What would peace look like? We might have to look through words a while before coming to see itself as "itsown."

Graham Greene in his novel The Heart of the Matter (1948):
"That's what I say," she said. "If I go away, you'll have your peace."
"You haven't any conception," he accused her angrily, "of what peace means." It was as if she had spoken slightingly of a woman he loved. For he dreamed of peace by day and night. Once in sleep it had appeared to him as the great glowing shoulder of the moon heaving across his window like an iceberg, artic and destructive in the moment before the world was struck: by day he tried to win a few moments of its company, crouched under the rusting handcuffs in the locked office, reading the reports from the sub-stations. Peace seemed to him the most beautiful word in the language: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you: O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. In the Mass he pressed his fingers against his eyes to keep the tears of longing in. (pp.60-61)

Cordwood in towers by oak tree. Cedar branch in warm February sunlight. The day cannot imagine itself other than it is. It is fine.
I've begun to think about Meetingbrook in terms of practicing Zen Catholic Ecology.

What might that look like? What is Zen Catholic Ecology?
What of the words? Zen -- A seeing and saying that adds nothing, subtracts nothing. Catholic -- A whole-safe comprehension that turns one into one. Ecology -- A dwelling inquiry that asks into the interrelationships of organisms and their environments.

A theme runs through the three words for me -- a theme that originates before split and separation -- a theme embodied in each of the words, namely: Practice seeing, whole and safe, each as its own dwelling place.

Perhaps a new word, "itsown," wishes to come into our language. I have long liked the word "itself" as pointing to that which cannot be other than what it is. It has served to suggest to me a corresponding place for the notion of "God" in theistic parlance, and "What Is" in nontheistic parlance. The "Itself" -- whether God or Ultimate Reality -- cannot be divided, but can be seen in diverse manifestation.

"Itsown" --as a new word, yet to cry aloud in its own voice -- suggests not only that which belongs to itself, i.e. "its own", but that which sows itself wherever it appears, i.e. "it sown." This suggestive quality of "itsown" reminds me of peace.

Peace is when each belongs to Itself as Itsown.

Please note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery --
·
Will be closed weekdays the last two weeks in February,
Monday – Friday
Feb.18th-22nd
Feb. 25th – Mar.1st

We will be open on weekends
Saturday and Sunday
Feb.23rd –24th
Mar. 2nd- 3rd.

No weekday evening events will be held during this time.
Sunday Evening Practice will be held at the hermitage.

Evening events will resume with Tuesday Evening Buddhist Studies, Mar.5th.
...............................................................................

Turn stones into bread? The devil tempts Jesus. Never mind baking bread -- perform magic, go for the big sell, the fast profit, the easy return on small investment.

Jesus had it. He'd had enough of the foolish parlor tricks stipulated by the power broker in this world. Then he said it:
He responded, "It is written, 'Human beings are not to live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of God's mouth.' " (Mt.4:4)
Morning Lectio at our monthly Saturday retreat was taken with this utterance.

The Os Dei, L.=the mouth of God. As we understand the story of the creation of the universe and all in it, God spoke the word of creation. Or, attempting to relate the origins of what we experience as matter and form, we have no idea what and how anything occurred "in the beginning." So, we say, "In the beginning there was the divine word and wisdom." (Jn.1:1)

Then, whatever is, and all that is, flows from the Os Dei, the mouth of God -- the ever-present origin. This is the word of God, these are are the words of God. Each thing, each being, each manifestation, each instance -- this is what emanates and emerges from the mouth of God.

Stones are stones. Bread is bread. Each is itself. Each longs to be itself.
Beware the suggestion to become something else, to be other than what we are at root. .
Jesus seems to be saying we are not about magic and myth, not about the mindless or the mental -- but rather, we are part of the expression of God.

As part of the expression of God we are invited to watch and look, listen and speak, engage and serve each and everything encountered and experienced in this world, on this earth, before, and within one's body.

Jesus embodied Christ-Nature, Christ-Mind. In the story of his encounter with the devil, (with false action and manipulated reality), Jesus teaches us to recognize the false and choose what is true. "Not by bread alone," but by the Alone -- which excludes nothing and includes everything, that which is the root and sustenance of creation as it reveals itself .

What we call God -- or, the Alone -- is here, now, the ever-present origin. God presents all we need -- just like that, just like this. Jesus saw and felt this presence, this awareness, and he tells us we are inside and surrounded by what God is speaking.

The Os Dei is silence, stillness, and solitary seeing. The Os Dei is communicative, moving, and communal Christ consciousness. By any other name, "Christ" is the permeating intelligence and compassion longed for by all that is human. God's presence, or, the creating word of God is a way of relating this grounded reality.

If we accept a particular facile answer as the whole, as substitute for a universal compassionate understanding that moves within and incorporates all creation -- we trip over the false promise of self-serving greed, our particular devil at this time in the world. The wisdom of one who would be Christ accepts no substitution -- wisdom longs for the good of each and all, a longing that will not be satisfied until Alone-With-Others (God with us) inhabits our consciousness, our hearts, and our lives.

No war against evil can substitute for Christ. The wisdom of compassion says: Human beings, if you don't live compassionately with every person and being now in the world, you will inevitably perish in the ignorance of false and fatal warfare, crusades, military and secret retribution, campaigns of terror against terrorism.

Can we hear the sound of that plea?
Christ, the Os Dei, longs to be that sound in our creation.

O Lord, open my lips; and my mouth shall declare your praise! (Ps.51:15)
O Christ, open mouth of God, help us praise the presence of every being!

Fresh, rising, worked in morning mist, scent of yeast, fragrance of heat forming crust, the very revelation of creation for all to taste.

Bread anyone?

The Beloved, through the energy of Love
brought forth the world.
From the rising to the setting sun,
Love radiates out to the nations
perfect in beauty.
...
I know every creature, every plant,
every mineral;
I know you -- your every need
and your fears;
The Earth and all that is in it
belongs to the Whole, to be
tended by all in co-operation
with Love.
(from Psalm 50, as presented by Nan Merrill in Psalms For Praying, An Invitation to Wholeness, pp.96-97)

Jim said in response to the question "Really...What is Love?" at Wednesday Evening Conversation, "Love is allowing God to flow through you."
To the thought "God is what is there," Charlotte corrected "here!" Jesus, by dying on the "T" makes it and separation and death disappear -- so that, There becomes here -- and God is what is here.
Saskia added, "By entering the flow we present God here. Trust, the letting go on, and the letting go into, the Love-of-God flowing through us -- that's trust."
It seems to me that the phrase "Love-of-God" is the very flow of the reality that originates and sustains life and existence. As we come to feel it and know it, we enter and even dissolve into it. What we have named "God" and "Love" with the possessive "of" -- can be seen in another way. The "Love-of-God" is what we are, what we are meant to be, the very reality of existence we are not other than..

Earlier in the day Virginia told that Seinfeld once said his show was all about language and words. She, Hugh, and I were assembling the new chair for Saskia purchased in Bangor enroute home from Presque Isle and the County. Talking about our stay-over in St. Andrews By The Sea, New Brunswick, I told them about our ruminations about the missing third part. There's a wonderful sailboat with its business for sale there, and a house perfect for the hermitage also for sale up the hill from the wharf. This process --from separateness, to consolidation, to enfoldment, to disappearance -- seems to be a sequence of meetingbrook meditation that applies to spiritual as well as physical life.

My friends, search for the still voice
that dwells in the Silence.
If you call upon Me in times of trouble,
I am ever present to you.
You will know Me in your hearts,
As you honor my love for you.
(Merrill, Ps.50, p.98)

Allowing is suffering, is letting -- that's the definition meaning of the word patior, (L.=to suffer, experience, undergo, permit, allow). Suffering is not synonymous with pain. Suffering is allowing. So, when Jim says, "Love is allowing God to flow through you," there is a suggestion of suffering God through one's being, one's person. Much the same way Jesus said, "Suffer [let] the children to come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Mk.10:14) To prevent, or hinder, the free flow of love through anyone, especially the young, is a real sorrow. To dam (damn?) anyone, to attempt to block the flow of the Love-of-God, is a foolish, cruel, and terrible activity to attempt. To open, unblock, let flow again what has been dammed (damned?) is healing, kind, and gracious activity.

All who surrender to the love of
the Great Mystery,
whose hearts are merciful and kind,
will go in beauty and walk with grace;
And all who reverence Love's Eternal Flame,
will know Love's Companioning Presence.
(Merrill, Ps 50, p.99)

It's St. Valentine's Day. Give chocolates! Bow in gratitude to the life and love that flows through each one of us!

The Earth and all that is in it belongs to the Whole, to be tended by all in co-operation with Love.

Tend well! Let love go on!

Desperate times demand desperate measures. When does despair become a virtue? Is it when hope turns to face you, and you have disappeared?

Comprehending the fundamental,
Embracing the spirit,
Roam the root of heaven and earth,
Wander beyond the dust and dirt,
Travel to work with noninvolvement.
Take care not to let mechanical
Intelligence burden your mind;
Watch what is not temporal
And remain unmoved by things.
- Lao tzu (in dailyzen)

In a time of censure, suicide, and slaughter, I propose a more radical penance practice -- namely, disappearing in place of Christ!

VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.
(final part, from poem "Ash Wednesday" by T.S.Eliot)

Dean, concert singer doubling as bookstore clerk, would often reach for a quote from Pema Chodron, about hope -- that it was something you hung on to, clung to -- but it too must be dropped. He'd say this over coffee. He wondered why Christians placed so much value in hope. Wasn't it wanting something other, something separate that wasn't necessary? Suffer me not to be separated.

Lent begins. Let the suffering begin! Or, put differently, let the allowing begin. To suffer is to allow, to let what is taking place be what it truly is. And what is taking place? What truly is? What is turning itself into itself in this existence?
Perhaps, just perhaps, it truly is the body of Christ taking place in this world.

Although I do not hope to turn. These are desperate times. Canadian figure skaters are denied the gold they demonstrated belonged to them. Catholic priests are deconstructing the privilege and power they once assumed was theirs no matter what. Politicians poise to saw off the limb of easy money that held them aloft from the ground of honest brokering. The heresy of having a different opinion about war, murder, infallibility, and nearness to God -- has been moved from ecclesiastical sanctuaries and relocated in the oval office, justice department, and pentagon -- linking heresy with treason, and usurping the national flag as new icon of redemption.

And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth.

I am desperate. I despair. I cannot see myself...without hope...where does one turn?

It is Ash Wednesday, Lent, and the slow emptying begins.
Perhaps it is not hope, but something wonders -- If what we call "Christ" takes place in this world, will anyone who answers 'yes' or 'no' come to realize their separation? -- or, their true self, their Christ-self?

As for me, disappearing might be a virtue to consider.
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross

At least, it's a place to begin.

[Note for bookshop Tuesday Evening Schedule -- There will be no Buddhist Studies for the remainder of February. They'll continue first Tuesday in March.]

.......................

The woman, the priest, and the community are shaky today.
We're not sages. We're ordinary people...

Sages lean on a pillar
That is never shaken,
Travel a road that is
Never blocked, are
Endowed from a
Resource that is never
Exhausted, and learn
From a teacher that
Never dies.
They are successful
In whatever they undertake,
And arrive wherever they go.
Whatever they do, they
Embrace destiny and go along
Without confusion.
- Wen-tzu (dailyzen.com)

...And we're confused.

Yesterday the pastor of the local Catholic church said someone had accused him of being sexist, arrogant, and having done immeasurable harm to women parishioners. He said he'd be rendering his resignation at an emergency parish council meeting this coming Wednesday. He then launched into his sermon, ignoring the murmurs of surprise as well as the woman who stood addressing him "Father?" Her plea was ignored. So too ignored was the question of propriety in announcing in such an unresponsive way what to some is a sudden and undesirable revelation.

Edward Collins Vacek, S.J. in an America article (March 9, 1996) entitled "The Eclipse of Love for God," wrote:
When David Hare interviewed clergy as part of his research for his play, "Racing Demons," he ran into a problem: None of the priests wanted to talk about God. One of the disturbing questions his play raises is whether contemporary Christians, with the exception of a few fanatical fundamentalists, are concerned about loving God.
In my own conversations with Christians, I find that almost all of them talk approvingly about love for others, some talk confidently about God's love for us, but few are willing to talk about their love for God. When I press them to say what it means to love God, some of them in fact deny that we can love God directly, many admit that they don't give much thought to love for God and most deny that there is any ethical obligation to do so. They judge that it is wrong not to love people, but they have no such thoughts about neglecting God. In short, many contemporary Christians subscribe to Jesus' second commandment, but not to the first. (p.13

The priest on Sunday must have been very upset to blurt out his suffering in what some feel was an insensitive and uncaring way to his parishioners. If he was asking for help, he didn't ask. If he was lining up support against the person (presumably a woman) accusing him, he chose an abusive way to do so. But if he was trying to say that he loved God, wished to serve God and God's people, and was temporarily knocked off his pins by rage, sorrow, and helplessness -- then, we must attempt to heal the cut and tear that all of us participate in as members of the body of Christ.

Brother Antoninus (William Everson), in his book of poems The Hazards of Holiness (1960) writes in his poem "Saints" --
Souls and warriors!
Great-hearted ones!
How may we hope to learn of you,
Of anyone,
For a course of battle
That can't be seen
Ever at all?
When what is relatable
Broke at a level beyond any ken?

Even you, even you,
Never really knew it, saints.
Stalwarts of the soul's war,
Prechosen.

But woke one morning
Dead and glorified,
Nobody more surprised than yourselves.

And looked back doubtless
As some thorn-torn climber
Pants at the peak-top,
Staring down in amaze
At the hell of cockle
He clambered through.

I've done that.
Looked back down all choked and bleeding
At what I crawled across,
Raking scorpions and poison-mouthed toads
Off my clothes as I stared.
I know that.

But now ahead
No cactus there nor any beasts,
No toads, no snakes,
No devils and no ghosts.

Nothing.

No thing. Not anything.

Not to be named, even,
Cursed at, grinned back against,
Invoked, knelt to,
Adored, denied, befouled or hated!

And nothing to love!

A blankness
Like neither night nor day
Confronts: the flat void
Of unrealization.

Before what will be
Is.

Before what might be
Can.
(pp.32-33)

The woman, the priest, the community attempting to be body of Christ -- are each "Before."

What happens next -- with, to, and as, love -- will reveal to us either realization or unrealization.

Vacek ends his article in America saying:
At the end of this essay, let me make it clear that in speaking of love for God, I do not mean to exclude love for neighbor or self or world. Rather, love for God leads us to cooperate with God's love of the world. Hence -- strange as it seems -- one of the reasons we want to love ourselves and others is that we want thereby to cooperate with God's love for us. In a profoundly religious sense, we are aware that the ordinary and usually best way that God can love creatures is through our love for them. Still, although love for neighbor and love for self are essential to the Christian life, my concern here is that we must not let these wholesome Christian loves eclipse our love for God. That love should be the sun of our lives. (p.16)

Perhaps here is offered a way out, or in, for the woman, priest, and community attempting to be body of Christ in a confusing time -- namely, acknowledge, but do not succumb to seasonal affective disorder. The light of the sun, deprived during dark winter, is returning -- slowly, slowly. Lent, the slow preparation for the mystery that enfolds our bodies as well as that of Jesus' is upon us. The sun, the son, the sum of our "thorn-torn climber" selves -- is returning to the midst of our consciousness, returning to this part of Maine's eco-geography. Put differently, what we are "Before" is ready to engage and enfold Real Presence. And for this, we need to:
...lean on a pillar
That is never shaken,
Travel a road that is
Never blocked, are
Endowed from a
Resource that is never
Exhausted, and learn
From a teacher that
Never dies. (Wen-tzu)

The snow is blowing horizontal in Presque Isle. We're on our way!
We'll, all of us, clamber through!

Meetingbrook riddle:
Question --"How do you know that you're a fool, a dimwit, and don't know anything?"
Answer -- "I don't know. Try not to think about it. What was the question again?"

There was this silly exercise done in workshops -- you ask one half the room to think of a question, any question, and write it down. The other half is told to think of an answer, any answer about anything that comes to mind, and write it down. Then by choosing willy-nilly one from each side to read their question and answer -- there occurs a sometimes hilarious, sometimes serious, but most times absurd connection between random questions and random answers. It nearly always served as a curious reminder that, while all questions find answers, the direct relationship between question and answer resides in the wit and intelligence of the occurrence, and not in the intentional logical conclusion reached for by the questioner or responder. The general result of the exercise is laughter.

So what? Well you might ask!
Once you enter the path of prayer and unknowing -- a curious sensation occurs -- nothing makes sense, and, everything seems absurd. Absurdity isn't a condition one reaches for in order to cultivate, propagate, and disseminate -- rather, absurdity arises from the everyday occurence of being, life, loss, and emptiness. Absurdity, according to the New World Dictionary, is from the Latin absurdus= not to be heard and is defined as "so clearly untrue or unreasonable as to be laughable or ridiculous; laughably inconsistent with what is judged as true or reasonable; laughable from incongruity; foolishness; nonsense."

Erazim Kohak's book Idea & Experience -- Edmund Husserl's Project of Phenomenology in IDEAS 1 (c.1978), begins with Kohak's Preface:
This study is predicated on the Heraclitean conviction that wisdom is "to know the gnome, the thought by which all things are guided through all." In the case of Husserl's project of phenomenology, that one thought, profound in its simplicity, is that, primordially and ultimately, to know means to see, or, as Husserl presents it in Ideas 1 # 19c,
Direct "seeing" ([Gk]: noein), not merely experiential sense perception, but seeing in general as the primordial presentive consciousness of whatever kind, is the ultimate source of the validity of all rational assertions. ((p.xi)

Kohak continues, The primordial starting point, as well as the ultimate aim of all knowledge, is not speculation but that clear, evident insight which humans acknowledge with the startled exclamation, "Oh, now I see!"

The devout wish such a consummation!

A Zen Master writes:
He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion. (Sokei-an)

Place that alongside the Dalai Lama's words when he said, "My religion is simple. My religion is kindness..." and there is a generous invitation to open one's eyes and see.

Human nature is developed
By profound serenity and lightness;
Virtue is developed
By harmonious joy
And open selflessness.
When externals do not
Confuse you inwardly,
Your nature finds the condition
That suits it;
When your nature does not
Disturb harmony,
Virtue rests in its place.
- Huai-nan-tzu (dailyzen.com)

These days the externals confuse me inwardly. While my only refuge is kindness -- this I trust -- the storm of closed self pounds absurdly against the place virtue rests in profound serenity and lightness. I feel Queeg's steel round clinking balls rolling around my hand as I realize the absurdity of my foolishness, dim wit, and ignorance.
What was the question, again?

The morning is brilliant. Bright sun on white snow, startling blue sky, elongated white cloud, bracing cold breeze. Outside the window everything seems in place. On bed, Sando stands, stretches, turns and returns to blanket, licks left paw while looking at me.

She sees me sitting right where I am!

Enfold. That's the word. The word had been 'consolidate.' Enfold seems more like it. 'Enfold' in the dictionary has two parts: 1. to wrap in folds; wrap up; envelop; 2. to embrace. We need to enfold.

Don’t be surprised,
Don’t be startled;
All things will arrange
Themselves.
Don’t cause a disturbance,
Don’t exert pressure;
All things will clarify
Themselves.
- Huai-nan-tzu (dailyzen.com)

In Meetingbrook's case, the two separate instances need to enfold one in the other. The bookshop/bakery in town and the hermitage on Barnestown Rd. at Ragged Mountain can no longer be sustained as two places. This emerging fact is unsettling. Perhaps Huai-nan-tzu is right, all things will clarify themselves, all things will arrange themselves.
Right now it looks like our 6 years at Bayview Street might come to an end and we will enfold at Barnestown.

A hermit by temperament longs for the simplicity of nature being nature. A solitary by inclination longs for silence and solitude to experience what is alone. A monastic by surrender longs to move through the appreciation that there is no movement to or from anything -- only the nondual appreciation of what is moving in stillness.

In the forward to Frederick Franck's book To Be Human Against All Odds, James W. Heisig writes of Franck:
He is equally attracted to the Zen view that dichotomized thinking is ultimately a betrayal of religious experience. Life/art, subject/object, I/Thou, persons/things are all modes of thought and need to be broken through in order to make what sense they can make.
By the same token, and in true Zen fashion, he does not see Zen itself as something to be clung to in exclusion of other religious ways. The sacredness of any tradition is that it opens our eyes to see what there is to see. By becoming dogmatic and self-sufficient, a tradition may have a better chance of surviving shifts of time and place, but it forfeits the basic task of opening our eyes to the sacred. (p.9)

The sacred is enfolded in the secular. Prayer is enfolded in politics. Work is enfolded in worship. If there is a thin place, that thin place is not between one and the other, not a membrane however transparent that separates one and the other, not a free zone that runs contiguous to one and the other. The thin place is the aspect of enfolding.

The aspect of enfolding is the looking at and as what is enfolding. It is not a matter of foresight nor of hindsight. Rather, what the aspect of enfolding is -- is seeing itself, now -- and here. Here we speak about seeing the reality of Meetingbrook move from two locations to one while retaining the monastic tension inherent in living -- alone-with-others, or solitude-in-community, or embodying the thin place of rooting-sprouting as the same instance differing directions.

The whole consideration of Meetingbrook is practicing between traditions. We are coming to see that this doesn't mean going from one to the other and back. Nor does it mean throwing them both into a single pot to stir together. Perhaps we will come to see that the meaning for us is to watch and see the unfolding and enfolding of what longs to present itself in the midst of creation itself. Some might call that God. Or, Ultimate Reality, Truly Human, Risen Christ, Buddha of Compassion, The Way with its Power, Truth, What Is, or even -- Hello my name is...!
Something is emerging in, with, and through creation and those awake to the emergence. Exactly what that is to look like is unknown to all but a few of our species. And it terrifies us.
Terra est! Terra's I Am! What is the error? It is the earth! I am the earth. And the error? It seems the error is we've separated ourselves from the earth, from creation -- and are intent on objectifying it, thereby eliminating it.

Frederick Franck writes:
Raimon Panikkar coined the term cosmotheandric for the trinitarian relationship referred to by Samartha. I understood him to agree that in our present situation no single religion, culture, or tradition can pretend to present a universally valid solution for either our theoretical or practical human problems. Alone and isolated, Hinduism is threatened, Christianity is impotent, Islam is in ferment, Buddhism is dissolving, Marxism is bankrupt, secularism is self-destructing. It is not unthinkable that cross-fertilization among the traditions could reconcile the original insights of the various cultures and make the stilled voices of the sages audible once more over the abysses of time.

A new innocence, perhaps even a new naivete, is needed. This is not something that can be willed or concocted intellectually, but must be born from "grace." What we need is a holistic view of reality, a post-modern view in which all our fragmentary modern knowledge would be evaluated as mere preparation of its insights on a higher level. This does not imply facile assumptions about some undifferentiated reality, but a restoration of a view of the human in its dignity as a spark of the infinite fire (agni), a microcosm, an image of the whole, a constituent of the entirety of the real: cosmically, environmentally, communally integrated.

Science is powerless when it comes to understanding what it might mean to be human, for this is not a scientific question. It is precisely this human mystery that is the questioner. An anthropocentric answer would be as deficient as a theocentric one, for being human is a coexistence with the Divine and the Cosmos. The Divine is not "pure transcendence," not free from all relationship. The Ultimately Real is not "Wholly Other," not an exclusively 'divine" kingdom. The human has its place in it.

In every human being, Panikkar noted, the entirety of the cosmotheandric real is centered. This does not make us the center of reality. It means that reality is centered in itself and at once the center of that "circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere."

As creatures we may be nothingness, but as constituents of the real, we are integral participants in the Trinitarian Mystery, and not merely passively but as fully sharing in the destiny of being. (Franck, pp.97-98)

The cosmotheandric, the enfolding aspect of Earthly/Divine/Human, is a longing that is felt everywhere. And yet, there are those who intentionally rape, pollute and expropriate for personal greed what does not belong to them, but belongs to a grace and a power beyond the understanding of the separators, takers, and criminals -- both petty and lawyerly corporate. (This last sentiment after viewing Bill Moyers Report: NAFTA'S Powerful Little Secret).

Elsewhere Panikkar describes his Cosmotheandric Principle as that in which what is divine, what is human and what is earthly (let everyone find their own terminology) are the three irreducible dimensions which constitute what is real. These three parts are not juxtaposed simply by chance, but they are essentially related and together constitute the Whole. They are parts because they are not the whole, but they are not parts which can be separated from the whole. (In 'The new innocence -- Interview with Raimon Panikkar,' by Carmen Font, from the October 1996 issue of "Share International.")

Something dies. Something falls away. As we participate in our small instance of this change, we try to see the enfolding aspect of the cosmotheandric; we try to see the grace of it.

Hui-neng, 7th century, said, "The Meaning of Life is to SEE."

The poet Ikkyu (1394-1481) wrote:
I shall not die
I shall not go away
Just don't ask me any questions
I shall not answer.

I enfold my hands. They assume the posture of prayer, departure, and arrival. These enfolded hands set to greet what is to be. This is done as the unnecessary disappears.

What is it we think about when killing people?

Read papers, listen to news, and the reasons heap upon each other. The explanations, the defenses, the invocation to national pride, satisfaction of justice, or elimination of evil -- all have a compelling soundness that nods heads and mulls minds sipping coffee in strategy rooms, cafes, and penal committee rooms.

"A mind," an advertisement went years ago, "is a terrible thing to waste!"
It is also a troublesome thing to taste. At best it makes clear what is clouded. At worst it clouds what is presented to it.

"Pay no mind," -- my grandmother would say. "Don't give it any currency," -- David would say at a Wednesday Evening Conversation. It is costly to use the mind in ways that are useless. It is costly to allow the mind to use us in ways often beyond our recognition.

"No mind," the Zen people say. "Dropping off mind and body," enlightened Dogen Zenji. "Don't mind me," takes on a different ring when spoken to another.

Coming, I don't enter by the gate,
Going, I don't leave by the door.
This very body
Is the land of tranquil light.
(--Gyokko, 1315-95)

Perhaps it is the body that refracts the light of understanding we normally attribute to mind.

The perfect way out:
There's no past/present/future.
Dawn after dawn, the sun!
Night after night, the moon!
(--Getsudo, 1285-1361)

Perhaps it is Nature itself that calls to us -- as mother, lover, friend, and child -- inviting us to simply see what is there, who we are, how life endures.

What is it we think about when killing people? Mind this -- reason justifies, but no reason satisfies. I don't sense we understand, not yet. Perhaps we're not ready yet.
Don't mind me.

God's breath exhales: "I Am Everywhere!" God's sight pleads: "Don't kill me!" God's compassion wonders: "What are you thinking of?"

Every thing, every place is real,
Each particle makes up Original Man.
Still, the absolutely real is voiceless,
The true body's majestically out of sight.
(--Chosa, 9c)

See?

Simeon, old and hanging on for some sign, held the child. He told Mary the child would be a sign that is contradicted, something spoken against. There would be pain and sorrow piercing her heart.

Anna, old and a regular at the temple, thanks God, and tells whoever would listen about the child. The child is presented as a light to the non-Jews and as a son-heir to the Jewish messianic hopes. The God of the Jewish people is both invisible and nameless but there. The Gentiles needed a light to see what they couldn't comprehend. The child with Simeon and Anna is visible, named, and will suffer and die. Like Mary, Joseph, David, Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob, Pontius Pilate, Herod, John, our parents -- like everyone who appears and is called by name, this child Jesus, will suffer and die. God or no God -- if you're going to appear you'll disappear. If you are given a name, it will be taken away. What's the point?

Today America says it is groundhog's day -- see or don't see shadow, the groundhog appears and is watched by others for signs of the length of winter. Tomorrow is superbowl Sunday -- bet or don't bet on the New England Patriots an enormous viewing audience will watch for signs to see which one or the other will suffer loss and defeat. Many will attend as the whole show comes to an end with the final whistle. And here too, will there not be signs contradicted in these events? Won't there be many who will speak against whatever outcome occurs? Won't the child be dismissed in equivocal ways that Simeon only half represents when he suggests God dismiss him now that he has seen? See what the heart longs for and dissolve with the seeing, dissolve into the seeing?
Seeing what?

Acts at random,
In ignorance of
The constant, bode ill.
Knowing the constant
Gives perspective;
This perspective is impartial.
Impartiality is the highest nobility;
The highest nobility is divine,
And the divine is the Way.
This Way is everlasting,
Not endangered by physical death.
- Tao-te Ching (dailyzen.com)

Light clarifies as fire refines. An email about refining silver was sent by Kristen. Excerpted:
He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold
the silver in the middle of the flame, where the heat was the
hottest, in order to burn away all the impurities.
The man answered that
yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to
keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the flames. If
the silver was left even a moment too long, it would be destroyed.
The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith,
"How do you know when the silver is fully refined?" He smiled at her
and answered, "Oh, that's the easy part - when I see my image
reflected in it."

The value of sangha, community, church, supporting circle -- is the constant attentiveness, watchfulness, listening, appreciating and questioning. The work is done there, within and surrounding the gathering of individuals witnessing the transformation presence encourages.

Simeon held this truth in his hands. Anna told it to others. You and I always have a choice -- namely, do we divert our attention and energy away from the process at hand, or do we engage each and all in the reflective work of allowing what we have seen and heard dissolve into who we are in silence?

One of the annoying yet endearing qualities of Jesus was his invitation to allow the rules and laws of external imposition dissolve -- and to enter the freedom of building together the kingdom of heaven, the indwelling place of God, the one reality of love, light, truth, freedom, justice -- an unseen, unnamed, unother Presence.

Simeon longed for the "consolation of Israel." Perhaps we might transliterate this phrase of Simeon's to -- taking comfort with the wrestling we engage in with messages/messengers of God. Is this what we call Presence?

Anna thanks God for the intuitions and energies that God is in our midst. She is a prophetess. She "...anticipates," as one writer says it, "what will happen when the spirit is poured out on all flesh...A model of faith in action, one who responds positively and properly to the coming of the Messiah." (in Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol.I, p.257),

At the Snowbowl next door, toboggan championships are being run. One by one they shoot through the chute and out across Hosmer Pond thick with ice. Each run is timed, measured, and recorded. In the dooryard Kristen leaves with her portable table. Jim unloads some things from his red truck and drives east. In kitchen the apple Kuchen is baked and out of the oven. Gray squirrels have emptied the house feeder out back. It is Saturday. Sando noses into this room. Smoke rises from woodstove chimney outside window and dissolves into the sun-bright frosty air.

I present these facts so that when each one of them dissolves there will be no need to speak against them. They are signs of themselves. No other meaning is needed.

We thank God, knowing this, constantly watchful.
Presence!

What we need is some way to be and say -- what and who we are -- as we become, truly, what and who we are!

"Rabbit, Rabbit." (That's for Susan, Bob, Dana and the rest of the schooner crowd -- as well as Kristen the Sweetvoice of Evergreen, Reiki and Massage -- who over the years have spoken these words upon opening their eyes on the first of the month. Although none of them have been able to attribute the source of pronouncing this ritualized awakening, they, and several visitors from away, nod enthusiastically as to the appropriateness of the practice.)

Attain the center of emptiness,
Preserve the utmost quiet;
As myriad things act in concert,
I thereby observe the return.
Things flourish,
Then each returns to its root.
Returning to the root
Is called stillness:
Stillness is called return to Life,
Return to Life is called the constant;
Knowing the constant is called enlightenment.
- Tao-te Ching (dailyzen.com)

Upon my awaking this morning, (rabbit rabbit notwithstanding), I found words echoing in my yawning dawn that remind me of the center emptiness, act in concert, observing return, flourishing root, calling stillness, returning to life the constant, knowing the constant is enlightenment -- the Tao-te Ching fragment arousing resemblance and resonance. Here are the words I wake with -- they arrive from a night's sleep:

May this bread we eat place us in mind of Christ.
May this wine we drink serve the embodying of Christ.
When we eat and drink this bread and wine we remember Christ with compassion.
May the understanding and awareness of Christ transform each and all in simplicity, silence, and service.
Yes, thank you!

Round drops of snowy sleet sound whoosh and shhh when pushed by my boots approaching the empty birdfeeders. We were gone four days to southern Maine and western Massachusetts. Saskia attended the funeral in New York State of her brother-in-law's father at a Russian Orthodox Monastery. May he rest in peace!
Today the birds must be higher on the mountain, not yet aware that our negligence is revisited with feed again for them as light snow resumes. That's how I felt at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland yesterday at 12:15 Mass listening to the words of liturgical celebration, receiving/reciprocating communion, and sitting in silent presence after the chapel emptied.

During his homily the priest spoke of Don Bosco, the saint honored on the 31st -- how he worked with youth, and his followers too were known for their educating and serving youth. I prayed for all those involved over the years with the sorrow and pain of sexual abuse, priests to youth, and for the healing of wounds in both victim and perpetrator. Boston reels with the coming to light of the secrets and denials rife in the clash of institution and human lives. The Church takes its hit -- and (in deference to upcoming Superbowl Sunday, another American liturgical event) -- it is thrown for a long significant loss. It is time to field a more transparent plan to embody the compassion, understanding, and awareness of Christ. Mere institutional lineage and conferring of teaching power -- whether in priestly or political arenas -- no longer compels as reason for fidelity. A dry, empty time, fallow and hard, winter's face.

And then -- one chickadee, two, three return. Their chirping precedes them. They take seed, dart to safe limb, and eat. This, this, is what we need -- to return, eat, drink -- remembering source, revealing what can no longer stay hidden, responding with what and who we are.

Yes, thank you!

Thomas must have loved straw. He compared all his writings to straw at the end of his life. Still, his straw became the foundation of scholastic theology for the next 700 years.

The tragedy of man is not that he cannot find happiness, but that he looks for it in all the wrong places. Because the desires of man are boundless, no particular good, whether outside himself, or in himself can perfectly satisfy him. (PartIIa, Ch.1, Pocket Edition of St. Thomas, Summa Simplified for Everyone)

Why did the Son of God have to suffer for us? There was a great need, and it can be considered in a twofold way: in the first place, as a remedy for sin, and secondly, as an example of how to act.
It is a remedy, for, in the face of all the evils which we incur on account of our sins, we have found relief through the passion of Christ. Yet, it is no less an example, for the passion of Christ completely suffices to fashion our lives. Whoever wishes to live perfectly should do nothing but disdain what Christ disdained on the cross and desire what he desired, for the cross exemplifies every virtue. (From a conference by Saint Thomas Aquinas, priest: The Cross exemplifies every virtue)

The desires we cultivate are boundless. We want what is not here. We want more, bigger, better. We want others to be as we wish them to be. We want the world to embrace our politics, our values both good and bad. We want wealth, health, happiness, for ourselves. We want something to go away, something else to come. There's no end to the ways our mind fabricates the belief that this, here, now is inadequate, measly, merde, straw. And yet, if God is here, now?

What are "the evils which we incur?" What, according to Thomas Aquinas, did Christ disdain on the cross or desire on the cross that exemplified every virtue? Perhaps the evil is the refusal to look at and see what is good. Perhaps what Christ disdained, that is, what Christ saw as unworthy and beneath the dignity of men and women, is the false front, mock values, and posturing pretense that prevents us from opening to and falling into the one true reality. And what is that one true reality? I'm not sure, I don't know.

But Christ seemed to suggest the one true reality is that we are family, brother, sister, mother, father to each other. That we are what God is -- we are meant to be presence, light, comfort, and truth for each other. That we are meant to be free and full of grace -- not burdened by debt, disease, distorted beliefs.

Today a 20yr old woman in the Middle East blew herself up and killed alongside her an 81yr old man and wounded 113 others. Commandos rush a hospital in Afghanistan and kill 5 members of a terrorist group holed up there for two months who threatening to blow up the hospital. Today four professional football teams rest from their games yesterday -- the combined gates, betting, salaries and endorsements of their and some of the professional basketball teams that also played their games -- amounting to well over a billion dollars. Corporations, lawyers, accountants, and politicians resume their Joycean monologues and polyphonic atonal rap songs to each other in the myriad hearings and scandal scouting events of Houston and Washington D.C.. Hide and run, shuck and jive, steal and fleece and explain it as capitalism, as distraction and entertainment -- what else can be seen from the cross?

When men see clearly the justice and the mercy of God, the wisdom of God will also be apparent to them. All the seeming inequalities and injustices of human life -- the prosperity of the wicked and the oppression of the just, the sudden and early death of the saintly and the long life of the tyrant -- all these mysteries of life will be opened to the minds of men [and women]. The plan of God in the creation of human life, in all its vastness and complexity, will be seen by men [and women]. (p.596, op.cit.)[brackets added]

Christ is the seeing of what is real. Jesus, hanging on the cross, Christed this world with a compassionate eye. He saw with the vision of God that so much of what we do, to ourselves and others, is unworthy of what we really are, and does not resonate the dignity of who we really are -- here and now. That vision is ours to see and to be. The words we've heard -- "he died for our sins" -- might better be phrased -- "he became straw so we would become wheat" -- flowering stalks, dazzling wildflowers, grass under snow urging winter on. Christ finds us worthy, with dignity, nearly ready to see and be what we really are. You've got to love straw, its fragrance, its feeding form, its sun shading brim.

The gift dies into this seeing/being.

"How can a thing be a miracle one day and not a miracle the next day?"

In the novel by Brian Moore, Catholics, (pp. 121-124) situated on the Isle of Muck in Ireland, the Abbot has to do something,
He hears Fr. Matthew's question.
"And I will not be put off like that," Father Matthew shouted. "I will not be ordered to believe something which I do not believe."
"No one can order belief," the Abbot said. "It is a gift from God." But even as he said this, said the only truth left to him, he saw in these faces that he was failing, that he was losing them, that he must do something he had never done, give something he had never given in these, his years as their Abbot. What had kept him in fear since Lourdes, must now be faced. What he feared most to do must be done. And if, in doing it, I enter null and never return, amen. My time has come.

The Abbot leads them through the nave, entered the chancel, and faced the altar.
"A miracle," he told them, "is when God is there in the tabernacle."
"But you said the opposite, you said that the sacrifice of the Mass is just ritual, that bread and wine remain bread and wine, that there are no miracles!"
Matthew, thundering: righteous, wronged. The Abbot, his back to all of them, heard their stiff intake of breath, the fear of their lives at these words, said in this place. He stared at the golden door of the tabernacle. His fear came. "Prayer is the only miracle," he said. "We pray. If our words become prayer, God will come."
..................
Kris, from Belfast, writes to say, "We send our best to you, Saskia and Meetingbrook. Wish we could do more--"
I respond, "You can do more: say a prayer!"

This fear is dear to us. If we pray... if our words become prayer... if God comes... then...?
..................
Slowly, with the painful stiffness of age, he went down heavily on one knee, then on both. Knelt in the center of the aisle, facing the altar, the soles of his heavy farm boots showing from the hem of his robe. He trembled. He shut his eyes.
"Let us pray."

He bent his head. "Our Father, Who art in Heaven," he said. His trembling increased. He entered null. He would never come back. In null.

He heard them kneel. "Our Father, Who art in Heaven." Relieved, their voices echoed his.
"Hallowed be Thy name," the Abbot said.
"Hallowed be Thy name."
.........
Then, indeed... not any... none!

The small pot-bellied stove has two broken legs. Tommy wants to be called when it is fired up for the first time. Snow melts from kitchen roof into white plastic gutter with hot sun over it waving hand fashioning disappearing trick. Jim walks carefully across snow and ice to pickup truck for telephone numbers he will call.

In the shop yesterday Susan tells me of a friend's wife with stage four lung cancer. She's been told -- two months to five years -- and is receiving either radiation or chemo, Susan doesn't know for sure. Earlier Karl and Bill separately tell me the news of a woman from church -- her son died -- suddenly and young. They don't know for certain, but suddenly and young evokes a groan of familiarity of recent deaths by suicide in the community. Joe and Gige stop in looking for a book that hasn't arrived yet. They are incensed by the oncoming and ongoing news from Boston about pedophilia and priests. Joe won't be going to the renewed hospice training in the morning, saying his 80+yr old energy can only be meted out for one thing at a time -- and the Patriots are playing on Sunday -- he's reserving his energy for that loss. Bob, who had a heart attack and is surprised at how that affects one's sense of well-being, calls to say he'll stop by for a chat Saturday afternoon.

An executive from Enron seems to have shot himself dead in his Mercedes in Texas. Hearings begin in Washington about the corporate collapse and matters of financial investments, political contributions, and accounting irregularities. Deaths in Palestine, Israel, Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan -- all indicate unfinished hostilities. It's not hard to wonder at death -- not why, we know why. We die because we are born. But how, the how of death -- that's what gives us pause.

Mokusen Miyuki in the book Buddhism and Jungian Psychology , in a chapter entitled "Dying Isagi-Yoku" writes:

Death is a concept. Dying, but not death, belongs to the experience of the living person. However, dying as a form of living is crucially different from other forms of living in that the individual is facing the critical moment in which he or she is going to disappear from this life. Here I present the Japanese response to the fear of death which can be characterized as the attitude of isagi-yoku.
Speaking of this attitude, D.T. Suzuki in his work Zen and Japanese Culture (1970) states:
To die isagi-yoku is one of the thoughts very dear to the
Japanese heart.... Isagi-yoku means "leaving no regrets," "with a
clear conscience," "like a brave man," "with no reluctance," "in
full possession of mind," and so on. The Japanese hate to see
death met irresolutely and lingeringly; they desire to be
blown away like the cherry blossom before the wind, and no
doubt this Japanese attitude toward death must have gone
very well with the teachings of Zen (pp.84-85).

This morning at Lectio, the reading about the two fellows, their names called, leaving their nets, father, and boat to follow Jesus -- something they saw, no doubt, something they heard -- and they're away. So many of them in a few years from that time are killed, martyred -- it is called -- for what they heard and saw, for what they said and did. "For the faith," some say. But that's not compelling. Faith in what? Belief in what? Or who? No, it's hard to imagine they died for a formula, a creed, or an affiliation. What then did they die for? Why did those fishermen drop everything, turn around, and enter a new reality? Typically we say they followed Jesus, followed the Messiah, followed Christ -- but what does that mean?

What if they dropped everything, turned around, and followed a new reality -- and it meant just that -- a new reality? When we see something, anything potentially, we are changed. Think of seeing the plane hitting the World Trade Center, or the twin towers collapsing. Think of seeing a loved one dead. We're changed by such seeing, such hearing. What if those fishermen suddenly heard and saw that they, (and possibly we), have been completely misled in what we consider reality to be? What if, like those science fiction movies, we come to the experience that everything we've believed about the nature of what is real and unreal has been completely overthrown? Like the film Matrix --living inside a computer program, or the film eXistenZ obscuring what is in the game and what is outside the game? Or one of those nocturnal dreams that are so vivid and active that we are unsure whether we are inside or outside the dream, and uncertain what waking would mean?

The fishermen, quite possibly, entered a new reality. What we read as a walking away from familial and lifework relationships in the narrative might be something more radical, unexplainable, and just a little bit terrifying -- a turning, not unlike death in life, or dying and living -- at and as -- the same instant. What if the very fabric and composition, ground and ideational perspective shifted -- and they no longer saw or recognized what they'd known as real and normal? What if they saw God?

I don't know what they saw. I don't know what they heard. I don't know what occurred for them after they turned. I don't know what new reality suddenly became their very life, their very existence. I don't know if "seeing God" means seeing reality differently or seeing a different reality. I suspect it means you no longer take anything other than what you directly experience as true, anything other than what you are experiencing as what you hold as true for yourself. For this we need both caution and abandon. We need what is called discernment and community -- to help sort through what is not true so to arrive at what is true. I suspect the lives and deaths of the fishermen had something to do with a profound and inalterable certainty that what they experienced and knew was completely worth isagi-yoku!. This attitude of isagi-yoku -- might perhaps be restated as life-in-death, death-in-life, wholelife/wholedeath -- a new reality of seeing as prayer and awakening.

I will die. You will die. We all die. What we struggle with is when and how. What if 'when' is now and 'how' is turning around into a new reality of seeing as prayer and awakening? Perhaps to live/die -- fully seeing what is really true -- is to be fully fearless and fiercely resolute in our response to what calls our name.

Outside window, the breeze takes edges of cedar branch a short way with itself. Fleeting water drop, sumie stroke on transparence, streaking window frame. White cloud moves effortlessly over Sally's land. Chickadee, with unseen sunflower seed, disappears. Each breath in this seeing is a prayer for the dead, the dying, the living, and those turning around.

Saul, it is said, was converted. His conversion is celebrated today. One's conversion, another's conversion, our conversion -- a formulaic understanding I need to come to terms with, to understand. It nears time to get up and return home.

Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him to Damascus.For three days he was unable to see, and he neither ate not drank.
(Acts 9:8-9)

Seeing nothing, some say, is prelude to new activity. In Saul's case the activity was the speaking aloud of what he heard -- namely, what we think is put to death because of our dualistic politics in the secular and religious realms, is transcended by the Christ who appeared from the center of woman, died into the center of earth, and resurrected as center of every nucleus and extension-without-end. Life/death is non-dual! Jesus related in an instant of blinding awareness to Saul that he, and we, are living in ignorance of what is true reality.

And what formulaic shape does this revelation take? Hurt anyone, hurt me, hurt yourself. Help anyone, help me, help yourself. Dismiss anyone, dismiss me, dismiss yourself. Kill anyone, kill me, kill yourself. Love anyone, love me, love yourself.

Jesus the human gift found himself Christ the gift of God. Christ the expression of the Father/Mother God is the gift Spirit gives through matter, life, word, flesh, and finally, truth. Find one, find the other, find oneself. Serve one, serve the other, serve oneself. Practice presence-itself, practice presence-with-other, practice presence-as-oneself.

This darkness of Saul's is prelude. We need to help each other in and through this darkness. Some get trapped in isolation in that darkness and commit suicide, or murder, or war - the combination of the two. We sorrow when that occurs.

Saul took the extended hands of companions that led him further through his darkness until he regained his sight. Our hands need to practice opening. Open one, open another, open to where light longs to lead!

Concrescence, says the dictionary, (from the Latin concrescere=to grow together), means a growing together of parts or cells. Alfred North Whitehead uses the word often in his philosophical writings.
In Stephen T. Franklin's book Speaking From The Depths, writing about Whitehead's thinking, Franklin says,
As we saw in the first section, religion is the application of the permanent side of the universe to the act of concrescence. This, however, raises a problem. For Whitehead, the process of the universe is a self-evident fact. How, then, does this "permanent side of things" find its niche in a world of endless change? How are we to verify the religious person's assertion that there exist ideals which are applicable to the concrescence of all actual entities at all times? Moreover, is there really any sense that the accomplishments of one generation are preserved from the ravages of the next?

Franklin says the primary religious problem according to Whitehead involves asking, "How then are we to account for this religious intuition into the permanent side of things -- the permanent principles of concrescence on the one hand, and the permanent significance of our accomplishments on the other?"
Quoting Whitehead:
The most general formulation of the religious problem is the question of whether the process of the temporal world passes into the formation of other actualities, bound together in an order in which novelty does not mean loss.
The ultimate evil in the temporal world is deeper than any specific evil. It lies in the fact that the past fades, that time is a 'perpetual perishing.' Objectification involves elimination. The present fact has not the past fact with it in any full immediacy. (Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology p.517)

Franklin writes, "Whitehead is famous for his tenacious insistence that no one ideal can serve for all people in all periods -- to say nothing of all actual entities in all aeons. This is a motif which is woven into his entire book, Adventures in Ideas. We will quote one passage as an illustration.
The foundation of all understanding of sociological theory -- that is to say, of all understanding of human life -- is that no static maintenance of perfection is possible. This axiom is rooted in the nature of things....The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe (AI 353h-54a)."

As it rains this Thursday morning -- Sando snoring on bed, Saskia waiting in a Volkswagon repair shop, and someone (I'm sure) wondering why our sign at the shop says 'Open at 10:30am' -- I wonder about God.

To grow together we must respond to the imploring of perfection to find it new and now, inchoate and nascent. This inchoate (only begun) and nascent (coming into being, being born) of perfection (per=through, facere=to make) asks us to face a reality that is not yet, while standing in a reality which is now, believing in a reality from which we've just come. Said differently, By making our way through this present moment we call 'now,' we are always at the beginning or origin of reality-itself while bringing together what went before into what is being built by our dwelling in a true and real immediacy.

Perfection is not a past or future state. It is not an ideal somewhere else that we try to measure ourselves or our behavior against. Perfection is moving through here now. Perfection is doing and facing what is here and growing together with what is now.

If God is perfect, God is moving through this time, this place, you and me, and each and every thing encountered on the way. God is not other than what is taking place. To hold on to an idea of God that posits some fixed and final, immutable and untouchable state of being that is outside the experience of you and me, here and now -- is to have that idea, and only that idea. God is not an idea nor a puppeteer. God is not a facsimile of a Supreme Court judge deciding what will be for each and all.

God is a more compassionate way of seeing. God is, if we dare say it or see it, right now inviting and imploring us to make our way through this time and place in such a way that what comes to be born is something we can grow together in love.

Recently the local internet station posted a question for a community poll asking, "Do you go to church?" The options to choose from were:
Every Sunday.
Two or more times a week.
Only on religious holidays.
I find spirituality elsewhere.
I am an atheist.

Did they mean by "church" as in "go to church" a building? A particular denomination? A distinctive ritual? An obvious congregation identified by a recognizable set of beliefs? I wonder.

If I were to post a question that might evoke current sensitivities to the notion of "church" -- (from Greek word kyriakos, belonging to the Lord); "Lord" -- (from Old English hlaf or "loaf keeper" i.e. one who feeds dependents); dependent -- (from Latin dependere, to hang down, to be derived from); I'd ask:
"Do you gather with supportive, inquiring, practicing people in order to deepen in your life that which is loving, inspiring, engaging?" Or, "Where do you find belonging that feeds your sense of true self?" Or, "How do you get or receive with others the feeling that you truly necessary and something wonderful?" Or, "From what source in your life do you find yourself awakening to that which is called God?"

Has "church-as-denomination" ("denominate," i.e. to give a specific name to), a notion of church that which we're familiar with -- done its job well delivering many to "church-face-to-face" (i.e. like the Zen saying "Better to see the face than hear the name!"), a recognition perhaps not so familiar, yet? Will church as it has been known, change? Following the lead and groundwork that our traditional understanding of the mission of churches has provided, to save us from becoming lost, and become more of a sense of shared journey with God and each other toward that which is our true and very life-with-each-and-all, a foundness, a sacred gathering in everyday encounter? Will church evolve and flower into a sacred presencing, a nameless acceptance, justice, and love?

Perhaps it doesn't matter whether we retain or move beyond the cultural and historical denominations and divisions that have been part of our experience of church. Perhaps it does matter. It seems to me to be part of a koan, a riddle meant to deepen understanding: namely, If each is church, how often do we attend oneself? If we all are church, how often do we attend each other? Or, If God is presence, then who's missing?

As places of identification and worship of God, churches enrich us.
As everyday encounters acknowledging the mystery and inner holiness of every person and all beings, no matter their beliefs, an evolving understanding of church as our ordinary face-to-face, everyday breathing, and daily practice of kindness and compassion -- my vote on the survey would aspire to 60 seconds of every minute, every minute, hour, day of every week.

Perhaps that aspiration is what prayer is. I'll try to pray continuously if that's the case. And if you meet me while I'm not praying, will you pick up the slack for the time we hang together, sip tea, look at each other, greeting whatever & whoever shows up?

Martin was a revolution. In 1968 and earlier, he was a turning around, a new prospect of peace, respect, and soul. He presented the other cheek of Christ, the practical strategies of Gandhi, and the hidden longing of the American soul to do right by the other. Martin was good company in a bad time.

On a long journey,
It is essential to go with
Good companions;
Purify your eyes and ears
Again and again.
When you stay somewhere
Choose your company;
Listen to what you have
Not heard time and again.
This is the basis of the saying:
“It was my parents who bore me;
it was my companions who raised me.”
- Kuei-shan Ling-yu (771-854)(-from dailyzen)


In March 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. preached a sermon at the National Cathedral entitled "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," using the example of Rip Van Winkle sleeping those 20 years through a revolution, from King George the Third to George Washington, the first President of the United States.
While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain a revolution was taking place that at points would change the course of history -- and Rip knew nothing about it. He was asleep. Yes, he slept through a revolution. And one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution. (MLK, March'68)


We need good company today. Bombs and planes are still used as weapons of death; rich men and women fight for more and more wealth for themselves and disregard the financial needs of others; individual respect and rights of freedom afforded to Americans as a beacon of hope for the world are threatened and compromised in the name of control, security, and the assumed singular responsibility of power to fashion what it says is right for others. The company we've kept troubles in unrevealed ways the next generation's longing for love, non-violence, and justice for all.

Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood [and sisterhood]. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught together in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way God's universe is made; this is the way it is structured. (MLK, Mar.'68)[bracketed words added]


Martin didn't lead a revolution; Martin was a revolution. He turned and awakened. This is the way God's universe is made! With Martin's help, with God's help, we can make it; we can structure this world in such a way that we do right by the other, we become good company in a troubling time.

Behalf Conversation, A Poem
-- (or, Dwelling Towards Turning One)

1. Oikoumenikos, Greek: of or from the whole world (-in New World Dictionary)

2. If you pass your
Whole life half asleep,
What can you rely on?
(- Kuei-shan Ling-yu 771-854, dailyzen)

3. “Or lack of belief,” the Abbot said. “I think I was born before my time. A man doesn’t have to have such a big dose of faith anymore, does he?”
Kinsella smiled. “Perhaps not.” He had been about to add that today’s best thinking saw the disappearance of the church building as a place of worship in favor of a more generalized community concept, a group gathered to celebrate God-in-others. But decided that, perhaps, the Abbot was not ready for that step.
(--from novel, Catholics, by Brian Moore, c.1972)

4. We live in the conversation we generate about the world. (- Lynne Twist, New Dimensions Radio)

.....................
It’s not that dreaming isn’t real. It’s more that we can only half read, half speak.
The sorrow’s we’ve forgotten dream’s grammar – the poetics of conversation!

Sal calls during Being There saying he’s gotten my email
what can he do for me? Thank you, I say, we’d like to see

the place in case it’s the right place for Meetingbrook.
This morning at prayer Saskia points out the word “justify”

saying that it might mean, like composing a document text,
“falling into place,” and I say, Yes, that’s it, word transformed

from one time of religion to this time of seeing things as they are.
Sal wondered if I’d checked the zoning, “I’m not sure retail is allowed.”

How sweet of him to pick the one thing I’m willing to give up,
as if he were transforming word to this stranger along the wire –

you see, if the shop was the tail looking for the dog, then, re-tail, or
conversing the tail, we’ve found the dog, found the place, justified

in dream the syllables of grammar. Call it Schola Lumen – a Light Conversation,
or a Conversing Light – that which arrives from word to silence or con-versa.

We’ll wait half awake to fall into place with each one departing silence to word
a clear and present learning once called school, or church, or synagogue, or mosque, or temple

but now with new grammar, new parsing of now, a hospice of “or” –we become words
seeking breath, falling into place in each other’s eyes, each other’s ears, each other’s benediction.

We are half awake, the sound of dreams speaking in drowse. And we are ready to fall awake,
fall into place the words, “I understand!” -- without thought, generative, awaking half to whole.

(wfh, 20jan02)

Anthony lived alone. And because he lived alone a while he became the father of many alones. It was the early 3rd century. He heard words of scripture, and then he heard the silence of scripture, finally settling into word-made-Anthony, a new dwelling place of scripture and silence.

Walking path after 3:30am silent sitting back to brook with pre-dawn snow falling as stillness over everything, the thought occurs to dedicate the cabin on the feast of the father of monastic dwelling. Earlier in the darkness of cushion and flicker of vigil candle the thought occurs from wall next to window -- from framed icon of Mary and Child -- to name the cabin MoGLIAD. It sounds Celtic. Even Semitic. It might even be a transliterated Japanese word from a Waka by Dogen in his poem, There in midnight water, / Waveless, windless, / The old boat's swamped / With moonlight. But it is not any of these. It is the acronym of the words below the icon, Mother of God, Light In All Darkness. The Iconic Image was issued by the Bishop's committee a few years ago in honor of those living-passing-serving with AIDS. Drawing from that originating issue, portrayed is Madonna holding child who in turn holds lighted candle in its hand.

None of us are immune. No longer. Not just AIDS, but terror, and the ordinary but often ignored reality that we too pass -- pass on, pass away, pass by.

Mother holding child holding candle also suggests the Zen story about the abbot at night handing a visiting monk a lighted candle at the door of the darkened corridor telling him to come to the meditation hall after he is settled in his room. Before departing down the darkened way the abbot blows out the candle and disappears in an extinguished swoosh of fading sound down the blackness -- leaving the new arrival in darkness -- leaving him astonished and unseeing in his own riddle. How become lights unto oneself? How not need the light of another's way? How allow the inner light of True Presence to shine from within, thereby lighting the way as inner emanation?

MoGLIAD might be the name of the Meditation Chapel/Zendo. Or it might not. The dedication, however, will take place tonight at the hermitage after Christian Contemplative Studies at the shop. Already a single candle has burned this morning alongside a smaller icon holding the place for MoGLIAD.
..............................
Yesterday at the shop an afternoon full of laughter and conversation about buying a local Inn and transforming it into a Pension/Small Hotel for the many who frequent Meetingbrook to live in a consolidated yet autonomous community of artists, poets, musicians, monastics, contemplatives, seekers-of-the-way, transients, retreatents and other questionable accomplices-of-lightheartedness. We know the site -- we'd like the Camden Harbour Inn -- so now we have to hone the sight, (or, bring the vision home.)

Perhaps our earlier notion of a SCHOLA needs modification to become SCHOLA LUMEN-- that is, A Light Conversation!

These days we pray by head-shaking desperation and laughing-imagination. Anthony would understand. He was a fool to abandon all his land and possessions to live alone with others. Fools understand a fool. It's an understanding born of desperation and laughter, love and surrender. Today is his feast. We note the day -- we note his way.

There are so many of us waiting and watching for the light -- to show forth and be seen from within each one of us.

First the highway falls away. Then cushion. Then faces saying something I cannot comprehend, that maybe doesn't need to be said. Then a book fills my hands -- about history and indeterminacy, Mary and the odd matter of miracles. For two days the dog breathes, the cat purrs, pages turn. Rodents dart to sunflower seed. Ladybugs on book page, on lamp stand, under driftwood. Everything else is frozen.

Computer freezes. Mind freezes. A great locked stillness encloses God. The Bodhisattva of Compassion averts eyes from unmoving and shivering stillborn unawareness.
January, no place remains but the beginning, again. Ordinary time. Ordinary mind. Hiatus without promise of anything other than itself. Brrr!

Breaking Through Solid Ice
Oh lonely boat, advancing, breaking through solid ice! Out of the blur of towering, frozen waves, from the desolate winter light of that isolated region, weathered dark with sadness, you small black whaleboat. The compass needle of the boat, adrift in the deserted surroundings of the sea, and the single sharp prow of will, how they cleave and shatter the hard ice of winter.
(-prose poem by Sakutaro Hagiwara, translated by Lane Dunlop)

Will the woman in Pennsylvania make it through her second bone marrow transplant? Will the man in New York recover from pneumonia and spots on his lungs? Will the elderly woman looking at candles on her tree decide her memories more comforting than what used to compose them?
Will the looming empty space across the river from Brooklyn entrance to Battery Tunnel ever be felt as anything other than burial space for three thousand surprised souls?

We are in the season of questions -- a hard-frozen sorrowing sea of holding-fast questions!

Before going away a few days to visit friends and family, a meditation on what we are learning with Meetingbrook Conversations.

Seeing and saying and service are the very ground of learning.

I've been thinking of the Maine State Prison and the Meetingbrook Conversations held there. Something simple and lovely is taking place. Observations and insights from the community outside the walls, and from the community inside the walls -- are being shared and thought about, and if found useful, incorporated into each persons understanding of who they are -- inside and outside. Topics in philosophy, poetry, the practice of seeing and saying -- are talked about in round-table conversation. Inmates and volunteers from Meetingbrook Bookshop meet together twice a month for two hours a meeting. So far we've conversed about poetry or pieces from Rumi, Thomas Berry, Hafiz, Mary Oliver, John Logan, Andre, Brendan, Kevin, Boyd, Kenny, Stephen, Russell, Robin, Mike, Sonny, Denis, Robert, Paco, Chris, David Whyte, Richard Hugo, Robert Lowell, Eckhart Tolle, John Riker, as well as Seth, Cheryl, David, Dick, Gale, Saskia and I.

For once, for a brief space, we walk among you
for a space of words,
we quicken your hearts in pursuit of the sovereign will. O makers and unmakers! I shall shortly be borne
in a flowering cart of sandal, into a high heaven; a quaint apotheosis!
The routine slaveries once more possess you.
Man and god, Buddha and Merton, those years, this hour, fold in like a dough.
The blows of the kneading fist withdraw, the times are your own.
(--Daniel Berrigan, from his poem "The Funeral Oration as Pronounced by The Compassionate Buddha" from series In Memoriam; Thomas Merton.in New & Selected Poems)

Thinking is seeing. Poetry is saying. Service is sharing what-is-found.
If thinking is what wakes us, then poetry enlivens us more than we think, but the service of sharing with each other what is found in the encounter -- that is the real practice. These three aspects of being-in-the-world are the foundation of contemplation, conversation, and correspondence.

They are a monastic practice. By monastic practice I mean what we are and what we do when we are alone -- alone by ourselves, alone with others -- or, alone with the Alone. Being alone is not always easily understood. For me it means no matter where we are, no matter who is with us (one other or a number of others), we are engaged in the practice of remaining true and faithful to who we are -- we maintain our grounded individual being -- even while we engage and collaborate with others in the Being and existence we share with them. The Alone (with a capital "A") is the Source of our Being, or Higher Power, or Ultimate Reality, or God, or What-Is. Whatever name we give it, we are referring to that foundational root No-Other that upholds us, informs us, inspires us, creates us, sustains and draws us into our own deepest understanding of what we are, where we are, and why we are in the world. By any other name, this is philosophy, poetry, and practice.

While Breathing

Sometimes I breathe harder and all of a sudden with the aid of my continual absent-mindedness, the world rises with my chest. Perhaps not Africa, but big stuff.
The sound of a brass viol, the noise of an entire orchestra, the noisy jazz beside me, sink into a silence ever more profound, profound, smothered.
Their light scratching collaborates (in a way that a millionth of a millimeter collaborates to make a meter) with these waves all around which give birth to themselves, splay themselves, which make the buttress and the soul of everything.
(Prose Poem by Henri Michaux, translated from French by Richard Ellmann, in The Prose Poem)

This is the year of poetry, the time is right. I understand poetry in this context as -- what is being written, what is being spoken. "Poetry and Autobiography," the course Harold & I did at Maine State Prison as an independent study has been a wonderful experience following the promptings of personal recollection along with the promptings of poetry. If anyone else wishes to explore these promptings, it would be a good exercise, a good practice.
I'm planning to offer as a course suggestion to the University of Maine System. "Philosophy, Poetry, and Practice: A Study of Seeing, Saying, and Service of the Ordinary and Extraordinary in Life." As a working draft for a course title it is a bit elongated. Perhaps, "Philosophy of Poetry in Practice."

By means of the three "P's" we'd read, write, and reflect the three S's." It would be an interdisciplinary aesthetic inquiry into the inter-relationship of thought, expression, and engagement-with-others. We'd interweave philosophy, poetry, and spiritual thinking as collaborative corollaries to situations in the world, personal experiential autobiography, and the creativity of meaningful contribution to both the arts and to one's everyday interactions with the world.

"Look, Paddy, nothing could ever make me believe
in that heaven of yours."
"Of God's, more strictly speaking...
and all the luckier for you. Think of your surprise
when you'll be waking up and saying, 'I still don't believe
in all this heaven stuff!' and God just grinning,
'Nor do you have to, man. Not if not believing
makes you any happier. We aim to please.' "
(--from Ramon Guthrie's poem, "There Are Those.")

The joy of philosophy, poetry, and practice is that whatever is seen, said, or served by the conversation is meant to be taken back by any of the participants to their own root tradition, spirituality, everyday reality, philosophy, or personal experience. Everything about the conversations is gift, namely, anything given into the center of the circle is just given. Anything taken is just taken. No other agenda, no other intention. Many are wary about motivations. At Meetingbrook Conversation the only motivation is the conversation. That anyone puts in something they think others should hear, well, there's no stopping that. Any attempt to push the issue to the right or the left, to one corner or the other, is soon counterbalanced by comments that move the topic back to the center. Preaching, proselytizing, or trying to convince are accepted for their duration because the openness of the circle equally invites the opposite opinion, the countervailing comment that expresses whatever is in the mind of the person not to be preached at, not to be converted to, not to be convinced. All is welcome, and therefore, all is considered in its own light.

Existence itself is poetical. The poetry is merely an expression of such existence. Chinese poets penetrate into the source of things and reveal their true nature. As Archibald MacLeish would say, "A poem should not mean, but be!" The best works of Chinese poetry do not "mean"; they "are." The spiritual rhythm emerges from the objective reality, which appears no more a mere visual description.

When the poet is free from artificiality he will not only reflect pure objective reality, he will also be able to reflect spontaneously his inner joy without distortion and limitations from the ego-consciousness. He is purposeless and fearless as the flowing stream and the shining moon. Since the poet is serene he simply reflects what happens to his mind.
(pp.176-7, Creativity and Taoism, A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Poetry, by Chang Chung-yuan)

The prison conversations, like the conversations held at the bookshop in Camden, are free, open, and informal. Free doesn't just mean there's no monetary cost to attend. It also means, as with all freedom, there's no telling where it will go and who will point it in that direction. This invited spontaneity serves to open the possibilities, and inform the individual and group that it is safe and sound to attend. Respect, rather than being a set of rules, follows when you know you are free to admit what you see and say into the service of the conversation.

Someone asked the master, Bokuju:
we have to dress and eat every day --
how do we get out of all that?

Bokuju answered:
We dress, we eat.

The questioner said:
I don't understand.

Bokuju answered:
If you don't understand,
put on your clothes and eat your food.
(in The Grass Grows By Itself, by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)

In other words, practice. As a contemporary saying puts it, "The only way out is through." Whatever we do is what we do; it is the mind that makes it burden or delight. Each thing done for itself needs nothing added to it. If the feeling or thought of "delight" or "burden" comes, then we just watch it come and watch it go. Practice is doing each thing for itself. So too, with things we've done in life, things we regret or things we'd like to repeat and repeat. Regret and longing to repeat are journeys to the past and the future -- which can only be done in the mind. The body is here and now. Awareness is here and now. To practice what is here and now is to free oneself from regret and longing for something else. Despite the attraction for what is not here and now, it is often a painful experience to realize that what is not here or not now is not real. What is real is here. What is real is now. By entering and engaging what is, here and now, is to live fully the life that is ours to live.

Perhaps there is a spirit of the place we occupy, and there are spirits of places we are not. (Poets can speak of these things; they have a poetic license.) When here and now, we occupy the spirit of the place we are, and are content to be what and who, and where we are -- no matter how objectively undesirable that place might seem to others. When not here, not now, spirits of the places we've wandered to in our minds occupy us, and we are at the whim of their memories and projections, no longer ourselves, and not moving through our own life, but through someone else's. Does poetry help us understand this dilemma? Czeslaw Milosz writes:

Ars Poetica?

I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

That is why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It's hard to guess where that pride of poet's comes from,
when so often they're put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?

It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I've devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.

There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
(--by Czeslaw Milosz, trans. from Polish by CM and Lillian Vallee, in The Poet's Work, 29 Masters of 20th Century Poetry On The Origins and Practice Of Their Art)

In the same book as Milosz's poem is an interview with poet and Zen ecologist Gary Snyder. He has just been quoted as saying that,
Poetry effects change by fiddling with the archetypes and getting at people's dreams about a century before it actually effects historical change."
INTERVIEWER: I'm not too clear on the idea of the archetype blocks.
SNYDER: What I'm saying is we change the values of a society.
INTERVIEWER: Then the poet is essentially a pioneer?
SNYDER: No I wouldn't say a pioneer. A pioneer clear-cuts an eco-system and sets the succession phase back to zero again. A poet would be, in terms of the ecology of symbols, noting the main structural connections and seeing which parts of the symbol system are no longer useful or applicable, though everyone is giving them credence. And out of his own vision and hearing of voices he seeks for new paths for the mind energy to flow, which would be literally more creative directions, but directions which change politics. Poets are more like mushrooms or fungi -- they can digest the symbol detritus...
The value and function of poetry can be said in a very few words. One side of it is in time, the other is out of time. The in-time side of it is to tune us in to mother nature and human nature so that we can live in time, in our societies in a way and on a path in which all things can come to fruition equally, and together in harmony. A path of beauty. And the out-of-time function of poetry is to return us to our own true original nature at this instant forever. And those two things happen, sometimes together, sometimes not, here and there all over the world, and always have. (p.292, Gary Snyder, "The Real Work" -- Excerpts from an Interview.)

We are fortunate to be able to learn -- to listen to, speak with, and practice alongside so many wonderful learning individuals. This is the real work of Meetingbrook Conversations -- to see what is taking place with attentive presence; to listen to the sound of what is being said; to practice what is now taking place.

We walk the snowy surface of playing field and frozen Hosmer Pond as midnight nears. Returning to hermitage, lighting incense and two candles, bowing to cushion, sitting. Brass bowl sounds itself 12 times as both candles dim and extinguish themselves. In the dark and silence we sit. Whatever juncture is crossed is done without sound, without illumination. Only woman, man, dog, & cat -- each settled and still in the crossing.

May blessing and peace dwell herein at hermitage in Maine -- and at any other quiet place of heart or mind -- wherever we dwell in the wide world this New Year 2002!

A meditation this day: Mothering God – O Marvelous Exchange!

What would it be like to experience the expression of creation from God’s perspective? Is every appearance of life a maieutic event, a midwifing birth from no-it-isn’t to yes-it-is? Is God the mothering Being-unto-Birth attending tirelessly every insight, every howling infant, and every death-rattling final gasp that brings one more being through the door of finitude?

When Jesus was told that his mother was waiting for him he asked who was his mother, really, who was his mother but anyone who heard and obeyed the promptings of the source of all Being, the Father. Contrary to the sketches of hurt usually ascribed to Mary upon hearing this relativizing rendering of her place in his life, I suspect she was delighted. If Mary is the woman so long touted as extraordinary in nearness to the unfolding of Christ, then she knew hearing Jesus’ words that he knew what she knew what we all will know when our time comes.

“O marvelous exchange!” proclaims antiphon 1 at 1st Vespers for January 1, the celebration of Mary, Mother of God, and the Octave of Christmas. “Man’s Creator has become man, born of a virgin. We have been made sharers of the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

Don’t we all become what we create? In the Creator’s case, the Creator becomes the creation. What do we become? What are we creating?

As a new year begins at Meetingbrook we are creating space for meditation and contemplation, conversation, collation and recollection, correspondence, and simple engaged service. We are doing nothing special, really, nothing other than what anybody does who suspects or realizes that we have been made sharers of the divinity of Christ. And what is that? The divinity of Christ might be seen as the unbroken awareness that we are what God is doing – the unceasing revelation of God’s life and breath in this existence. Jesus knew it, Mary knew it – now, we are practicing what they knew and taught.

We practice the awareness graciously given us by these two wonderful beings. Presaged and predated by other marvelous and compassionate beings in Israel, India, Persia, and what would come to be called the Americas – this anawim (poor and lowly) woman and anointed son forged a new exchange – a new circle wherein what we will be and what we are is just ahead of what we’ve been. The straight road has turned around into itself and become a circular spiral where we no longer are straying from what and where we are – but are extending this being and place called who-we-are into a profound and deepening awareness of our shared origin. Point of departure and focus of destination have grasped each other’s hand and now twirl in ecstatic embracing dance at origin – a grounded, real, encircling earthly/heavenly origin.

That’s what a hermitage is and does. It creates a place of practice and then practices so as to be a place of practice. And so this New Year – we practice. Alone, together, with those we know, and with those we will come to know. This practice, this dance, this prayer -- this exchange of mothering creation with mothering creator – is the exchange taking place in solitude and community. As long as we can, we practice the presence of this exchange, one breath at a time.
………
We’ll be visiting a new prison when we continue conversations at Maine State Prison in February. Meanwhile, the windows for the Meditation Cabin are all nearly in, with door, flooring, and woodstove at ready to complete the creation. We want to buy the adjoining 2.8 acres this year and trust the money will appear. The Hermitage Harbor Room is ready to receive those wishing a retreat by the ocean. Call to reserve for a creative rest and retreat. It is available for all four seasons.
……….
As we face backward and forward this January, lets surround and mother each other with creation. Let’s pray for each other. Let’s practice with each other. Let’s exchange our life in the creation of freedom, peace, and love – the life of mothering God with us.

With gratitude -- May all experience joy this January, this New Year!