Nancy from Portland spoke by phone yesterday. She wondered about community. It set me thinking about why anyone does or does not long for a spiritual life shared (near or far) with others called sangha or community.

One of the reasons that there are less and less religious communities today is that no one wants to live with anyone else. There is a huge movement towards individualism. The monk asks himself: Why should I have to live with such a cranky and unhealthy person? And the answer from Saint Benedict is this: Christ is present in each brother and I must find that presence, particularly in those brothers who are most difficult for me to accept. (- Abbot Philip, OSB, Monastery of Christ in the Desert)

There is a song in the musical Man of La Mancha that is entitled "What Do You Want of Me?" Lyrics by Joe Darion. Aldonza sings this song, as she attempts to come to an understanding of this "knight" who has entered her life and begun to melt her heart by opening her eyes to a better life beyond her current state of despair.

Why do you do the things you do?
Why do you do these things?
Why do you march through that dream that you're in --
Covered in glory and rusty old tin --
Why try to be what nobody can be
And what do you want of me?
What do you want of me?

Why do you do the things you do?
Why do you do these things?
Why do you rush at the world all alone --
Fighting mad battles that aren't your own --
Why do you live in a world that can't be
And what do you want of me?
What do you want of me?

Why don't you know that you're laughed, at wherever you go?
But I ... cannot laugh with the rest ... and why, I don't know ...

Why do you do the things you do?
Why do you do these things?
Why do you batter at wall that won't break?
And why do you give when it's natural to take --
Where do you see all the good that you see --
And what do you want of me?
What do you want of me?

(- from website http://homepages.together.net/~donutrun/quix.htm#Whatdo, by Donutrun Presents )

When one enters the awareness of Christ-Life what is seen is a glimpse of honor, duty, fellowship, love, and sacrifice. When one enters the awareness of Buddha-Life what is seen is a glimpse of suchness, thusness, compassion, service, and sacrifice. With both forms of God's Life here with us, there is a glimpse of who we are, and who we are in each other's life. There is perhaps only a glimpse -- but that's enough for now. What Christians call their gathering --"One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic" -- is not far from what Buddhists call "This One," -- that which is our common life with all that is.

To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe. You feel profoundly rooted in it and connected with it. You feel, in other words, that the whole energy which expresses itself in the galaxies is intimate. It is not something to which you are a stranger, but it is that with which you, whatever that is, are intimately bound up. That in your seeing, your hearing, your talking, your thinking, your moving, you express that which it is which moves the sun and other stars. If you don't know that, if you don't feel that, well naturally you feel alien. You feel a stranger in the world. And if you feel a stranger you feel hostile. And therefore you start to bulldoze things about, to beat it up, and to try to make the world submit to your will. And you become a real trouble maker. (-web audio snippet, Alan Watts)

Someone in a shop conversation the other day said what sounded like "You have to guru up" to make a point about the spiritual life. What he actually said was, "You have to grow up." There was laughter -- and, an important point. In America we are hesitant to give our lives over to anyone. It's not in our ethos to abandon ourselves to another. There are dangers in doing so -- accepting teachings that are merely given to us, to accept without questioning, to blindly follow. It used to be easier to do so -- with attendant abuses. Now, we are more cautious, circumspect. (It is also curious that this reluctance has affected institutions as varied as religious life, marriage, corporate life, and other forums where belonging calls for self-donation.)

Just don’t seek from others,
Or you’ll be far estranged from Self.
I now go on alone;
Everywhere I meet It:
It now is me; I now am It.
One must understand in this way
To merge with thusness.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807–869)

Solomon asked God for something unusual. God responded: I give you a heart so wise and understanding that there has never been anyone like you up to now, and after you there will come no one to equal you." (-1Kings3)

"Up to now," is a lovely phrase. And "Now?" Can we become "no one?" And by being "no one" do we find what equals us? This is a tricky glimpse. It is centered on real humility, not on degradation of person.

Jesus forwarded a tricky glimpse when he said: “Have you understood all this?” They said to him, “Yes”. And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old”. (-Matthew 13:52)

"What is old and what is new" is a good description of the householder treasure profoundly within each one of us. This "kingdom of heaven" - as recently read in a Bishop's posting, The Kingdom offers ongoing joy for those who find themselves within...is there for those who find themselves within.

Alan Watts' lectures are full of tricky glimpses.
The word _tathata_, which is translated from the Sanskrit as 'suchness' or 'thusness' or something like that, really means something more like 'dadada,' based on the word _tat_, which in Sanskrit means 'that,' and so in Sanskrit it is said _tat lum asi_, 'that thou art,' or in modern America, 'you're it.' But 'da, da'--that's the first sound a baby makes when it comes into the world, because the baby looks around and says 'da, da, da, da' and fathers flatter themselves and think it's saying 'DaDa,' which means 'Daddy,' but according to Buddhist philosophy, all this universe is one 'dadada.' That means 'ten thousand functions, ten thousand things, one suchness,' and we're all one suchness. And that means that suchness comes and goes like anything else because this whole world is an on-and-off system. As the Chinese say, it's the _yang_ and the _yin_, and therefore it consists of 'now you see it, now you don't, here you are, here you aren't, here you are,' because that the nature of energy, to be like waves, and waves have crests and troughs, only we, being under a kind of sleepiness or illusion, imagine that the trough is going to overcome the wave or the crest, the _yin_, or the dark principle, is going to overcome the _yang_, or the light principle, and that 'off' is going to finally triumph over 'on.' And we, shall I say, bug ourselves by indulging in that illusion. 'Hey, supposing darkness did win out, wouldn't that be terrible!' And so we're constantly trembling and thinking that it may, because after all, isn't it odd that anything exists? It's most peculiar, it requires effort, it requires energy, and it would have been so much easier for there to have been nothing at all. Therefore, we think 'well, since being, since the 'is' side of things is so much effort' you always give up after a while and you sink back into death. But death is just the other face of energy, and it's the rest, the not being anything around, that produces something around, just in the same way that you can't have 'solid' without 'space,' or 'space' without 'solid.' When you wake up to this, and realize that the more it changes the more it's the same thing, as the French say, that you are really a train of this one energy, and there is nothing else but that that is you, but that for you to be always you would be an insufferable bore, and therefore it is arranged that you stop being you after a while and then come back as someone else altogether, and so when you find that out, you become full energy and delight. As Blake said, 'Energy is eternal delight.' (- from Lecture on Zen, by Alan Watts)

I told Nancy we are a loosely knit association of individuals who travel the meditative & contemplative road from dependence to independence to interdependence in our spiritual lives.

We are only voices to each other as we encounter each other right now.
We are voices in each other. We are listening to the voice of God within.

This is an eternal delight.

Whenever we come out from visiting the prison for a conversation we feel visited upon.

Jean sends a piece from Gerald May in Shalem News Online, Summer 2002:
It may also help to read the classical contemplative authors in greater depth. As one gets to know them better, one might realize that their understanding of contemplative presence is not quite the same as limp dish-rag passivity. I want to share just two examples from St. John of the Cross. Both are frequently quoted, and both are from his commentary on the third stanza of his final great poem, The Living Flame of Love.

In the first example John says, "...contemplacion pura consiste en recibir." This is translated as "pure contemplation consists of receiving," or "pure contemplation lies in receiving." On the surface, it sounds like the expected "do unto me" passivity. But the Spanish word recibir connotes something a bit different. Recibir implies a kind of welcoming, even welcoming with open arms, as one might receive a beloved friend into one's house. Might it be more accurate then, to read John's words as "pure contemplation consists of welcoming with open arms?"

The second example is, for me, even more striking. In several places, John uses the phrase "simple, loving awareness" to describe the attitude of the soul moving into contem-plation. Again, the common interpretation is of a tender yet wholly passive awareness. The Spanish John used is "advertencia amorosa, simple y sencilla." Simple and sencilla imply simplicity, directness and straightforwardness, an absence of complication. The key word however, is advertencia. Just as recibir implies more initiative than "receptivity," advertencia implies an attentiveness that goes way beyond "awareness." In fact, advertencia is used in modern Spanish to communicate an alarm, a warning, or to draw attention to a critically important event.

Welcoming -- aware and alert -- what is realizing God.

When we left prison yesterday, Saskia, Cheryl and I realized something given us by Jonathon, Andre, Sonny, Joseph, Josh, Charlie, and Paco. They gave us the gift of poetry, conversation, and no choice. Around a table, all we had to do was receive with awareness and alertness the welcome extended to each one of us to enter into the pure contemplation of each other's presence.

I read the words of Archbishop Prendergast of Halifax Nova Scotia, One needs, instead, to be a person of the Beatitudes, `pure of heart’ (5:8), single-minded. Such are those described by Jesus in two parables, those who found treasure and pearl and gave up all they had to possess the one thing bringing them joy. God's Kingdom, Jesus says, is worth sacrificing all to enter. The Kingdom offers ongoing joy for those who find themselves within.

For those who find themselves within.

With what is...open.

Mothers want the best for their children.

Sometimes what they consider the best is a projection, an interpretation of what they consider best, or is selected from a range of possibilities others have calibrated as choice picks. Mothers suffer both gratitude and scorn from recipients. And given we all 'mother' each moment into being, ours is the same pattern response received from sons and daughters everywhere.

James' mother had an idea when she spoke to Jesus, Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him, with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something. And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Command that these two sons of mine may sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom”. But Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?” They said to him, “We are able”. He said to them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father”. (Matthew 20)

As a boy in Brooklyn I often cringed when my mother spoke on behalf of me. Then, as part of shyness, and now, as part of a chosen sense of contemplative quiet -- a watching silence has risen to a preferred practice. Still shy, often accompanied by combined love and mistrust of words, I find a preference for silence. Through the years I've heard silence referred to as the language of God.


The skies tell the story of the glory of God,
the firmament proclaims the work of his hands;
day pours out the news to day,
night passes to night the knowledge

Not a speech, not a word,
not a voice goes unheard.
Their sound is spread throughout the earth,
their message to all the corners of the world.
(-Psalm 19)

When you come to think on it there's not much need for many words. I've hardly ever been satisfied by explanation, excuse, denial, proposal, apology, analysis, or judgment. What does approach loveliness is an understanding that accompanies silent presence.

If your ears see,
And eyes hear,
Not a doubt you’ll cherish
How naturally the rain drips
From the eaves!
( - Daito Kokushi, dailyzen)

When I appear rude, I am an unfinished listener. If I sound cranky in response to something said, I have not yet learned the wisdom of allowing. Should I seem distant when noise of talk surrounds me, I have gone to a place where another language is spoken without sound.

In the story the woman is referred to as "The mother of Zebedee's sons." They were her sons too, James and John. Her request wasn't so popular with their friends:

And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers. Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.
(Matthew 20:20 - 28)

Jesus says -- No lording over; no exercising authority over.
But -- Serve; free from captivity; free from punishment; free your life; free many; free all!
This is part of a mother's longing for her offspring. It's part of the best.

Sometimes, when things become too much, I say out loud, "I want my mother!"
I can hear both Jesus and a Zen Master ask, "But, who is your mother?"

I'll sit with this...in silence.

A friend wrote, “You're sounding pretty blue in your "Today at Meetingbrook" entries. Anything I can do? I can always use practice at listening!” This is a sweet invitation, one that could be issued quietly over and over to the vast majority of us who are feeling and sounding “blue.”
That’s exactly how I’m feeling. And so, that’s how I’m sounding.

One and the same breeze passes
Over the pines on the mountain
And the oak trees in the valley;
Why do they give different notes?
( - Shinkage-ryu sword school, dailyzen)

The different notes reflect the vibration and shape, timbre and presence of what the “same breeze” passes over. Pine breeze and oak breeze sound distinct in a way similar to our sounding distinct in the face of what passes us.

There are many sounds and many people coming through the doors of Meetingbrook. Some do not hear anything. Some passing through the shop hear the sound of our world with glee that it is a mess and the institutions in it will surely collapse. Some hear the sound of sorrowing disillusionment at blatant deception foisted by clever criminals or profiteering business folk in financial and corporate culture. Some hear the sound of their own lives squeezed between push and pull, like bumpers between sailing craft and harbor dock in a restless tide. Some hear the sound of their families crying out for food, justice, understanding, and forgiveness -- and quietly take action, and quietly pray.

For he knows how we are made,
he remembers we are nothing but dust.
Man – his life is like grass,
he blossoms and withers like flowers of the field.
The wind blows and carries him away:
no trace of him remains.
(- Psalm 102)

Today’s psalm in the Hours reflects how the breeze crosses my face. Dust and grass, blossom and withering, blown and carried away – no trace remaining.

So many ways to hear this:
1. To live a life hidden with Christ;
2. To contemplatively dwell unseen and unheard;
3. To see, find, enter the light and enter it leaving no trace.
4. To return to the marketplace after finding, taming, riding the Ox into unity, undifferentiated.
5. To go away, without benefit of any of the above, and live unobserved as one hue in a spectrum.

A woman at the shop suggested the other day she pays no attention to the news in the world. “I don’t care for that energy,” she said.

It’s true and often recommended – not to enter into the upsetting news from the everyday world. And why? Is it because we don’t know how to suffer through the suffering of others to a place of transforming healing and communion? Perhaps this type of prayer and fasting is best left to those grounded in Christic or Buddhist understanding of and engagement with the world.

The Tibetan practice of Tonglen is also a transforming one --
In the sutras it is said, "Remain in the meditative state of loving-kindness," which means that you should train your mind with compassionate awareness and develop your ability to actually illuminate and radiate such friendship. In order for our body and speech to spontaneously appreciate and thus support the training of the mind, we use the traditional mind training practice of Tonglen, or the "sending and receiving" practice. (Khempo Karthar Rinpoche)

Breathing in the suffering of the world, breathing out a transforming healing -- sending and receiving by means of prayerful awareness and engaged compassion. A Catholic priest on Sunday spoke his version when he said, "We should fight evil with good – with prayer and good example." Fight? Some would say so.

I'd prefer another metaphor, namely: self-forgetting -- when we decrease so that Christ might increase; or self-remembering -- when we understand with Bodhisattva awareness that our true self includes everything. These seeds of contemplation are tossed everywhere from diverse sources -- even unrecognized farmers and gardeners of the spirit.

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat there; and the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away. Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear”.
(- Matthew 13:1–9)

I listen! What is heard? Outside my window – wind chime, the sound of cedar branch, rustling of driveway bushes, song of birds, rolling of tires, cracking open of sunflower seed. The blue sky is without other color over barn and cabin.

In this blue space, I am listening. What is heard beyond this patch of hearing is incorporated in my patch of ground and sky. This is my prayer. It is a blue prayer – (with abundant green) – and a heart breaking open with the whole of our pains and hopes throughout the world.

To my friend wondering if there is anything she can do, I say: Yes!

Sow well. Listen well. And wherever seeds fall – on fruitful or barren ground -- pray some benefit be found by someone willing to share it well.

Sorrowing tears. Demanding to know. Lost and without presence. Hearing her name. Telling what is seen, what is heard.

It is a hard time for the world. Mary Magdalene knows.

John 20:11-18 tells us, "Mary stood crying outside the tomb. While she was still crying, she bent over and looked in the tomb and saw two angels dressed in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and the other at the feet. 'Woman, why are you crying?' They asked her. She answered, 'They have taken my Lord away, and I do not know where they have put him!' Then she turned around and saw Jesus standing there; but she did not know that it was Jesus. 'Women why are you crying?' Jesus asked her. 'Who is it that you are looking for?' She thought he was the gardener, so she said to him, 'if you took him away, sir, tell me where you have put him and I will go and get him.' Jesus said to her, 'Mary!' She turned and said to him in Hebrew, Rabboni! (this means teacher.) 'Do not hold on to me,' Jesus told her, 'because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and find the brothers and tell them: 'I am ascending to my father and your Father, to my God and your God.' So Mary went and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that he had said these thing to her."

If we long to overcome the world with its untrue promises, we have to attend what is pronounced through sorrows, false demands, noise of naming, and speak & see what is true. Loss and recovery is a fertile ground for Christ-seed re-creation.

Mary Magdalene is icon for us. See through her vision.

Breeze makes laugh green foliage, peals chimes under cedar, keeps air course correcting in swooping bird song this Sunday morning.

It is good to seek shelter in the Lord,
better than to trust in men.
It is good to seek shelter in the Lord,
better than to trust in the leaders of men.
(-Psalm 117)

As God speaks trust and shelter through the appearance of men & women, nature & silence -- ours is to listen carefully.

It is not our work in life to lose oneself in the other. That is called co-dependence.
Rather, it is our joy to disappear into the act. The act of being-with, the act of wordless presence. The act of no-othering. This is called inter-dependence.

Buddhists might call this interdependent co-origination, or, circum-incessional interpenetration.
Christians might call this incarnation, or, Eucharistic co-creation.
Listening with silence is portal and presentiation. It is archaic and original.

The term "archaic" as used here is derived from the Greek 'arce', meaning inception, or origin. Origin (or 'Ursprung,' in the original German) is the source from which all springs, but it is that which springs forth itself. It is the essence which is behind and which underlies consciousness. As Gebser understands the term, "conscious is neither knowledge nor conscience but must be understood for the time being in the broadest sense as wakeful presence." This presence, or being present, excludes two further overpowering by the past (past-orientation) or any future-oriented finality. He writes:

It is our task to presentiate the past in ourselves, not to lose the present to the transient power of the past. This we can achieve by recognizing the balancing power of the latent "future" with its character of the present, which is to say, its potentiality for consciousness.
(from "The Primordial Leap And The Present: The Ever-Present Origin - An Overview Of The Work Of Jean Gebser" book by Jean Gebser, article by Ed Mahood, jr., Synairetic Research)

Today it is time. Now it is eternity.

Eucharist. Friends Meeting. Harbor shop. Appearance and disappearance. Refuge. And the strength of weakness.

To be what we are, we have only what is alone ours -- listening silence.

There’s plenty to ponder.

The stock market is drowning. (I own no stocks). The Middle East is ablaze. Executives in the corporate world tank their companies and escape with hundreds of millions as reward. The President and Vice President try to be scolds, but like parents who use illegal drugs lecturing their children not to, Bush and Cheney must be alternately giggling and looking over their shoulders with nervous paranoia.

AIDS is creeping under every nation’s bedspread. Anger and rage ride in the fast lanes and crowded streets of our urban sprawl. Priests nationwide are either seen as predators or looked at by new squinting eyes to be likely suspects for that type of thing. Even the prior administration’s harshest and purest critics are pausing at the confessional doors uncertain whether their newly uncovered sins of cruelty or the sexual sins of their priests take precedence in the box.

It seems that kind of day -- gray, chilly, without promise.

Each night I gaze upon a pond,
A Zen body sitting beside a moon.
Nothing is really there and yet
It is all so clear and bright
I cannot describe it.
If you would know the empty mind
Your own mind must be as clear and bright
As this full moon upon the water.
- Chiao Jan (785 – 895)

I visit Sr. Bette at her yurt further down east along the coast bringing her two books in which she is profiled. We chat in her damp yurt. Books, flyers, pages from retreats, and all sorts of references to things she’s been doing stack the small opening on table between us where mosquitoes hover and breakfast dishes contend with death notices.

At Hermitage, Paul and Jim screen porch of cabin. Sando and Cisco find tennis balls for mother and son at Snow Bowl where a wedding party is unfolding. Saskia is closing doors of shop. Di opened, Cheryl covered until I got back, and Saskia came in from baking and working with Paul, and I left with the dogs because I was feeling like something the dogs leave on their walks.

Yesterday an accounting type said that after the conversation about a Laura Common (where the thought was expressed that we might want to rely on gift and grace) – it has begun to seem more than he wished to consider – concerning sound financial footing. He thinks, for reasons known and unknown, he might not be able to consider with us any longer.

Nova Scotia feels like a good choice right about now. Sooner than later a contemplative life as hermitage wants to be seed in ground.

Sr. Bette says that everything is meant to teach us something we need to learn. Tommy didn’t believe me yesterday when I told him what a dunce I was in school. “Nah,” he said. “Oh yeah,” I said. “I don’t believe it,” he said.

“Oh, yeah!” That’s what I say about then – and now.

There’s plenty to ponder.

Mini the cat is first to zabuton this morning. She faces hibiscus tree as Saskia lights incense and candle. Sando comes in. Cisco comes in. Bell is sounded.

Light rain, the mountain forest
Is wrapped in mist,
Slowly the fog changes
To clouds and haze.
Along the boundless river bank,
Many crows.
I walk to a hill overlooking the valley
To sit in zazen.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Susan arrives to accompany Saskia and Mini to vet in Augusta. Mini may be in renal failure. A homeopathic attention will be explored.

During sitting Cisco sniffs closer to Mini. The Border collie is ever interested in smaller animal. Mini looks over shoulder. She doesn't swat at his curiosity. Either trust or weakness to bother presides.

Bell sounds. Bows. Rubbing and strokes for all. Psalms. Intercessions for all. Final pealing of Angelus bells.

Friday takes shape.

(Later) Saskia calls from road. Vet says her body language says Mini is not ready to go, yet.
So, we stay together as long as we can.

Listening to sounding bell, we continue returning home, a lovely surrounding silence.

In a Laura, the footpath you follow leads back to your own dwelling. If you visit another, it is only to find your way back to yourself. If you visit a central place to converse or practice with others, you return to your pathway home with whatever gifts found with others to take refuge there in your own home ground.

Practice isn't interested in creating something new. Practice invites disappearance. When we completely practice, there is no other way -- there is only the way. We are not the way, the way is us. In prison several months ago Harold said it this way -- "We are not God; God is us."

Tricky business, talking about God. Buddhist’s help other religions by not using a name (God) but describing the reality: “What Is,” or “This One,” or “The Itself.”

There is also the rich question that is itself a practice, “What is this?”

All along the trail of moss,
I followed your wooden shoeprints.
White clouds hung around your little island
Where spring grass hid your unlocked door.
I enjoyed the colors of pines after rain
And reached the river’s source
Along the mountain trail.
Facing the stream and the flowers
I came inside a sense of Zen,
Yet cannot find the words.
- Liu Chang Ching (709–780, dailyzen)

Last night at the Hermitage Harbor Room there was the first of three Wednesday Evening Conversations on the Laura Common. Today Dana sent an email:
(for me) The MOST important thing that the subscription gets the
subscriber is the knowledge that we are supporting something of unique
and intrinsic value to us and others: the continuation of the
Meetingbrook Harbor Site. A gathering place in Camden that is not about
commerce, tourism or money, but about support, growth, and
conversation. For the same reason I give to Habitat for Humanity,
etc...it's not about what's in it for ME. It about what's in it for US.

How's that for "Substance"?
Dana

The word 'coalesce' came up three times. Coalesce, (from co = with, together; and alescere == to grow) means to grow together, to unite into a whole.

We become whole when we realize that wholeness is not other than us. When we experience our lives as broken, incomplete, or separate we might choose to enter a practice that heals, wholes, and unites. Silence with intent to heal helps. Solitude with intent to whole helps. Simplicity with the intent to common unity helps.

Whatever form our spiritual, religious, contemplative, meditative, or interactive practice takes -- when we dedicate it to the well-being of all beings, and we long that the graciousness of love be experienced in everything -- we have entered the Laura trail that visits with God, neighbor, all creation, and our own true self.

The above list is divides one reality with many words. So too, the reality of God is one reality with many expressions. We live in a dualistic experience of one reality. Practice invites us to gracefully live in and through that experience of many. Practice also invites us to live in and through the experience of one. Between us, God willing, we'll realize what is to be done in this existence.

Laura Haiku

Between us – is God
willing -- what is this willing
not… but between us

(wfh18july02)

In the deep recesses, is the snow still deep? Meetingbrook tries to find its way.

Which way
Did you come from,
Following dream paths at night,
While snow is still deep
In this mountain recess?
- Ryokan (1758-1831

MEETINGBROOK LAURA COMMON (A draft proposal for further conversation)


1. FINDING COMMUNITY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE

Q: WHAT IS MEETINGBROOK LAURA COMMON?
A: Meetingbrook Laura Common intends to be a community of individuals engaged in their own practice/prayer/study alone or with others.

Q: WHAT IS A ‘LAURA?’
A: ‘Laura’ is from a Greek word meaning foot trail, lane, or path. It represents the worn trails we travel between dwellings.

Q: WHO CAN BELONG TO THE LAURA?
A: Those identifying themselves as practitioners of a spiritual or religious discipline might wish to be part of a loosely knit association of individuals who intentionally choose to
· 1. Deepen their practice,
· 2. Share the delights & difficulties of their practice with another or others in soul-friend (1x1) conversation and circle (group) conversation,
· 3. Invite an openness of practice/prayer/study in one's own particular tradition or discipline so as to encourage others theirs.

Q: WHY CONSIDER BEING PART OF A LAURA?
A: In an age of many religious traditions and spiritual practices, there is often a lack of exposure to and conversation about the practice individuals actually engage in to deepen their practice/prayer/study.

Q: IS THERE A GOAL?
A: The goal to encourage each other to have a chosen practice, to actually practice, to share the experience of practice, to ask questions that arise from it, to invite others into the experience and questions so as to create a community, a sangha of practice/prayer/study that is available to enrich each other and visitors to the process.

Q: IS THERE A FEE OR COST INVOLVED?
A: No and yes.

Q: NO?
A: All events at Meetingbrook are free, open, and informal.

Q: YES?
A: Meetingbrook Bookshop and Bakery on Camden Harbor is the central clearinghouse and space for gatherings, conversations, information, and study – these things are part of our practice, that is, Bill and Saskia at Dogen & Francis Hermitage.
We are inviting the wider community, if they wish, to become subscribers to Meetingbrook to help pay the costs of rent, utilities, and meeting space.


Q: WHAT DOES THE SUBSCRIPTION GET THE SUBSCRIBER?
A: A forum, a place, a retreat room, an on-line and bi-annual journal, a community of practitioners that is willing to openly support each other in their practice. O yeah, free coffee, tea, summer sails with Saskia, and the (oftentimes) looniest bunch of people your tolerance can take.

Q: DO I HAVE TO GIVE UP MY CURRENT AFFILIATIONS?
A: No. The purpose of the Laura is to be a resource to all people of practice, prayer, and study. The goal is to deepen and share individual journeys. Then, to go back to our individual practices, or religious/spiritual affiliations and deepen one’s life in that setting if that is the call. The Laura Common wishes to be a common space where everyone with an intent to draw closer to their own truest reality – natural, divine, human, -- might find others similarly engaged and practice/pray/study with each other.

Q: WHERE DOES THE ‘LAURA’ NOTION COME FROM?
A: A “Laura” is a series of trails that lead from one's dwelling place to another's dwelling, to a common meeting place, and back again. Historically it is associated with what is called 'a laura of hermits.' These are individuals who have chosen to live an intentional life of solitude and community.
Some might live alone. Some might live alone with another. Some might live alone with others. Those who are part of a Laura are part of a larger community of individuals dedicated to living a life of contemplative, meditative, mindful, engaged, and loving service to self, each other, the world as we find it, and the ground of all being – known to some as True Self, God, Christ, Buddha, or Love Itself.

Q: DO YOU HAVE TO BE CHRISTIAN OR BUDDHIST TO BELONG?
A: No. At Dogen & Francis Hermitage Saskia and I practice in our root Catholic tradition as well as in the tradition of Zen Buddhism – but that is our practice, not the standard for anyone else. Each is meant to bring their root and/or current tradition to the Common and learn deeply there.

2. CHOOSING LAURA MEMBERSHIP

Membership suggests responsibilities and benefits.

Responsibilities include:

1) Daily Practice: Maintaining a (daily) practice/prayer/study engaged alone or with others.
2) Weekly Recording: Journal, letter-write, voice/video tape an entry concerning some delight or difficulty of your practice/prayer/study. This is for your own use.
3) Monthly Soul-friend 1x1 conversation: Willingness to regularly (monthly) speak with another person about matters of practice/prayer/study.
4) Monthly Community Conversation: Attend (monthly) a conversation conducted by another on some aspect of their practice/prayer/study.
5) Quarterly Invitation to Practice: 4 times a year extend an invitation to others to visit your practice in your own dwelling or in a common location.
6) Bi-annual Convening of Conversation: Twice a year convenes a conversation open to other Laura members and/or public on any chosen aspect of your practice/prayer/study.
7) Annual Retreat: Attend (yearly) a retreat of several days, or week in a setting honoring the simplicity, silence, and service in the tradition of your practice/prayer/study.

Benefits include:

1) Participate in an intentional community of practitioners where your particular expression of practice/prayer/study is respected and deepened.
2) Have abundant opportunities to share your personal practice/prayer/study with others.
3) Have forum to experience a variety of spiritual and intellectual traditions and disciplines and the personal encounters of others in that forum.
4) Utilize a network of individuals willing to practice non-judgmental and open loving speech and deep listening.
5) Have an ongoing online and bi-annual printed journal to read and contribute one's reflections and observations about their practice/prayer/study.
6) Utilize retreat resources for quiet and solitude. There is a meditation cabin at Ragged Mountain and a Harbor Room at Meetingbrook's two locations. Other retreat rooms might be available at other Laura member's dwellings.
7) Participate in volunteer service to the greater community where you live, or in the mid-coast area. There are prison conversations, community bakery visits to homebound and nursing facilities for recipe and hospitality purposes, and opportunities to be a resource for respite retreat and support for those experiencing the need to have a time-out because of life situations.

3. LAURA SUPPORT
Meetingbrook invites a subscription membership to help pay rent and keep going the programs begun there. While there is no fee to be part of Meetingbrook's Laura Common, donations and gifts for the ongoing costs and support of Meetingbrook are both welcome and needed.

4. BECOMING A SUBSCRIBER/MEMBER OF MEETINGBROOK
There is a yearly overhead of $18,000 to lease and maintain the cape on the harbor currently housing the bookshop/bakery and hermitage harbor room. This building is used for conversations, study groups, meditation practice, and retreat stays. It too will become part of the Hermitage non-profit organization so that all donations will support the practice/prayer/study that takes place there as well as the volunteer programs centralized there.
We’re thinking of 36 donors @$ 500 each to begin the first year. Nevertheless, all and any donation will be gratefully received.


Meditating deeply
Reach the depth of the source.
Branching streams cannot
Compare to this source!
Sitting alone in a great silence
Even though the heavens
Turn and the earth is upset,
You will not even wink.
- Nyogen Senzaki (1876-1958)

5. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: WHAT IS THIS?

To the question, "What Is This?" -- the Laura Common might wish to respond, "This is our practice, prayer, and study -- to present with simplicity & attention, integrity & silence, faithful engagement & transparent service -- who we are and what we do in each moment and situation we encounter."

At a recent Sunday Evening Practice someone pointed out there are three aspects of practice to consider for the Laura Common:
1) Personal Practice - that which an individual routinely engages in for his or her own practice, prayer, study.
2) Household Practice -- that which a household, (where two or more persons dwell together), regularly sets as a time to practice, pray, study together.
3) Community Practice -- that form wherein many people gather together outside the home (whether church, sangha, or other community) to practice, pray, or study.

These three forms connect with a larger understanding of the balance we try to maintain between solitude, intimate sharing, and broader community. The Laura Common intends to be just one of many other vehicles to encourage contemplation, conversation, and correspondence. This, and the engaged service of mindful compassion and awareness, is what practitioners offer to each and all. As individuals with a practice we choose to inform each other of what it is we do, keep all beings in mind and heart as we do our practice, and invite anyone who wishes -- whether new beginner or old beginner -- to be part of a wide and varied community of practice.

May all beings be happy! May all beings be safe! May all beings come to dwell in their true home -- with wisdom and compassion. And may the love of God, This One, help us 'reach the depth of the source!'

We'll have 3 weeks of Wednesday Evening Conversation (17, 24, 31July, 5:30-6:30pm) about the Laura.

[wfh/11July2002, Feast of St. Benedict]

Walking from shop to grocery store Saturday night I see doors of Catholic Church open. I enter. I'd stayed away from this particular parish church since before Ash Wednesday. I'd spent the duration going to church in the towns north and south of ours. The local pastor had, in my and other's opinion, abused the power of the pulpit for personal reasons. He only apologized to the people he'd been unkind to after 4 months of sorrow and fretting on their part when he left recently for 6 months of residential therapy.

The inside of the church was quiet and vacant, but for a lone man in third pew. He turned and noted my entering. Gregorian chant sounded gently the silent interior.

This morning the substitute priest, a chaplain at the State Prison we also visit, said he'd opened the church last night as he will every Saturday night 8-10pm for quiet contemplation.

He said one or two had stopped by the night before, no doubt surprised to see the church doors open.

Do we not cherish the
Infinite brightness
Of the one bright pearl?
Who can surpass
The virtue of this
Brilliant, radiant pearl
That covers the universe?
The essence of causality
Never ceases and
The pearl is always bright.
It is our original face and enlightened eye.
- Dogen (1200-1253)(dailyzen)

Doors are made of spirit as well as wood. It delights that these doors are open again.

Open doors reflect a bright pearl. We long to see our original face in this silent hospitality.

EVE, MOTHER'S BIRTH
(for Catherine)

When my mother was born
whole reaches of universe came to be

when she died, so many coffee cups
beer glasses stay dry in cupboards --

still the universe drinks
without pouring a single drop

from what is not open.
When mothers are born

every point of light spouts itself
over and open over again

a wondrous thirst never slaked,
each word mothers our creation.

(wfh)

There is no news in silence. Nothing is revealed with possessions.

Clear the land, thatch the rush for roof,
All around cherish the empty, the pure.
Mountain blossoms fall by a secluded door,
Within, one who has forgotten the world’s schemings.
Concern with existence needs no possession,
Comprehending the void does not wait upon reason,
All things are of conditions born,
Profound is the silence in the midst of clamor.
A person’s mind is very much the same;
A bird in flight, leaving no tracks behind.
- Liu Zongyuan (773–819) (dailyzen)

Dead chipmunk killed by cat is left out in open for crows. Government leaders plan similar scenarios for enemy leaders of countries considered threat to our way of life.

Women with cancer visit. Their chemo regimen balds heads and frightens hearts -- they reappraise what is dear to them.

The world is dizzy with greed and criminality on the part of heads of corporations. In America the sickness of excess and deception nauseates those who cause the infection and those suffering the received infection.

Diogenes, Socrates, Buddha, Christ, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Francis, Benedict, Teresa, Dorothy, and many others -- all search and seed the ground of earth/being for what is honest, true, and loving.

Concern with existence needs no possession…
Profound is the silence in the midst of clamor.

The emptiness of our arrival and departure seeks middle emptiness that trusts without grasping.
Birdsong and clanging bell attest to silence.

What I love about this life is simple awareness excluding nothing.
What I love about silence is what is included.

There is no news anywhere that is not in silence. If I learn to read the emptiness appearing around me, if I learn to hear the news of silence – then -- I will cherish and understand what and who I am.

Then, as now, I will leave no tracks, no trace.
Simply, one in flight.

Yearning is the only trail between what we’re not and what is really there -- what we really are.

If you meet a fencing master on the road,
show him your sword,
If you meet a poet,
offer her your poem.
When you meet others,
say only a part of what you intend.
Never give the whole thing at once.
- Mu-mon (1228)

Do we hold back our gifts because experience indicates many people will glance at them, shrug, and turn away to something else?

Everyone is poet. The ability to see what is really there -- the dance of energy passing through myriad forms – belongs to anyone willing to pause, look, and listen.

Everyone wields a sword forged in fires of their own perceptions. We fence with real and imaginary opponents, ones we perceive encroaching beyond boundaries considered sacrosanct. The sword we use – taken from the scabbard of self-image – should only be carefully shown, if at all.

At Lectio this morning Matthew’s words about Jesus’ yoke being easy, his burden light. This union (yoke, yoga) is easy. The task (burden, focus) is light. Ease and light – (letting go, passing on) – governs the simplicity of response impermanence evokes.

Yearning is the trail we travel between arrival and departure. This footpath connects us to all that is. It is not acquisitive. It is releasement.

Gifts imply what is given and what is giving. To hold back a gift is to have only shattered promise in one’s hand. To refuse a gift is to fist approaching kindness.

When we yearn for and show carefully what we are, we create a trail for others to explore. Processing along the trail will be discovery for creator and pilgrim -- holy communion with each we meet, poetic realization with all we see.

Yearn deeply. Learn phenomenally. Cut illusion with the sword of awareness. Enjoy the hike.

When prayer finds me I am always surprised. I'm not always aware I'm lost. Like a friend appearing in a summer morning's playful tag, prayer taps shoulder with "you're it" and scoots away behind birdcall.

I found my way up
Yoshino’s precipice-hung
Path and into its
Past, seeing there the blossoms
I sought that spring – ages ago.
- Saigyo (1118 – 1190)

Ages ago there was only linear time. Long straight extension from an unimaginable past stretching to an unimaginable future. Then arrives prayer.

Prayer encircles. It enfolds. What seemed once to be a line straight and narrow becomes a round return, origin to origin.

If I pray for a happy life and happy death for those who come to mind, I am praying for their happy life and death at the very moment of their life and death. It doesn't matter that they've been dead in linear time's measurement for 30 years or 3 days. Prayer reaches into the instant of that person's life, the instant of their death, and touches them there.

Prayer is eternal presence. This eternal presence consists of the one praying, the one prayed for, and the One Presence encircling and enfolding each in prayerful round return.

Each and any prayer is eternally real. It is, as well, felt presence in time. It acknowledges and participates in the creating life of the whole family of Being -- humanity, all sentient beings, matter itself, divinity itself. (What we call non-divinity, or non-being, or some, evil -- might be the separating, non-inclusive, fragmenting, othering, and divisive intent/activity to avoid and deny what is whole -- causing harm and suffering.)

Prayer heals and wholes that which has been broken by those of us not yet ready for love, not-yet ready to be Love's dwelling place. When I'm tagged by prayer in my forgetting, touched by presence when I'm lost -- suddenly I remember -- be prayer, say prayer, long for what I am.

God is the longing that inspires prayer. We are God's longing to inhabit and transform this sacred family.

Prayer is surprising. Let's surprise each other!

The strawberry moon came full over Curtis Island. Tom O'D alerted us, took zoom lens and camera to edge of Waterfront patio and clicked away at it. The new waitress from Colorado, then kitchen crew, customers, all stood in a silence of liturgical vigil at its rising.

If your mind is fixed on a certain spot,
It will be seized by that spot and
No activities can be performed efficiently.
Not to fix your mind anywhere is essential.
Not fixed anywhere,
The mind is everywhere…
The Original Mind is like water which flows freely
Whereas the deluded mind is like ice
There is a passage in the Diamond Sutra that says:
“The mind should operate without abiding anywhere.”
- Takuan (1573-1645)

The universe in a rounded moon, and St. John's Day to boot. The sky resplendent, conversation in open air, a sense of loss and gain all at once.

We will stay where we are at Ragged Mountain. The moon is familiar there too.

When I die will the world still exist?
This is a spiritual question. If God Alone Is, and I die -- does the world still exist?

Although the marvelous
Lines are difficult to trace,
Still I can make out
Several layers of mountains,
A jumble of peaks,
Like shell-spiraled locks of hair.
Faraway streams and mountains,
Peaks swathed in clouds,
Just like a painting,
Have captured the essence.
Gazing into emptiness,
I long to ask the monk about it.
If I don’t learn the meaning
Of the reclusive life,
I can but sigh with regret until the day I die!
- Su Shih 1073 (dailyzen)

The reclusive life is returning to what alone is.

The novelty of Christianity from the sociological standpoint, as compared with other religions, lay in breaking down all imperative relationship between religion and the family, clan, nation or empire, giving it a personal basis in conscience. (opening line in Church and State c.1939, by Luigi Sturzo)

Perhaps the reason prayer is vital is in its personal basis. What we call 'conscience' is the dwelling place of what is and can be known, seen, and intuited -- the apparent and the hidden -- residing in the very essence of each individual. Prayer -- or the meaning of the reclusive life -- is enfolding conscience resting in itself, in what is true and loving. Prayer asks into and invites what is there to see and know with (i.e. to dwell as conscience). Prayer resides within a common wholeness. Prayer engages what is there.

What alone is! All else is dispersion, diffusion, and dissimilation.

If I recall, e.e.cumming's words go something like: Better worlds, I suggest, are born, not made -- and begin with the birthdays of individuals. Let us pray, therefore, not for better worlds, but for individuals.

In response to my first question above, I suspect the world will still exist when I die. The mystery of appearance and disappearance is more than one person's biographical terminus. Still, there is something to contemplate here that corresponds to the meaning of the reclusive life. If God alone is, and I have died into Christ's mysterious passage -- through creation, through life, through death, into what is alone God -- then, what else is there?

As I live and as I die -- I'll be gazing into this emptiness -- knowing the sight of God is what is looking through me. This will be my prayer.

One day I'll no longer sigh with regret at what I no longer am.

Have you ever wondered what time is? Ever thought it is only an agreed upon convenience serving to keep events, places, and autobiographical incidents separate and sequential?

Time seems to be the mask Now wears so not to frighten us. Seeing or doing all at once hardly allows for a change of clothes.
Time is a wardrobe stagehand backstage assisting the changes we think we must make before appearing again before others.

We do things when it is our time to do them. They do not occur to us until it is time; they cannot be resisted, once their time has come. It is a question of time, not motive.
(p70, in novel The Holder of the World, by Bharati Mukherjee)

News comes we might not get the farm.
I trust the nexus, the transition from one thing to another thing. Spring becoming summer; something held as possible becoming the possible itself holding nothing.

I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to understand but is obviously calm, someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquillity, is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to re-enter and be riven....I admire the authority of being on one's knees in front of the event. (Harold Brodkey "Manipulations" in Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, p217)

I trust what is wanted, not always what we want. A difference? I don't know.

The Manifestation
Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming
Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
A seed pushing itself beyond itself,
The mole making its way through darkest ground,
The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil--
Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,
The motion of the moon, and waves at play,
A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.

What does what it should do needs nothing more.
The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.
We come to something without knowing why.
(Theodore Roethke)

This warm afternoon breeze moves through wind chimes, cars up Barnestown Road, sun streaks through bamboo slats at window facing barn. Each doing what it should.

And us?
It is a question of time.
For now -- I think we're out of it.

Suddenly solitude. A sequestering silence. Dusk at Ragged Mountain.

In quiescence I hear the
Cinnamon blossoms fall.
When night comes,
The Spring mountains are silent.
Suddenly the moon appears
From behind the clouds
And startles the young birds;
By the mountain stream they chirp and chirp.
- Wang Wei (701–761)

If I were to be asked right now what is Meetingbrook -- I would have nothing to say.

This nothing is best unsaid but better sounded by Oriole and Grosbeak, Finch and Nuthatch, Chickadee and Sparrow.

If we say nothing, can anything come of it?

Green stillness.

Poetry and Psalms make secular and sacred life more tolerable.

Today is the feast of St Romuald. "St. Romuald lived and worked during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. He fully realized in his own life the spirit of the Rule, and he wisely reinterpreted it, emphasizing the solitude of the hermitage. St. Romuald wanted the hermitage to be characterized by a greater simplicity and a more intense penitential and contemplative practice." (from Introduction to the Rule for Camaldolese Benedictine Oblates)

St. Romuald's Brief Rule

Sit in your cell as in paradise;
put the whole world behind you and forget it;
like a skilled angler on the lookout for a catch
keep a careful eye on your thoughts.

The path you follow is in the psalms -- don't leave it.
If you've come with a novice's enthusiasm and can't
accomplish what you want, take every chance you can find
to sing the psalms in your heart and to understand them
with your head; if your mind wanders as you read
don't give up but hurry back and try again.

Above all realize that you are in God's presence;
hold your heart there in wonder as if before your sovereign.

Empty yourself completely;
sit waiting, content with God's gift,
like a little chick tasting and eating nothing
but what its mother brings.

The monk's cell and the inmate's cell have much in common. One of which is time for considering what poetry and psalms open into.

In the Maine State Prison last Friday -- where we returned for twice-monthly conversations after a lengthy hiatus due to the closing of old prison in Thomaston and moving into new prison in Warren -- we spoke about the first few pages of Socrates Cafe and an essay in The Poet's Work (edited by Reginald Gibbons).
Christopher Phillips' Socrates book, subtitled "A Fresh Taste of Philosophy," begins with a lead line quoting someone saying, "Psychiatry is the rape of the muse." We conversed about this opening salvo for a while. The second piece, entitled "Why Write" (1972) by Gunter Kunert contained the following:

The more I tried, as I wrote, to dissolve into what I was writing, the more severely the number of themes and subjects was reduced (as if that were the price) -- however inexhaustible I had formerly believed them, as others believed in the diversity of life. With increasing identity of text and author, the author's role as clown or teacher ends; every mortal impetus loses its imperative aspect and becomes viewpoint and style, the frequency of the literal essence into which the author withdraws. The lack of freedom in every literary effort increases proportionally, and variability decreases, because all that succeeds is what promotes transformation; everything else comes about halfheartedly or not at all. (Kunert, p137, in The Poet's Work)

Chris said that insanity is that which transcends contemporary thought. Sane acts we understand; insane acts we don't understand. "The insane is where thought cannot go," he added.

Paco thought that by lumping the not understandable into categories with labels and diagnoses, we are able then to dismiss the person and hold onto the label. Paco then went on to say that considering the practice of Meetingbrook to come into prison for no other reason than to have a conversation - no pay, no other obvious agenda, nothing but the conversation -- was most likely considered crazy by a vast majority. (He added a great compliment -- "You guys are freaks!")

Ed spoke of Viet Nam experience -- finding wallet and pictures of a dead enemy soldier's family -- as a blinding light in 1972 for him. (We'd been talking about the Leonard Cohen lyric that went something like; "There is a crack in everything, that's where the light comes in.")

Aren't we all trying to retrieve the original felt experience when we write, speak, converse, or even care about anything? To say, as above, that poetry and psalms make secular and sacred life more tolerable, is not to say there is no pain or depth of anguish. It does, however, remarkably, free us.

Joe wondered, "Can an insane person describe insanity?"
Paco described what must be one of the most punishing aspects of residing in prison, namely, you never know in any prison conversation whether it is a mask you are talking to -- or through. "We're so great at adapting," he said.

I've heard Paco's observation before. It is not restricted to those behind walls of an official prison. There are other prisons of subtler walls. But the suspicion that the person we think we are conversing with is either not really there, playing us, or is masking a role that might or might not be authentic -- that is a prison conversation. That is one of the real deprivations, the absence of freedom to be ourselves.

At end of this conversation at prison, there is poetry. Andre, Joe, and Mike had one of theirs. Cheryl had one by Hafiz.

The minds
Depict me tribal,
Religiously contradicting myself,
Reading script from the Bible
with visions homicidal.
Beauty is deprived with my eyes open.
I keep my eyes closed, and dream of butterflies
until they end up my size,
flying with knives trying to slice throats.
Decisively my mind chose to find
a place safe in the Devil's oasis.
There's nothing he doesn't cater.
Every acre is filled with temptation,
intoxication and riches major.
It makes me hate to sleep or wake up.
One world is degrading, one world is fake.
But they both have plenty snakes,
and spiritually my boundaries won't let me
reach a space where all is sacred.
I stuck on a globe with open drapes,
my mind naked.
Praying what I state or what I think
can change created fates we make up
and let penetrate us.
At any rate when we keep faith and
learn that when we're sleep we're awake,
Both worlds will hate us.
(Andre)

And,

Seg
Sitting here time goes passing,
Past and present keep on clashing
The present goes off into the past.
The future is here present at last
(Mike)

Hafiz gets the last word:
God wants to see more playfulness in your eyes.
If you pray, somewhere in the world some good will happen.

We try to be, secular and sacred, more tolerable with each other in this way, in this life.

Monetary life or monastic life?

We live in a moneyed economy. It buys rhetorical persuasion. It can even buy an unseemly silence - with hush money. It builds cathedrals of corporate power -- whether for the aggrandizing of human or divine beings. It feathers nests. It creates tomes of binding contracts, inheritance dispersions, and tax laws. Money is our secular scripture.

Likewise, what used to be Holy Scripture has given way to fundamental literalists on one side and deconstructive allegory on the other. Where do we find the middle road -- where written word mingles with inspired thought -- leading to personal insight while conserving original text?

What would it look like to live sacred poverty?

Devote yourself to the Absolute Emptiness;
Contemplate earnestly in Quiescence.
All things are together in Action,
But I look into their Non-action,
For things are continuously moving, restless,
Yet each is proceeding back to its origin.
Proceeding back to the origin means Quiescence.
To be in Quiescence is to see “Being-in-itself.”
- Lao tzu (dailyzen)

Though he was in the form of God,
Jesus did not deem equality with God
something to be grasped at.
Rather he emptied himself
and took the form of a slave,
being born in the likeness of men.
(Philippians 2:6-7)

When Jesus "emptied himself" becoming Christ; when a Buddha puts Nirvana on hold to return to the dwelling place of someone still suffering, becoming Bodhisattva -- am I attentive to their embodiment of poverty?
Most often not.

The moneyed way is norm. Poverty is either failure to carry one's weight in the eyes of those who can -- or poverty is practice seldom attempted, even by those who profess it for religious or spiritual purposes.

As the world experiences detonation of its unreflective acceptance of the moneyed way, I ask: Is the monastic way retrievable and meaningful for individuals residing in our contemporary culture?

If God is One and we long for that Oneness to be what we are, is poverty a requisite practice of One?

Devotion to "Absolute Emptiness" (Lao tzu) or to "the form of a slave" (Paul) invites us into the mystery hiding in existential human life. This devotion pivots on the question: What is the longing at root of my existence?

What and how we respond to this question will shape the form of the world in which -- and as which -- we live.

Do we Christians have it wrong? Not yet trying poverty -- do we consciously postpone Christ-life?
Do we Buddhists (and other religions) have it wrong? Not yet recognizing that any suffering is shared suffering -- do we elongate illusion? Is life able to be simplified with its root longing?

Wasn't the inability to simplify life a Turgenev character's reason for suicide?
When we kill ourselves, are we not also really killing Oneself? By failing to simplify our lives are we, wittingly or unwittingly, contributing to the postponement of Oneness and the prolongation of suffering in the world?

Monastic poverty is the simplification of one's life.

Monastic poverty allows Life-Itself to resource the lives of all. By choosing moneyed life over monastic life I choose what can be bought and sold in this conditioned world over what can be shared and given in unconditional freedom.

This choice asks: Being-in-itself? Or, beings-for-your-use? The first requires contemplation to embody. The second merely requires our willingness to reach out and take for our own whatever we want. The first is what we truly are when we finally see our inner true nature. The second is what we manipulate and accumulate as our external net worth.

This Being-in-itself -- whether Christ-Life or Buddha-Life -- is a dimension of love and compassion that is the essence of holy poverty and sacred scripture.

Imagine choosing the form of a slave? Imagine longing to simplify and not knowing how to?
I ask myself: What is this one longing? What devoted form of service am I willing to disappear into?

We are each one in this longing.

Monastic life is longing for what Alone is.

Here is what birth is.
When here we birth what is here, we birth what we are.

Today is Saskia's here-day.
We each and all are birthed in her birthing here.

We are told to realize that
Not a single thing exists.
In this field birth and death
Do not appear.
The deep source,
Transparent down to the bottom,
Can radiantly shine and respond
Unencumbered by each speck of dust
Without becoming its partner.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)

No dust, no encumbrance, no birth no death --
Only partnering what is within without becoming partner.

Happy Saskia Day Here!

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.