In America it is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, a heavy travel day. Saskia yesterday, Jon today, off to places south and west. Sando, Cesco, and Mu-ge travel around the house, Ragged, and bookshop. Dredging of harbor continues. Emptying out and filling up is the rhythm of the day.

Better than a thousand hollow words
is one word that brings peace.
Better than a thousand hollow verses
is one verse that brings peace.
It is better to conquer yourself
than to win a thousand battles.
Then the victory is yours.
- Buddha in the Dhammapada (dailyzen)

We are stragglers and strangers wandering home. Just as there is no way to peace -- peace is the way itself; so too there is no way to get back home again -- home is where we are. Turtles, we traverse here to there, coming and going, dwelling and carrying our very home within and without.

Death reminds us of the illusion of fixed addresses. Certain addresses provide warmth, food, companionship, and a place to receive mail. But there is no longer any address that satisfies the psychological & spiritual need for home. Home is right where we are.

The eggshells of family visits temper the longing for home, for grandma’s house, during holidays. So much to reconcile from years and unfinished business gone by, so compact and charged a space of time to face it. We are nomads who feel every place and each relative we know owes us something we define as something we deserve but has somehow been denied us.

Beneath and beyond the opinions we cultivate and scores needing to be evened, we carry also the forgotten reality that is our very being. By forgetting Being we busy ourselves with tasks and appointments, people as resources and roles as defining identities. By forgetting Being we forget God.

Peace is remembering who, what, and where we are. Peace is who, what, and where we are. Ask those who radiate peace. Pray in their presence, whether they are alive and visible, or dead and invisible – either way, they are there. Ask Jesus. Ask Buddha. Ask saints and bodhisattvas. Ask the ordinary person sitting right next to you, or walking across the street from you, or passing on a bus, car, train, or plane.

Ask them, not necessarily with words or voice. Ask them with your eyes. Ask them with your heart. Ask them with your attention. Look at each one with silence and acceptance, and let your loving watchfulness be what you ask. You are asking them to consider where they are. Doing so you prayerfully and mindfully invite them to be at home. Stay a while at home. Dwell in peace.

May each dwell grateful as snow falling where it falls, finding where it is, home.

Worry, worry. It's not as though everything will not fall down around us. Leaves have. Deaths in Nigeria, Palestine, and everywhere else. Political parties pick up the pieces after wins and loses. Economy sags. War strains at its leash. Finally, this morning, some sunlight over new rows of wood Jon, Saskia, and I stacked Sunday.

To look at life is like being in a dream;
It is really noisy being in the dream.
Everything stops when the dreamer suddenly awakens,
And in the same way as a dreamer awakes,
The wise understand how to wake from the dream.
The deluded believe in the dream and are disturbed
That understanding and dreaming
Seem to be two aspects.
When once the truth is comprehended,
There is no other comprehension.
- Master Pen Ching (dailyzen)

Stepping through this dream -- what courage.

Francis M. Cornford in his translation and running commentary of Plato's Sophist, says, "The Stranger begins by pointing out that 'all discourse depends on the weaving together of Forms'."
259D.
Stranger. Yes, my friend, and the attempt to separate everything from every other thing not only strikes a discordant note but amounts to a crude defiance of the philosophic Muse
Theaetetus. Why?
Stranger. This isolation of everything from everything else means a complete abolition of all discourse; for any discourse we can have owes its existence to the weaving together of Forms.
Theaetetus. True.

The weaving together of Forms allows conversation. We experience it four evenings during the week around the fire in the bookshop and one evening around the Rhodes table at hermitage. No lecture, no performance, no sermons or reports -- just conversation weaving together the forms that have appeared.

When we as dreamer awake, we begin to experience comprehension of a truth well beyond distraction and inattention. The energy of awareness with its potential for sharing this teaching and practice with another -- is what Buddhists call faith. It is what Val used to call "holding as true." Our era, writes Thich Nhat Hanh, is a time of lost faith.

When we hold something as true we really don't "know" it to be true. There is room for doubt, for a change of form, for new insight. Faith allows us a temporary resting place for time to change hands.

There's no need to worry. What is going to happen will happen. What will not happen is what is not going to happen. In the meantime we must remember everything and forget everything at the same time. Worry is worthless. What is worthwhile is weaving together forms in conversation with each other and every one. This conversation is the origin of present moment. This conversation is the completion of dream and awakening of what we hold as true with each other.

Tonight ends the four-year volunteer facilitation by Susan Smith-Hudson of the Tuesday Evening Buddhist Meditation Studies. Her faithful service, choice of poems, and unwavering counsel to "breathe three times before speaking" and "no cross talk" will be the source of respect and ribbing for many years to come. We are grateful to Susan.

John Cassian conference read at Sunday Evening Practice. Is it possible that any act is in itself indifferent? That we receive it and impose on it the designation "good" or "evil?" And if our minds are open and unjudging? No matter what the intent of the one acting the act in our direction? Can it be that only good be received no matter how wrong the act appears to be?

It is quite the power of transformation to be able to receive all in the light of God. No slight, no hurt, no malicious intent need darken our minds/hearts/spirits. Yes, there will be sorrow. Yes, there will be delight. But the steady state of receptivity to all as the appearance of God -- and the freedom to accept whatever comes as the transformative grace of re-creation of the world -- is this in our everyday capability as public worship inviting divine transcendence with inner presence?

There is not much the world can do to touch our inner presence. Once God has disappeared into God's creation -- permeating inner and outer so that there is no absence of God's awareness -- then all can be received through us into God. Nothing can separate us from the awareness of God loving us within and throughout.

But, of course, our unawareness. It cannot separate us, but our unawareness will create the illusion that an absence of God prevails. While it is only illusion, it nevertheless overwhelms us with despondency, depression, and distraction. It is up to our willingness to surrender to the radical reality suffusing our uncertain reality -- surrendering to the ground of being waiting to be seen in each and every thing, person, or act. Even the acts that give every impression as being devoid of God.

Francis of Assisi called it perfect joy. Jesus called it forgiveness without fear. It is the radical acceptance of what is taking place. It is transformative reception of what is there. It is grace and gratefulness. It is gift to trust we are not lost in our falling but will be found safe in the open hands of a God beyond whom we cannot fall.

There is no place to go that is not the presence of God. Not a notion of a God that causes harm and wrong, but a reality of God who appears within the experience to see us through.

Love sees us through. We are seen through, and in that transparent gift of freedom, love sees us through.
This is an innerstanding, (Shunyata's word), with which I can only watch and pray while dwelling in silence, stillness, and stark surrender. It is most often an empty wait. So, don't wait. Rather watch and pray with what is within us and throughout all already. This is a gift one can live and die with.

One, with which, I am grateful.

Are we going to wake up? Michael Thoms poses the question on New Dimensions this Sunday morning.

Terrorism is how our lives become devastated. It finally became "our" problem, after long plaguing other countries. Thoms' guest wonders whether our current response is just an attempt to strengthen the illusion that we are in control.

It's not only terrorism that threatens the illusion of control we cultivate. Everyday living and dying, everyday accidents, everyday surprises -- these too threaten the illusion.

Taking care of you is not a selfish thing. Taking care of others is not a selfless thing. There is a middle place. That place might be called leaving care. In that place is leaving care its own. Leaving care is abandoning both the selfish and selfless. Leaving care is allowing things to follow their own course -- with an exception. That exception is our watchfulness, our engaged, participatory watchfulness.

This notion of leaving care is out of our control. Life is living itself within, through, and alongside our presence. We cannot control anything for the long haul. It is our illusion to believe the brief spurts of balance (that we mistakenly call control) can be manipulated and extended throughout our lives, the life of our country and the life of our planet.

God is caring-itself. When we are involved in true care it is caring-itself lighting through us. Leaving care is allowing caring-itself freedom to enter the world in its own light.

Only gratefulness, for each thing and for everything, allows us to see within the light of God.

hospice

companioning presence

here,
home

God is
what is
looking through
us
with love.

Snow grows wet and slush hardens Ragged mountainside. Ji-Ji-Mu-Ge settles into hermitage. Jumps to table during Sunday Evening Practice knocks over two candles. Spends rest of conversation about the philosophy suggested by his name in the bathroom meowing his views.

Cesco perfumes himself on the mountain with some fragrance that is washed out of him in bathtub. He is cooperative and unfragrant again. Both Sando and Cesco stopped short on the path overlooking Hosmer Pond when a moving lump that turned out to be a porcupine ambled across our trek. We turned back.

Mu-ge and the two dogs circle for agreeable boundaries in the house. These wary obstacles of particularity -- spatial negotiations -- narrow and tighten and perhaps, in time, will disappear. So too with us. We move from the unboundaried to vague then clear boundaries, through permeable boundaries to no boundaries -- someday. So much of life seems to be the establishing then dismantling of boundaries. In the spiritual life the process is mandatory. In national and security matters the process freezes with establishing and protecting clear boundaries. Unless, of course, the will of the state demands more and more and more for itself.

We are grateful to be spared the responsibility for securing the state, the nation, and interests therein. It is a special service some take on for the rest of us -- to protect and preserve. Both church and state assume that task. The rest of us are free to let go and let God emerge where church and state do not control. That place is within. That place is no-place.

In prison Friday Andre's poem asked us to consider the word "capture." It is well worth contemplating. To capture = to take. (In contrast, to leave = to fail to take or refrain from taking.) To be captured by the sun after a storm is to be taken by the warmth and brightness, relief following danger. (To leave or to let go, to suffer, permit, or allow is to free and be freed from that which catches or gains control by force, stratagem, or guile.)

Likewise, Harold follows up his personal autobiographical inquiry with an investigator's efforts to interview those who knew him before his crime 25 years ago. The investigator writes he might not spell so well, but he'll ask the right questions.)

So too Shane is asking himself whether to continue here where he is or (in some way) depart. Maybe a new citizenship in another country. (Maybe in a way of thinking that is not so punishing.) It is a privileged education we experience visiting for conversation inside the walls of prison. We read Andre Cadrescu's essay on John Cage's Silence, and Shunyata's (Emmanuel Sorensen's) two chapters in Dancing With The Void and a New York Time's Science article on the Cosmological theory of an Inflating Multiverse and Limitless Space.

We're just conversing with each other.

Perhaps there is no boundary. I am in prison. I am in hermitage. I am poem being written. I am universe expanding beyond itself. I am inmate sitting at round table. I am guard looking in through glass window. I am Cesco snoozing on bed after bath washing away pungent smell. I am water draining into septic. I am kneeler in front room waiting for weight to posture itself in front of crucifix. I am wind chime hanging from cedar tree in strong wind. I am crusted snow with fallen oak leaves stretched along expanse. I am porcupine burrowing into hollow trunk on darkened hill. I am letters throwing themselves together into words that settle for now into narrative. I am silence and emptiness following final period ending this word.

At shop Jeff strings stick. Hugh and Sam have been talking about starting a fire from scratch. Virginia and Susan watch on. They are intent on the experiment. It goes nowhere.

Muge arrived last night from local shelter. His full name is ji ji muge (or, harmony within diversity). More literally ji ji muge means between one thing/event/happening (ji) and another thing/event/happening (ji) there is no (mu) barrier/separation (ge).

He seems a sweet 4-month-old kitten. Some coon cat in him.
Cesco tracks him. Muge swats Cesco. Sando raises her head, glances over, and lowers head.

Ji ji muge -- welcome to this generous new arrival!

Crossing Oneself

To understand
what is here
begin to understand
our being there. Cross
"t" from there, comes here,
comes God. Dying cross,
lives God, there to here.

wfh,13nov02

Joel brought firewood. Dropped it right by last year's stacked towers. It's out there. In drizzle. Yup. Waiting for this year's architecture. Beehive? No telling what shape might take.

Accomplishing Peace

November is emptying. The leaves of two prior months' turning have fallen. Rain and snow begin to saturate earth again.

We know this without going outdoors. The basement is under 13 inches of water today. Sump pump from last winter is ground down and muttering but not working. I sit and stare from broken wooden steps at floating debris. Saskia comes home from Rankin’s with new pump. Water flows over rims of green boots and freezes my feet while I twist hose and submerge plastic pail riven with holes containing new Flotec.

In the ocean of the holy dharma
There is neither movement nor stillness.
The essence of the wave is like a mirror;
When something comes, the reflection appears.
When there is nothing in the mind,
Wind and waves are both forgotten.
( - Gido )

Autumn is end-season. Piece by piece earth in New England reclaims what it gave. Nothingness of first season, winter. Seed and sprig of spring. Summer’s resplendent glorious fullness. Now autumn receives back emptiness, especially November.

Hosmer Pond can be seen through bare branches. So too the neighbor’s house. The chapel/zendo is prominent stark. It stands four square behind Loon IV and dinghy Immer Call back from salt-water heel and bounce to mountain stillness.

Elections are over. We will most likely enter another war. This one with Iraq. The war on drugs against American ghetto poor and anti-drug fumigations in Colombia continues. The war on terrorism home and abroad continues. The war on poverty was lost without a truce. The war against the middle class and lower class by the corporate class and wealthy class is raging in a seemly quiet. Whenever the administration in Washington wishes its way on any contemporary issue they simply call their opponents unpatriotic and liberal rhetorical sympathizers with the enemy. So many enemies, so little room for dissent, so complex a metaphor -- that of war.

It is the empty time between secular celebrations. Stores shelve their Halloween costumes and ready for pre-Christmas merchandise sales. Thanksgiving will show up as time to remember we ought to be grateful for something to do with fruitful fields, new occupancy, freedom of expression, and a sense we are blessed. It is a regional holiday, decidedly American.

It is an empty time between religious celebrations. Ramadan nears end, Christ prays an Advent of new consciousness, Buddha pauses before enlightenment the same day Mary readies to be conceived with no barrier to God, and Chanukah menorahs prepare to extend a hedge hope against lowering candles.

Darkness tiptoes across the middle of this hunter’s month. We, like frightened deer in wooded glen, listen for breaking twig and bolting metal in pre-dawn stillness. Death loads, takes sighting, and pauses. We’re unsure the light to come is flash of ordinance signaling our end, or nova spirit of life burning through our ignorance with news of liberation for human consciousness.

97 Jesus said,
The [Father's] imperial rule is like a woman who was carrying a [jar] full of meal. 2While she was walking along [a] distant road, the handle of the jar broke and the meal spilled behind her [along] the road. 3She didn't know it; she hadn't noticed a problem. 4When she reached her house, she put the jar down and discovered that it was empty.
(-- from the Gospel of Thomas from the Scholars Version translation published in The Complete Gospels)

It is a curious proposition that the Father’s accomplishment is emptying out. Emptying out, not noticing a problem as it occurs, not knowing that it is happening as it is happening.

There’s no joy in war. It is November. We are emptying. A nova nada, a new nothingness, perhaps, will release us within. We must find out who we are. We have to come to see who we are in each other’s lives. There is no opposite to war. There is only war, and those who live through war with peace in sacred emptiness. God alone knows how this is accomplished.

May each be accomplished.

Without Knowing Why

A Hallowed Eve arrives. We'll ready the chapel/zendo wood stove for sitting and psalms. We will try not to be veils between each other.

The spiritual light shines alone,
far transcending the senses
and their fields;
the essential substance is
exposed, real and eternal.
It is not contained in written words.
The nature of mind has no defilement;
it is basically perfect and complete in itself.
Just get rid of delusive attachments,
and merge with realization of thusness.
- Pai-chang (720–814)

Veils are willing to dissolve when we are willing to look through them. Veils exist to protect us from seeing too clearly what is there to be seen. Veils are thinnest this eve of All Souls, Celtic New Year's Eve, and Eve of Day of the Dead.

Some in spirituality speak of the death of the ego. It is when there is no longer any supportive energy for veils. The held belief we are isolated separated beings crumbles and dissolves. We are left bereft of what we once thought we were. This dissolving of the veil is a shocking invitation into a new way of being. A new energy is released.

Opening Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's book The Future of Man page 210 presents itself with these words:
After a short period of untroubled proprietorship every new source of energy, as we know by experience, gives rise to two related problems, that of the limitations to be imposed on it and that of its preservation. The new force must not be allowed to get out of hand or to exhaust itself. The same applies (although we have thought less about it) to the source of energy abruptly released by Nature through Man which I have called the 'force of purposive thinking.'

What are we to think when the veil thins? Are we, of necessity, compelled to both put limitations on, and try to preserve, what is revealed? How far are we from understanding Meister Eckhart's phrase "leben ohne warum" (life without the question why)? What is the alternative to our dependence on the question 'Why?'

If today you hear God's voice,
harden not your heart.
--Psalm 95

Will we always ask "Why?" when (or if) we hear the voice of God? Do we need to search and find the right wavelength, the right station on the dial, in order to hear God's voice? Or, is God's voice the permeating sound and silence resonating at heart of each and every being, each and every thing, each and every event and occurrence in existence? In life itself?

Tonight the veil thins. Something dissolves. Without limitation or preservation. Arrives. Softens.
Our hearts?

Now?

Cesco at foot of chair. Sando by door. Today quiet. Trees field chill air. If limbs bare, my spirit bares. Cold stillness. Some days it takes all one can to simply breathe. Thin air. Thin membrane between worlds. The thin place opens. No speaking there. Only stark learning silence.

After Jesus said, "This is my body, this is my blood," was he at that place? Where does one go once coming to earth and returning to earth?

Today, walking 4 road miles to town, I thought about each granule of soil. I thought about all I don't know.

Heart of Peace; Heart of God?

What is the cost of peace?

We know the cost of war -- dead bodies, enormous economic expense, consolidation of power in the hands of a few military or administration officials. But what is the cost of peace?

We'd have to consider justice -- equal treatment under the law. This equal treatment is at times more abused than held in honor. I frequent a prison. I know who is there and not there. Not many millionaires. Not those Wall Street or corporate activists drinking Black Label or sniffling white powder who've stolen from thousands of people and are protected by the weapons of lawyers. Rather, mostly poor kids. Those whose back street activities after beer and marijuana or heroin rip off two or three people brandishing extra bags to sell and a firearm for protection.

Peace costs less than war. But the cost hits us and our culture right where we hurt the most -- in the comfortable habits of our American life style. Peace would ask us to change our way of living. We in America are very wealthy. We are criticized that our way of life is decadent. Our way of life depends on others' living far below our standard. Would peace, real peace, ask of us to have less, consume less, demand less from others?

Christianity is loosely based on the life of Jesus, called by some Christ. The Ground of Being and Ground of Christ is the very Ground of Each One of Us. It occurs to me that to turn or return to that Ground or Christ would mean living the life of Christ. What is the life of Christ?

Here is where many part paths. It occurs to me that Christ is peace. Not security, not protection at any cost. Not deterrence. Not primacy in munitions or deployment of armed forces. Not detente. Not first strike ability. Not patsy. Not victim. Not martyr. Not savior of the world.

To say Christ is peace is to consider saying we are not other than Christ. We realize Christ realizing what Jesus realized. Jesus realized that to live God is to abandon the self that acts and operates in place of God. To find oneself dwelling God is to live what God is. What is God living?

Here is where many more paths part. To live God is to embody peace. Peace is the radical acceptance of the poverty of God. Emptiness is God’s dwelling.

God owns nothing. Thus, everything is of God.
God withholds nothing. Thus, everything is gift.
God sees everything as it is. Thus, we are transparent to God; there is nothing to hide.
God loves what is real. Thus, to be real is primary.

Peace is the dwelling of God. No economic wealth, no military strength, no ideas of hierarchical "we are the best" applies in the dwelling of God.
What does peace cost? And why can't we afford peace?

Peace costs nothing. And we, it seems, are unwilling to, or cannot, afford the nothing it takes to dwell there.

We understand war, killing, spoils of conquest, and exploiting fears.
What we don't understand is someone emptying himself or herself, taking on the form of one who serves others, and dwelling there with and as God. As God's dwelling in this existence on this earth.

Unless, of course, it isn't a matter of understanding. But a matter of simplicity, love, and life. Unless it is a matter of courage. Of heart.

Which brings us into the question; do we have the heart for peace?

In Augusta Maine and Washington DC people gather to say "No" to President Bush's intended war with Iraq. In Minnesota a state mourns at the death of Senator Paul Wellstone, family members, workers, and pilots in plane crash yesterday as investigators prepare to sift through the site for clues as to how and why it happened. The weather turns raw and wet along the coast, a bleak statement corresponding to antipathy toward war and sorrow at death.

Before I was forty I quit my job
and came to tread the way
of saints and sages.
If I come out, it’s just
because I love the hills
and streams.
My ears are clean,
my vision’s ample.
When you ponder it,
this is true happiness.
The golden girdle girds calamity;
purple robes, pain.
Are they better than my briar
cane and cap of straw?
- Chang Yang-Hao

Who are these men and woman who give up briar cane and straw cap for purple robes of governance and power? And how can they, and we, sort through the temptations to ignorance so rife in human rational ego? How do we come to serve rather than be served? How transform the inclination to rule with benefit to some few and begin to serve with benefit to everyone?

Workers from Prock Marine are tearing out the deck pilings outside the shop. Sawn tired debris of 40 years lay on side. New full replacements stand fresh and green from mid-tide under dock. There is, always, much to replace, much to reform.

To transform is to allow what is occurring or being said by another to pass through our very form there present with another. Transformation is more difficult than replacement or reformation.

It is a day to pray for those attempting peace. It is a day to pray for those attempting to rule. For wisdom, compassion, understanding, and service.

It is a day to pray for those dying, and those who have died.

Waking this dawn, Meetingbrook mala beads in hand, the words occur:
Jesus lived his life living God.

Practice is practice

At Tuesday Evening Conversation on Buddhist Studies John C. and Saskia collaborate unknowingly on a wording of practice that fits: "Naturally -- it's not hard, and doesn't hurt -- practice."

Earlier a woman spoke of playing piano years ago. She seemed wistful when asked if she kept her hand in. "If you don't practice, you forget." (Susan F.) With prompting she realized what she'd said. Her words apply to any practice, particularly that of zazen and mindfulness.

We practice to remember -- to remember who we really are and what is the ground of our being. There is no future goal -- no goal of enlightenment or heaven. We practice sitting meditation and mindfulness to remember our ground.

When sitting there is no technique, word, breath regulation, mantra, image, or guided formula we follow. There is only sitting. There is no "subject" concentrating on some "object." There is just sitting.

Remember -- earth is earth. We arise from earth and return to earth. While sitting we sit with earth as earth.
Remember -- God is God. We are within God and return to God. While sitting we sit in this creation with this creating God.
Remember -- each one of us is each one of us. We present ourselves within the presence of each being. While sitting we sit with each presence as it is in itself.

This is what we practice, this remembrance.
If we don't practice, we forget.

Naturally, it's not hard and doesn't hurt, practice.

Four inmates and two outmates conversed about Jean Paul Sartre's "Condemned to be Free" essay and Andre's poem about that place within where we still have choice whether to go to light or to dark.

The fishing hole each finds is a virgin future. Alone in the moment, accompanied by the presence of all who have touched us, appreciating what is there for the first time. Ed brought us to that fishing hole. Paco brought the touch of all he's known with him. Andre brought his poem. Sonny knows the place well once and once again.

It was raining as we went inside the walls. The sun was shining as we said goodbye at the fishing hole of our appreciation for each other.

Lori calls to tell me Rocky B's funeral was today. Friend and neighbor of my parents on 69th street. We'll keep them in prayer.

All things are
perfectly
resolved in the
Unborn.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

We know why he died. Because he was born. How can one be unborn? Much less come to terms with the phrase "Born again?"

Originally, yes, nothing is born.
Perhaps if we learn to unask a question we might learn what is unborn. Until then, tired, it is time to sleep.

Everything is relational -- no subject, no object. There is only two "jects," says Forrest at Thursday Evening Conversation. We laugh. Without "sub" or "ob" what is there but simply to be thrown?

Land well, Rocky!

Theme: Trow-el: To Disturb or To Trust God?

Our country, right and wrong.

It occurs to me this damp storm-readying day that the difficulty we are having in this country with ethical thinking is lists. On one side of the page, correct behavior. On the other side, incorrect. Therefore, keep to the correct; avoid the incorrect. Sounds right and reasonable. Are we missing anything?

The exceptions to this list are thrown into the area known as murky or unclear. They follow the question, When is the right thing not good to do? Or, When is the wrong thing good to do?

When kill? When deprive people of their rights? When choose death over life by withholding services or medical assistance? When not make medical insurance, and thus care, not available to increasing numbers of people? When choose to take from the rich to give to the poor? Or, the more common decision - When take from the poor to give to the rich?

The murky unclear usually calls for guidelines or principles for use in determining where and when such and such an action might be taken without incurring punishment or too great a common public outrage. The human mind is often very clever in devising criteria for such situations. The popular mind shrinks differing views into simplistic allegiances and categories -- like Republican versus Democratic, or conservative versus liberal. Commentators and political pundits whose aim seems to be parody and divisive antagonism pick up still further simplifications. They load complex issues into simplistic jingoes and fire their guns into airwaves and newsprint. Their aim is to kill meaningful conversation and reasoned debate by substituting mockery, name-calling, othering, and arrogance.

Arrogance especially. Not asking questions in such a way inviting responses that explore ways to meaningful solutions honoring all participants affected by the issue, all touched by the topic. Instead, the bottom line becomes: them versus us; we've got it versus they want it; and finally, God favors the strong and bright and disfavors the weak and stupid. These designations are arrived at by architects of arguments who are intent on winning and preserving their way of life. It is not a conversation created by those seeking thoughtful insight, those longing for diminishment of suffering for all peoples.

We don't know the so-called right time and right place to concentrate the energies of the nation toward a purposeful goal of neutralizing or eliminating evil. Pragmatists and idealists alike worry that such goals are foolhardy. Others contend that if not now, when? If not us, who? If not definite action, what? Talk and more talk while outrageous attacks on individuals and communities continue?

This is the crux of ethics and our contemporary world. What used to be the concern of ethics and morality -- namely, sexual behavior, honesty in interpersonal and business dealings, use and abuse of substances such as alcohol and drugs, assisting people to die according to their own decision, or not -- has changed. Today's concerns seem different.

Today's concerns have escalated from complicated issues that divide and offend cultures different from each other -- to simplistic solutions of elimination of those whose difference you cannot abide. This is another list. Ethnic, religious, sexual preference, economic status, racial complexion, class strata, political philosophy -- all manner of variety and diversity, plurality and difference -- are on a list. This list is earmarked for elimination.

In days gone by the list was controlled by religious zealots and institutional hierarchy. Those on the list were going to hell for everlasting damnation in fire and unceasing suffering. It was known as the division of saints and sinners. Agents of God administrated the list. The good went to heaven. The bad consigned to hell. Wars and inquisitions, crusades and ritual condemnation were enough to strike fear into hearts of the undecided.

Today, God is still used to condemn and destroy. Whole nations and/or whole sections of people are earmarked for destruction. We are capable of making these lists. We make these lists. We study the names. We check them off one by one.

My country does this. Many countries do this. And multitudinous factions within countries, religions, ideologies, and mental constructs do this. These mental constructs reduce all conversation and worldview to good/bad, right/wrong, evil/our way. It is a mind, a mental construct that is hopelessly dualistic. This dualism, a helpful way of navigating our technological and mechanized world, has deteriorated into an either/or in the moral/ethical realm that deeply endangers our ability to seek solutions that fall outside simplistic categories of deliberation.

I think we need to seek solutions using tools of archeology. We need to trowel and excavate awareness from the debris of history. We need to find again the lost origin of our being-in-the-world. This digging needs careful sifting through debris accumulated by dust raised by passing wars, laws, ambitions, failures, fears, accomplishments, and grand (at the time) successes.

What lay at bottom of human action? What ground wishes to reveal its original reason for being? What has the earth to say about what has emerged from it?

And where, really, is what we call "God?"

Our country is right and wrong -- about wealth, war, human worth, freedom, happiness, and systems of sharing resources of the earth with all dwelling therein and on. Beneath the right/wrong is the origin of our being here at all. Beneath the mental constructs we've developed to manage the opinions and resources of personal and planetary existence is a profound reality hidden.

What profound reality remains hidden beneath, beyond, and within us?

That profound reality hidden is life itself.

Not the mental construct that asks questions like: When exactly for legal purposes does life begin in a woman's body? When exactly are we justified to take another's life? Does life end when the body dies? Not the questions that proliferate the majority of minds -- about inheritance, investments, security, power, and pleasure. Neither the phrase “life-style” nor "the life of this country." But -- life itself – beyond the divisions and distinctions we place on it.

The profound reality hidden is how we look into permeating questions all share. Such as: What is life? Who are we in each other's life?
Really.

If we stopped everything for a week and asked ourselves this question, over and over, perhaps something will be unearthed.

Perhaps we will return to earth.

Finding there God.

Really.
Not right and wrong. Not ideas about God. Not creeds, constitutions, charters, real estate deeds, personal finance portfolios, nor nurtured hurts with (in the words of poet Richard Hugo) "compensations too lovely too leave."

Only God. Originating earth. Cosmos eternal. The ground, center, spirit, and light of existence.
Life and love. An ever-present origin, (in Jean Gebser’s words).

To think, or suppose, God?
Any trow-el handy?

Colors appear in crisp light. What matters appears in clear light.
Mark and friends visit from New York this Columbus holiday. Wind blows from northwest gusting to 35 knots.

See for yourself.
Directly transcend the
principles and activities
of the buddhas and patriarchs.
Go through the forest of thorns.
Transcend the barriers
of potential described by
ancestral teachers.
Pass through the silver mountain
and iron wall; then for the first time
you will realize there is a
transcendent fundamental endowment;
you can sit, helping people solve their
sticking points and untie their bonds.
- Shoitsu (1202-1280)

Walking Ragged this morning after zazen and psalms with Sando and Cesco, leaves glistening in first sunlight, cool air invigorating their pace.
Karl is back from Christ in the Desert, delighted. A honeymooning couple visit the shop. He'd been a short while with the Trappists. Retired Lutheran minister over from central Maine earlier. Those longing for unsticking point and untied bonds surround us.

The heart of monastic practice is wholeheartedness. David Steindl-Rast OSB said this to poet David Whyte -- about the antidote to exhaustion being wholeheartedness.

If we are going to sit, then completely sit. If praying the psalms, completely pray them (with objections as well as affirmations). If walking mountain trails, then completely walk the trail. All of it is prayer. All of it, mindfulness.

The terror of Bali explosion, Maryland/DC sniper killings, and the obsession of the United States president with attacking Iraq and its obsessive dictator is the realization how little matters to those whose eye is filled with death and destruction. Ideology doesn't equal the value of human life. Whether the ideology of capitalistic democracy or the ideology of oil powered tyranny -- neither come close to the importance of a single human life. Neither is more important than earth itself we stand on.

Look at us. Look at all of us. Abandon ideology; receive living beings with hospitality and humility.
Take a look at what really matters.

Look through clear light.
See for yourself.

The human heart longs to return home to itself.

Moni dies. Several weeks ago she sat in center of canoe as we paddled the pond near Rangeley Lake. So quiet. She was experiencing back pain on her visit to the double 80th birthday celebration. On the canoe ride, peace and silence.

Reading Dowling Singh at this morning's 'The Many Faces of Death' conversation we wondered about the Ground of Being. Earlier at Lectio the parable of the wedding feast -- which at first and second reading sounds like the resolution just passed by Congress authorizing first strike permission to the president. On third reading it might be metaphor for abandoning ego self for God self -- else, punishing behavior toward everybody, even those gaining access to the mystical oneness of the wedding feast.

Punishment precedes and succeeds the self-aggrandizing posturing of dictators of every stripe, star, and crescent scythe. War cannot distinguish between the self-indulgence of tyrannical leader or democratic leader. All are punished for the evasion rife in willing the world in our own image.

There is sorrow in death, as there is sorrow in the preface to war. Powder is loaded and flint readied for striking.

If we were wise, we would say, “Send innocent and foolhardy peace pilgrims to Baghdad. Let them enter the feast of union, or let them be killed trying.” No one is killed when the innocent die willingly -- taking no life, but allowing their lives to be offered for peace.

But we are not wise. So we prepare to send warriors to shoot and bomb and kill those who do not wish to die.

We who are about to live in the prayer of peace and silence salute you in the name of what is holy. Do not create death by taking other's lives. Create life by abandoning all illusion and false ideology -- whether tyrannical power or executive power. Look for the opposite of war.

Look for what is looking for the human heart.

No war will return the human heart to itself.

At dawn, frost gathers on tent top. Unzipping sleeping bag not heavy enough for autumn in Canada, light glows behind island mountains across from St. Andrews.

Walking path behind Katy's Pond we see mother deer and two young ones at edge of beach across growing expanse of light.

Last night at Christian Contemplative Conversation, we speak of the word ecology. Oikos = ‘home’ in Greek. Logos = ‘meaning’ or ‘wording of.’ Wording of home, meaning of home, or dwelling at home -- this is what ecology is.

Once there was a way to get back home again, went the words of a song.

Now?

As sun peeked over island mountain, lengths of sticks waded in salt stillness near shore.
This is a way of seeing oneself home.

Two people, two dogs, and three deer walked that path one sweet cold morning in Canada.

On the road, two days away.

My home’s in the
flowering mountains.
My joy is purest reflection
in a rush hut by a blue grotto,
at the end of a crazy winding path.
At noon I take a simple meal
and when I’m full
I take my staff
and wander to the
mountain top and gaze.
- Yun-K’an Tzu

What is there to see?
Looking at earth, at nature, at nothing in particular.
Looking as earth, as nature, as nothing in particular.
This cosmotheandric gaze – Earth/Nature, God, Each One of Us.

Nothing in particular?
God is not a thing, no thing, nothing. Is it true? Are we nothing in particular?

I have nothing to say about this. I don't know. God alone knows.
God’s language is earth, nature, each one of us.

God speaks silence lovingly within each one -- and all -- we see.

Thirty people filled the cabin for dedication. Many sang together. Then each. Kristen sang. SuSane sang. John sang. Saskia, Virginia, Sam, and John played instruments. Robert read poem. Susan blessed water for Buddhist blessing of place for practice. Cesco drank the blessing water. Transitus night was this combination -- as well as silence and hands on cabin walls leaving blessings by hands and hearts.

After Eucharist in Rockland, prison today, Andre's poem "Then He Came." A gift --
from the darkest of the skies came light,
a bright spark,
he caught the people's eyes,
and helped with their vision
(excerpt, poem by Andre W.)

Tonight's sitting and compline complete the lovely celebration of Francis.

This is our practice.
In silence and prayer to hold each in heart and light -- this is our promise.
In gratitude!

Dedication of Chapel/Zendo Cabin
Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage
Oct 3, 2002



1. Welcome

2. Reading from Living Buddha, Living Christ

3. Songs & Music

4. Buddhist Blessing

5. Words of Gratitude

6. Songs & Music

7. Psalm Prayer

8. Hands & Hearts, Final Blessing of Touch

9. Refreshments

………………………………..
To study the way is to study self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to remove the barriers between one’s self and others. (Zen Master Dogen)

All praise be yours, My Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all the weather's moods,
By which you cherish all that you have made.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,
So useful, lowly, precious and pure.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
Through whom you brighten up the night.
(Saint Francis)

Angels today. Therese yesterday. Francis of Assisi tomorrow evening, then the 4th, and all October.

You ask why I live in the mountain forest,
I smile, and am silent,
and even deep within remain quiet:
the peach trees blossom,
the water flows.
- Li T’ai-po (701-?)

The brook is a sleepy tumbling passage from one place to another. Francis went to the core. He faced the mirror. He stepped into the mirror. He is known as the mirror of Christ.

This path is worth stepping.

Finishing ladder steps to loft in chapel/zendo. Dedication on Thursday evening 3Oct., Transitus of Francis. Woodbox placed on porch. Windows cleaned. Loft arranged.

The iris pond has flowered
Before the old temple;
I sell tea this evening
By the water’s edge.
It is steeped in the cups
With the moon and stars;
Drink and wake forever
From your worldly sleep.
- Baisao (1675-1763)

The delight of a place to pray and sit zazen! Rough wood, candlelight, and woodstove. Grand simplicity of sacred space.

If the radical core of creation is at center, then as we open our mouth and heart, mind and intention to reach that place of presence we engage the open way of place itself.

The very place of prayer is where Christ emerges. The very place of silent sitting is where Buddha awakens.

Practice makes perfect sense. Prayer reaches no end. Awakening silence within practice and prayer -- it is time to begin again. I am still in my own dream. Now it is time for sleep.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
(--from poem “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke)

Two dogs get biscuits by bed. When will they chew?

“Heartwood circle up,” the woman said on the sloping roof of Sr. Bette's yurt-in-progress. Tied by rope at waist to copula beam, we join the slow and meditative work of fashioning cedar shingle to round arc and jigged height Saturday afternoon at lighthouse road Stockton Springs.

Forty-some years I’ve lived in the mountains
Ignorant of the world’s rise and fall
Warmed at night by a stove full of pine needles
Satisfied at noon by a bowl of wild plants
Sitting on rocks watching clouds and empty thoughts
Patching my robe in sunlight practicing silence
Till someone asks why Bodhidharma came east
And I hang out my wash.
- Shih-wu (1252-1352)

The koan might easily be: Why does Christ come in human form?
And Saskia kneads dough in kitchen for bread.

It is feast of all angels. Notably: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel.
These four names of Archangels rise in translation like haiku poem for us:

Coming to be Conveyance, a Haiku of Angels
Who is like God? Strong
One of God. Blessing of God.
My light is like God.
(wfh)

These Angels come to earth because this is where Christ comes. Wherever else the benefit of Angels and Christ, earth is blessed.

The world’s rise and fall is again in the mouths and minds of those whose odd delusion is the planning of destruction, war, and remaking in their image.

Hidden in the center of the world is Christ. What is Christ? Christ is not the religious object of religious people. Christ is the radical core of creation. Jesus was a Jew, a man of his time. Christ is where Jesus found himself.

Angels permeate creation as questioning, strong, blessing, light. They are inspiration and intuition of creation and humanity. They, like God, like us -- long that light show through each and all with glowing warmth and clear sight.

Here is creation. Here is where we find ourselves. Here in creation. Here is Christ, the radical core of creation. Here is laundry swaying in breeze. Here is fragrance of bread becoming itself in oven.

Finding our way is the kindness light offers.
Practicing silence. Practicing creation itself.

Lola says she and Carter wait on Bear, their elderly dog, to teach them when and how to let go.
When do we actually die? As a question it ranks with -- When are we actually born?

Around the circle this morning we consider why many consider oncoming death 'tragedy,' while others do not. It is a sweet gift to speak of death. And rare.

In a pellucid ocean,
Bubbles arise and dissolve again.
Just so, thoughts are no
Different from ultimate reality,
So don’t find fault; remain at ease.
Whatever arises, whatever occurs,
Don’t grasp—release it on the spot.
Appearances, sounds, and objects
Are all one’s own mind;
There’s nothing except mind.
- Buddha

At Lectio this morning in the cabin, "Have this mind in you which was in Christ Jesus." Emptying, serving -- like death to life.

Sitting in loft for night prayer, candlelight glowing rafters.
It doesn't matter what comes in our life. Whatever comes is our life.

The highest truth is not difficult,
just avoid picking and choosing.
-- Zen master Seng-ts'an, 7th century

Rain comes. This day, this rain is our life.

Earth flag on barn signals allegiance. I pledge this allegiance to the earth, on which I stand.
This is where I live. This is where I die. This day. This place. This is my life.

When the zen master was asked for a definition of truth that would be true 500 years from now, he said, "The truth...is just like this."

I don't understand this.

Just to clearly see it would suffice.
And to share the soul of what is at origin, truth.

If prayer lifts up mind and heart, God is equipresent.
If zazen quiets mind and body, presence is equally God.
Beyond this, nothing matters, nothing is said.
September night. Moonlit chill skims Hosmer Pond.

Anytime we think we are sufficient, something goes missing.

Careful! Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you’re lured to watch,
Are a wall before the Truth.
- Sogyo (1667 – 1731)

It is not out there, nor is it in here. It is not the moon, nor dewdrop, nor our eyes. It is the watchful participation of each with each with each that engages no-wall truth.

In chapel/zendo Richard wonders about the 6.5 billion of us, and how many serve life, how many serve God. It is the light of God that catches our attention.

All the 6.5 billion are repositories of that light. Our mistake is looking for sufficient examples that, to our thinking, are models of light. We pass over each other looking for saints, masters, divas, angels, ascendant beings, great teachers, and official spokespeople for exalted notions of what is right or perfect.

If we are lured to watch something or someone outside ourselves, we are walling up that person or thing, event or teaching. But if we recognize there is only one new being each time, each instance of engagement with another person, event, place, or thing -- then we are creativity itself in the act of birthing a new form of existence.

If we are careful, there is a way through the forgetfulness, disappointment, and suffering this world cultivates. If we are careful we might see the light of God in another. In that seeing, for that instance, we might engage with joy what is being revealed there and then.

In a space the size of a salt granule fallen from an old pretzel, all might reside in peace -- in flavoring joyful engagement serving life.

The cabin is now Meetingbrook Hermitage's Meditation Cabin. Morning and evening sittings, Saturday Morning and Sunday Evening Practice will be held there. It is our Chapel/Zendo.

Emptiness is a name for nothingness,
A name for ungraspibility,
A name for mountains, rivers, the whole earth.
It is also called the real form.
In the green of the pines,
The twist of the brambles,
There is no going and coming;
In the red of the flowers
And the white of the snow,
There is no birth and no death.
- Ryusai

No name contains everything. It will be, ineluctably, the Cabin.

Sacred reading and sacred conversation is rooted in what is showing up and sounding through now.

The wise people of old who
Took goodness as their way
Were retiring as though shy
Of all around them.
Their conduct to all was
Respectful as though to
Honored guests;
They could adapt themselves
Like ice melting before a fire;
They were artless
As blocks of uncarved wood.
- Lao tzu

What have we forgotten?

Steady greening rain, dropping everywhere, staying like old friends from high away, after long absence, come to tell stories to the ground.

The wise people of old who
Took goodness as their way
Possessed marvelously
Subtle powers of penetration;
They were so deep that
None could plumb their mind,
And, on this account, if forced
To describe them we can only
Say that they moved cautiously
Like people fording a river;
- Lao tzu (dailyzen)

Like those long asleep in their loneliness, stones in brook awaken with near-forgotten memory of former friendship.

Delia Mae at Sunday Evening Practice reminded us of the 14 workers from Honduras and Guatemala who died up north in a van accident on their way to work. We were talking about blood, about word and the ending of hostility.

What is the blood of words? This blood must course through us -- as words enter us through ears and eyes. Becoming part of our tissue, musculature, bone, and veins. These words from the source, the very origin of creating love, passing through us, taking residence in us, settling into quiet watchful waiting near our hearing.

Today is Yom Kippur. Today we look for light in each other. Today we save each other from the darkness we, unawares, impose on ourselves and each other. Seeing even a flicker of light in the other brings that one into a simple radiant community of shared light. The messiah arrives in the light we find and share with each one.

So, today, we move cautiously with alert attention across that dry brook or flowing river. Whether empty or full, we are seekers of light; we are watchers for light wherever it might appear. In any darkness, especially deep darkness, even a mere speck of light opens the way.

Steady greening rain. The resting souls of 14 workers. The empty dark place we find ourselves. Telling stories with old friends -- this is the ground of our shared being.

One step begins, one step continues. Blessed be the way we come to ground!

Watched film The Book of Life, by writer-director Hal Hartley at harbor room last night. Jesus prefers forgiveness. Final scene, ferry crossing from Manhattan, twin towers receding.

It is an odd juxtaposition – Jesus moving away from expectations of father’s vengeance, crossing through what would become a thin place between destructive justification and constructive compassion.

It’s a wonder to look at something suddenly seen differently.

Wonderful! Wonderful!
The sermon of the inanimate is inconceivable.
If you try to hear it with your ears,
You’ll hardly understand
Only when you hear it in your eyes
Will you be able to know.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807-869)(dailyzen)

Eyes hear what is -- without commentary.

Forgiveness needs compassionate understanding. Forgiveness is curious watchfulness of what is emerging through. Jesus anguishes what to do with what he sees -- the sight of what is emerging through. Humankind moves with an uncertain emergence through this current time, form, and mind.

The devil, we might say, is curious too. But that curiosity is less wonder than a certain slant of frenzied interest how best to exploit the direction humanity turns.

Plans evolve for war with Iraq. War and humankind – a curious evolution!

I prefer the evolution of rough wood meditation cabin. It sits with us this morning as chapel/zendo presenting its sermon to our eyes.
Each mistake made during construction is forgiven. It stands in prayerful vigil, eyes and ears resting on simple being and silent presence. We see what we hear.

Forgiveness is not easy for those deciding the fate of nations and regimes while sorting through their own economic interests. Forgiveness is not easily fooled. It knows genuine action. It recognizes when genuine necessity disappears and posturing frippery takes over.

For some, there is nothing other than forgiveness. Christ watches. He attends the suffering of end times -- whether personal life, dreams, or war. Christ disappears into what is transparent. We, unfortunately, are difficult to see through. We place bets on possible outcomes instead of emerging from hostility to embody the peace we so long for.

Booking life is not an option. Finding oneself in the book of life means allowing life its own name. Why be other than life? Why make odds on life, wagering with all that longs to live and share life with its origin, the one creating life?

What is is What is. A Franciscan Friar I knew had a favorite sermon of three words: “God is God.”

To live What-is-Life is to enter Christ through one’s own life. If we allow this entering and this emergence to happen, we become what we truly are – one in the other. If we block and barricade our self against the shared blood of one body – the body of Christ – we remain two, separate, dissected.

“Whole sight;” John Fowles wrote, “or all the rest is desolation.” Forgiveness waits and watches this way. To see whole is to see life as it is. To forgive something or someone is to see things as they are. To see and accept something or someone as exactly what and who they are – that’s forgiveness. It seems too simple. Christ help us!

May each have a quiet night and a peaceful death!

Tom from New York smoked a cigar by harbor. Another man who carted off seven "Subjects" Books In Print after breaking a plastic plate brought back some old Ellery Queen mystery magazines, a book by Ferdinand Marcos, and one on educational philosophy. Tom found it a curious swap. Life is a curious swap.

Neither by words nor by the patriarch;
Neither by colors nor by sound was I enlightened.
But, at midnight, when I blew out
The candle and went to bed,
Suddenly, I reached the dawn.
Profound quietude delivered me
To the transparent moonlight.
After enlightenment one understands
That the Six Classics contain not even a word.
- Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529)

The Angelique will enter port channel at 8:30 this morning. Jim yesterday closed on his new dwelling. Mary Beth visited and we spoke about the Laura Common. Intimate and safe, we agreed.

At Friday Evening Conversation Betty Ann wondered about this notion of oneness and no-self. Jean put it in terms of vibration that went one into the other and once there is one as the other. When we awaken, will this be clear as clear can be?

Bob sat in biannual dread of Friday night's graduation at the C-School. Sando and Cesco each tried to take Hugh's walking stick from him. Robert shared m-n-m's.

At times it seems silly that some tsk tsk our determination to simply continue Meetingbrook's Bookshop and Bakery. Does the ocean abandon its waves during storm? Does the sky declare bankruptcy after gale winds sweep away whatever resists?

One breath at a time -- it all continues. I said in the circle last night that it makes a difference whether you say, "All are one," or you say, "All is one." Wherever there is one, there is all.

What, asks Betty Ann, would it mean practically if "we're all one" were true?

We're each one. Maybe that's a way of looking at it. One begins with you, with me. One, no other. But if there is no one, there are ten thousand others. And you know what we do with "others?"

At dawn, profound quietude delivers us to transparent moonlight.
From across Barnestown Road a dog barks. On the bed to my side Sando has not opened her eye, no sound comes from her throat. In the open van Cesco snoozes in cicada solo and sun on barn.

Not even a word can disturb an extinguished candle.

After morning sitting, one was.

Is every word alive? What if every word is alive? Would it change our attentiveness to each word that is spoken by another? By ourselves?

Reading Aramaic translations of selected texts at Thursday Evening Conversation, the thought occurs: what if each word is a living being? Would it revert back to the same difficulty, namely, are we able, much less willing, to attend to living beings?

Not concepts -- those encapsulated saran-wrapped packages of imprisoned ideas.
Not dogma nor belief -- those lined-up, snap-to-attention fixed and final arrangements of militarized sentences.
And not opinions -- those coffee-splattered newspaper-modeled typeset finger-dirtying loud-mouthed unreflective stay-too-long houseguests sitting to the right of us.

But individual, dazed and dazzling, newborn wide-eyed words. The ones that arrive fresh and naked, still open to the experience they carry -- still aware of the breath they exhale in the presence of loving attention to them.

Original presence! First there is the glance.Then there is the inhalation. Next there is the experience. After that the exhalation. On the emerging breath there is the vibration of energy longing to be free, to be born. Fanny slapping awakening to the sound of one’s own voice follows this.

The cry of emergence. The presentation of itself -- word made real through flesh. In the beginning, actually at origin, is the word. As it comes to be in our midst -- ah, there and then -- actually, here and now -- we are at origin with what is original.

At origin with what is original!

No need to look for God. No need to dissect, deconstruct, compare and contrast, translate or transact text and pericope into language to be analyzed and annotated. Here and now is our opportunity to let words be themselves.

If we allowed words their own being, will we find ourselves tempted to allow individual things their own being? Each animal their own being? Each human person their own being?

Maybe that's a stretch -- allowing each their own being. Words their own. What if everybody belonged to himself or herself? What if every thing belonged to itself? What if all beings belonged as-they-are to the as-they-are-community of all beings as-they-are? Would the word 'they' choose to sacrifice itself to the word 'we?'

Would that make community as-we-are?

Be careful. Conception -- the act of becoming pregnant, the state of being conceived, the originating of something in the mind -- can become artifice, artificial. Artifice is an artful stratagem, a trick, an ingenious device or expedient. Artificial is something produced or effected by man to imitate nature. It is simulated. It is not it. It is make-believe-it.

Let's not make-believe. Let's be it. Approach with tenderness, with kindness.

Come to word. Be what is living. Be at origin. Be original.
No knowing what is found right there, here, now.

So, don’t know. Breathe. You are alive!

Silence until noon today.

Silence of watering flowers. Silence of walking Ragged Mountain. Silence of tired dogs. Silence of sitting on cushion.

Though I think not
To think about it,
I do think about it
And shed tears
Thinking about it.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Religion is not what we think it is.

Julien Green says: "Religion is not understood. Those who wish themselves pious, in order to admire themselves in this state, are made stupid by religion. What is needed is perfect silence, supernatural silence. Pious talk has something revolting about it."

...This is one of the deep problems that Eliot suggests at the end of Murder in the Cathedral, where Thomas is faced with the realization that he may be gladly admitting martyrdom into a political and religiously ambitious scheme for himself: punishing the wicked and making himself a saint by treading down his enemies, stepping upon their heads into heaven. It is in this sense that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom -- and of true religion. This fear questions our own religiosity, our own ambition to be good. It begins to see with horror the complacency of speeches that "know all about" piety, possess the right method of pleasing God and infallibly winning Him over to our side, etc. This "fear" is what imposes silence. It is the beginning of the "supernatural silence" Green asks for.
(--Thomas Merton, pp.138-139 in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)

Religion is only care-taken by churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples -- it is not owned by them. Religion is something much simpler than the institutions erected to portion and partialize it to the world.

What is religion?

Moses did not see God in the burning bush. He saw the burning bush and knew that it was a sign that God was speaking to him. In revelation, then, we recognize the signs that God is speaking to us, the works that he has done. There is nothing more illuminating than this continually repeated situation. When God is there, then he acts in our lives, our society, or our group, we do not know or feel anything special. It is only afterward, when God's work is done, that looking back we can say: "But it was God who was at work, it was he who changed the situation, it was he who passed by," just as we read that Moses and Elijah saw God's back (cf. Exod. 33:23; 1 Kgs. 19:11) when he had passed by.
(Jacques Ellul, pp.173-174, in What I Believe)

Religion is two hands of two jumpers holding each other falling from burning tower. Religion is two hands of two strangers pulling one another to safety from collapsed building. Religion is what remains when wonderful or terrible things pass human beings by. Religion is the willingness, as Rilke said about love, of two solitudes to greet, touch, and protect each other. It is immediate, intimate, and indestructible.

Am I a religious person? Are you? Not stupid religiosity, but true religion. Stupid religiosity kills in the name of God. True religion holds the suffering with tears and compassion. Stupid religiosity declares war on real or perceived enemies in the name of God. True religion attends to human beings where they are, shares abundance with those without, and consoles the sorrowing with mere simple love.

There might not be much any of us can do to fix what is broken in our world. Perhaps our task is to find what is broken within us and begin to heal there. One injury at a time, one hurting place, and one initial awareness of unknowing amid so many false certainties of who we are in this wild, unsettled, and incomprehensible place -- we begin there. This is where the world begins. It begins in the stunning shock that we have only each other to blame or love.

Blame is stupid religiosity. Love is true religion. Blame assumes and exerts power as solution. Love empties itself of all power and shows itself passing by in small, fragile, and quiet presence. It's a choice.

For this is a choice for life (nonviolence being part of it), and no other is possible. Pretending that we can express the Christian [or Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or any other form of belief or act] in works of love (aid to the poor and sorrowing, etc.), or in revolutionary acts to achieve justice, is treason if we engage thereby in the use of power. For the last word of love is that never in any circumstances will it express or indicate power in relation to others. Today only a nonuse of power has a chance of saving the world.
(Ellul, p 151) [brackets added]

Silence of cicadas in high grass. Silence of brothers and sisters one year dead. Silence of religion. Silence of God.

Silence -- even in words with another.

Ineluctably.

Cesco lies by van. Sando inside by bed. Sounds of four wheels swoosh Barnestown at bottom of hill. They flatten out, curve left, coming to Snow Bowl, then right around Hosmer Pond. Maine is too hot for this time of September.

Saskia is in galley of Angelique for week. Jon wakes to harbor. Cicadas surround Jim. Birds wonder where seeds have gone.

It is the one-year eve of the end of America's virginity. By rape, pain, blood.
What burgeons thereafter is our current ground. How fares our ground?

Loss. Ordinary people know how alone absence is, even in the company of others. Leaders of government know how seductive the temptation to insert personal agendas into national response. Religious voices cannot any longer treat doubt and skepticism as alien approaches to God -- God too is felt by absence as well as by presence.

Sorrow. How difficult the realization someone who mattered is gone. How empty the assurance they are with us still in another realm. How difficult the experience -- the one wanting to blame, explain, deny, accuse, avenge, or justify? How odd to find even forgiveness without solace or peace.

And love? Has mistrust covered love with gritty ash and soot? Is love part of our reconstruction? In looking back or looking forward what is seen if love is what is seeing?

One year ago tonight the country wondered whether a congressman who denied everything had a role in the disappearance of a Washington DC intern he'd been having an affair with. He dodged any semblance of human concern for her in favor of his career. While he tiptoed through minefields of self-interest, it was not known that her body lay lifeless in a park under brush. Not known, that is, but by the person who raped and murdered her. The discovery of her body would not occur for 13 months.

The eve. That momentary precondition and precognition of all we humans might experience. We call first woman, first mother, Eve.
We long for her now. We want to be given birth. To be reborn. Resurrection. We want to pick up the fractured slivers of love and see the faces once we saw in the mirror reflecting the other to us. Eve is promise of what is to come.

XXIII

Call me to the one among your moments
that stands against you, ineluctably:
intimate as a dog's imploring glance
but, again, forever, turned away

when you think you've captured it at last.
What seems so far from you is most your own.
We are already free, and were dismissed
where we thought we soon would be at home.

Anxious, we keep longing for a foothold --
we, at times too young for what is old
and too old for what has never been;

doing justice only where we praise,
because we are the branch, the iron blade,
and sweet danger, ripening from within.

(-# 23, from second part, The Sonnets To Orpheus, by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

Rilke uses the word "unaufhörlich" -- which in the German dictionary translates as "incessant, continuous, uninterrupted."

Mitchell chooses the word "ineluctably" for his translation. In English dictionary it comes from "ex- + luctari" -- to struggle out -- and defined as "not to be avoided, changed, or resisted."

This eve, ineluctably.

Looking back or looking forward -- what is seen -- is fresh promise of what is now seeing, with love seeing through us, with love seeing us through.

What kind of world begins when we realize that now the world begins?

Awake or asleep
In a grass hut,
What I pray for is
To bring others across
Before myself.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

The intersection of all the twos, the fragments, the relative that is not the absolute -- this is what is crossing.

This prayer and promise -- "to bring others across" -- is the Bodhisattva vow.

Across?

Crossing the line, fording the brook, stepping out from inner seclusion -- this is becoming human. This is how we come to exist. We begin to step out from hiding.

No belief carries us across. An empty mind and devastated heart place us at the line. It is the thin place between what is no longer and what is now coming to be.

Take the hand. Hold it. Step out. Travel well.

Now the world begins!

When news comes that shocks us, when our minds say, "Uh oh, this is bad," or when we first awaken of a given morning -- these words apply. Now the world begins.

The real sunrise is in
The sky of the heart;
Just as the water jar
Reflects the sun,
So the entire universe
Shines in the heart
Of the One.
When you are in a train,
The whole world appears
To pass by.
Similarly, the whole universe
Can be known within the One.
- Nityananda (d.1961)

Surprise might be the sign of an awakening mind.
It is always curious to hear someone say, "That doesn't surprise me." There's an element of either ennui or feigned control whenever we demure we already know and are not surprised by something, anything that happens.

With each occurrence, the world begins. With each encounter, the world begins. With each appearance, the world begins. With each invitation to respond, the world begins.

This is being present at the creation. At that instant, we have to say something, do something, or not. We might simply be eye and ear, body and soul in the presence of what is unfolding. All time and space originate in this augenblick, this glance of the eye, this seeing now.

Now the world begins.

The anniversary of the devastation in New York City approaches.

That day, amid many other deaths, when 200 people fell or jumped from the top floors of the World Trade Towers one year ago, eleven seconds remained until they hit their death. A longtime, a lifetime. A time, curiously, of grace.

Grace is within you;
Grace is the Self.
Grace is not something
To be acquired from others.
If it is external, it is useless.
All that is necessary is to
Know its existence in you.
You are never out of
Its operation.
- Ramana Maharshi ( d. 1950)(dailyzen)

The Bangor Maine paper reported today the death by hanging of a 37 year old man in jail. He was serving a 60-day sentence. It was only seconds after his cell was checked, the guard said, that they found him dead. What does his death have in common with the WTC deaths? On the surface it seems an odd question.

I'm coming to suspect that just being alive is the grace of God.

No hoops to jump through. No groveling penance. No judgment and evaluation of deeds to endure.

In a fractured time, is what we need just God, grace, and gratefulness?
These three things? And split seconds to appreciate, to affirm, these gifts?

Camus was right. Suicide -- or the consideration of how to enter and pass through life, through death -- is the only serious philosophical question.

It is our gift to consider this question.
It is our gift to consider this.
It is our gift.

To know the existence of grace in us.

A few seconds.

It is enough.

Along Ragged this morning an hour hike. Using ski poles as walking sticks I am able not to always keep eyes fixed on trail.

It occurs while ascending and descending over root and rock how much attention is placed on keeping to the path and not falling or turning ankle. A lot like spiritual paths and religions.

Many paths lead from
The foot of the mountain,
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)(dailyzen)

The two poles steady me on my way. Something about Contemplative and Zen supports along the path allows looking around without fear getting snagged on exposed root or loose stone.

At Quaker Meeting end at Vesper Hill Children's Chapel Diane asks we hold two Friends with failing health in the light. Ed asks if I know a man at local Episcopal Church who died this week. I remember Penny's mother below Boston who is readying her going beyond. Our one certainty -- one we will encounter somewhere along the trail -- is that things change.

And things do change.

Charlotte comes into shop after musicians leave. She tells me one of the Friends we prayed for died last night.
This tall and gentle man disappears around the turn by a tree on the path.

It is September. On trail this morning the fresh air wandered clear and cool with us.
Feeling change, mountain shrugs, turning toward equal balance night and day.

When balance is right, the single bright moon is our guide through the woods.
All we’ll see will be seen well.

Early sun over Melvin Heights wades Hosmer Pond to Ragged Mountain coming through prismatic sphere hanging from thread at window of meditation room releasing angelic plumes of color dispersed to wall where Meetingbrook Promises hang over Phil Root's sitting bench.

If people are quiet,
They can be quiet anywhere.
If people aren’t quiet
They won’t be quiet in the mountains.
Everything depends on you.
Life is transient,
Like a flash of lightning in a dream.
Before we receive this form,
We had another face,
Our original face.
We can’t see it with our eyes.
We can only know it with wisdom.
- Chi-ch’eng (dailyzen)

Readings today scratch with irritation.

I said: “Thou hast deceived me, O Lord, and I am deceived. Thou hast been stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed. I am become a laughing-stock all the day, all scoff at me. For I am speaking now this long time, crying out against iniquity, and I often proclaim devastation: and the word of the Lord is made a reproach to me, and a derision all the day”. Then I said: “I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name”: and there came in my heart as a burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I was wearied, not being able to bear it. (Jeremiah 20:7 - 9)

Who wants to hear "The Lord said so"? Whose God wishes to smoke Iraq? Whose Lord wants to kill America? What deity has consulted her stockbroker and decided the poor suck and don't deserve but crumbs off the table? When will the Great One, the Lord Adonai, the Savior of the World -- when will he, she, or they win a seat on the UN Security Council and bang their shoe on tabletop to protest the scurrilous phantoms wielding unyielding power in the world?
Jeremiah is ready to shut up, go home, and cultivate his garden. But for that burning fire in his heart.

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1 - 2)

The writer of Romans bears fire from Jeremiah. "Your bodies," he says, "a living sacrifice." Forget your ideas; forget cool constructs of complacent rationalization about why things are the way they are; forget being awed by mystery sidelining understanding; and forget the illusion you are chosen, separate, one of the few who have to suffer the pangs of others' antagonism to your privileged standing.
"Transform, renew, by the mercies of God -- change your mind."

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you”. But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men”.
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done”. (Matthew 16:21 - 27 )

Peter is an obstacle. He says, in effect, "No, no, not you -- you're above all this, you don't have to do that." Not Jesus, he's exempt, chosen, not like 'them' -- and Peter wonders -- maybe we too? He has to be set straight with the crooked, spherical lines of God's mind.
In the prior chapter, the Canaanite woman who told him about dogs -- a lesson pivotal to his coming to reverse and transform his mind to God’s -- has just straightened out Jesus. He had it wrong. He thought it was just "my people" he was about. Not any more.

"Save and lose, profit and forfeit, return and repay" -- Matthew's wording of Jesus' sayings sounds like the financials page of the Wall Street Journal. Is this a coded insider-trading alert to heads up investors?

I prefer to see something to do with bodies. Poet Dan Berrigan wrote, "Bodies belong where words are." I think it is a matter of bodies, not of belief, nor of besting antagonists.

Be quiet. We can only know our original face with wisdom. Everything depends on you. Life is transient.

So much suffering in the world caused by making obstacles to God's mind. What have we done?
What are we doing?

Are we attempting to recognize and make holy the body of what is alive in this existence? One body recognizing Itself is all bodies being seen as truly sacred.

All living beings, wherever they are, whatever they are called, no matter what their diverse appearance - this is our prismatic light. "Prismatic," that is, "having such symmetry that a general form with faces cutting all axes at unspecified intercepts is a prism." (Webster’s Seventh)

Seeing with wisdom is seeing all faces intersecting sacred compassion at unspecified intercepts.

Present your bodies as a living sacrifice -- holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Here's looking at you, kid!

Windjammer Weekend floods Camden Harbor with schooners, people, and events.

On a peak standing still
Only clouds coming and going.
A thousand misty mountains below me.
In the open sitting straight
Nothing false, nothing real
Shapes of light and dark before me.
- Ch’and-hui

Strange notion "nothing false, nothing real."

Deck fills with waiting crowd for 9pm fireworks. Bursts of light, multi-colored flowering falling fading sighs of surprise.
Gordon Bok's voice and music from cd player inside the bookshop. Clouds high over masts will not dull the display readying on barge by Curtis Island.

This final weekend of summer vacationers. Coming and going, clouds giving shape to night sky. We are fortunate to see the many shapes before us.

Charles dulcets "Topfen Kuchen" and is served some. Jim readies himself to step outdoors and step into his fortieth birthday in two days. Jonathan listens to Red Sox game on radio in Harbor Room and prepares for 30th birthday tomorrow.

Dogs are frightened by loud noise. Cesco and Sando huddle by my feet behind counter. Proximity is no problem. Necessary solace. What others celebrate, they shy from.
Every second begs for compassion.

Afterwards, Sando walks home with Charlotte. In shop a woman walking by steps on Cesco's paw. He cries out.

Some joy, some sorrow.

A thousand misty mountains encircle us.

When beeper beeps, cake comes out from oven. When Cesco barks once, door is opened for him to come in. When story is told, always look both ways before crossing into it.

To practice Zen, you need deep roots.
People with deep roots are rare.
In the past anyone could practice Zen.
But not now.
Zen depends completely on yourself.
It’s much harder, especially now.
- Sheng-hi

Why harder now? Are the barriers erected by thought-patterns of contemporary culture that much thicker and impenetrable? Or is a more subtle explanation -- one that says the barriers are down, it is all revealed, no need to break through anything -- causing us to throw away practices and disciplines once used to root us to see and be with each other without barriers?

Take the story told in Matthew:
Jesus said, “Then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him’. Then all those maidens rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out’. But the wise replied, ‘Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves’. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast; and the door was shut. Afterward the other maidens came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us’. But he replied, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you’. Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour”. Matthew 25:1 - 13

In the story, wise prepare, foolish despair. Hip hip hooray the wise! Nah nah na na nah the foolish!
Remember -- look both ways.

Jesus relates the story, then adds postscript: "‘Lord, lord, open to us’. But he replied, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you’. Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour”.

The bridegroom in the story says, "‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you’."
Jesus says "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day or the hour."
Which saying is the compassionate saying? Is the Boy Scout motto invoked, "Be prepared"? Or is the Zen saying suggested, "Zen depends completely on yourself.”

Watch therefore, become therefore, practice therefore. You are therefore.
"Therefore," in Webster's Seventh is defined, "consequently, for that reason, because of that, to that end."

So, what follows that story? How are we to follow that story? Perhaps we are to look both ways, even look twice, before crossing.
Are our roots deep enough to remain who, what, and where we are? Are they deep enough to be wherever we are?

Maybe Jesus quoted that story to usher the wise behind the door, into the room with the bridegroom -- these 5 unwilling to share what they had with the other 5 -- they get what they've prepared for, what they've known would happen if they were wise.

But the other 5 -- the so-called foolish ones, those who beg, "Lord, lord, open to us," -- these are given a greater teaching than the reward reaped by the wise. They are given the teaching to practice, to "Watch therefore." To let roots deepen into the ground of one's being, the very soil of this earth, the loam of longing for what is revealing and opening itself in their midst.

To allow oneself deep roots is foolish these days. We are not "on" the earth for anything we can prepare for. We are "in" the earth for Itself. We are the earth. Came from there, returning there, are it here. Roots reside best where they've found their own depth.
People with deep roots are rare.

Practice doesn't follow anyone else disappearing behind a door. Practice watches What-Is-Itself right where one is -- open, here, and now.

These watchful rooting foolish ones! Open. Here. And now.

Watch well. Sit well. Cross well.
Especially now.

Wednesday afternoon brought two boats into the harbor. One a large green ferry-like three-decker named "Who Cares." The other a big marlin fishing sports rig with the name "So What." It seems some of our wealthier watercraft owners are taking a stand on matters economic and political.

It might be serendipitous that many across the country went today to speak to their congressional representatives about war-making talk by the administration. These large craft broadcast a response several expect from the exercise of public opposition to government's terrifying polemic to increase war.

Some see peace right where it is. Looking within, there is seen a self-emptying humility. Seeing -- no wanting, no needing -- only God Alone. These visionaries are neither pro-war nor anti-war. They are in the sight of God. They are seen as what they see.

The entire universe is one bright pearl.
When the right time comes,
The essence of the bright pearl can be grasped;
It is suspended in emptiness,
Hidden in the lining of clothes,
Found under the chin of dragons
And in the headdresses of kings.
This pearl is always inside our clothing,
That is, inside us, our real nature.
Do not think about putting it on the surface;
Is should be kept in headdresses and under jaws.
Never attempt to wear it on the surface.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

To be what you see and are seen as -- this is what is longed for by anyone longing to live life within God's sight.

Who can wear the sight of God on the surface?
No one -- at least, it seems -- not yet.

We'll have to wait for wiser boats to enter our harbor.
We'll have to wait for This and That to sail beside Here and Now.

We'll stand on edge of yacht club lawn as turn is made around head of harbor buoy. They’re gliding slowly mid-tide. Names come within view.

We Care.
Because This is, That is.

Brad said a woman he knew, when dying, spoke aloud the words "donut hole" while her daughters, keeping watch with her, sat around bed eating donuts. All these years the donut koan has been right there in my hand, and I've missed it.

I’m twenty seven years
And always sought the Way.
Well, this morning we passed
Like strangers on the road.
- Kokuin (10th century)

Question: Why do we eat the donut?
Answer: To free the donut hole becoming wide as the universe.

She died, as we each shall. In the end she understood the mystery of the donut.

Our lives, too, exist to be held, eaten up and away, then let go -- so as to free the inner emptiness becoming wide as the universe. In Buddhist readings about the death of enlightened beings there is ordinariness, a simple moving to what is falling in our midst. No big deal. One more bite, then...

Brad smiles at the story and it’s telling.

My love of donuts is coming into practice. Everywhere is expanding whole the donut hole.

This bite and that bite, some crumbs, and here it is.

Root and stone along mountain path. Two dogs sleuth the past night's forest visitors side to side up and down hike. Their scripture is fragrance. Their eyes look back at me as if to say, "Do you know what was here?" I don't. Sometimes they come quickly back to my side to mull the seriousness, proximity, and timeline of their investigations.

Every day priests minutely
examine the Dharma
and endlessly chant
complicated sutras.
They should learn
how to read the love letters
sent by the wind and rain,
the snow and moon.
- Ikkyu (1394-1491)

In the small Catholic church in our Midcoast town Sunday morning the visiting priest, after finishing his sermon about being somewhere between heaven and hell, is telling the congregation that he'd taken down some decoration he doesn't describe, something someone had placed in the church because: 1) it wasn't done together with him or other folks in charge, and, 2) because he is the priest, and he could.

In the backset of chairs, the local corporation's multi-millionaire and wife exchange glance and smile. I imaging she is telling him "Just like you, dear." Ahead of them one set of chairs, a local carpenter-builder and his wife. I imagine they are saying to themselves, "We've come to pray, can we please." Most folks I see by back of head possibly respond with patient acknowledgement that something is being said, the context and lesson of which they have not measured yet. From the place on the wall where I am about to exit through kitchen where Tommy offers me a coffee, I am thinking, "Priested again!"

The Quaker Meeting in Rockport is an inviting contrast. Trees, water, birds, breeze, small animals in underbrush -- and God in silence. The open-air chapel allows "the love letters sent by the wind and rain" to be read by bare attention. The sounds of nature and expressions of one's heart are exegetical scholarship and homiletic inspiration that change with each movement of attention or shift of breeze. We listen in prayer-shrouded recognition that only God reveals either nature or heart. Then, when unknowing presence finishes its rounds, Diane says "Good Morning!" We are invited to say aloud our names, one by one, to be recorded only by the passing stylus of silence.

It's not that authority and priestly order are not important. It's just that in prayerful and worshipful stillness -- they are not interesting.
What is interesting is appreciative presence -- sensitive awareness. To what? To what is asking/responding within -- what is inviting and accompanying us -- what is offering coffee, mentioning their name, and returning to our sides.

The solitary path, with root and stone along path. These are good reminders.
That, and the willingness to trust what is sniffed.

Quaker Meeting at Vesper Hill Children's Chapel is quiet. Arnie praised the silence then read two lines -- about seeds readying in soil.

Dogs in Rockport bark into each other's hearing during sitting.
Sando barks as two folks arrive tonight. Cesco twice asserts his boundary in meditation room.

A man of the Way comes
rapping at my brushwood gate
and wants to discuss the
essentials of Zen experience.
Don’t take it wrong
if this mountain monk’s
too lazy to open his mouth:
late spring warblers are
singing their hearts out,
a village of drifting petals.
- Jakushitsu (1290 –1367)

Music on deck at harbor shop was rich and fully attended. Sam and Virginia, Hugh and Tom, Gale along with voices of several passers by marked the clear sunny pleasant day.
Tonight's practice at hermitage is also rich. Sokei-an's writing about soul and mindlessness.

"Be kind," says the High Lama, Father Perrault, to Robert Conway in Lost Horizon.

Dog barks across road.

We are drifting petals in a waterless brook.