldon Whitehouse, US Senator, D-RI)

 

 I could be in France.

What does virtual even mean?

Their Palm Sunday mass

I could be in Augusta Maine

What does satori even mean?

They practice shikantaza

I could be in Senate chamber, 5mar.26

An intelligent and sober floor speech 

Sheldon Whitehouse reveals sanity

But I am in my window chair

early spring shuddering sunny air

pussy-willows on cold branches

Don’t call it multi-tasking

my multiple personalities head shake

I love you each and all, L'Chaim" (לַחַיִּים) ...

Oh Israel! we want to love you

but your cruel killing destruction in Gaza

makes it very, very, difficult

I could be in a confused mind

What even does peace and sanity mean?

I hide my face, I dissolve, I disappear

the perfect patsy

 non-feeling, non-thinking

cunning, monomaniacal,

ego-unsatiated, greed-lusty

they say we should not despair

stay ebullient, see thin cracks of light

God bless their hopeful healing hearts 

generations yet unborn will curse our names forever

 The woman cried after reading 'Iran and Gaza Are ONLY THE BEGINNING' (Chris Hedges at Princeton). Something about the historical pain and contemporary implications of such cruelty and consequence led her bereft.

Elsewhere, I respond to a NYTimes opinion piece by M. Dowd with a take that emerged from last evening’s conversation:

Lists and lists how terrible he is gets tedious. His handlers have a winner symbol to move America into a Theocracy. What people think of Trump they once thought of God, that he’s untouchable, beyond justice and understanding, only to be flattered and placated. 

 

Our American Theocracy is nearing completion. His religious handlers have a pliable and beyond-human morality figurehead to lead us into their fundamentalist religious autocracy. The rest of us are just a studio audience waiting for the commercials to be over. 

 

Our fundamentalist brothers and sisters speed through the US military, the US Congress, and The US Supreme Court to inject their brand of Autocratic Theocracy on the American populace and thereby creeping across foreign policy and war-making.

Today’s “No Kings” celebration should also see signs that read “No Gurus, No Messiahs, No Theocracy, No Divine-ish Autocrats! Just the People Living Life As One!”

Call me a romantic 1969 aesthetic dallying plagiarist, but “Something’s In The Air”  and we have to get it together now.

That being said, I hope women who changed their names for marriage find their original birth certificates so they can vote in November. I also trust that the pseudo-Ayatollah of the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Ave. Wash DC will face whatever legal constraints remain so as not to complete his Gaudy Secularish-Religious Temple where he plans to implement his divine ascendency to Universal Savior of America and all her territories.

The YouTube of Hedge’s talk here.

Genocide is a strong word.

With whatever strength remains in our weakening resolve, we should not be afraid of difficult words.

James Baldwin presciently saw this regression to our innate barbarism. He warned that there was a “terrible probability” that “Western populations, struggling to hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look into their mirror, will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial war such as the world has never seen, and for which generations yet unborn will curse our names forever.”

(--text, Chris Hedges) 

i’m a slow learner

 Walking into prison

Walking out of prison

Thirty eight years

Conversations

simply

 We go on.

end of set

 Martin made it 

out of house

where fire raged

falling to ground

a pebble kick from 

front door

inside, two old guitars

he'd played for years

burned

Firemen found him

in dirt where no song

could be heard

worth a read

“It’s Not Trump. It’s America”

Like a lot of other Americans, I’ve oscillated in these dark times between two emotional poles. At points, I tell myself that Donald Trump is a uniquely malevolent figure who has seized levers of power that no previous president had ever dared to grasp. The story doesn’t stop state violence in the streets or illegal military operations abroad. Yet it has its comforts. Once Trump passes from the scene — as the laws of nature, if not politics, require — some kind of restoration of the American democratic and constitutional project can take place.

On darker days, I find myself turning to a more thoroughgoing narrative: that Trump is the fulfillment of what America has always been — a self-satisfied nation, granted license by its myths about providence and exceptionalism to do whatever it wants. Trump didn’t come from nowhere, after all. His two victories were forged by choices made by Americans and the leaders they elected. If he had not existed, history would have invented someone like him. This explanation offers its own consolation. At least it is something a rational mind can grasp.

— excerpt, 26March2026, NYTimes, Opinion, by Lydia POLGREEN

 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/opinion/trump-america-iran-war.html

who dares bring truth into existence

 Thanks

For saying

Yes, Mary 

fesso

Sometimes I'll look at one of the articles sent by Academia.edu. They are all worth the time and effort. Today a question of God and the question whether 'care' is a felt attribute. 

Why do so many suffer? And why do so many not suffer? Is there some theological algorithm? Is there a karmic scale pointing to degrees of weight tilting one way or the other? Is it all just the luck of the draw? Good genes? Wealthy grandparents? A cosmic lottery spun and dropped into a sequence of numbers?

I have no idea. But I sent a small donation to St Judes last week. Kids with cancer is a tough one. Not all cases are sweet, happy, and successful. How is that? Why is that? 

Evaluating Schellenberg’s Presuppositions in the Problem of Divine Hiddenness from an Islamic Perspective 

--by Hamidreza Ayatollahy 

Abstract:  

 

At the end of the twentieth century, Schellenberg attempted to construct an argument for the non- existence of God. He emphasizes the necessity of the manifestation of divine love among people and argues that since many human beings find no trace of this love—despite having made great efforts and being willing to accept it sincerely if they were to find evidence—the existence of such non-resistant nonbelievers is itself evidence that such a God does not exist. Many have attempted either to challenge the structure of his argument or to provide justifications for why God has concealed Himself. However, in this paper, in order to evaluate Schellenberg’s claim, the presuppositions underlying his argument are identified, and an effort is made to examine these presuppositions within the framework of Islamic thought. Four presuppositions are discussed, and it is then shown that none of these four religious presuppositions has a place in Islamic thought such that Schellenberg could base his argument upon them. Consequently, these presuppositions cannot serve as premises for Schellenberg’s arguments, and thus the structure of his argument collapses when viewed from an Islamic perspective. 

Introduction:  

 

Atheistic currents have adopted a new approach since the beginning of the twentieth century. Until the early twentieth century, these currents either tried to provide reasons to show the inefficacy of various arguments that had been offered for the existence of God, or they questioned the reality of believers’ faith in God through psychological or sociological explanations (Ayatollahy, 2025). However, all these efforts resulted merely in agnosticism and skepticism regarding the existence of God. From the early twentieth century onward, instead of rejecting the arguments for God’s existence, these movements attempted to put forward arguments aimed at proving that God cannot exist or that no meaningful concept of God can be obtained at all. Their most important effort was made through the problem of evil (Mackie, 1955.)

They sought to show that the existence of evil in the world demonstrates an intrinsic contradiction in the concept of God as understood in theistic worldviews. Some also tried to draw such a conclusion from the apparent conflict between divine foreknowledge and human free will. However, philosophers such as Plantinga showed that the existence of evil is not logically incompatible with the attributes of God, and even demonstrated that the existence of evil may be a necessary condition for God’s creation of free human beings (Plantinga, 1974). Subsequently, the logical problem of evil gave way to the evidential problem of gratuitous evils, which was formulated by William Rowe (Rowe, 1979). This objection, too, was subjected to numerous critiques by theists. With the emergence of analytic philosophy of language, another type of objection was raised by opponents of theism, questioning the meaningfulness of religious propositions. This argument was formulated by Antony Flew in his famous parable of the two explorers and the invisible gardener. 

Two explorers, during their journey, encounter a group of trees, and one of them claims that the grove is arranged and cared for by a wise gardener (just as God is explained in the world). The second explorer takes the absence of any observable gardener as evidence of his non-existence. He then shows that there is in practice no viable way to reveal such a gardener. Consequently, neither evidence for the existence of such a gardener nor evidence for his non-existence can be provided, and thus the claim of the gardener’s existence is meaningless. Basil Mitchell, Richard Hare, John Hick, and Crombie, in response, attempted to demonstrate the meaningfulness of belief in God in various ways. This objection has been presented in two forms (Flew et al., 1971). In the parable of the two explorers, Flew questions the existence of God, while in another parable he renders the attributes of the God of theists meaningless. He gives the example of a child suffering from cancer of the larynx, burning with fever, while his earthly father desperately tries all night long to save him. Yet no sign of the heavenly Father, who is said to be a God of love for His servants, is seen, and eventually the child dies (Flew in Hick, 1990, p. 368). Through this parable, he shows that the theistic claim that the heavenly God loves human beings is neither verifiable nor falsifiable, and concludes that this belief is fundamentally meaningless. After Flew, this example has been discussed less frequently (Ayatollahy, 2025). 

The challenge of the alleged meaninglessness of God’s existence and of divine attributes was reformulated in a new structure by Schellenberg at the end of the twentieth century in order to present an argument against the existence of God. He analyzed the Christian doctrine of a loving God whose most important attribute is love for His servants. He argued that such a loving God necessarily seeks to be in relationship with His servants in such a way that they can understand this loving relationship. Yet under circumstances in which some human beings (at least) are in dire need of benefiting from the fruits of this love, they see no tangible sign of God’s love in their lives. He describes this issue as “divine hiddenness” (Schellenberg, 1993). 

(An excerpt. --cf https://www.academia.edu/s/3808a7aa4f#comment_1495553 for whole article)

I played 'hide and seek' as a kid. After a while in a good hiding place I'd want to be found. I didn't want dusk to come and be forgotten. "Divine hiddenness" feels a familiar scenario. I'm not fond of the thought that God doesn't care. (If there is "a God" or "God-as-Reality.")

So many arguments seem an artifice of apologetics. The driver in a smashed automobile in the seconds following a sudden crash calls out to God to protect her children in the back seat. Of course she does. The desperate man with gun in hand sitting in living room at edge of inner debate whether now is the time to pull the trigger and erase (he thinks) his life, his pain, his tortured psyche.

It seems both facile and foolish to question whether there is a God who sees us, cares for us, and wishes to assist us in our difficult and critical moments.

These days I'm just as pleased to imagine there is a God who cares as I am to accept the possibility there is no God and, thus, no superseding being in control of existence and sentient life. I pray to a loving living God and, at the same time, I accept the raw fact we are on our own with no protection or home.

In days gone by we would kill the atheist. Or we would kill those who believed in a version of God different from the one "we" believed in. And then, curiously, we would quietly inch toward our self-generation as a version of God more to our ideological aspirations. Which is more dangerous is fodder for Talmudic or Tibetan or Inquisition debate.

Whether God's existence is meaningful or meaningless is, I suppose, something to think about.

I don't know.

Last night we talked about the word "stupid."

Certainly applies to me.

I look at myself in the world.

And the word "fool" comes to mind..

sandlot idle

I won't be throwing out the first pitch

baseball season opens tonight

instead I’ll eat a hotdog, loaded,

sip a diet tonic water, pretending 

i'm playing third base, that I really

can make the throw to first, able

to lift pitch out of infield, trudge

to first without falling in the dirt

my baseball career is spotty, I know

I must have gotten a few hits, made

a few throws, ran from first to third 

at least once, caught a few grounders

so long ago, so long ago, nobody

thinks of me and says ‘he could play!’

but my son gave me an Ohtani jersey

it hangs on sun porch. I’ll wear it tonight

outer world exists for the purposes of the soul

 You would think, with the myriad of product advertisements flashing across every media, devise, magazine, email, radio, and newspaper, that shopping and purchasing is the purpose of human life on this planet.

Is Pantanjali saying anything different?

18. Things seen have as their property manifestation, action, inertia. They form the basis of the elements and the sense-powers. They make for experience and for liberation.

Here is a whole philosophy of life. Things seen, the total of the phenomena, possess as their property, manifestation, action, inertia: the qualities of force and matter in combination. These, in their grosser form, make the material world; in their finer, more subjective form, they make the psychical world, the world of sense-impressions and mind-images. And through this totality of the phenomenal, the soul gains experience, and is prepared for liberation. In other words, the whole outer world exists for the purposes of the soul, and finds in this its true reason for being.

(-- from,THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI,“The Book of the Spiritual Man” An Interpretation By Charles Johnston, Bengal Civil Service, Retired;, Indian Civil Service, Sanskrit Prizeman;, Dublin University, Sanskrit Prizeman, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2526/2526-h/2526-h.htm#:~:text=In%20other%20words%2C%20the%20whole,mark%2C%20that%20without%20distinctive%20mark.  

Investing and trading.

Betting and gambling.

Get me more. 

Find me loopholes.

19. The grades or layers of the Three Potencies are the defined, the undefined, that with distinctive mark, that without distinctive mark.

Or, as we might say, there are two strata of the physical, and two strata of the psychical realms. In each, there is the side of form, and the side of force. The form side of the physical is here called the defined. The force side of the physical is the undefined, that which has no boundaries. So in the psychical; there is the form side; that with distinctive marks, such as the characteristic features of mind-images; and there is the force side, without distinctive marks, such as the forces of desire or fear, which may flow now to this mind-image, now to that.

20. The Seer is pure vision. Though pure, he looks out through the vesture of the mind.

The Seer, as always, is the spiritual man whose deepest consciousness is pure vision, the pure life of the eternal. But the spiritual man, as yet unseeing in his proper person, looks out on the world through the eyes of the psychical man, by whom he is enfolded and enmeshed. The task is, to set this prisoner free, to clear the dust of ages from this buried temple.

(ibid, bk 2: 18, 19, 20, Pantanjali) 

I remember studying Pantanjali at The New School For Social Research in Manhattan in the early 1970s. I included him in my syllabus on Comparative Religions in university courses. I’m not sure I had (have) the foggiest idea about that which he writes. That might be age -- once too young, now too old.

Let’s try this: we look out through a field of distracting obstacles attempting to see through into an open empty field called the clarity of things as they are. 

That which is the so-called origin of the looking, that out of which the longing to see, actually, what is there, has, of and in itself, a “no-place source.” 

This “no-place source” is also (extensively) a no-place destination.

The seer (if you will) is traveling from no-place to no-place. Between origin and destination is the field of buying and selling crowding our every thought, desire, and action. It is a debris field likely to destabilize and reroute any traveler venturing into the circling band surrounding all human action in the so-called world.

So many of us get lost in this travel (travail?) 

What’s not to like luxuriating in gadgets and groceries, pharmacy aides and insurance guarantees offered us for our protection, pleasure, and privilege?

Of course, this is probably not what Pantanjali is talking about. 

But as I look back, I realize how off-course I went trying and failing to navigate that space between no-space and no-space.

No-space and no-place intruded upon by space and place obscuring no-space and no-place.

But as my (so-called) life rides the subway train from Coney Island Brooklyn to 57th street Manhattan I am flummoxed as to the complexity of life and its goings-on station to station, ingress to egress, strap-hangers and rush-hour crowds, bumping and rattling my knapsack on the rocking transit cars passing through the boroughs tunnels, and announced stops.

Ah the "pure vision, the pure life of the eternal” -- even unto now, warming sun melting snow from porch roof, white snow ground, pure blue sky, clear enough mind, in chair, by window, riding the corpus-capsule through the day, one day at a time, decades and decades trailing rumination of someone’s life, my life, gone by, going by, covered by all -- all I have fallen to, all that has fallen on me.

"The task is, to set this prisoner free, to clear the dust of ages from this buried temple.”  (op cit)