Tuesday night rain cloaks everything with its sound.

We are fortunate to hear this sound, to say so, and to praise both its origin and destination.

Our worst worry is not dirty bombs or other forms of terror.
The worry worth our attention is not to hear, say, or appreciate the sound of rain.


“From the very beginning
All things are in nirvana”
Here’s spring with its hundred blossoms,
A yellow warbler singing in the willow.
- Anonymous(dailyzen)

Mini the cat licks herself. Saskia talks with her mother by phone.
Fifty years ago tonight they both prepared to receive and give birth. It was received. It was given.

Rain is birth cloaking everything with its receiving giving sound.

The taste of spring lingers in opening ground, nature, and faces.

Three sisters (from Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia) visit and appear to be three appreciating angels at the shop. Dana arrives and confirms their appreciation of Meetingbrook.

Hugh and Virginia (now famous with article written on their Poems/Pictures book in local paper) came to visit the ordinary working class on their rounds,

Silvia says Mercury is in direct following retrograde -- ("Don't sign any contracts during retrograde," she chirps.).

Later at food market I tell Nancy about the Mercury news. She asks if that's good or bad. I tell her I haven't a clue. (She buys spring water; I buy seltzer). We laugh.

In a grove of tall bamboos
Beside an ancient temple
Steam rolls from the brazier
In fragrant white clouds.
I’ll show you the path of Sages
Beyond this floating world,
But will you understand
The lasting taste of spring?
- Baisao (1675-1763)(dailyzen)

Charlotte and friend borrow canoe to paddle the harbor. (Sando walks her home and stays for two hours with her ball-throwing friend.)

Barbara returns for naturalist week on the ketch Angelique. She's been doing Yoga down south and readying to teach it. (She took bus up from Carolina; her body is unfurling.)

Tenzin the dog was in with Holly the Tibetan Rug specialist. (Cisco kept the younger pup in his sights with low growls each time the tailless one approached.)

Kristen stopped in the day after her triumphant return to stage in The Apple Tree at civic theatre. (Word is she can really act and sing.)

Schooner Susan drops off copy of her first cd, Water Meets Sand. (She's gone to meet the cover creator in Lincolnville.)

Saskia naps under eaves, tired from all she does to bail the bilge and maintain freeboard on the good ship she has poured herself into. (She's a courageous captain!)

A fishing boat in the afternoon carried wedding party from town landing to yacht club reception passing shop with calls of celebration from harbor side. (We are all at the beginning of nuptiality.)

Who was it said, "All Being is Nuptial"?
It is.

We ask each other: What is it our hearts long for?

A regular life. Full of the liturgy of the hours, zazen sitting, hospitality, conversation, stillness, and silence. And solitude. Especially what Henri Nouwen calls 'solitude of the heart.'

Thinking is not the perseverating noise that rattles inside people's heads. Thinking is watchfulness. It is a seeing that allows what is there to be seen. Thinking is not worrying. Thinking is not analyzing or judging. Thinking is seeing itself.

"There is a pleasure in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the course necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain." (Durant)

"To be a philosopher," said Thoreau, "is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a love of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust." (in The Story of Philosophy, by Will Durant)

South and north,
Sharing a single mountain gate,
Above and below,
Two temples both named T’ien-chu.
Dwelling therein is
An old dharma master,
Built tall and skinny
Like stork or swan.
I do not know what
Practice he engages in,
But his green eyes
Reflect the mountain valleys.
Just looking into them
Makes one feel fresh and pure,
As if all one’s baneful
Vexations had been cleansed.
- Su Shih (1073)

When we see what is there, we are not other than what is there. Green eyes reflect the mountain valleys.

This afternoon the harbor is calm and sky is cloud gray.
When we see, will we see what we see?

What is it our hearts long for?

Absurdity -- the unsound and stupid -- postures as power and wealth in our culture. This is unfair.

The sound and wise invest money and rule confidently the institutions of learning, government, religion, and financial matters. They are not the absurd ones.

Real absurdity hides in simplicity and poverty. Within or without awareness – in Spirit, Truth, and Love.

Though night after night
The moon is stream-reflected,
Try to find where it has touched,
Point even to a shadow.
- Takuan (1573–1645)

It cheers to think we no longer know the whereabouts of our priests, roshis, rabbis, sages, and saints. They are hidden within the ordinary sound of birdsong. They are felt in the passing fragrance of mowed field. They reside in the silence of cloud-break sunlight on scarred wood desk. They wander without knowing the pathways the rest of us wander.

It is not the lies, deceit, greed, nor even pretense of good intention that disturbs about the culture of professional political and private-public power grabbers -- it is the absurdity masked as the American Way, Capitalist Way, Plutocratic Way.

Absurdity -- the unsound and stupid -- belongs instead to a different segment of our world. Absurdity belongs to the fools whose lives are lost in the sacred silence of stillness, solitude, and simplicity.

Ridiculous, unreasonable, and incongruous -- radical holiness -- the foolish way of one lost in God.
This one does not kill, substitute the unreal, take from another, lie, or pretend the unlovely is lovely.

Somewhere this morning there are Buddhists reciting precepts. Somewhere there are Christians praying promises. Jews saying a blessing. Muslims proclaiming the greatness of God. Hindus making vows real. Native Americans chanting the earth and sun into being. Atheists and agnostics caring for loved ones and the earth.

Somewhere -- absurdity is regaining its correct domain. Those who grab power, money, influence, and control of who lives and dies -- they should not be allowed to appropriate the alias absurdity -- they should be given a name resembling something less valuable: like stocks, lawyer's bills, and success.

Absurdity belongs with the lovers of the earth, sentient beings, human family, and divine guest. These failures, chaotic expressions, and imperfections are what is now and ever sacred. The sacred – the unpretentious absurd – our lives.

Absurd. Seem strange?
"Try to find where it has touched" -- and heal within that place.

Upstairs in Harbor Room Dana and Saskia set up new register for use. Schooner-bum Susan comes in with the mastered cd from her afternoon recording session. We play it. She can sing.

It's a hot afternoon. My heart is in a pine glade.

Alone in mountain fastness,
Dozing by the window.
No mere talk uncovers Truth:
The fragrance of those garden plums!
- Bankei (1622 – 1693)(dailyzen)

Or brown needles grounding shade through sanctuary walking path.

Just because a body is in prison, no need for mind to stay shut up.

Joe asked if we would cease to be human once we arrive at cosmotheandric awareness. Once we awaken a spirituality and consciousness that Raimon Panikkar names and toward which, he suggests, we are evolving.

We returned to Maine State Prison this morning after 5 months. That time was closed to volunteers due to the prison's move from Thomaston to Warren. Everyone had to be reorientated -- retraining prisoners, guards, and staff -- as well as lastly, volunteers.

For two hours 15 of us sat and read, conversed, laughed, spoke for heart and head, recited poetry -- and released the expression that cannot remain unfree.

No thinking, no reflecting-
Perfect emptiness:
Yet therein something moves,
Following its own course.
- Shinkage-ryu sword school (dailyzen)

Dick thought the human was chaos and mistake. Hyun felt that view didn't take into account the oscillating spirituality we'd wrestled with after the Capra/Bateson dialogue. Panikkar's 9 ways not to speak about God suggested alternate thinking about what discourse might fly.

Andre's insight that divinity will not be tainted by one who sees all things in simplicity -- and Kevin's experience that nature "just picks up" when attended to -- sparked thought about the relationship between complexity and consciousness.

Chris said that the ability to make a decision is where chaos begins. Deprived of that choice we remain infantilized. With choice and decision we court mistake and error.

Barbara Rhodes' Zen talk on the illusion and suffering of separation brought attention to the molecular exchange taking place in the midst of our gathering together, and however unaware we might be, there is profound interconnection.

Thor -- ("the image of you / you can't undo"), ("to know death / is to know the wind / that whispers through the trees") -- and Andre ("I wondered if I'm under a spell / you have to wonder") -- recited poems and lines from their poems.

It was a wonderful return. We'll have Meetingbrook Conversations in prison every other Friday morning. We'll put our bodies behind locked doors and barbed wire in exchange for the wonder and wind sweeping through our common exploration.

Water is scarce, says Skip Day -- town Manager at Lincolnville -- when we run by him our plans for Meetingbrook Farm. He thinks we'd be fine with what we wish to do. Of course we are like scarce water trying to seep deeper into ground.

However deep your
Knowledge of the scriptures,
It is no more than a strand of hair
In the vastness of space;
However important seeming
Your worldly experience,
It is but a drop of water in a deep ravine. -
Tokusan (dailyzen)


Walking boundaries, house inspection, water tests, mortgage inquiry, questions and questions by those who come into the shop. E-mails of advice and wariness. Exclamations of hope and expectation! Always the unknown – where will money come from to support the purchase of farm and initiate the volunteer programs at Laura Common?


But we take one step at a time. Last night reading Plotinus by Hixon -- the ending paragraphs of the love and compassion the One processes forth with what one is -- a slinky extension rounding into itself, twisting to the shape of our dna and awareness.


One day we will see. That day there will be nothing special to note -- only birdsong, cloud cover, flowering bushes on roadway, and fragrance of something baking in the kitchen.


We are fortunate to even write these words.







Sunday, May 26, 2002

Source. Expression. Integration
This sacred three. Holy Trinity. Sei, in German, Be! Source of what is. Expression of what is. Integration of what is.

This cold night bamboos stir,
Their sound- now harsh, now soft—
Sweeps through the lattice window.
Though ear’s no match for mind,
What need, by lamplight,
Of a single Scripture leaf?
- Kido (dailyzen)


At the shop today good music. Coming Home from Dvorak's New World Symphony. Sam, Hugh, Virginia, and Saskia play, visitor sings words. Outside I tell Virginia to play that at my memorial service. Woman playing piano, Idona -- first time in since husband died. Man from Florida, Charles' brother Edson, first time in since wife died. Woman from Rockport -- first time in -- a respite from weariness showing in her eyes. Just that -- with coffee, soup, and rhubarb kuchen, strawberry kuchen, and fire in the fireplace. Just that, a fact of being.


We breathe, laugh, sing. We talk, greet, say goodbye. These trinitarian acts infused with source, expression, & integration -- this is a practice worth practicing. Thomas Berry (p.136) in Buddhism tells of the moment Dante in the Divine Comedy wrote -- after his vision of Divine Reality that he had seen therein -- "All the scattered leaves of the universe bound by love in one volume" (Par.xxxiii, p.85). Is this the Godhead, the Sacred Trinity celebrated today even by those of us who see only through another's words?


Moonlight on kitchen roof is not blown off by stiff winds.

We remember and pray for all those dead and deadened by war. It is Memorial Day Weekend.

A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)(dailyzen)

In that darkness stumbles another priest, this time an Archbishop. A different kind of war. Not sexual -- as some would explain it. But a war between what we think -- and what we do.

The Church war is being lost. Thought and dogma clash with fact and act.
When the war ends the priesthood will not be recognizable. War is hell.

Earth turns and stars punctuate dark distances. What priests were for, they thought, was conveyance of the sacred to a world absent God. The sorrowful mistake is made by thought.

God is absent absence. Conveyer is without conveyance. Thought made other. Other is absent.
The world will have to adjust to what is devoid of what was thought of it. And it will.

Those who have forgotten God have forgotten earth and forgotten what they convey. We are here to convey sacred to sacred. Water conveys water. Fire conveys fire. We've forgotten that.

So many are dead and have deadened others in the name of what they thought life should be.
No thought, please. Let what is itself convey itself. Forget other. See yourself in all, as what is.

Find what is you. What is conveys what is. What you are conveys what you are.
See yourself as yourself. See each and all as each and all. Don’t make other. Don’t make dead.

Life is not thought. Life is life. Life is love without thought. And love without thought lives itself with forgiveness and compassion.

It is Memorial Day Weekend. We try to remember. We try forgiveness and compassion. We try life. What we are is what we do.

Life – ‘bright and clear in an unclouded sky.‘
Remember?

The ten Ox-herding pictures took us from searching to disappearing to showing up in the middle of the marketplace last evening. David and Jim sat on either side of Buddha statue newly placed upstairs in the harbor room. Saskia was flu prone on the futon. Delia arrived (as usual) in time for the finishing with contributing comment.

In the stillness by the empty window
I sit in formal meditation
Navel and nose in alignment,
Ears parallel with shoulders.
Moonlight floods the room;
The rain stops, but the eaves drip and drip.
Perfect this moment—
In the vast emptiness, my understanding deepens.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Tonight we close in on the final chapter of the Jim Marion book. At hour's end Tom sums up, "Whenever you hold onto another's thought as though it was the truth, you ain't."
Nancy started up the stairs but wisely withdrew keeping her silence at mêlée’s end.

Tide's high. Moon's nearing full. Ryokan's "Perfect this moment --" is at the window.
The window of opportunity, the great spiritual moment, says Richard Groves in The Sacred Art of Dying, is the moment of death.

Nothing is more important, says Blessed Fintan. Hospitality. Hospice. Presence.
Every instant, at the window. Soon enough, the window itself.

Pentecost Haiku

All together
body gone, body revealed
you are this one
breathing
(wfh)

Pentecost Haiku, Evening Edition

The fact itself,
the fact revealed,
the fact realized --
as I live and breathe!
(wfh)

What is the coming of the Holy Spirit?

Is it the realization of what is in fact true?

Paul wrote:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and all were made to drink of one Spirit. (1Cor.12:13)

The fact that we are one body, "so it is with Christ," remains a fact whether or not it is realized. Perhaps the coming of the Spirit is the realization of the fact.

The work of art is, indeed, the by-product of a state of high functioning. The state of spiritual exaltation is fundamental to creative activity, whole skills and measurements are secondary. It is the measurement of an ontological experience. The great painter Ku 'ai-chih (c. 344-406) points out that the purpose of painting is chu'an shen, or the revelation of the spirit. He says:

"Forms are used to reveal the spirit; when it is lost, one deviates from the principle of discarding the 'fishing net and the snare' and the purpose of painting is missing.... Even though there be light and shade in the painting, nothing is better than to communicate with its spirit when one gazes at it."

Wang Wei (fifth century critic) stresses the same idea: "When the spirit is not revealed in the form, what is carried by the form is not in action." What is in motion is revealed through form, but is itself not the form. When spirit is not in motion, it is the unrevealed reality in the form; when in motion, it vibrates in the vision of the beholder.
(in Creativity and Taoism, A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Poetry, pp.208-209)

Christ is revealed and realized in and with the Spirit. Jesus disappears so as not to be obstacle. Spirit reveals the transparency of that disappearance. That is -- the new dwelling place of Christ in the hearts and minds of those who love -- an incarnation that leaps from beloved children story in the Bible to felt experience resonating in the body.

Bamboo shadows sweep the stairs,
Yet not a mote of dust is stirred;
Moonbeams pierce to
The bottom of the pool,
Yet in the water not a trace remains.
- Zen Dust (dailyzen)

It is Eve of Pentecost. We border the realization.
We look with simplicity. We listen with silence. We act with service.

Some revelation is at hand. "It vibrates in the vision of the beholder."

Boats are lowered from Wayfarer's travel-lift at regular interval. Floats are in. Channel markers too. The harbor comes alive with brightwork, rattling, batten, and hull paint. Deckhands seize sail to mast-hoop as gaff-rigged schooners ready for season.

We have the farm under contract. This fact is equally disturbing and humbling. Karl, head shaved, says "calling" and continues eating Topfen Kuchen -- as though everything is said with that word. As though with each forkful raised to mouth the vocation of Meetingbrook is visible, the sound of it audible.

Every thing,
Every place is real,
Each particle makes
Up the Original Person.
Still, the absolutely real
Is voiceless,
The true body’s
Majestically out of sight.
- Chosha (9th century)(dailyzen)

So much to worry about and doubt.

I read the poet Randall Jarrell,
In a letter to his red-haired Viennese friend, Elisabeth Eisler, Randall prided himself on being "quite optimistic, mostly in order to save bother: I accept, dismiss and forget about bad things that happen as quickly and well as I can." I guess one of the great principles of my life is: 'O don't bother, forget about it...'"
Saving bother coupled with my own great commitment to William James's "Wisdom is knowing what to overlook" spared us many a squabble.
(Mary von Schrader Jarrell, in Introduction to Remembering Randall, A Memoir of Poet, Critic, and Teacher Randall Jarrell)

No bother. What takes place, takes place.

The elegant and large ketch Sumurun ties up at Willeys wharf.
Sam and Susan row by in their dory. Charlotte comes in under her large daisy hat and hangs flyer of the Wabanakis of Maine and the Maritime. Alan pours tea. A seagull inspects Waterfront Restaurant deck. It is warm.

James is right -- "Wisdom is knowing what to overlook."
The Original Person is what is only seen in silence and stillness. Transparence is her shape. Emptiness his sound.

Let's try wisdom. Let's listen to the voiceless.

Yesterday Isidore the Farmer looked over rolling acres and saw silence.
Today Ramana, the saint of primal awareness, smiles and remembers his name often pronounced in the Wednesday Evening Conversation reading from Lex Hixon's book.

Earlier Ignacio from Bolivia laughed and took pictures and talked about the United Nations stay he'd done for Franciscan International. Thirty-four years between conversations and I remember how sweet a fellow he is, and Francis our common bond.

There is much questioning about the farm negotiations. If they collapse, that would be fine. If they take root, also fine. But the most important incarnation is the Laura Common. That belongs to itself. We are caretakers of that belonging -- taking care to listen to it speak itself, taking care to watch it form itself.

Spirit, holy and true, inhabits the sound and form of what is Itself for and with others.

As the earth longs for the spirit of holiness and truth, so does the Spirit present Itself to any of us willing to dwell in that good company.

Come to earth! Dwell here in peace and good will!

Rain
Watering earth.
May mothering Spirit ground.

Liturgically we are between things. Between Ascension and Pentecost.

O monks, there is neither going or coming or standing still; neither is there duration or decline or growth; nothing is fixed and still, nothing moves nor has foundation. This is the end of suffering. (Early Buddhist text, quoted in Bruno Barnhart's Second Simplicity)

That which Barnhart the Camaldolese Benedictine points to -- pure ultimate unitive reality and to unitive contemplative experience, reawakening in the Christian tradition by the encounter with Buddhism today -- is rainfall today. Everywhere everything is watered.

Veni Creator Spiritus, Come Creator Spirit.
Being between mothering -- our unknowing birth.

Terence on life support Friday afternoon allowed my hand on his head, on his hand. Water, holy and wet, forgave him if ever he'd forgotten he too was water. Two women cried by his bed. Water remembering he was water as he died.


In the realm of True Purity
there is no such thing as
“I” or “he” or “she”
nor can “friend” and “foe”
be found.
The slightest confusion of mind
and innumerable differences
and complications arise.
- Muso (1275-1351)

This morning canoe ride in harbor after sunrise and Eucharist at 7:30 service, I bought ground coffee, muffins, and New York Times at French and Brawn. On Bayview Street sidewalk a still and stiff bird with blood splattered on neck similar to Terence’s. On one knee I pick it up placing on bed of flower against tree in front of ice cream shop. Like water under paddle earlier and wine on lips at altar rail the flow of life and breath, rising and falling, dispensation and death interspersing each other as coffee poured through filtered grounds to air pot.

Prayer touched Terence's head and hands in final hours. And prayer knelt to move bird to funeral bier. At Sunday Evening Practice we laughed at Cheryl's talking to a piece of cake, saying she was talking to her mother -- laughing -- when words couldn't do what words often can't.

We mother with our love whatever we attend.
Happy Mother's Day -- all of us-- who've ever let their heart attend life!

Ascension Thursday was our decision time:

We have decided: 1) to obtain a lovely farm to live a quiet, contemplative, and engaged service life that can invite others to do the same in their own communities and homes. We have one picked out and are making an offer. 2) We will retain the bookshop/bakery on Camden’s Bayview Street with its retreat room above it on the harbor – it will be supported by membership subscription.

So it is.

"Here's the hardest part," says the man struggling.

The container is not what it contains. The institution that has conveyed within it a core essence is only a conveying shell, not the essence itself. The essence, he says, is that which belongs to everyone. Water may be conveyed by brook, pail, bottle or cupped hands. But water is the essence.

When you’re settled in Zen,
Your mind is serene,
Unaffected by worldly distractions.
You enter the realm of enlightenment,
And transcend the ordinary world,
Leaving the worldly while
In the midst of society.
- Fenyang

Right in the middle of society, right in the center of the conveyance -- right there within your heart, right here looking out from our eyes.

Gratitude for the carrying forward. Now, go home!

Light Dancing From Water to Brown Wood Planks and Beams
(A Thursday poem after 40 days)

It is where the heart is.
The sun rises warm on right shoulder.

Harbor surface calm with small ripples rubbed by breeze.
It is Ascension Day!

If Christ were to disappear from our eyes,
Would it matter to the heart?

It is the heart that sees what the eyes cannot.
The very next person I look at, the very next awareness of my heart,

There...
Here...

Christ has returned home. Christ is seeing what you are
Seeing.

Here it is again.

A Proposal for Intentional Community:
Meetingbrook Hermitage -- A Laura Common
Maine USA, and dwelling places elsewhere

Meetingbrook proposes a Laura of Hermits, an intentional community, a loosely knit association of individuals seeking what might be called Zen Contemplative Ecology. A “hermit” is one longing to dwell with simplicity, silence, & service -- deepening their life alone or with others. “Embodying the dwelling place of the Alone, Stepping aside to make room for another.” Hermits are those longing to dwell in their true home and in true community.

For the purpose of Meetingbrook’s proposal, “laura” means the pathways and waterways connecting us on our journey. A laura is:
1. a gathering of individuals living their own lives in their own dwellings;
2. peripheral to a central location shared for communal use;
3. building community with distinct yet similar shared intention to deepen one’s life;
4. each engaged in idiorhythmic practice (i.e. according to one’s own rhythms and schedule) -- whether prayer, meditation, contemplation, energy work, healing unease, encouraging physical, intellectual, spiritual health & balance;
5. with periodic sharing of each person’s conversation & practice in community;
6. devoted to the common intent of cultivating peace, compassion, engaged service, merciful reconciliation, and lovingkindness;
7. welcoming hospitality and generosity of spirit within and toward others.
8. A Zen Contemplative Ecology is, for this proposal, the practice of seeing directly & clearly -- now, safe, & whole -- interrelationships of individuals in community, sentient beings in nourishing environments, and a cosmotheandric awareness (of earth & nature itself, divine presence, and human family) that caringly and carefully makes room for each other.

A Meetingbrook Laura Common -- welcomes individuals, couples, & families. Members of any or no religion are welcome. Members of sanghas, orders, followers of specific teachers, are welcome. Those on any particular spiritual path, those willing to allow others to practice their own religious and spiritual path, are welcome. Inclusive, autonomous, & generous hearted people, are welcome. Those who appreciate diversity and a plurality of seeking, those realizing and embodying what is natural, sacred, and human – the immeasurable gift of existence and life beyond compare -- are welcome.

The mere prospect of connecting what already touches us is attractive. Identifying, consciously and intentionally, as part of Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits, deepens the affection and mystery of living life alone with others. Whether you prefer: to live alone on one’s own; live with others; or live alone together – we will explore how to dwell engaging solitude and community – a dedicating of life and love -- with God, each other, oneself.

If interested, come join us for some exploratory conversations toward the creation invited by a Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits. If nothing else, it might provide some thoughtful considerations, laughter, & a spate of belonging!
If interested in such an exploration, please email or call 236-4346, leave name and #.

Thanks, Bill Halpin and Saskia Huising 25Feb2002 - 6May2002 laura@meetingbrook.org

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Proposed Engaged Service Projects for Meetingbrook:
1. Conversations in Prison
2. Community Bakery Volunteer Connections and Recipe Ethnography for those in Good Health and Healing Recuperation
3. Practice and Study of Inter-Religious Peace, Understanding, & Tolerance.
4. A Laura Common – A Practicing Zen Contemplative Ecology Community.
5. Respite Community Resource -- Time Apart for Those Suffering Alone or With Others.
………………………………………….

Theme -- Meetingbrook Hermitage: As and In A Laura Common

Writing this on 5May2002 I remember my mother who died this date 1981. It is also four days until the Christian feast of the Ascension. On that day we will have chosen the way Meetingbrook will go on. It might have been an arbitrary choice of date for decision – but it’s ours.

Ascension, however else it has been conceived and celebrated, is the feast of Christ returning home to dwell as and in Father/Mother, Spirit & Truth. That Jesus opened himself completely to this Christ Reality is the joy of his followers.

Ascension is the return to one’s true reality. Some have called it one’s true self, others the absolute, divine self, ultimate, nirvana, liberation, or the ground of our being.

It might entail disappearing into undifferentiated suchness, as Buddhists speak of it. It might entail giving up our attachment to separateness and embracing unity. Or perhaps it entails a final tiring of fear and a corresponding surrendering to love

Ascension is coming home.

In Jesus’ Ascension it appeared he was leaving those who loved him. They were wary of his assurance he’d be with them always. Always! They might have been consoling words, but their eyes saw him no more. He was gone. No longer out there to see.

Here – that’s the promise Jesus tried to assure them – I am here. Here with you. See me, he said, and you see the Father, and the Paraclete (a supportive comforter – like sangha, community) will come. And all will be well with each and all.

(As I write this I break to dash to kitchen stove every five minutes to spray and bake bread.)

Still uncertain but open to what Ascension means for Meetingbrook, we listen and watch, both in silence and conversation. We don’t know. What we trust is our “yes” to the call to contemplate, converse, and correspond with all that is taking place.

If you want to be no
Different from the buddhas
And Zen masters,
Just don’t seek externally.
The pure light of a
Moment of awareness
Is the Buddha’s essence within you.
- Linji (d.867) (dailyzen)

At the end of his Gospel account, Matthew has Jesus saying as he ascended,
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold I am with you always, until the end of the age. (Mt.28:19-20)

“To observe all,” – what a lovely teaching and learning to dwell with one another in common!

Here is what we propose: To engage the lovely teaching and learning – the sacred reality that observes all dwelling with one another in common.

In trusting appreciation, we go on.

At end of Lectio, Kristen prays us out with her words, "O Christ, may we move with ease into your bountiful emptiness."

Is the truth the world does not understand this -- that the one before us is the whole of the Father, Son, Spirit -- that the core reality is right there, right here? The "commandments" Jesus speaks of -- that if we follow them all will know we are disciples -- are these commandments the affirming yes of acceptance of the core reality of this existence?

If we love Jesus (or anyone) we become a way of being that does not make what we love other. Therefore, there are things we will not do -- not to, because of -- the one we love. Affirming whole present reality -- seeing as one seeing one -- we abandon the illusory othering view. There is no other to do wrong to. There is no wrong to be done -- not, at least, if we abandon ourselves into love.

Inside the sacred fence
Before which I bow
There must be a pond
Filled with clear water;
As my mind-moon becomes bright
I see its shadow reflected in the water.
- Daito Kokushi (1213-1279)(dailyzen)

Five days to the 9th. Monday we view a farm with friends.

The pond with clear water is in the viewing with friends -- the truth the world cannot see. Viewing with the one before us, looking back at the one viewing us.

The view, the viewing itself, the one viewing, the viewing with one another – this is the interview with Christ, this is the interview with Bodhisattva.

Those who would master Zen fully engage and embody this interview.

Pilate asked, “What is truth?” Jesus stood silent before him. Pilate didn't get it.

Enlightenment is no big thing. It is dropping into the one, into the viewing, interviewing the reality right before us. Seeing truth as it is.

What is that? And what is this?

O Christ, may we move with ease into your bountiful emptiness!

Cisco wags tail greeting at door of shop. Sando, the veteran, snoozes by bakery case.

To be resolute in the way means
from the beginning never to
lose sight of it, whether in a
place of calm or in a place of strife;
to not cling to quiet places nor
shun places where there is disturbance.
- Daikaku (1213-1279) (dailyzen)

A little boy named William wearing yellow and wine red is carried in by his mom after Buddhist Studies, He grabs on to ribbon of bell over counter. He rings and rings. His father's sister is in India with the Tibetans,

Gary Snyder's words say we don't change reality but we can transform ourselves.
With that, an elevating of awareness, a deepening of consciousness.

Mini is curled for the night on chair by desk in 2nd floor room at hermitage.

War is one of those realities. We cannot live as war. We must be peace.
Sorrow for one. Pray for the other.

I wouldn't want to live in a world where no one winced when a cat was killed -- even in a Zen story. Relationality is the human story. We are not the moral of a teaching story. We are the story.

Dirk wondered if (a phenomenological example) my comment on observing a body, a bat, and blood on the floor, one concludes something wrong had occurred -- was absolute or relative. "It was felt," I said. And if the whole is to be whole, it is a related whole.

Paul and Jim worked on the birchwood floor of cabin this weekend. In kitchen with coffee we spoke of clay feet and those in religion. Community begins when each one realizes the commonality of their ordinariness. Intention to live a particular kind of life only points to the way you wish to travel. Those who travel with or near are community to you. We all have clay feet. It is our earthy steps that give us the grace of each other -- not our lofty aspirations.

All the holy ones have turned within and sought the self, and by this went beyond all doubt. To turn within means all the 24 hours and in every situation, to pierce one by one through the layers covering the self, deeper and deeper, to a place that cannot be described. It is when thinking comes to an end and making distinctions ceases, when wrong views and ideas disappear of themselves without having to be driven forth, when without being sought the true action and the true impulse appear of themselves. It is when one can know the truth of the heart.
- Daikaku (1213-1279) (dailyzen)

When we pray we pray earthbound for all alongside moving as we move. Deliberate with each other, there is much to say and listen to on our way.

Fear might be the need to cut, stack, and burn wood; but ash is how we are transformed into love.

Poetry is what remains
when words dive into fire.
Poetry is ash seen
transformed back to lumber,
ahead to tomatoes.
(wfh)

Pulling Mark Strand's book of poems Darker (1970), the following:

The One Song

I prefer to sit all day
like a sack in a chair
and to lie all night
like a stone in my bed.

When food comes
I open my mouth.
When sleep comes
I close my eyes.

My body sings
only one song;
the wind turns
gray in my arms.

Flowers bloom.
Flowers die.
More is less.
I long for more.
(Strand, p.30)

At Friday Evening Poetry Annie reads poem about bus ride Boston to Rockland shared with young Korean carrying belongings wrapped by mother in paper with strings looped and tied. We see in words she left out her own finger placed on the bow being tied on what this young man carries in his journey. She is mother to him departing at Union Street. Of course, the poem and destination is left without sentimentality at Union.

Sando on one bench with me, Cisco on other bench with Saskia, Annie alongside logs glowing with fire in hearth.
Cisco is a border collie who will stay with us. He arrived Friday morning. His mistress leaves Maine for Florida and asks us to be home for Cisco. Black and white, over 10 years old, Cisco acclimates to hermitage and shop. He is sweet. He stares at Mini the cat, which has become meditation object for Cisco. Everyone is learning their space, sniffing proximity, and giving room for each other. It goes well!

There are three things I must do before dying:
1. wash dishes;
2. walk meditation path;
3. scratch cat passing to window;
Now I am ready. Now I die.
(wfh)

Poetry helps make an ash of ourselves. That's the more and less of it!

The Church, said Doug, is collapsing. "Did you ever think it would disintegrate in our very lifetime?" he asked at Chase's Daily breakfast last week.

The Boston Globe reports Cardinal Law sent faxes to his priests: "Cardinal Bernard F. Law is cracking down on efforts by lay Catholics to organize in Greater Boston, ordering priests not to cooperate with an evolving coalition of parish leaders." On the Globe website the 27April2002 headline reads, "Law seeks to curb organizing by laity."

The frown becomes scowl. The clergy, good or bad, has given itself the Church.
Laity must now, as in the beginning, give themselves to Christ.
Until they admit their absurd appropriation of what belongs to all Christians, all beings, all nature, the institution with its hierarchical arrogance should be left to flounder and fail.
When Christ is allowed back into the Church the laity will welcome back the clergy

Don’t tell me how difficult the Way.
The bird’s path, winding far,
Is right before you.
Water of the Dokei Gorge,
You return to the ocean,
I to the mountain.
- Hofuku Seikatsu (dailyzen)

Someone I worked with in New York once addressed the behavior of an opinionated school secretary in his employ saying, " She is impertinent." Irrelevant, insolent, no longer worth listening to -- this was his meaning twenty-five years ago in the child welfare agency. It was an icy dismissal, done with an unflinching belief that his characterization would carry the condemnation of opinion and its holder.

The institutional Church in the Globe's story -- and in the pedophilia scandal -- mimics the secretary and the director. Impertinence and, like Toynbee's declining slope of post-creative deterioration, a dominant minority carving stone with dictum better left unworded.

I walk to the mountain. There I find bird path, no other way.

Here is why we are in the world!

Closed out the old year
And held a dream of spring behind
My shut eyes…til now
This morning I opened them to see
It’s really come into the world.
- Saigyo (1118 – 1190)

Nature snowed through the night. As morning middles itself, sun looks at the unlikely spill, melting swiftly. Like last evening's conversation -- nature's urge is to present itself as it is for all to engage.

Separate dissatisfies. Unified releases. In the interim we measure the alleged supposed apparent and believed distance of one from the other. This activity is known in places as "sin."

The days stretch toward 40. There are 13 remaining. What will ascend?

Maria turned 74 Wednesday. We sang to her last evening. A jar of Trappist Apricot Jam curled itself in her hand. She believes in love. Thus she is, loved! Tom smiled with her out the door heading home.

Christ blames no one for the death of Jesus.

No one is converted to truth by means of blame or shame. What moves us to change our way of life is the compassionate revelation that the ignorance, mistakes, and misunderstandings we’ve cultivated can give way to a deep and lovely awakening of our true nature, true relatedness, true being.

Mind's no solid
One can touch or see --
Dew, frost.
(--Dogen)

Ephemeral and beautiful, dissolving and disappointing, impermanent and wistfully watched disappearance.

Once we learn to accept failure, love grows. We do not grow by thinking about it or by wishing for it, but only by the experience of failure. (Thomas Keating ocso, The Mystery of Christ, p120)

These 40 days of prayer, meditation, and conversation about Meetingbrook continue with us. And you too?

In every vocation, events and other people constantly reactivate our emotional programs for happiness, along with the accompanying turmoil that occurs when these programs are frustrated. Such self-knowledge is not a disaster but the necessary condition for changing them. When these have been dismantled, our ministry starts to work of itself because, once freed from the obstacles of pride and subtle forms of selfishness that hold the false-self system in place, the Spirit of God can work in us.
The seventy-two disciples, flushed with success, came to the Lord expecting to get a pat on the back, and all he said was, "Don't get excited about working miracles. Anybody with a little psychic power can do that. What really counts is that you are part of God's plan. The thing to rejoice in is that you are chosen to become divine and to join me in raising the consciousness of the world." (Keating, p.121)

No blame, no shame -- only the new foolishness of sun and mountain, sea and sky.

Like water running brook tumbling down Ragged we smile and wave to each other with passion and passing recognition.

We'll have many things to converse about. If not today, tomorrow. If not tomorrow, it doesn't matter.

What matters is choosing to be what each truly is, choosing to dwell who we really are.

Dew, frost -- ourselves!

Hawk? Or eagle overhead? The silent walking meditation Lauras itself along Ragged Mountain on Saturday morning.

An enfolding meditation on our retreat day:
1. Zen is looking; Zen is listening.
2. Inviting insight, allowing what is there to reveal itself, as it is.
3. Prayer is gratefulness, trusting what is there to reveal the presence of God. For where is God not?
4. Jumping in, engaging what is there, acting & moving, a transformation which affirms, empties, resurrects, and ascends.
5. At origin, still -- listening, looking, the practice of no barriers.

Brook carries itself before our eyes.

By becoming a human being Christ annihilated the dichotomy between matter and spirit. In the Person of the Divine-human Being, a continuum between the divine and the human has bees established. Thus, God's plan is not only to spiritualize the material universe, but to make matter itself divine. This he has already done in the glorified humanity of his Son. The grace bestowed on us by the Ascension of Jesus is the divinisation of our humanity. (Thomas Keating, in The Mystery of Christ, p.86.)

Sando lay in the brook looking at us, lapping water, and epitomizing the emerging and engaging convergence of our lives. Susan sings a song. We bow to the betweening embodiment, and return to the hermitage for lunch.

The grace of the Ascension enables us to perceive the irresistible power of the Spirit transforming everything into Christ despite any and all appearances to the contrary. (p.87)

The bird overhead, I think, was a hawk. Watching us as we step our prayer mindfully.

Jo is bald like a Zen nun. Head shaved clean as a whistle. So is David's -- but he hasn't just come home from a second bone marrow transplant. On back stoop in the cool of evening Jo asks what is my dream. I tell her to be the monastic I am.

To seek and long for God alone. And since nothing is really separate from God -- to seek and long for each other in our awakening into the realization of God. So many are alone, even alienated, unaware of their true relatedness, their true home. To invite -- quietly, kindly, and compassionately -- oneself and each into their own very nature, this is the practice of contemplation, Zen, and engaged service. To invite Christ, God, Bodhisattvas, holy men and women -- each into the wordless silence of love's simplicity, stillness, and sanctuary.

Empty and desireless,
Cold and thin, simple and genuine,
This is how to strike down
And fold up the remaining habits
Of many lives.
When the stains from old habits
Are exhausted,
The original light appears,
Blazing through your skull,
Not admitting other matters.
Vast and spacious,
Like sky and water merging
During autumn,
Like snow and moon
Having the same color,
This field is without boundary,
Beyond direction,
Magnificently one entity
Without edge or seam.
- Hongzhi (1091-1157)(dailyzen)

It was 94 degrees at 1:33pm in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. Now, Jo calls down to say "ice cream" -- and in that calling all is for the moment just as it should be.

Someday, David says, illness and disability will be no more. Will that eventuality be a conclusion of courage or a cause for reassessing all valuing?

"To ice cream," says David, going up stairs with his Welsh laughter.

To say it simply -- we might have found ground -- a place for Meetingbrook Hermitage to root.

The seedling these several years searching soil, is, perhaps, ready to enfold, dive deep, and unfold. It's still early. But, something quickens!

On a doorpost in a lovely house in Belfast there is a Mezuzah with the Shema. "Shema" is the word that begins the verse "Shema Israel", "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One". (Deut.6). Upstairs, on the door to a bedroom with a tank of tropical fish, there is a crucifix.

In the readings for this weekend the Jewish Yeshua (Jesus), who had been put to death, is reported to breakfast on the beach with a small group after a fishing encounter that yielded a surprising catch.

These memory devices -- words on doorposts, wood on doors, words on paper -- are set there to remind us of a ground longing to arrive home. The Lord is One. The child of God who died rather than deny that reality. The story of surprise nourishment when we release our controlling will and open to the free and loving wholeness that each is in God. These are fragments of a picture we puzzle to understand.

If you think that you
Have cut off illusory mind,
Instead of simply clarifying
How illusory mind melts,
Illusory mind will come up again,
As though you had cut off
The stem of a blade of grass
And left the root alive.
- Menzan Zuiho (1682-1769)

Our task is to clarify how illusory mind melts. If we allow this clarity to arrive with a still, silent, safe, and aware compassion -- we might be able to simply live with each other as neighbor, friend, and family.

We can't cut each other out. We can't cut each other up. Something else is being called for. We, if we are to live profoundly the gift we each have been given, must listen.

"Listen," says St Benedict in his rule. "Hear," says the Shema. Take root illusion, and watching, let it melt away -- the Zen invitation calls.

The ground is softening. It is mid-April. Smell that ground. Feel it. Love it. It -- everywhere and at every depth -- is our source.

In Belfast this week we found ground. For this next week, we'll watch, listen, and pray.
Soon, we trust, we’ll see!

The windbell rings outside my window over kitchen where Zwiebel Kuchen (onion cake) lofts its scent with breeze moving through bell and open window. Sunlight. Daffodil stalk rises dark green alongside empty birdfeeder. A lovely morning! And yet, will this all one day disappear?

About the mystery that the cosmos has to disappear, Teilhard de Chardin said –
The more I think about this mystery, the more it appears to me, in my dreams, as a “turning-about” of consciousness – an eruption of interior life – as an ecstasy. There is no need to rack our brains to understand how the material vastness of the universe will ever be able to disappear. Spirit has only to be reversed, to move into a different zone, for the whole shape of the world immediately to be changed. (The Future of Man, p.322)

In 1955, 10April, on Easter Sunday, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin died. His writings -- a combining of biology, paleontology, philosophy, and spiritual visionary reflection – had to wait until after his death to be published. He was as obedient a Jesuit as he was an unorthodox thinker.

He'd written a reflection finished in Tientsin, on 25 March 1924, titled, "The End of the World." It is found in his book The Future of Man as the final essay. It ends,
When the end of time is at hand, a terrifying spiritual pressure will be exerted on the confines of the real, built up by the desperate efforts of souls tense with longing to escape from the earth. This pressure will be unanimous. Scripture, however, tells us that at the same time the world will be affected by a profound schism -- some trying to emerge from themselves in order to dominate the world even more completely -- others, relying on the words of Christ, waiting passionately for the world to die, so that they may be absorbed with it in God.

It is then, we may be sure, that the Parousia will be realized in a creation that has been taken to the climax of its capacity for union. The single act of assimilation and synthesis that has been going on since the beginning of time will then at last be made plain, and the universal Christ will blaze out like a flash of lightning in the storm clouds of a world whose slow consecration is complete.

…At that moment, St. Paul tells us (1Cor.15: 23ff) when Christ has emptied all created forces (rejecting in them everything that is a factor of dissociation and super-animating all that is a force of unity), he will consummate universal unification by giving himself, in his complete and adult Body, with a finally satisfied capacity for union, to the embrace of the Godhead.

Thus will be constituted the organic complex of God and world – the Pleroma – the mysterious reality of which we cannot say that it is more beautiful than God by himself (since God could dispense with the world), but which we cannot, either, consider completely gratuitous, completely subsidiary, without making creation unintelligible, the Passion of Christ meaningless, and our effort completely valueless,

Et tunc erit finis. [Then it will be finished.]

Like a vast tide, Being will have engulfed the shifting sands of being. Within a now tranquil ocean, each drop of which, nevertheless, will be conscious of remaining itself, the astonishing adventure of the world will have ended. The dream of every mystic, the eternal pantheist ideal, will have found its full and legitimate satisfaction. ‘Erit in omnibus omnia Deus.’ [‘God will be all in all.’)
(The Future of Man, pp322-323)

We are in 'between' time. We’re happy to move along our ordinary lives. But something nags. There is a suspicion that we really don’t have much figured out. But we go on, as we must.

Elsewhere, a web essay looks at Teilhard's thought:
To be fully ourselves, according to Teilhard, we must head in the direction of "convergence with all the rest...towards the other." He puts it grandly: "The peak of ourselves, the acme of our originality, is not our individuality but our person; and according to the evolutionary structure of the world, we can only find our person by uniting together. There is no mind without synthesis."

The danger, or the evil, is not so much the ego as it is egocentrism! Teilhard denotes that egocentrism (or egoism) confuses "individuality with personality." Becoming separate, the ego "individualizes itself." It is a fatal move, it is regressive. It seeks "to drag the world backwards towards plurality and into matter."

For Teilhard, the point of the individuation process, or being open to universal insight, is to further the evolution of cosmic (and human) consciousness and creativity.

Teilhard believes that there is an enfolded creative Intelligence within the depths of the cosmos...and that every aspect of human experience can be affected by this creative Intelligence, mainly via a "breakthrough" experience.
("The Cosmic Plenum: Teilhard's Gnosis: Cosmogenesis," by Beatrix Murrell on web Stoa del Sol essays)

The wind picks up. Gale warnings off the coast. White clouds chat against April blue sky. So much on the ground – in Israel and Palestine for example – is besieged by momentary uncertainty, by the nearby dissolution of particular lives. We are no longer that far. Not merely from warfare and terrorism – but we are not that far from the change in consciousness Teilhard speaks about.

This “turning-about,” this “breakthrough” – not that far? Between here and there, between now and then – what fears of ours will have to dissolve?

While we ponder, phoebe, crow, and redwing blackbird sing psalms and antiphons into the wooded wind.

Between you and me, what's going on?
Resurrection might be the beginning. Ascension the continuance. What is the end? And what is between beginning and end?

The season of Easter with another 40 days to wonder and wander -- something dies, something survives and rises, and now the wait. The wait between rising and ascending. Ascending? What does that mean?

What if we were like the zen master who said "Is that so?" each of the times he was slandered and apologized to for the slander? Both times he stated or asked, "So it is!" or "Is that so?"

What if we were like Jesus who when asked if he was who some said he was answered only "You say so!" -- returning to the investigators their own words, their own minds?

The zen master went on living, we suspect, long after his earlier death in the opinion of townsfolk for the (uncommitted) sin of impregnating a young girl. He simply accepted her giving over of the child to him, the scorn of the people, then the apology and acknowledgement many years later he was not the father of the child. He returned the child to its mother with the same words, "Is that so?" with which he received the child those years before.

Jesus returns to life with a similar question. "Is this so?" he asks. Made the object of hope, then the object of betrayal and rejection, he is put to death, a death (not without searing anguish) he accepts. Now -- no longer object -- the empty, stark, unrecognizable, and unfinished reappearance from the tomb. Jesus takes to this hiatus. He is between things. Between places. A kind of thin place that nears and involves.

Julian of Norwich writes:
So in our true Mother Jesus our life is founded in his own prescient wisdom from without beginning, with the great power of the Father and the supreme goodness of the Holy Spirit. And in accepting our nature he gave us life, and in his blessed dying on the Cross he bore us to endless life. And since that time, now and ever until the day of judgment, he feeds us, and fosters us, just as the great supreme lovingness of motherhood wishes, and as the natural need of childhood asks.
(--from Showings, p.304, in Peoples Companion to the Breviary, Easter Monday, c.1997)

So high you cannot
Climb or get close to it;
Raindrops scatter in the flying wind.
The gate is barred with green moss.
Suddenly forgetting thought,
Without attainment,
Only then will you be sure
The gate has been open all along.
- Zen Master T’aego (1301-1382)(dailyzen)

All along? Is that so?
This time wandering the between occupies me. My mind is completely confused. Nothing makes sense. I am lost. My only sanity is the poet's words that say that the forest knows where I am, the song of the bird knows where I am, and the earth I stand on knows where I am.

And in this season of Easter, that too knows where I am, I hope.

Mary Magdalen, who had eyes for Jesus alone, saw him and mistook him for the gardener. Two disciples walked miles with him between Jerusalem and Emmaus, talked hours with him, and thought him a stranger. To recognize the risen Jesus, you would have needed a special grace -- as when Jesus murmured to Magdalene "Mary", or broke bread with Cleopas and his friend at Emmaus. And still, for all the mystery of this new Jesus, at once seated with [God] in glory and moving magically through the barriers of our earth, he is the same Jesus who was fashioned from a teen-ager's flesh, the same Jesus who walked our dust and waked our dead, the same Jesus who hung three hours between two robbers, the same Jesus who, Scripture proclaims, "always lives to make intercession for [us]" (Heb. 7:25). Without so risen a Christ, without so loving a Lord, Christianity is a sham and a scam.
(--Walter J. Burghardt, SJ, Lovely in Eyes Not His Own, pp. 43-44, in Peoples Companion to the Breviary, vol.2, p.208)

"Intercession," (L. inter=between, cedere=to go) might mean more than we have considered. To go between is more than an intermediary task. To go into the between has more of 'a new way of being' quality to it. To live between, to live within the between -- this is so strange a way of dwelling! Are we, unknowingly, residing in that between? And do we do whatever we can, anything we can, to busy ourselves out of that center?

This and that, this or that -- we need hiatus. Where look?

Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. It takes no time, but occupies all our time. And it makes our life programs new and overcoming.
(- Thomas R. Kelly, Quaker Spirituality, p. 305, op.cit.p.202)

This is a time between. Simple grace is to be aware of it. Special grace -- well, there's no telling when that appears -- isn't this so?

Lost, I ask: what is taking place?

The zen master says, "nothing special."
The contemplative says, "special grace."

How peculiar! How particular! Here we are.

[Website was out of commission for a week. Karl has righted. Events and Update will be posted in the righting.]

Back from retreat. Now April. Easter. Forty days of building dwelling within.

If You Meet Inconvenience On The Road, Look For The Rest Of Her Family
(Poem for Robert, Monk)

God is a great Bodhisattva
refusing to budge until son is home.

"Come home, son," God says. But
son stays bread. Son stays wine.

The great Bodhisattva waits at edge
of edgeless space in moonlight. This

inconvenience is God's wife. She feathers
seed for wheat in wide fields. Their daughter --

humanlovingkindness -- plucks grain,
turns butter, fires oven. These kids –-

serving way beyond
morning meal.

(wfh, holyweek poem, 2apr02)

Note: 25Mar-2Apr -- Meetingbrook is on retreat this week. It is Passover. It is Holy Week. The shop is closed, no evening events until Tuesday, 2April2002. (But, the shop will be open Thursday the 28th.)
……………………………….

Life and death attend each other this week. It is a holy week.

We think death is other than life, other than what is. Death is not what we think it is. Death companions the passage to what is fully experienced.

Life faces and engages itself. Life is what is at origin. Life companions death as it moves through all that would stay, separate, annul, and unlove.

What is this companioning passage? If we are willing to say “God,” say it. If we wish to say “Nirvana,” say it. It we decide to say “Nothing,” that too. Names are valuable -- but not as valuable as experience.

The word “companion” is lovely. From Latin com + panis = with + bread. Meaning: thoroughly together with, comrade; rascal; one of a pair of matching things; one who lives with and serves another.

To companion is to be bread for and with each other.

For us, just now, we have some fear of death, but after we resume our true original nature, there is Nirvana. That is why we say, “To attain Nirvana is to pass away.” “To pass away” is not a very adequate expression. Perhaps “to pass on,” or “to go on,” or “to join” would be better. Will you try to find some better expression for death? When you find it, you will have quite a new interpretation for your life. (p.94, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind)

A holy night approaches. One face of night is silence. Another face of night is emptiness. Praying at night is the prayer of silence and emptiness.

1. Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!
2. They shall see the Lord face to face…The night shall be no more.
3. God has destined us for acquiring salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
4. Stay sober and alert
5. If you are angry, let it be without sin.
6. May the God of peace make you perfect in holiness.
7. You are in our midst, O Lord, your name we bear: do not forsake us, O Lord, our God.

These seven first lines are from seven Night Prayer readings of The Liturgy of The Hours.
I wonder if #2 might also be read, “The night shall be, no more.” And #3, “God has destined us for acquiring salvation. Passing Through! Just as our Lord Jesus Christ!”

Night is the truest prayer. Moving through night is co-incident with engagement and encounter.

One who has made the passage from origination through separation to the holy name of what is Alone peace, presence, and wholeness, that one – is named Jesus, the Christ.
Passover Angel, Bodhisattva, or Companion – these too take us through this week of deep remembrance and recollection.

Shunryu Suzuki (1905-1971) in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, (c.1970) in a chapter entitled “Nirvana, The Waterfall” says,
Before we were born, we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called “mind-only,” or “essence of mind,” or “big mind.” After we are separated by birth from the oneness, as the water falling down from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life. (pp.93-94)

Water falls, as we fall, through empty space. Best to let the fall be what it is – movement through seeming separate existence, return to flowing companioning continuance, allowing the passage.

If one is a true learner of the Way, one does not search for the faults of the world, but rather speedily applies oneself to attain genuine insight. If one only can see with perfect clarity, then all is completed.
- Rinzai (d.866)

There are some among us who understand intuitively the companioning presence we call God.
It is good to travel near them. This week, as does life and death, let us attend each other.

Listen carefully to the conversation. Set a place for the stranger.

This night is different. Watch through the night. Begin with bitter herbs. Begin with fire. Begin with water. Fall free. It’s only life; only death; only the breaking through and going beyond of humankind’s deepest longing – to see, God!

To talk about it this way is quite easy, but to have the actual feeling is not so easy. But by your practice of zazen you can cultivate this feeling. When you can sit with your whole body and mind, and with the oneness of your mind and body under the control of the universal mind, you can easily attain this kind of right understanding. Your everyday life will be renewed without being attached to an old erroneous interpretation of life. When you realize this fact, you will discover how meaningless your old interpretation was, and how much useless effort you had been making. You will find the true meaning of life, and even though you have difficulty falling upright from the top of the waterfall to the bottom of the mountain, you will enjoy your life.
(p.95, Suzuki)

This holy falling, holy passage, and holy week calls us into companionship.
Behold the lamb, the bread, the wood, the water, and the night.

Attend with attentive presence what is passing through, passing beyond!

Be companion!

Nothing could be further from the truth. For the most part, however, it nestles close.
What is truly real beyond appearance?

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---
-- Emily Dickinson

The local community is astir over a newspaper essay that takes a skeptical, some say downright negative, view of the town of Camden and, by association, its mid-coast extensions. The writer begins with theme bait of a series of suicides over the past year. He proceeds to rhetorically neighbor these occurrences in some literary way to the credit card bank MBNA – juxtaposing bank, town, and suicide with a slant of affluent, manicured attention -- the preference of appearance to reality. (Who would really think that such a clean and well lighted place would enter so darkly, even with their annoying phone intrusions at dinner time, their bait and slap tactic luring new fish with low interest rates then tossing tardy payers into the punitive hold of jacked up rates?) Many on the Internet boards and letters to local community station have taken the bait of both Maine Times headline and cheap money promise.

The intelligent rail, the angry flail, the bruised hardly take time to heal. Those who don’t like the town are told to leave. Those who criticize are mocked with faux lure-lines of genteel first-name admonition. Those who misspell are corrected. And those who are misunderstood retaliate with further ambiguity. One joins the discussion with trepidation.

Then someone will point out what a jolly battle it is -- no one is bloodied, and isn’t this exactly what we fight for worldwide – the freedom to be critical, testy, irreverent, and even wrong. The combatants respite their skirmishes for a relenting while and join in hymns of praise for the friendly and freedom affirming battle.

It’s true. No one has strapped a bomb to their belt to detonate in a busy square, fired a semi-automatic into a crowd, or lobbed grenades into a church gathering. Opinions, even those unpleasant and arrogant, take to the air without intent to kill and maim. It is enough to speak and fume, clarify and expand, belittle or over-reach. There’s a freedom from fear in posting a view that invites the courageous willing-to-be-countered opinion holder.

The cry for truth – if such brazen appeal can be made in our ambivalent, spin driven culture – does have a longing for freedom to it. Seldom agreed upon, but sometimes -- like horseshoes – neared, truth hovers as nothing hovers. We try to grasp and narrow truth -- to bandy it as something we really don’t fear. We try to ignore nothing – maybe side step certain themes as one might shudder with schadenfreude passing a horrible accident or hearing of a sudden stunning death -- a neighbor by his or her own hand.

The experience of nothing – (the stomach wrenching bottom falling out oh my God what is to come of me is this the end) – that experience is closer to the experience of truth than we might comfortably admit.

One of difficulties encountered in contemporary culture exemplified hereabouts is the appearance the writer of the Maine Times article points out. Neat, tidy, organized, pretty, and well endowed is no substitute or hedge for truth.

One truth, if we were to consider the proposed theme of the essay sparking so much response, is that we die. All of us, we die. No matter what religious, philosophical, spiritual, or new fangled belief we have –we each die. Life might just carry on after death in some way we do not truly understand, but death is certainly a punctuation mark in that passage.

The experience of nothing, like the experience of truth, is more common than we admit. Youth, those in middle years, the elderly -- have had the experience. This experience of nothingness --when nothing matters, nothing comforts, nothing seems to loom on the horizon, and nothing can change the situation of our lives (or so we feel and think) – is part of what it means to live, breathe, and have our being. This reality, experienced as nothing, is felt and thought of as the truth.

And, it might just be the truth. We don’t know. In the same way, the experience of truth – one that opens, clarifies, and frees – is often a dizzying liberation from illusions and delusions we’ve carried with us long and without a clue. Truth has a way of insinuating itself without our fully realizing it. Still, in the face of either nothing or truth, we try to help one another feel better, think differently, and get on with life. This is a good thing to do.

Unfortunately, an experiential encounter with nothing, or truth, can be and is often devastating. A woman I knew committed suicide last year. Another woman I know died this week of cancer. Several others I’ve known or heard about from loved ones have gone the same way. This is true. No matter how the post-death appeal is made – gone to better place, not suffering, we’ll all go on here or elsewhere, (even the crass ‘get over it’) – we know deep in our coffee cups that there’s a hole and a whole lot here philosophy or biology courses, religious education or positive thinking affirmations don’t come close to touching.

These women and men are dead. Their bodies deteriorate and disintegrate. What some call “them” or their soul, spirit, or true selves – this has dropped through the center of their being and gone to a truth, a no-thing-ness that I do not yet comprehend. No-thing there -- is that the truth? Sure, there are memories, stories, even a sense of presence – these, too, are good. Still, no one answers the phone or comes to the door in the whereabouts of those dead. Our understanding has not caught up with our experience in these matters.

Our teachers, parents, ministers, priests, rabbis, therapists, writers, business leaders, or politicians in our communities – even the successful ones, no matter how intelligent or opinionated – are all in the same boat. We fish the same waters. Some bait smells more rotten than others. But all are trying to bring up something to take the edge off our hunger to understand that upon which we float, steer, and call our being.

We don’t always have the familiarity or ability to name or help each other through the stark and unsettling times these experiences of nothing or truth evoke. We try. But we usually call the troubling reality something else – like adolescence or middle age, adolescent turmoil or middle age crisis, depression or other clinical diagnosis. Naming it this way seems curious comfort to some. As if a handle makes it easier to carry the fright. Sometimes it does. Often, not. The Zen saying says, “Better to see the face than hear the name.”

Teenagers know nothing. (Make that phrasing a joke or a critical comment if you wish—but it’s not.) The phrasing, “Teenagers know nothing” is also a revelation we need to process. Our culture of appearances cannot fool them. Nor can we fool ourselves – not for long, anyway. Teenagers know, know, that what we genially agree upon as pragmatic continuance of everyday life with values and standards considered good measure for common living – these are agreed upon appearances that soothe and cover another reality.

That truth is known in the bones. Namely – we are impermanent -- we pass. Life (as wonderful as it is) is punctuated by and defined by death. Nothing -- certainly not our fastidious show of good taste, fine joinery, and swept sidewalks -- penetrates the truth of death.

Rather than a straw argument that approaches then withdraws from the subject, are we willing and able to speak both to each other and the issue at hand? How are we to live in the face of death? Is there a truth beyond my capacity to grasp? Appearances to the side – are we able to live and move through this existence in such a way that it matters, really and truthfully, to you, the world, and me? Would it make a difference if we loved each other? Would it help if I were to say aloud, “I love you?”

In paradoxical restatement of that earlier sentence: Nothing does penetrate the truth of death. ‘No-thing’ -- or radical interpenetrating awareness – does penetrate death. Similarly, Jesus was said to be obedient to death. The New Jerusalem Bible translates the Philippians' piece,

Make your own the mind of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God,
did not count equality with God
something to be grasped at.

But he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
becoming as human beings are;
and being in every way like a human being,
he was humbler yet,
even to accepting death, death on a cross.

And for this God raised him high,
and gave him the name
which is above all other names;
Phil.2:5-9)

Is death, like birth and life, a process of taking from us that which is unnecessary and extraneous – a spirituality of subtraction, not adding? Does death, long considered the enemy of life, serve as the pivoting point for a life willing to turn and free itself from what is not life? That would be an interesting shift – death as teacher of life from birth to birth, or from origination to resurrection. Perhaps one reason why suicide is so distressing is that it stops with ‘no’ -- cuts off the hard learning and continuing evolution within and before us. Death is not ‘no.’ Death is a fuller phrasing.

In its natural revelation death is a gateway to ‘yes’ – a passageway to a truth so alluring that only the prepared can appreciate its appearance. Too precipitous and negating a death, such as suicide, might mean the person will have to continue the work of moving toward ‘yes’ in another dimension, perhaps more slowly, and certainly dependent on the prayers and thoughts of those remembering them as they continue their journey. It’s not so much a matter of wasting one’s life, but more of having to begin again and work it differently than the way afforded by life’s earthly dimension. Those of us still here must remember. Our assistance, along with our own work, matters. We only appear to be separate. The reality, I suspect, is more non-separate.

So too, restating the first question of this piece: “What is truly real beyond appearance?” We arrive at a response to consider, namely: "What is" -- is truly real, and is beyond appearance.

“What is” is elsewhere referred to as “God.” Truth is “what is” revealing itself. And to the slang question, “What’s happening?” (That is: What is happening?) The response might easily be, yes! Whether our language is laced with theological references, philosophical references, or everyday street references -- it doesn’t matter which. What does matter is listening to what is being said. What further matters is the willingness not to separate ourselves or try to separate ourselves from that which we are.(Were we even able to separate ourselves from what we are, we would not be able to finish this sentence.)

Now that you and I have finished it, we can mull the pervasive and improbable ground of our existence. Yes, I am here. Yes, you are there. Yes, we are each and all in this place. And, yes, we are held as one another by something we have not yet been able to name, overcome, transcend, or transform. What is that? “Tat tvam asi,” meaning, “That is you.” The non-dual Advaita tradition of India would answer “there are no unenlightening beings in existence, anywhere, anytime.” The Advaita-Vedanta tradition teaches that the manifest creation, the soul, and God are identical. The latest discoveries of nuclear physics give meaning to this concept of nonduality.

Richard Rohr, Christian author, would add, “Yes, no, yes.” The first ‘yes’ is enthusiastic with promise. The following ‘no’ is necessary to empty our illusions and unnecessary baggage. The final ‘yes’ is mature, without illusion, clear hearted, and willing to move into unknowing trust --what is the nothing other of truth. Then, only following that “Yes!” can we contemplate, converse, and correspond with what is, with each other. The fuller phrasing of death involves this yes, no, yes spoken with, to, and as, what is taking place.

It is our task, sooner or later, to engage “what is” beyond appearance. Death will accommodate the task if we wish to wait. So will despair. So will devastating truth – such as news of a terrorist attack in a near and dear place. We could put it off. And wait. And even pretend we’ll never have to look at the question – that it will happen to us when we’re unconscious, or not there, or…whatever. (“Whatever,” a term so popular today, might be the perfect ambivalent current question/response to troubling encounter with the unknown, death, and truth. Ambivalent because it is the tone and emphasis of its pronunciation that suggests either genuine puzzlement or who-gives-a-shit exasperation.)

Put in terms more familiar to us: God is what is; we are wonderful; life is mystery; we’re not as smart as we think; pretty isn’t perfect; someone needs you; pay attention; pray for awareness; tip generously the waiter and waitress; buy low and sell high but don’t spend too much time thinking it matters; prepare a will; eat chocolate donuts; be kind, mostly, be kind to yourself; and, as Emily Dickinson suggests, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.” We’re not meant to clobber each other with the truth we see – just slide it across the table like a matchbook in a movie.

In Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet, Janice D. Willis (editor), in a chapter entitled “Dakini: Some Comments on its Nature and Meaning,” Willis writes,

Herbert Guenther offers the following gloss: “The Tibetan explanation for the word ‘sky,’ ‘celestial space’ is a term for ‘no-thing-ness’ (stong-pa-nyid) (Skt., sunyata) and ‘to go’ means ‘to understand.’ The Dakini is therefore an understanding of no-thing-ness.”

Again, James Robinson, in a description which is perhaps too anthropomorphic (?), comments: “The Tibetans render dakini as mkha’ ‘gro ma, ‘the sky-walking woman’. But the idea of ‘sky’ was interpreted as standing for ‘emptiness’, and ‘walking’ is equivalent to ‘understanding’, so that the dakini is ‘the woman who understands emptiness’, that is to say, the feminine embodiment of wisdom.” (p.62)

The open, empty space of transparent clarity, what is called love, or God, or awakening, or – your very name. Is this what we long for – to hear, to speak – to love our true name?
Wisdom just might be feminine embodiment, one who understands emptiness.

This season of being-birthed, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension is not an isolated or belief-specific season.
It is the season of existence. We’re right there in it. Nothing is more vital than the effort to visit each other, face the truth each longs to reveal, joyfully attend this season of our lives, and accompany each and all in the passage we traverse.

While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
-- William Wordsworth

I end revisiting the article in the Maine Times. This geographical area, Camden and environs, with its magnificent natural beauty, exquisitely wealthy corporation with all the power and willfulness that wealth affords, has indeed had its share of suicide. So too, many experience traveling alone without soul-friend -- too many. Probably the numbers are no more, no less than any other area, rich or poor, well educated or miserably denied. It just happens that concentration of wealth, arrogance of power, belief in security and surety, and the opinion that smarter is superior -- makes the suggestion of causal connection tempting.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For the most part, however, it nestles close.
What is, nevertheless, is truly real, beyond appearance.

Wet snow broke one trunk branch of front cedar this morning. We were on cushions. The crack. The fall.

We cut away many broken limbs. Dragged the pieces back to stone wall near cabin. The fragrance, the red liquid of torn down bark. Sprayed gaping split with protection against water.

Reattached telephone line
Just like that.

Bruises, breaks, and bottoming out come just like that.

The early spring snow melts all day. Electric power returns. Sump pump in basement awakens, grabs inching water by ankles before it reaches bottom step, sends it up through tube, and out window by wood fence along Barnestown Road.

Cedar tree is still. Quiet. Like a patient after sudden accident, it stands in dusky inventory of itself. Something is gone. Much remains.

Like life.

We live, right now. And any sustained accounting or intelligible recounting cannot explain the fact we are alive right now.

COULD HAVE

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.
You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.
You were in luck -- there was a forest.
You were in luck -- there were no trees.
You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . .
So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.
(Poem by Wislawa Szymborska, trans. by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh in Could Have, 1972)

It is the feast of St. Joseph, best known as the husband of Mary – the man who didn’t divorce her or have her stoned for a seeming adultery. He’s also known as the foster father of Jesus – the man who shepherded his family by dreams from country to country in a middle-eastern drama of cloak and dagger.

One wrong turn and she’s dead, he’s dead, or the kid is dead.
Joseph is the wordless one, the silent one, unrecorded in scripture as uttering one quotable sentence. Today at mass cakes at foot of altar. A special blessing and, through the glass in the soup kitchen doors, tables set at St. Bernard’s for coffee and cake.

It is my sister’s birthday. Zazen at dawn with her photo ready for hermitage altar. Her life now silent. We pray by presence, seen and unseen, a sacred appreciation. Patricia, Joseph, Mary, Jesus – the aspiration of unseen, unsaid, intimate appreciation.

The world with its wars and noise, bickering and posturing, demands and ultimatums – the world that newspapers, radio, and television recount as real – the political, economic, cultural, and religious world of contemporary human anxiety – that world – is no longer important…or, is it?

NO TITLE REQUIRED

It has come to this: I’m sitting under a tree
beside a river
on a sunny morning.
it’s an insignificant event
and won’t go down in history.
it’s not battles and pacts,
where motives are scrutinized,
or noteworthy tyannicides.

And yet I’m sitting by this river, that’s a fact.
and since I’m here
I must have come from somewhere,
and before that
I must have turned up in many other places,
exactly like the conquerors of nations
before setting sail.

Even a passing moment has its fertile past,
its Friday before Saturday
its May before June
its horizons are no less real
than those that a marshal’s field glasses might scan.

This tree is a poplar that’s been rooted here for years.
The river is the Raba; it didn’t spring up yesterday.
The path leading through the bushes
wasn’t beaten last week.
The wind had to blow the clouds here
before it could blow them away.

And though nothing much is going on nearby,
the world is no poorer in details for that.
It’s just as grounded, just as definite,
as when migrating races held it captive.

Conspiracies aren’t the only things shrouded in silence.
Retinues of reasons don’t trail coronations alone.
Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.

The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
Ants stitching in the grass.
The grass sewn into the ground.
The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.

So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else’s but its own.

When I see such things, I’m no longer sure
that what’s important
is more important than what’s not.
(Poem by Wislawa Szymborska, in The End and the Beginning, 1993)

It is the final day of winter. Hosmer Pond ice withdraws from its shore retreating to a centering circle to pause, and disappear. So too the Eucharist this morning – a centering circle, pausing, and disappearing into an unseen, unsaid, intimate appreciation.

As the poet writes, whether winter or Eucharist, it "is none other than itself, no one else’s but its own."

This is how we celebrate passing -- whether of season, or person, or matters of once seeming importance. How? We attend, appreciate, and abandon ourselves in the passing.

Allowing each its own. No one else’s. Each none other than itself.
Happy birthday Patricia! Happy feastday Joseph!

Now, winter. Now, spring.

Saskia told me Bunny is in the health care facility and is dying. Last night at Sunday Evening Practice the question was asked, “When did death become a problem?” Seth reframed the question to, “When did life become a problem?”

At Saturday Morning Retreat, this month Buddhist Lectio, we read the four noble truths “The First Sermon of the Buddha” as translated by Walpola Rahula in book Radiant Mind (ed. Jean Smith). Afterward the talk went to the cycle of arising from origin, flowering, deteriorating, and returning to origin. Elsewhere the cycle is called life and death – born, grow, peak, decline, and die.

Everything seems to travel that circle. Yet, we seem to want something different. Our minds grab on to one point of the circle and claim it as a desired permanent attachment. Our ego says ‘this is me’ and defends against any other interpretation or possibility. Our fear says, ‘ I’m afraid of change, I want it all to stay the way it is.’

When, I wonder, did our consciousness look at this cycle and consider it a problem?

If everything originates, expands, contracts, and returns to origination – then that is what will be with us. In the Christian season of Lent, at Ash Wednesday, the words are “Remember -- dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

Marcus Borg ends a Lenten meditation; ”For Christians, Ash Wednesday and Lent are an invitation to follow Jesus on the path of death that leads to life.” (beliefnet.com)

Perhaps the problem isn’t one or the other – life or death. That is the dualistic way of saying it.
Perhaps what we really are saying is that the problem (of our making) is life/death, life/death, life/death.

Said once or three times, life/death is the inseparable experience of one whole fact. The mind fragments it. The ego prefers one to the other. The fear grabs tight what it wants not to change.

Life/death is the path all in existence take. One is the other. Without the other there is no one. It is what is. There is no other way.

The Buddha said, “I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering.” Life is impermanent, conditioned, not completely satisfactory – and attachment is suffering. Craving causes suffering, by greed and thirst. Cessation of suffering is giving up craving, renouncing greed, emancipating oneself, detaching oneself from always wanting something more. The path leading to the cessation of suffering is eightfold – right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

In Mark (8:34) Jesus says, If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” To follow “the way” is to walk the path of seeing without choice. Choicelessness – the acceptance of what is -- is sufficient for Buddha and Jesus. Our problem is the discriminating and divisive mind we apply to what is.

Life is good. Death is good. You are good. We are good. There’s no choice. All is well, and all shall be well.

We pray for Bunny. She used to sit with us at centering prayer. We pray she might easily go where she is going, with love and attention, with our appreciation. With God.

Somebody or something is on thin ice.

Maybe Lazarus. He'd stopped breathing, no coursing blood, tissues gone cold, set in cave tomb for the long haul.
Maybe Jesus. They script him cool and hip to the opportunity to do a media splash and photo-op the glory of God thing now that his friend had died.
Maybe it's the person in Saskia's dream who's on thin ice -- that's the words she was told: Justin is on thin ice.

The ice in mid-coast disappears fast and early this late winter. Chickawaukie Pond, the large body of ice last week along route 17 going into Rockland is completely melted, no ice, open water.

Maybe she got the spelling wrong. Maybe "justice" is on thin ice. And we are calling to help before it sinks out of grasp and we are left to surface views, surface memories, and surface transport -- but no justice.

This week we'll invite some people to speak with each other about justice and what we are learning following the thin ice experience one family is suffering in the larger family of the local Catholic Church.

Jesus fell through the thin ice. Grandstanding be dammed, he abandons the show -- and weeps. He comes to understand (or maybe the writers do) that his life is not a propaganda pamphlet. He is flesh and blood. His friend has died. Many are weeping. He awakens.

When he awakens, Lazarus awakens. So too, the writers awaken. The sisters see their brother through their tears. Jesus and Lazarus, Martha and Mary stand there, the other Jews attending this awakening also stand there. No cameras. No reporter's notebooks. No publicist's bus idling nearby. The scene is cleared. Anyone not belonging in that instant of awakening disappears.

Justice, finally.
From the Sanskrit yos, meaning welfare, L.jus, meaning right, justice -- the right understanding of the well-fare-ing of each in light of all. No one fares well until all fare well. It's not rhetoric. It's what is real -- all the way down.

Lazarus fell through, Jesus fell through, and those attending this love fell through -- all the way through. Maybe there is a correlation between thin ice, justice, love, what we call 'death,' and falling through into a depth of understanding and awakening. It seems our fears keep us on surface. When one who has broken through says, "do not fear," we are invited to go where true justice goes.

Few attend when justice occurs -- real justice is a quiet, almost intimate instance of awakening. Perhaps the "All," or, the glory of God, attends only when justice occurs. And not until.

It is Saint Patrick's Day. The Irish smile. And a sweet celebration that is!
But the ice is thin. Winter wanes. Spring longs for itself from the depths, from underground where water tables wander waking from winter frost.

That we each attend the welfare of all is only right.
Off with you! Save each other. Keep each other in mind and heart. Then, for God's sake and all our family's too -- cry for, and smile with, justice!

Top of the mornin' to us all!