Dredging is finished. Harbor is bare. And deeper.

The unwillingness to live sharing who we are and what we have is crippling the human race. This is the Christian secret: God and humankind are not two, not one. Each is itself. The Christ has realized the secret. The Christ shows there is no secret. All is revealed from the beginning. Do we see?

The contemporary view of abundance and the attainment thereof needs revisioning. Intention doesn't accomplish riches.

Rather, abundance is the reality of all creation. It's all there. But for one thing. That thing is the necessity for humankind to let go what they grasp onto as their personal and sole possession and enter empty into the fullness of all things.

Each belongs to itself. No one owns anything. We can only exercise right of use. Proper exercise and use of what is right – this is what keeps us healthy.

For us today, poverty is an enemy to destroy. To Francis and Jesus poverty was a grace. What is ungraceful is our penchant to sequester and hoard what is necessary for the lives of others.

There is nothing wrong with wealth. Many claim much good is accomplished by wealth. And it is.
What always surprises is a belief system that suggests poor people are either undeserving or undesiring of abundance.

Sunlight streams on the river stone.
From high above, the river steadily plunges.
Three thousand feet of sparkling water,
The Milky Way pouring down from heaven.
- Li T’ai-po (701-?)

If tomorrow a catastrophe demolishes with the force of cataclysmic destruction, and all material financial wealth is eradicated in this apocalypse, then who is richer than another? Who is neighbor worth anything? Who shares water? Who shares bread? Who comforts the suffering? Who clothes broken bodies? Who heals splintered spirits? Who has words of solace? Who walks with another to safety? Who pronounces our name with love?

It escapes me how we can so easily forget who we are in each other's lives. Is devastation our only wake-up stick? Are the final gifts we receive following the loss of everything else: 1) our realization we’ve been ignorant, and, 2) our recognition we’ve forgotten why we were born?

Will our realization and recognition result in simplicity of awareness and remembrance at the end?
Allowing each to be itself, acknowledging each as itself – these are gifts.

We can practice now, if we choose, the simplicity of final gifts.

Is this, finally, how heaven pours out from us?

Wait and see!

Anthem

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again,
I heard them say,
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.

The wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again;
the dove is never free

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed,
the marriage spent;
the widowhood
of every government--
signs for all to see.

Can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned up
a thundercloud
They're going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
There is no drum.
Every heart
To love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
(-- From: "Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs," by Leonard Cohen
McClelland & Stewart, 1993)


It once seemed that 'wait and see' was a lukewarm delaying tactic phrased by skeptical speaker. Now 'wait and see' means just what it says.

Wait -- be patient, attentive, and willing to sit or stand for a while. In fact, the notion of ‘waiting’ is not really waiting. It is being patient, that is, allowing what is there to be there. It is attentive, which is alert, present, and watchful. And it is willing to be still in mind and/or body, a stillness that does not try to solve or chase away the matter at hand.

See -- just see. Allow the hidden connections to reveal themselves. Permit what is revealing itself to emerge in its own manifestation. Let the fact and reality display its full shape and form inch-by-inch, piece-by-piece.

So, to wait and see is an act of profound faith that what is there is there, and what is not there is not there. No lukewarm delaying, no skeptical doubt. Rather a trust that whatever reveals itself is the will of God at that instant in that form. To wait and see is no longer wary doubt. It is joyful hope at what is coming in our midst.

Some ask whether God wills evil. I don't know. I'd prefer to wait and see whether the evil being done will crack open to reveal a light through it that will heal and transform. Leonard Cohen’s words suggest the crack in everything is how the light gets in.

In the ultimate stillness
Light penetrates the whole realm;
In the still illumination,
There pervades pure emptiness.
When I look back on the
Phenomenal world,
Everything is just
Like a dream.
- Han-shan Te-Ch'ing

At Meetingbrook, light searches for the crack in our thinking. If we pray, is that the crack? If we wait and see, is that a trusting which reveals what we need to know and do?
Stay where and as we are? Speak with others about a fuller, more consolidated expression of three interests:
1. A Laura Common, (that is, A Loosely Knit Community of Individuals Practicing Spirituality in The Thin Place).
2. A Schola Contemplationis et Gratia, (that is, An Open Ongoing Place of Community and Hospitality of Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence) to practice with others, speak and learn with others, and enter into engaged service with others.
3. A Community Cafe, Bakery, & Bookshop, that is, a meeting place for the intersection of generations (young with older), perspectives (spiritual, intellectual, personal experience and stories), and service (engaged extension into prison, nursing home, shut-ins, and other places of human need and caring.)

Would this place be in a former Inn that could house and serve these and other events? A place with room for chapel, meditation hall, library, cafe, rooms for retreatants, visitors to area? A place for conversation, poetry, music, art, exploring new expressions of healthy meaningful neighborliness? And would there be enough generosity of vision, spirit, and finances to create a solid and simple community resource that is self-sustainable?

Whether war or community, we wait and see. There are so many reasons for human beings to go their own way, grab what they can, and hoard their fears, talents, and loneliness. Is there heart enough to travel together to a still quiet place of joyful engagement and aloneness with each other?

We watch and pray.

Will you too watch and pray, wait and see?

A cranky friend writes,

Wrong again. It's not George Bush or Saddam Hussein. It's the thoughts of people that are causing all the problem. The leaders just out picture the
force that's already there. When we as a people can learn to control our thoughts and out picture all that's good then peace will come; meanwhile join
the race, human that is...
D.

Returning from southern Maine it is hard not to be surprised by the crowdedness and busyness there.

Still, one's hermitage is one's heart.
The old timers say, "Don't leave your hermitage!"

I have discarded the world of fame and profit.
How elegant is the morning sun
Shining on the rafters and eaves.
How cool are the terrace and pond after the rain.
I burn incense to break the deep silence,
And drink the spring water and relax in joy.
I penetrate into the wonders of Tao,
And chant ancient sutras.
When my mind is at ease, my spirit is gay.
When understanding is gained,
There is nothing left to comprehend.
Who can say that the realm of Tao is far from us?
How tranquil it is;
As at the beginning of Heaven and Earth.
- Ni T'san (1301-1374)

What howling winds shriek between the mountains! Wind chill will average -25degrees tonight.

Heaven and earth begin in our thoughts and come to reside in our hearts.
It is there we pray. It is there we ponder. It is there we attempt to say, "Father! Mother! My home!"

There may be nothing left to comprehend.

Still, one's heart is one's hermitage.

If solitude is the teacher, silence the teaching – then we are students just beginning the practice of learning.
.
If silence is the language of God, creation God's body -- then we are words filled with breath and emptiness.

If we are not deep listening, not loving speech -- then no other prayer can emerge from this human existence to reveal to us the Holy Spirit of Love and Truth.

Divination showed my place
among these bunched cliffs
where faint trails cut off
traces of men and women.
What’s beyond the yard?
White clouds embracing hidden rocks.
Living here still
after how many years
over and over
I’ve seen spring and winter
change.
Get the word to families
with bells and cauldrons
empty fame has no value.
- Han-shan

Who will deeply listen to George Bush as he talks war? Who will lovingly speak to Saddam Hussein as he listens for drones of destruction?

Who knows silence and the ways of silence?

Perhaps if we weep for the imprisoned and terrified peoples everywhere, Saddam Hussein will look off to the distance where our weeping sounds itself.

Perhaps if we weep for the privileged and wealthy elite everywhere, George Bush will pause listening to see where the sound of sorrow faces itself.

We are losing the Catholic Christian Church; it has forgotten Christ. We are losing the United States of America; it has forgotten the unity of we the people.

Christ is not wanted in the church, and is let go. Liberty and justice for all is not wanted in America, and is buried under mounds of money tagged with the words 'private, corporate interest.'

To those who want war rather than justice, and to those who prize institutions over ordinary people, Han-shan says, "empty fame has no value."

Solitude is the body of God. Silence is the language of God.

Stillness reveals what forgetting conceals. It is time to remember.

Pray for remembrance!

We touch each other in passing.

In his book A Monk in the World, Wayne Teasdale writes, “It can be said that solitude is the teacher, and silence is the teaching ”

And what is being taught?

Being taught is this very moment revealing itself.

The last word is itself.

Silence.

Haiku
broken and troubled
sit together in prison
mending and healing
(wfh)

Mist and fog shroud out
the dust of the world.
Mountain and stream embellish
the place where I live.
At a time like this,
should I turn to scribbling poems,
the breeze and moon would surely
look down on me with scorn.
- Tami No Kurohito (unknown)

At prison today,
twelve converse theme "Beauty Within."
And it was, seen
(wfh)

Perhaps the real joy in conversation is simply conversing with one another.

At Canadian border yesterday we receive yellow card and invited to pull over, "It came up on computer," said customs woman. A brief glance about and we are free to enter Canada for brief pickup of salami, dog biscuits, grapefruit mineral water, and tea.

It is a surprising thought re-entering the United States that someone at the border might say, "You are under arrest, come with us," and be taken away in handcuffs. No lawyer. No charges. No court hearing. Just handcuffs and jail in the name of national security.

A thousand mountains,
Wind and snow,
Stop me in my lonely tracks;
Turning my head to the western sky,
The road a dead end,
I recall the distant event of
Bodhidharma’s arrival in China
An old monkey howls from the highest peak.
- Wu Hsueh Tsu-Yuan (1226 – 1286)

Along with the innumerable email offers received daily to enlarge penis, buy discount viagra, watch barnyard animals and human females do things I can only hope not to imagine, purchase cheap ink replacements for printer, protect my computer from the destructive viruses of people who send out destructive viruses, and those kind requests from Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa to hold millions of dollars for them for a short while --- there are other emails these days.

These emails ask me to sign petitions and circulate telephone and fax numbers of President Bush and assorted Senators. These pleas worry that Mr. Bush only wants war with Iraq, period. They ask to let him know that a significant number of people do not trust he will keep his word and let inspectors inspect, and use force only as a last resort. They worry bellicosity produces bellicosity. They wonder whether the president is being manipulated by less than honorable intentions of other powerful men in his Republican club. These other emails fear deep damage to democracy and painful harm to America's true strength, namely, freedom and justice, tolerance and inclusivity.

Ninety percent of incoming email is about sex, money, viral war, or personal appearance.
Would that the remaining ten percent celebrated the courage to undertake fellowship and neighborly concern in the form, not of war, but of love.

After Mass this morning we sat silently in the empty church. It is Martin Luther King's birthday. In a speech on 4April1967, one year to the day prior to his assassination on 4April1968, he said:
This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today.
( -- from speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City )

Some people change their email address to avoid the unnecessary and superfluous things they receive. Some change their physical address and residence to avoid those who would cowardly harm them. Some even change their country when the fear of loss of liberty and menace of authoritative police and military tactics begin to encroach. Today I long to change the mind of this country from arrogance and fear to open inquiry and love.

I suspect the more honest change would be to change my own mind, to become closer to the twofold invitations of Christianity and Buddhism. One, to empty myself and allow in the form of Christ-mind, the other to empty myself and allow the form of Buddha-mind. These two forms, kenosis and shunyata, are for us the practice of simplicity, integrity, and faithful engagement. Worded differently, it is the practice of attentive presence, root silence, and transparent service.

Can we live this way?
And allow embodying love?

Why pray?

If prayer is opening to God, to the person whose voice comes from across the room, to the chickadee on branch, and cat on stairs – why, and to what purpose is prayer?

I don’t know. I pray to find out.

Eagle Poem
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear,
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
(Joy Harjo)

The beauty of this life in this world!

"... until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the Providence moves, too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."
- Goethe

Men who refuse beauty or who wish its substitute -- power, possessions and wealth -- talk of and plan for war.

Prayer opens to these men in their strategy rooms and uncertainty of heart

Why, and to what purpose?

Begin now prayer.
Begin now peace.

Icicles hang from eave guarding small window in this room as sunrise lengthens light embrace through them. Ice on window melts and drips. January is soft snow and cold freeze.

I live far off in the wild
Where moss and woods
Are thick and plants perfumed
I can see mountains rain or shine
And never hear market noise
I light a few leaves in my stove to heat tea
To patch my robe I cut off a cloud
Lifetimes seldom fill a hundred years
Why suffer for profit and fame?
- Stonehouse (dailyzen.com)

There is no cutting away the human to reach for the divine. Each is in each. They grow together like water and ice. No water, no ice. When season matures, sun comes, melts ice, only water.

But in deep cold of January sun is able only to shine through ice, illuminate it, and reside thereby within and without even in this state of hard encased stillness.

The term [Pleroma] is used in John's gospel...to indicate the perfect presence of divinity in Christ, who is the place where God dwells bodily, but also to indicate Christ as the whole measure of divinity, knowable through the church, his body. (p.698, Encyclopedia of the Early Church, entry by L. Vanyo)

Church, whoever is gathered in the consciousness of Christ, is the body of Christ. Christ is the fullness of the place "where God dwells bodily." Whether zendo, chapel, circle conversation, one-to-one soul-friend meeting, or ever-solitary meander through crunching snow -- it is our good fortune to be body here on earth.

It is not a matter of 'believing' in God. It is the matter of 'being' in God. Being in God as water in ice, as ice in light, and as the slow movement -- lengthening and shortening -- of all three in the world of winter.

There is no need to suffer for profit and fame. We suffer, rather, the coming-to-light of all that is hidden in shadow.

There is no one without the other. Here is one within no other.

Morning! The spirit of birds blur past bright icicles.

No water, no life.

The Great Person from time past
Had no fixed abode.
In famed mountains hid his traces,
Grew old amid wind and frost.
From afar, I see your
White-rock hermitage,
Hidden in a haze
Of evergreen trees.
When the moon sets,
It’s mind-watching time;
Clouds arise
In your closed eyes.
Just before dawn, temple bells
Sound from neighboring peaks;
Waterfalls hang thousands of feet
In emptiness.
Moss and lichen
Cover the cliff face;
A narrow, indistinct path
Leads to you.
- Chia Tao (779-843)

It is not distant and separated seclusion the hermit seeks. The hermit seeks pure nature and distinct reality in human nature and the indistinct dispersions of our common everyday experience.

After Saturday Morning Conversation with Richard and Susan it was suggested it is not an oppositional stance the hermit takes, rather a stance in the middle of the values of the society and culture, a stance that dissolves within immediate reality.

Thus says the Lord: All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk! Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy? Heed me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare. Come to me heedfully, listen, that you may have life. (Isaiah 55)

Salt doesn't lose its flavor after it dissolves in water. It is not pure salt; it is salt water. Hermits do not lose their distinctive quiet presence after they disappear into the marketplace. They are not separated seclusion; they are inclusive immersion.

Baptism immerses us in everyday reality permeated with Christic grace. Jesus came to it with John at Jordan. We must face our own beginningless and endless interpenetration with God in all things, in beings with indistinct meander.

"You," said the voice in the Christ experience of Jesus, "are my beloved son with whom I am well pleased."

Come to the water. Come to life.

They lead to you.

Where else would God be watching?

Be well? Be pleased? Be loved?

Letter to Rick in Missouri:

More specifically, it's just Saskia and I (with dogs and cat, of course) residing at hermitage. We continue to wish to dwell as hermits in the everydayness of the marketplace. Thus, many of our "conversations" are in town in the bookshop. There are several who would like to be part of a Laura of Hermits, i.e. a community of hermits. I can barely organize myself out of my pajamas -- and so have little skill or energy to contribute to that.

A hermit is one living alone. A Meetingbrook hermit ponders the words, "Embodying the dwelling place of the Alone, stepping aside to make room for another." Dwelling alone with the Alone does not mean isolation from others. It suggests dwelling as no barrier.

We are not a Zen center as typically conceived, as is in Missouri. Thank you for the link. By practicing between traditions, we actually are neither here nor there, but continually pass through a "thin place" which often feels like a mirror's surface, where in and out know no difference, yet are not the same.

The very attempt to see this kind of life through feels like a koan.
God is God; No God is no God. Zen is Zen; No Zen is no Zen.
Saying, "yes" to each of these phrases places us, unknowing, in the middle of our life.

Much was made last night at the bookshop during our conversation after reading Meister Eckhart's 'The Noble Man' that there is a "knowing" that occurs that is beyond beliefs, beyond mere thought and experience. While I affirm that reality, I question it.

It still seems to me that this kind of 'knowing' is a wink-wink, nod-nod secret handshake type of posing that must be watched carefully. It is my suspicion that if someone really didn't know, i.e. looked from a don't know mind, there wouldn't be anything other than the don't know reflection mirroring the presence of the one there.

Francis didn't know Christ, Francis mirrored Christ. The Zen practitioner doesn't know everyday extinguishment, that person is right there by being transparent and empty.

God is being there. "Da-sein," the German word literally translated "there-being," is used to signify 'man' or a human being. For Christians the mystery asks them to ponder, "What does it mean to say that God became human?" What does being there, or being here, or being anywhere have to do with God?

Zen asks, "What is this?" By calling each into the question of "What is," we are invited to dwell as "this" wherever we are. Bird comes, bird. Joanie comes, Joanie. Tom the mailman comes, Tom the mailman. Dredging barge in harbor comes, dredging barge. Snow falling on Friday morning, snow falling on Friday morning.

Enough for now. So it is, always, enough for now.

Best,

Who knows about God?

A man from Missouri writes and asks about Francis of Assisi and Zen. It is a kind question. He invites looking at what is the relation of theistic approach with Francis and non-theistic with Zen.

Practicing Zen is zazen. For zazen, a quiet place is suitable. Lay out a thick mat. Do not let in drafts or smoke, rain, or dew. Protect and maintain the place where you settle your body. There are examples from the past of sitting on a diamond seat and sitting on a flat stone covered with at thick layer of grass. Day or night the place of sitting should not be dark; it should be kept warm in winter and cool in summer.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

The cabin and front room of house are the sitting places we share. Cabin sits cold during week, front room warm. Lights from stars, moon, and Snow Bowl wander cabin through night. Light from vigil lamp stays on cross with Jesus, icon of mother and child, and sitting Buddha in front window of house. Each stays steady through night.

Who knows or does not know about God? Francis lived connected with all that was there in the Umbrian Hills. Zen is the eyesight of leaves, grass, dove, and squirrel in the hills of Ragged and Bald. Francis knew no other. Dogen changed verb from "has" to "is." Everything, he said, is Buddha-nature. So, to it he looked, and so, as it he watched.

The Soto tradition says -- Just sit! Just do what you are doing. Stand when standing, eat when eating, and make no image when no image need be made.

Francis loved Jesus, so, his spirit mirrored Christ's spirit, his body Jesus' body. There is a place in the speaking about mirrors where there is no subject reflecting object. At that nearside, the place where image and reality are not two, is a transitus. The Latin word, transitus : translates as "crossing, passing over, transit /changing, alteration." Stepping into the mirror changes everything. Inside and outside fall away. All opposites evaporate and become each other. Looking shifts from "at" to "as."

As hermits who live temporarily in both a hermitage and in the marketplace we are learning to live in the midst of others as no other. For us this means we live in distant and separated seclusion from the values of our culture that are hostile to the sacredness of every being or antipathetic to the stillness, silence, and solitude of true nature.

We choose the paradox of living alone with others, together with all alone. Close is too far. Near is not far enough. What Nishitani calls the absolute nearside is neither here nor there – it is all there is here now.

Who doesn't know about God?

Not two of us, not one of us.

Dogs bark in frozen snow outdoors. Bell rings at bottom of stairs for dinner.
Thank you for asking, Rick.

The bookshop/bakery will re-open today at 4:00pm. There will be Buddhist Studies at 5:30pm.


January 2003 Events

All Events at Meetingbrook are free, open & informal

Note: There are several changes on schedule, including Winter Hours, and Evening Conversations. 1) We’ll be closed Mondays and Tuesdays in winter. 2) Maybe Zen, Maybe Not, A Practice/Study focusing on Buddhist Meditative Tradition will be held on Friday Evenings, 5:30-6:30pm 3) A new conversation, Tea and Literature, will be held Saturday afternoons.
Note: Consult "Today at Meetingbrook” for any changes in shedule.

MORNING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE. (6:05am-6: 35am) Silent Sitting - 30 minutes, daily. Then follows (6:40am-7:00am) Chanting/Mindfulness Walking (MWF Christian; TTh Buddhist). Whatever your tradition or practice come sit together. Simply enter, sit, & leave in silence. Note: For the winter, the cabin will be heated only on weekends. Sat/Sun sittings and practices take place at the Cabin just up from the barn. Weekdays held in house front room.

SATURDAY MORNING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE – Weekly Lectio Divina: Sat, 6:45am-8:00am; (In Cabin) Monthly Retreat 7 hrs, 18Jan; 6am-1pm, (Buddhist focus this month)

SUNDAY EVENING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE Each Sunday evening, 6:00-8:00pm. Practice Silent Sitting, Walking, Listening, Eating, Conversing, Chanting. (12,26Jan.Buddhist focus; 5,19Jan.Christian focus) All welcome.

A Place of Conversation, Collation, and Recollection at Camden Harbor
Come anytime, each conversation stands alone.

WEDNESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT THE BOOKSHOP 5:30-6:30pm
Wed. 8Jan.03 Topic: Reading The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain. A reading circle
Wed. 15Jan03 Topic: In whose name? A conversation about the threat of war.
Wed. 22Jan03 Topic: Reading The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain. A reading circle
Wed. 29Jan03 Laura Soul-Friend Circle: A monthly reflection about personal spiritual well-being.

THURSDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT THE BOOKSHOP
5:30pm-6:30pm.Stepping into the Mirror, A Practice/Study focusing on Christian Contemplative Tradition. Currently reading Selected Writings, by Meister Eckhart. (1260-1328)

FRIDAY EVENING CONVERSATIONS AT THE BOOKSHOP
4:30pm - 5:30pm Poetry. Open gathering invites anyone to bring poetry to read, whether own or others’. “Poetry” for us is Poems, Letters, & Pieces of Journals. From time to time we might even write.
5:30pm-6:30pm Maybe Zen, Maybe Not, A Practice/Study focusing on Buddhist Meditative Tradition. Currently reading Nothing Special, Living Zen, by Charlotte Joko Beck

SATURDAY MORNING & EVENING CONVERSATIONS AT THE BOOKSHOP
9:00am-10:00am: The Many Faces of Death. We are reading book, The Grace in Dying – How We Are Transformed Spiritually As We Die, by Kathleen Dowling Singh. Come by any week.
4:30pm-5:30pm: Tea and Literature. For one hour we’ll read and converse about a prose piece, essay, or short story. (Fiction or non-fiction). Bring or suggest a piece.

MUSIC REHEARSAL AT THE BOOKSHOP
1:00pm-3:00pm (approx) Every Wednesday and Sunday Afternoon. A group playing effort. Join in. Also, any other days for individuals. An opportunity to rehearse with ease in a public place, anytime.

Bookshop & Bakery Schedule
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays,
Open:
Wednesday Noon-7:00pm
Thursday 10:30am-7:00pm
Friday 10:30am-7:00pm
Saturday 9:00am- 6:00pm
Sunday 10:30am- 5:30pm

The sweet solemnity of Epiphany sees us through.

Is God what is looking through us?

Epi = on, at, besides, after. Phainein = to show. Epiphany is an appearance or manifestation of a divine being.

So many wise ones in our world, so few Magi. So many teachers, so few learners. If teachers are not learners, what then do they teach? If the wise do not embody their wisdom, why travel anywhere to point out the divine shining through another human being?

There is a place we must visit before hanging out a shingle with the word "teacher,” “coach,” “therapist,” or “ordained anything" affixed.

And the people on the street view me behind my own glass in much the same way, and it is the way that I have looked at others in their "foreign licence" cars, and it is the kind of judgement that I myself have made. And yet it seems that neither these people nor this man are in any way unkind and not to understand does not necessarily mean that one is cruel. But one should at least be honest. And perhaps I have tried too hard to be someone else without realizing at first what I presently am, I do not know. I am not sure.
(sic) (Pp.56-57, in story The Vastness of the Dark, in Island, by Alistair MacLeod)

That visit is to the vastness of the dark. It is an inconvenient side trip. It is there, without deflective light from any external source, we begin to see signals and signs pointing to the place we would like to call home, ourselves.

Magi point and leave. Others set up tents, hang out shingles, and ply skills of directing traffic. Like colorful officers waving white-gloved hand signals, those who don't leave direct visitors toward, away from, around, and sometimes through their tents.

God is not in any tent. Magi know this. Magi arrive, leave presents, and leave themselves.
The divine, akin to what Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle points out, shows up and through in a glancing passing presence.

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. (-- Werner Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927)

No stake fastens the movement of God.

Magi return home. Having seen God, they move on in a delighted weariness continuing their watchful and curious lives.

They move on with what is seeing them on their way.
They see through what is there to be seen through.

They are themselves seen through.

When the divine shines through life, death appears clear and present.

When you are born with a strong presentiment of death, life advances toward birth in reverse. It recovers all of the stages of life in a sort of upside-down evolution: you die, then you live, suffer, and finally are born. Or is it another life that is born on the ruins of death? One feels the need to love, suffer, and be born again only after having known death in oneself. The only life is the one after death. That’s why transfigurations are so rare.
(p.14, in Tears and Saints, by E. M. Cioran)

Is life only seen through death?

Perhaps this is the danger of the Magi. They follow intuition to the divine showing through a child. They’ve brought presents. The present has brought them to their senses. “Now,” they say, “Now we have seen what we have long traveled to see.”

The child is born, recognized, and everyone shivers. They shiver not from some atmospheric chilliness. Their shivering is rapt awareness that the gift of life is the gift of death, and that death must be opened first.

For the divine to shine through we must first reconcile humanity to transparency. See life, see death. See death though life; see life through death. Try to hold on to one of them and discard the other, and a contemporary murderous Herod will try to fool you into reporting back to him what you are willing to sell out for a fool’s errand of personal gain, favor, or praise.

Cioran tells Herod, The only life is the one after death.
Herod is tempted to kill. He is wrong. It is a koan, a deep riddle.
See?

What does a lovely transfiguration ordinarily look like?
Do we dare respond with our own epiphany?

Snow seems sweet and soft this Saturday. All day.

We move things around kitchen.
Saskia finishes at sink. "Ready to go?"
What a choice! Go out to shovel snow? Or, move daybed and table in kitchen?

See, darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds cover the peoples; but upon you the Lord shines, and over you appears his glory. Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance. Raise your eyes and look about; they all gather and come to you: your sons come from afar, and your daughters in the arms of their nurses. (Isaiah 60)

If God were to show up, what would we see?
The Feast of Epiphany comes near.

The Magi in the Gospel were looking for something that had been revealed to them. They knew a spiritual truth and they followed it. There is no indication in the Gospels that they ever follow Christ. Their task in the Gospel is simply to point to the divinity of this small child. So it is with many of us: our task is to point to the divine at work in our world without becoming caught up in strife or useless religious arguments.

Christ is born for us! Christ is revealed to us this day. Let us open our eyes and our hearts.
(-- from Epiphany Homily, 2003 The Monastery of Christ in the Desert) (http://www.christdesert.org/news/homily.php)

Appearance with recognition.
What would God see?

What is being revealed to us?
What would any of us be seen as?

At prison Charlie, Shane, Ed, Mike, Paco, Andre, Sonny, Saskia, Vaughn, and I read the Canadian writer's story aloud in circle for 35 minutes.

"I know, Ma," says my father, "I know that and I appreciate it all, everything. It is just that, well somehow we just can't live in a clan system anymore. We have to see beyond ourselves and our own families. We have to live in the twentieth century."
"Twentieth century?" says my grandmother spreading her big hands across her checkered apron. "What is the twentieth century to me if I cannot have my own?"
(p.88, in The Return, (1971), story by Alistair MacLeod in his book Island The Complete Stories, c.2000).

We sit in silence 5 minutes. We let conversation carry us from the writer's Cape Breton to Montreal, then take side trips from New York City to the island of Jamaica, from towns in Maine to Holland, jail cells to childhood everywhere remembered.

I’ve always loved friends of the Way,
Always held them dear.
Meeting a stranger with silent springs;
Greeting a guest talking zen;
Talking about mysteries on a moonlit night;
Searching for truth until dawn,
The tracks of our inventions disappear,
And we see who we really are.
- Han-shan (dailyzen)

Andre's poem, It's Too Late, caps the two hours we spend in Meetingbrook Conversation at Maine State Prison. Poem begins with lines,
I get this gift called life,
but it's like my every breath is through
a shattered wind-pipe,
my speech is quite a whisper,
it's hard to get a listener,
it's hard for insight,
angles of angels get it twisted,

The ten of us are tourists. We travel by word across the table to each other's country. We stay as long as we can. Return fare is letting go what we think we know about the other, paying opinion and prejudice's ticket price back to one's chair, looking out over the landscape passing us, and sorting through what we've become enroute.

I'm so confused in my movement for direction,
I'm so lost, I lose myself, where am I headed?
Good question,
where's my head at, it spreads in sections,
along with my flesh,
never forgetting life and death,
they're both conception.
(from chorus in It's Too Late, poem by Andre H.)

Alistair and Andre convey us through their written words to places we visit with them in our conversing words. We feel a familiar memory. Have we been here before?

Life and death, / they're both conception -- Wherever we arrive, we have been here before.
The grandmother's words bring us to wonder what it is we conceive if we cannot have our own.

This is our own, this is the path we take, where we meet each other.

Charlie said it's something he's been reading about, "empathy."

The sign on door of shop still says, "We're closed a few days. Happy New Year."

"Stormstay," was the word used in a story about Cape Breton in a book about Nova Scotia.

We stormstay at hermitage for rest.

Dew and the moon,
Stars and streams,
Snow on pine trees,
Clouds hovering on the mountain peaks;
From darkness, they all become glowingly bright;
From obscurity, they all turn to resplendent light.
Infinite wonder permeates this serenity;
In this reflection all intentional efforts vanish.
Serenity is the final word of all teachings;
Reflection is the response to all manifestations
- Hung Chih (1091-1157)

Bach plays.We stay put.
We look at things that have been still for a while.

Winter.
Ice over everything.

If anything moves, it must move carefully.

Old year eve sitting with snow fog surrounding cabin wood. New year morning sitting with sunlight permeating cabin windows. This is how the mountains stay so quiet -- they sit looking across each at each.

Happy in the morning
I open my cottage door;
A clear breeze blowing
Comes straight in.
The first sun
Lights the leafy trees;
The shadows it casts
Are crystal clear.
Serene,
In accord with my heart,
Everything merges
In one harmony.
Gain and loss
Are not my concern;
This way is enough
To the end of my days.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Hugh C. from Surry sends this invocation:

INVOCATION FOR THE NEW YEAR

Let us invoke our ancestors,
And our spiritual ancestors,
for we are the sole reason for their existence.
Let us also invoke our children, and their children,
for they are the sole reason for our existence.

Let us invoke the mountains and
the rivers of this great Earth,
and realize that we and they are
part of the great wheel of being
of sentient and insentient life.

The gift of Life is more fragile than
the dewdrops on the morning grass.

So let us vow to heal & nourish,
to love & share,
To alleviate suffering & bondage.

May we come to know Peace & Joy,
wisdom & compassion in the New Year.
(Adapted from the Mayan New Year Invocation)

Each bird and squirrel takes seed, whether from feeder or what is scattered on snow.

So it is to all Mary’s, all mothers, all expressions of God's light -- praise and gratefulness this day!

With two dogs we walk across Hosmer Pond. Shroud of moist air clouds Ragged and Bald Mountains as daylight lowers to white gray silhouette.
"Do you think the ice is thick enough?" is often asked by one of the four.
"Yes!" the repeated answer.

Another year about to end
In my empty mountain abode;
Rivers and clouds,
Their trails indistinct;
Pines and cedars,
Their natures the same.
I arise from my nap
To find the taro roots done;
As the incense fades out,
I finish a scripture.
Who knows that real pleasure
Lies within stillness and silence?
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)(dailyzen.com)

Sign on shop door says, "We're closed a few days, Happy New Year."

Smoke rises from house and cabin chimneys.

Body and breath. Carnal and spiritual. And the dissolving of all that is seen into the unseen.

As calendar year ends, so does all time transmute into no time. In brief: beneath the story we tell about life is life beyond story, among and within what is itself no story.

Have you not seen the idle person of Tao
Who has nothing to learn and nothing to do,
Who neither discards wandering thoughts
Nor seeks the truth?
The real nature of ignorance is
Buddha-nature;
The illusory empty body
Is the Dharma body.
- Yung Chia Hsuan Chueh (665-713)

The story is history. What is now is what?
The open is God Mothering/Fathering. The body is God Christing. The breath is God Spiriting.

Let's call it a day. Let's call it a year. Let's call it a silence.

The words Di sent apply. "Beyond, among, within, beneath" -- is everything -- silence, stillness, solitude, and sanctuary.

In the beginning was the word. At end will be the gaze.

For now, only the open alone invites and conveys body and breath.

As we live and breathe!

In Murder in the Cathedral about the killing of Thomas a Beckett in 1170 in Canterbury cathedral, the chorus intones,
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right thing for the wrong reason."
(--T.S. Eliot)

Jonathan Mondaldo is on New Dimensions Radio talking of Thomas Merton with Michael Thoms this 29Dec., the date Thomas a Becket is traditionally celebrated. Montaldo reads from the Asian Journal a prayer by Merton to God which includes the phrase, "because our being is in your being."

Is our last temptation to do the right thing for the wrong reason? To pretend to be God is most often recognized as madness. To disappear into God is holiness. But the middle path, to recognize what God is recognizing, engaging and enacting our being within the being of God, what is that called?

There is no need to pretend we are God. We are not mad.
There is no need to disappear into God. Everything is revealed as it is with God.
There is no need to look for the middle path. We are the middle path. We are only to look as what is traversing the way of God.

The right thing is to be what, where, and who we are.
The wrong reason is to think we are trying to become, do, or accomplish something else by pretending or practicing that which we aspire to.

As we live, and breathe, we come to see our being in God's being. Merton's prayer in Asia was one he embodied.

No temptation. No treason.

Live. Breathe.

There is no place to hide. Even when we long to disappear it has to be done in plain sight.

The little retreat is to hide
Among wooded hills;
The great retreat is to vanish
In the capital.
- Kanzan

A curious dream. Waking up after dream of a monastic setting and another of beach waves behind sand dunes the idea of consolidation and enfoldment recurs. The woman from Lincolnville comes in and is fired as spiritual director (a self-appointed position that consisted of pizza and advice, both by the slice).

As an ancient Chinese saying goes, 'Mediocre hermitry exists in mountains; real hermitry downtown.' It means ordinary hermits retreat to mountains or forests; great hermits retreat to the center of the city. City life is quick-paced and it is difficult for hermits to find a quiet forest. In Lantau Island one can find a Trappist Haven Monastery, a group of true hermits - the cenobites. If wild life is forced to emigrate from this Concrete Forest, how could there be sufficient space for these cenobites? (on website, Trappist Monastery in Lautau)

What sleeping dream of monastic life and ocean proximity? What retreat does the inner solitary find in outer community?

Great hermits don’t know who should live and who should die. They allow life to see itself through. We need hermits and solitaries that continue to look deeply and long for, at, and as each of us.

There is no place to hide. What really interests is how to be hidden in the obvious. To find oneself out is it necessary to lose no self within?

Today we think of innocents. Those who die -- first in the minds of uncaring people, then physically at the hands of unkind people -- die without being seen by those who profess to know who they are. Their death is an ignorance that causes suffering in the world.

What do we do when we don’t know what to do?

Sit a while. Be unknowing. See what is there. Care for what is seen. Be kind to what is cared for.

Whether ignorant and harmful, or unknowing and hurt – these are two versions of innocence. Perhaps we might learn to look at “wild life” the way hermits look out of solitude. The world longs for what is looking at it with love.

What if innocence was treated with love?

John's words make of the Word a language of love.

Is he "the disciple whom Jesus loved"? Is it because he was loved that, in his words, Jesus the Christ was one who taught we must love one another?

Now whether withdrawn on a mountain,
or retired in a city, the essential
thing is the long maturation.
For this, it is good to keep
the examples of the old masters in mind,
or we will be pulled back into
the dust and delusion of the world.
- Torei (1721-1792)(dailyzen)

A long maturation is needed to learn through dust and delusion the longing of love for itself.
It seems muddled to suggest love has no object. Love has only itself, and itself includes one and all.

John was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the brother of James the Greater. In the Gospels the two brothers are often called after their father "the sons of Zebedee" and received from Christ the honourable title of "Boanerges," i.e. "sons of thunder" (Mark, iii, 17). (Catholic Encylopedia)

Had mother Salome been the chosen reference, the honorable title for the boys might have been "Rogati Dei," or, "asked of God." They were asked to consider with their lives the question of love.

What is the question of love?
With our lives, in the beginning, we listen to the word.

When word and question become flesh, we'll sit in stillness, move with peace, our long maturation.

Shoveling 20 inches of snow 4 hours places one in prayer.

Christmas night white snow blowing northeasterly stops everything in Maine. Stephen’s Day pulls blanket from manger, covers everything with pause, and drops coat at feet of someone needing new way of seeing.

Where is Christ today?
Is each sculpting act, each falling flake, each wandering thought preparing this one to be the question? Is “this” – each instant as it is – the coming into being of Christ?
Like the words in the story told in Acts 6: "And the high priest said, “Is this so?”
I ask: Is this so?

More than the watchman for daybreak, let Israel hope in the Lord:
for with the Lord there is kindness and abundant redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel from all its transgressions.
(from Psalm 130)

Like the Dalai Lama -- who says that his religion is simple, his religion is kindness -- is the new way of being, “kindness,” replacing religion, as we’ve known it?

Absent all implements and instruments of religion, absent creeds and confessions, pronouncements and pontification, capital building fundraising and hoarded treasures in basement archives -- absent all these, can kindness revive religion? Or, perhaps, can kindness reveal the Itself, God, Ultimate Reality?

Is there a need to divest all extraneous possessions, a divestiture of special symbols, handshakes, & titles on the part of religions in order to restore genuine trust and everyday sacredness to the world?

What is religion holding on to that makes it so reluctant to allow appear the true face of God longing to shine through everything?

The vagaries of life
though painful,
teach us not to cling
to this fleeting world.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Not to cling to this fleeting world, surely, means letting go the ornaments and prized differences so precious to religions. .

It is a terrible thing done in the name of God. Patronizing and murdering, growing rich with divisive rhetorical venom spit at others -- all the "others" -- and calling it entertainment, commentary, ecclesiastical and clerical fatwa, interdict, and casting into the darkness.

No wonder.
No wonder and fear replace wonder and love.
Kindness need not apply.

And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them”. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:60)

We're told that Jesus' words and Stephen's words were prayers to absolve those who killed them.
Kindness? No cry for justice. No curse of damnation. No promise of future retaliation or vigilante revenge. No elimination of enemies in the name of God, country, flag, or the deaths of the innocent.

What would the world come to if kindness were our prayer and act?
One need applies to everything, everywhere, everyone, and every time.

Kindness.

Simply.

What is this?

Cesco looks over toward woodpile. We've returned from short walk along Ragged Mountain. I take wood to cabin. Smoke from woodstove chimney. Stillness.

Blue Lincoln pulls in as I sit at desk in house with Mu-ge tossing off, one by one, small things to floor and attempting to do same to words from computer screen.

Betty gets out, walks to cabin, and enters. Some time passes. Later, leaves. Bringing, and leaving with, solitude.

MoGLIAD, (i.e., Mother of God, Light In All Darkness), gift of Betty, icons north gable of chapel/zendo, as does her wooden turning centerpiece on Janet’s hermitage table in dining room

In front room of hermitage, incense burns rising behind clay carrying animal (reindeer? camel? donkey?) from artists Clarity with child in basket on its back.

Arrives child extending into life. Single candlelight glows behind child on animal between sitting Buddha and crucified Jesus. Arrives these two men expanding through death.

The whole season of a person's life celebrated of a day. Our Mother Light issues forth her children. We are gifted and served well!

"This," says song and script, "this, is Christ the Lord."
What is "this?"

I ask this so that we, each and all of us, might have life, and have it abundantly.

A sound! Nuthatch breaks seed on bell pole outside window.

This is good!

We like the invitation of a silent night.

"I'm not there yet," says Jerry from the bench and table by fireplace. He is writing. Cesco sleeps by door.

They shall tear down the Temple to Self for man is an unworthy God when man exalts something and heads into nothing.
There is no higher-minded goal other than love thy neighbor as thyself...otherwise the foundation of man is sand, washing away. Build it on stone so others can stand with you. (Jerry at 4:45pm)

The people from New York finish their coffee and hot chocolate and leave with words of the season. Jerry goes. Sam and Susan arrive. Joan from Northport arrives. I can't imagine why we are open.

"Caring about people who are alone, who don't have much," that's what Joan relates Rev. Susan S. at Lincolnville said at this evening's service. There were four speaking people at four corners of the church and a woman in a gold scarf telling the Christmas story.

Soon solitude will watch doors close and cars disappear. The star atop Mt. Battie tower has focus tonight. Generator filled with fuel. Cold night air. Drivers heading north on Elm Street Route One might pause.

For now, that is all we can do.
Pause.

What is being pointed out?

Stefanie, a student, leads her paper with two quotes:
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.
( -- Albert Einstein, letter dated 1950, quoted in H. Eves’ Mathematical Circles Adieu, 1977)

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.
( -- Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, foreword to The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery)

Is birthing Christ a dawning consciousness that recognizes one family?

A holy family? All beings – inanimate to animate, dirt to sentience, all species through human to realms unknown to any of us? Are we ready for this birth?

Another student writes:
I know I won’t emerge from this class as a philosophical scholar. In my “trained” way of thinking, I tell myself that I did not succeed in this class because I can’t put a pretty ribbon around the little box of wisdom that I didn’t gain from this class. Are you following me? Then, I realized that I do not need to because there is no box and no ribbon. There is only philosophy, which leaves things as they are; bare. In the end, I’m still holding onto the ribbon, but I’ve managed to throw the box away! (Josyln)

Perhaps the box is bare, empty. Without box, the empty content, that is, the emptiness that even the idea of box could not contain, much less the greater illusion that a container such as a physical box could contain what is wisdom, spills effortlessly into nowhere.

Put differently – what a lovely ribbon!

Is Christ a lovely ribbon remaining after what we thought we held has disappeared? When nowhere becomes now here?

Is Christ the light illuminating a circle of compassion embracing all and whole?

There is no shopping for this. This is gift given and received once and for all when the first sound resonated from the origin of sound.

Put differently – Let there be light!. (cf. Gn 1:3)

And there was, and is here, and ever will be -- this sacred ribbon.

Still.

Holding.

Haiku for Elizabeth

Wet old apple tree
watching orange sunrise wash
clear cabin window

(wfh, 21dec02)
.........................
Sometimes fire doesn't catch until you leave it alone.
After several attempts, not until returning to house, cabin woodstove chimney dances smoke. Woman arrives, walks mindfully to screen door, and disappears into chapel/zendo.

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith to the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Romans 16:25 - 27)

"Now," Paul writes, and "now disclosed." What is constant, and what is evermore constant, is honoring resplendence no longer hidden from our eyes, is born aware presence.

Coming to this, an advent pilgrimage is what is born, within and without.

We must first visit another. They too are near birth.

Visit Elizabeth, a name that means "one consecrated to God."

Aware presence sits in maximum-security prison around table in education. Eight inmates, two visitors, reading at random snippets from The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace, pieces from many minds collected by Jack Kornfield. Later we read a piece on history and who we are. We finish with poem by e.e.cummings let it go .

Then Sonny getting up to leave says it. One sentence. It sums up the gathered circle conversation with compact clearness.

Sonny says, "What Jesus was, we are now, if we let it be."

Turning the wheel of the Dharma
is the beginning and end
of the whole training.
With this aspiration one starts
giving one’s whole heart to the training;
with one’s heart in it, one does it.
Depending on it, one looks
for the wonder arousing,
mysterious state behind appearances.
That attained, the transformation
of one’s life has been completed.
- Torei (1721-1792)

Beyond appearances, at center of our very being, Sonny's sentence.

Saskia ends with their nodding affirmation, “May we all be at peace, now.”

What if we've never grasped the incarnation?
Is there an incarnational constant, similar to the cosmological constant?
Creation is God's way of saying, "I am here!"
What if God is, from the first, awareness becoming human?
What if Jesus saw through Christ what God from the beginning is creating?

Who, then, would not celebrate each birth, each awakening, and each leap of light through night to earth?

Christ is now longing to be born. Jesus knew this. And this is what God reveals as truth in time.

Imagine this: religion has done its job, holding sacred sound reverently as time unfolds voice to pronounce its song. Our breath rises in and out the body mother bestowed on one and all.

This. Know this. "This," sounds God, "is my son and daughter in whom I am. Well. Pleased."

Oh dear! Here we are! Thanks be to God!

"People don't write history, historians do."

I remember that line (or one similarly phrased) from a play attended in Callicoon NY in 1964, The troupe of theater players would descend to auditorium under church and rehearse a comedy about somebody's war. Our own war was nascent in Vietnam. Our personal wars with what and how we thought were like rocks in the near flowing Delaware River, temporarily diverting the rush of event and history, a surprising whitewater of resistance that splashed over us before continuing toward Crows Nest, Port Jervis, the Delaware Water Gap, Dingmans’ Ferry, down to Philadelphia, and out into Atlantic Ocean.

Historians have realized for a long time that monks of the eleventh and twelfth centuries invented a past in order to legitimize their claims to the present.
(-- from Introduction, in Monks & Nuns, Saints & Outcasts, Religion in Medieval Society, c.2000)

If I were to invent a past, what would I wish to legitimize as a proper present?

Monastic culture sought to control the future through the proper performance of liturgy. Prayer, for the living and the dead was the primary function of the monastic community, a function understood and cherished by all orders of lay society. Moreover, ritual actions showed the proper social hierarchy, they acted out the proper order of the world, or, when necessary, they dramatized the failure of human society to conform to the divine order.
(-- from ch 1, Monastic Memory and the Mutation of the Year Thousand, essay by Patrick J. Geary, op.cit.)

How would I write it? The divine order, yes, what is the divine order? No matter what anyone else calls it in their version of history, I'd say that the divine order is common use of commonly used property and possessions. A wise person with no personal ambition would be wise counsel to those who gather into communities of common intent.

(Of course there would be the non-gatherers, the non-commoners who would rather think of themselves as special and privileged, who take to themselves honor and rank and assemble under their benevolence minions of fawning prisoners to their control and protection -- not unlike the current day governments with their two party political charade that rivets attention on every proclamation and grumbling complaint to their benevolent patriarchy. But these are not the divine order in the history I write.)

The divine order is a circle, not a ladder, not a straight line. Women and men attend to creation. This might be birds, cats, spiders, clouds, mice, dogs, horses, chipmunks, dust motes, baking flour, branches of trees, elderly people or even children. All creation, once or formerly visible, is the work and leisure of the divine order.

In this history there is no entertainment industry, no recreational industry, no educational industry, no financial industry, no industry whatsoever. There are only people living their lives with nature and unseen nature. The circle of life encounters each and every individual on the circle with attention, respect, and engaging service to the needs of each and all.

Women are neither baby makers nor objects of sexual satisfaction. Men are neither baby makers nor objects of sexual satisfaction. Women and men are the created, creation, and creators in a circle of reverence and love. There is nothing to take and nothing to give -- everything we once thought of as sexual industry is reconsidered in the light of what is calling forth now. Is now a child? Is now a comforting? Is now a coupling? Is now a non-coupling? Whatever emerges will be a result of what now is creating -- and not a result of an industry, whether ecclesial, cultural, or consumer -- for the good of now and forever. What we once called procreation and perpetuation of genetic strain is no longer of interest. What is the divine order that is of interest? Ask yourself.

You alone are the creator, the created, and the creation. In the past we were tempted to say "God created...” When we did say that, we fell deeper into forgetfulness with the use of a word with three letters. Today, now, is the space of remembering. The remembrance we arrive at is the very fact of what we have called incarnation. It is an awkward word. But so is God.

You and I are not God. God is not God. (God is not a word that represents God). Nor is anyone else God. What else can we say?

Go ahead -- say it. It is the present. It is now. God is everywhere present, but nowhere found. And the mystery we call Christ is the realization in Jesus this season that God is now human. It is a curious phrase: God is now human. If such is so, perhaps this is why God is nowhere found. Are we looking in the wrong places? Are we looking in words? In sky? In routines and traditions that have no further role in locating and celebrating God? And is this why we feel so alone and not with God?

There is no need to write history. We are what historians choose to say about us. There is no need to believe what is said. We are condemned to repeat history when it is someone else's telling of history. Forget it. History, far from being a recounting of events gone by, is a story embedded within us right now in our hands and feet. With every move we enact history. Don't let anyone enact your life for you.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
(-- George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950)

Rather, be divine order. Write no history. Be the story of life as it is unfolding right now. Be what we are doing.
Yet the question remains -- If this common gathering is to simplify creation, who are we to say we are?

We are who we are and what we are, when and how we are there, as we are here.
Write this -- nothing other.

Breathe easy. The darkness of history is dying. Light will see us through.

Us. With us. God with us. Emanuel.
Write us -- no -- enact us well.

There's no place to go but home.

Gathering simples, going home
White clouds flying
Mists melt black mountains
And this wandering mystic’s
Wandered astray.
Black apes call and green birds cry
A magic crane goes before me,
Dancing, leads me
To my cave.
- Yun-K’an Tzu

Home is not what we think it is. Home is where no thinking leaves us. After illusions reveal themselves and scuttle off. After long looking down many paths yields an empty road with no encouragement to continue further. After one of the numerous beliefs we've cherished collapses into vacant stare at nothing we can remember. After we discover one more 'friend' has bailed out with oblique words such as, 'There are other things I have to take care of.'

Home begins to take shape when after one or all of the above riddles our lives with disappointment. We realize there has never been a real appointment with any of them -- not illusory perceptions, not the direction of our life, not beliefs we've held with foolish courage, and not the friendships that have been mere convenience, and you and I are now inconvenient.

Home appears when we are looking the other way. It occurs during the dismantling of our special lives. Home is where nothing special takes place with arresting awareness.

A poet who looked the other way with words wrote:

let it go--the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise--let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go--the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers--you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go--the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things--let all go
dear
so comes love

(e.e.cummings, XXIX in 1 X 1)

Being led, dancing, to that cave. Love is where there is no place to go, but home.

"Where there is no one, I am." It was a silent phrasing during 1st sitting in chapel/zendo.

That's what came after arriving at the cabin for Sunday Evening Practice and the woman connected to Tibetan monks asked where she might sit. Moonlight over her shoulder placed window squares on ash wood floor.

The letters "w" and "t" keep phrase from saying, "Here, here is no one, I am."

Pure and fresh are the flowers with dew
Clear and bright is the singing of the birds;
Clouds are calm, waters are blue.
Who has written the True Word of no letters?
Lofty are the mountains, green are the trees,
Deep are the valleys, lucid are the streams;
The wind is soft, the moon is serene.
Calmly I read the True Word of no letters.
- Zenkei Shibayama (dailyzen.com)

Cesco occupies middle blue zabuton below as I sit in loft. In the house Saskia researches music order, Mu-ge races crazily up and down stairs, up and down table, desk, and chair. Sando sighs on bedroom bed with elderly tolerance of the new energy bouncing off the walls.

The day extends. We walk with dogs in state park. Back at cabin as sun sets and darkness curls around bare branches we light oil lamps to begin enclosing porch with clear plastic. When night and cold temperature rendezvous we gather tools on porch for morning and enter chapel/zendo for Vespers.

Prayer is sung in psalm-tone. There is a trust that in ways we cannot fathom what we do matters. We don't know if it does. We just do it with intention to remain in loving attention with all there is and each one there.

We try to do, simply and starkly, what we are doing. When being and doing have little or no separation between them, we begin to disappear. In that disappearance, the one we call God is no longer absent but still invisible, no longer unheard but still silent. In that disappearance there is no knowing.

We know nothing of God. We barely know anything of ourselves. What we do manage to know are odd details of finances, academic test questions, flaws of others, and how to divert ourselves from ourselves by becoming someone. When and if we ever fail miserably and wonderfully at becoming someone, it is there at that ground opening emptiness the one we call God resonates “I am.”

No need asking why and how. No reason, no explanation, satisfies. Just this: Where there is no one, I am.
“I am!” -- There’s that sentence! We are permitted to praise this. And give thanks.

Choose your own silent phrase. Sit with it. Lose track of everything else. Go away. Return home.

Advent in forceful wind.

Phil Berrigan died Friday, Dec. 6. Reading Phil Berrigan’s final words about nuclear weapons, their production, threat, and ultimate use:
Because of myopic leadership, of greed for possessions, a public chained to corporate media, there has been virtually no response to these realities... (“PHIL'S STATEMENT 12/05/02” (dictated the week before Thanksgiving, via Liz McAlister) (http://www.rcnv.org/rcnv/archives/philberrigan.htm)

He died soon after an unfinished sentence in a completed life. Compare Phil’s life with the incomplete lives and finished sentences of profiteers and politicians trying to convince us that destruction and death is good for the economy and our ideals of freedom.

I came late to the dharma,
But each day, deepen my retreat.
Waiting for mountain monks,
I sweep my simple hut.
Then down from cloudy peaks
You come through knee-deep weeds.
We kneel on tatami, munching pine nuts.
We burn incense and study the Way.
Light the lamp at twilight;
A simple chime begins the night.
In every solitude, deep joy:
This life abides.
How can you think of returning?
A lifetime is empty like the Void.
- Wang Wei

Brendan Walsh gave a eulogy for Philip Berrigan. Walsh is cofounder of Viva House, a Catholic Worker house in Baltimore that operates a soup kitchen, food pantry, and free law clinic. He said that during one incarceration, he and Phil lived like monks together in a tiny jail cell for 5 months, eating wonder bread and grape juice for morning Eucharist, doing scripture study during lockdown. Wang Wei's words, "How can you think of returning?” must have been heard by Berrigan each time he did an action he calculated to land him back in jail. He spent over eleven years in prison for civil disobedience acts of opposition to war and destruction of implements of war.

It is mid-Advent in the Christian calendar. The yearly meditation on the coming of Christ into human history is paled by homeland security in America, nostalgia for segregation, privileged rulings for the wealthy, and an odd intensity to rid the world of evil that particularly interferes with the interests of commercial vendors of oil, arms and weapons of mass destruction.

While churches sing and celebrate liturgical sentiments of anticipation of the prince of peace, others plot bomb coordinates, CIA assassination targets, and random terror. This is done in the name of Christian and Muslim causes and values, democracy or holy war. Is the world dangerous? Yes, the world is dangerous.

The wind is a clearer sound. It makes no statement trying to convince anyone of anything other than moving along a course of night, sounding through chimes hanging to record its passing. The wind is a haunting sound. The wind has integrity many long to hear.

Christ is being born. Phil Berrigan has died. Two persons and two sentences that serve to evoke sacred longing and spiritual crisis. There is a skeptical uncertainty initiated by these two moments of appearance and disappearance.

Phil Berrigan was a forceful wind. And so, through this night we wait and watch. We do so with friends whose longing and crises ask us to wait and watch with them.

Woodstove smoke at 5:00am from cabin. Bald Mountain reveals and conceals itself with moving clouds along southern side. Inside we read Dogen's words on walking mountain. If we're unaware of a mountain walking can we be aware of our own walking?

Under the thin smoke of winter
The old temple is quiet.
After sundown,
All the visitors are gone.
On the west wind, three,
Four chimes the evening bell.
How can the old monk
Concentrate on zazen?
- Ma Chih-yuan (1260-1334)(dailyzen.com)

Following Saturday morning's conversation, Many Faces of Death, a woman said she thought the practice at Meetingbrook was a radical acceptance of & surrender to the reality of each person arriving here. Like death, we arrive, finally, at who we are as we are at that moment. Why not in life as well?

True love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become impossible and the heart has turned to stone. (-Thomas Merton, quoted in The Grace in Dying.)

Today, in unrelenting driving rain, this impossibility of prayer surrounds the walking mountain, shrouding clouds, chimney smoke, and this stony heart.

Who knows what person we are?
The sound of each and every thing is sonorous within us. Which sound do we retain and claim to be us?

Or does our consciousness stretch to the extending edges of an expanding multi-verse far beyond the ideas we've held of a contained universe, enclosed mind, separate self, atomistic existence, or isolated unconnected people in a conditioning manipulation we call society and culture?

Dreaming, Chuang Tzu became a butterfly;
Waking, the butterfly became a man.
Who knows which is real?
Who know where endless changes end?
The waters of the deepest sea
Return to the smallest stream.
The melon-grower outside the city gate
Was once the King of the Hill.
Even rank and riches eventually disappear.
You know, and still you toil.
- Li T’ai-po (701-?)(dailyzen)

In Boston, the Cardinal resigns over issues of protecting child-abusing priests and denying the problem. In Washington the President chastises impromptu remarks by the returning Majority Leader of the Senate regaling segregation and lamenting the difficulties that followed not having a segregationist leadership in this country. In America the bait and switch technique so popular in retail minds is being applied to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in world affairs. Which one am I?

Mu-ge steals a slice of cheese from counter. Sando eats morning treat from pink bowl on bed. Cesco hides out under an unassuming alias. Snow melts from roof with warming sun.

Each is alone. We are not each other. Our true worth comes in realizing this, waking up from the very same dream, stepping out our life in the midst of everyone else sleeping, dreaming -- and waking.

Who knows who we are?
Who hears the sound of What Is being said?

Sitting in cabin night and morning. Temperature 18 to 8 degrees. No fire. Incense, sunrise, starlight.

There’s no self and no person,
How then kinfolk and stranger!
I beg you, cease going
From lecture to lecture;
It’s better to seek truth directly.
The nature of Diamond Wisdom
Excludes even a speck of dust.
From “Thus we have heard,”
To “This I believe,”
All’s but an array
Of unreal names.
- Layman P’ang (740-808)(dailyzen)

Arraying myself with unreal names, warm socks, and woolen watch cap the sitting occurs as snowmaker at Snow bowl makes good use of cold.

All in prayer, there, as sitting continues. One bell, two bells, three bells. Mother and child icon, circles on wooden cross, one finger raised on rosewood Buddha -- stain-glass candle is warmth enough.

All day, dust motes carry on in our absence.

Today is Thomas Merton day. We're happy Thomas Merton was who he was.

Let the wise one watch over the mind,
So hard to perceive, so artful,
Alighting where it wishes;
A watchfully protected mind
Will bring happiness.
- Dhammapada

He died Dec.10, 1968. He is vital for us.

"Thomas Merton wrote in his journal:
If I am to be a saint - and there is nothing else that I can think of desiring to be - it seems that I must get there by writing books in a Trappist monastery. If I am to be a saint, I have not only to be a monk, which is what all monks must do to become saints, but I must also put down on paper what I have become. It may sound simple, but it is not an easy vocation.
To be frank, without being boring, it is a kind of crucifixion. Not a very dramatic or painful one, But it requires so much honesty that it is beyond my nature. It must come, somehow, from the Holy Spirit. "
(Logan Alley's Eulogy for Thomas Merton, December 10, 2000, Gethsemani Abbey, Kentucky, http://archives.marshall.edu/~altany/rst351-0002-list/0293.html)


The man of Tao
remains unknown
Perfect virtue
produces nothing
'No-Self'
is 'True-Self'
And the greatest man
is Nobody
Thomas Merton, in The Way of Chuang Tzu

The Merton we knew, who is still in the lives of both of us, was a different man, and monk, from the saintly person of pre-fabricated purity that has become his image these days. He was a real person, not a saint; he was a mystic searching for God, but a God that crossed the boundaries of all religions; his was not a purely Christian soul. He developed closer spiritual ties than Church authorities will ever admit to the Eastern religions, Hinduism as well as Buddhism. In fact just before his appalling accidental death in December 1968, he was saying openly that Christianity could be greatly improved by a strong dose of Buddhism and Hinduism into its faith. These are things the record needs.
For us Merton was one of the seminal figures of our time. He was deeply curious about all religions, all areas of thought and philosophy. Rice says: "The Church has not done right by him. In fact, the Church has wronged him, and continues to wrong him, by glossing over, by evading the universality of his thought. The Church wants to obscure his basic human nature, his reaching out to other people in a desire to create a common bond, not necessarily based on religion."
"Sometimes I think there are two Churches," Rice says, "one run by the Vatican and the other by Merton. The one run by the Vatican is exclusionary and cold and based on dogma. The one run by Merton reaches out to the whole world and is based on faith." (Jim Knight, in his recollection of Merton, along with Ed Rice and Robert Lax, in The Thomas Merton We Knew, http://www.therealmerton.com/tommie.html)

Merton's last recorded words were "...and now I will disappear."
And so, he did. But not before he was sighted in our midst.

Buddha's Enlightenment Day. Mary's Immaculate Conception. Meetingbrook Monastics 5th public proclamation of 3 Promises: Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence. Strong wind blows clear stars above ground snow.

You’re bound to become a Buddha if you practice
If water drips long enough even rocks wear through
It’s not true thick skulls can’t be pierced
People just imagine their minds are hard.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)

He saw, the star.
She is conceived, with no barrier.

We are happy to be in a garden with what grows around Sunday Evening table. Still, the Cape Breton attraction. Who dares explain what draws us:
Alles Vergängliche
Ist nur ein Gleichnis;
Das Unzulängliche
Hier wird's Ereignis;
Das Unbeschreibliche,
Hier ist es getan;
Das Ewigweibliche
Zieht uns hinan.
(-- Chorus Mysticus: Faust)

(All things corruptible
are but reflection
Earth's insufficency
here finds perfection,
Here the ineffably wrought
is with love;
The Eternal Womanly
draws us above.)
(-- Mystical Chorus, Faust, by Goethe)

So it is, we are drawn.

“Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of their country.”
I remember that sentence (parentheses added) from my youth. It was a typing exercise my mother and sister would peck out on the small Olivetti I’d been given. The sentence and sentiment seems renewed now.

So many in our country are passionately confused. Back our President and administration? Or, loyally, oppose their either preventive positioning or posturing pretense with regard to Iraq?
People in America are torn between the take-no-prisoners of the right wing politicians and commentators, and, the just-wait-a-minute of the undecided. Polls say the President’s focus on regime change and war with Iraq is much approved. The inner hearts of those who doubt either intention or motivation of this course of action at this time by this set of men in power – these hearts hardly show up in the count used to measure the will of the American people.

“I knew a priest once. When I lived in Beijing. He used to help me.” Shan spoke at her back. “Once I had a similar dilemma. About whether to seek justice or to just do what the bureaucrats wanted. Do you know what he said? He told me that our life is the instrument we use to experiment with the truth.” (-- p.319, in The Skull Mantra, novel set in Tibet, by Eliot Pattison)

For those wishing to experiment with the truth, there is something they can do. To find the truth amid confusion and diversion of attention away from it, there is something that must be done. Practice. Practice Now. And practice continuously.

Practicing with my life is the test and trial of my life. It is to try out – [L.ex-periri] – what is the very ground of my life. The word ‘experiment’ has this definition alongside several in dictionary:
“an operation carried out under controlled conditions in order to discover an unknown effect or law, to test or establish a hypothesis, or to illustrate a known law.”(p.293, Webster’s Seventh)

Practice, Now, and Continuous – this is what each is invited to do to learn the truth.

The immediate “now” of continuous practice is not something which existed in me from before. The time called “now” is not born from continuous practice. The time when continuous practice is manifested is what we call “now.” Consequently, one day of continuous practice by us becomes the seed of all the Buddhas; it is the continuous practice of all the Buddhas.
(-- from Gyoji, in Dogen’s Shobogenzo)

No one can accept another’s version of the truth without experimenting themselves, with their own lives, with the truth. One Zen Master, when asked for a definition of truth that would still be true in five hundred years, answered, “The truth is just like this.” And so each one must ask -- What is this?

War is a serious example of our unwillingness or inability to face who we are. The externalization of inner truth – the internalization of external truth – are ways of seeing what is whole and unbroken by our minds with their rationalizations, propaganda, self-interests, delusions, and deceptions. If we are truth, each one of us, everywhere, how do we account for the activities of destruction and elimination of what we are?

“Truth,” said Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "is only arrived at by the painstaking elimination of what is not true.” I can't help but wonder. Until we face what is not true within us we will never see what is true. To face who we are is the beginning of conversation. Are we, each of us, the conversation between what is true and what is not true? Perhaps Sherlock Holmes should have been given the line: "Truth is arrived at the painstaking awareness of what is true and not true now."

We are not at the mercy of those in power with their perceptions and intentions. Whatever they do cannot touch our true reality – that which is the Ground within us. Rather, we are at the mercy of ourselves. If we do not practice the alertness and awareness that will lead us to truth, to this truth available to each of us, then we do not belong to ourselves, and are lost. To practice, now, and continuous, is to look and listen – experimenting with the instrument of our life – with the truth.

“Truth” is embedded within. No one can ultimately manipulate or destroy it. Truth waits for us -- for our eyes, ears, nose, taste, touch, and simple awareness. Truth is not other than who and what we are. Don’t lose your truth.

By practicing, now, and continuously the truth we are, will help others, everywhere. From Washington D.C. to Iraq – we can help find the courage to experiment with the truth, deepen our lives, and painstakingly become aware of and live what is true. Elimination is not the necessity. Transparency, and embodiment of truth, is.

We pray for each one’s arrival, each one's discovery, and seeing each one through.

Kneeling/sitting with Omni bench in front room. Votive candle below bronze two-sided crucifix: corpus one side, tree other. Tree facing trees of Bald Mountain, body facing me in dimming daylight.

For a while we arrange and rearrange the details surrounding our lives. Soon enough we derange and descry the details of surrender of our life. It is not a difficult transition. Only, the reality of it often eludes us.

Power is the drama of monarchs and heads of state. Power is protected, always, by death and threat of death. In the Middle East Israel occupies Palestinian land. Angered, Palestinians strike back. America gives money and implements of power to Israel. Arabs and Muslims include America in retaliatory punishment. America unleashes death and threat of death in response.

The drama. The play. The actors.

Looking at crucifix one sees death and the threat of death do not exclude Jesus. He is dead; he surrendered to the power of this world; he was nothing special.

It is Advent again. He is coming, again. Boughs and cribs, lighted trees and choral refrains, again. The cycle of birth and death is dramatized in religious observance. In the Middle East a contemporaneous passion play in real time mirrors liturgical celebrations of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions.

Sacrifices are readied. Men, women, and children are primped, rehearsed, and sent out on stage. Rulers with serious faces give explanations for their motivations that are moronic. Tanks, machine guns, heavy artillery, bombs and victory parades are planned and positioned. These heads of state are something special; entourages, secret service, bodyguards, flags, salutes, posters, hiding places – the perquisites and pornography of power. Furtive agents of terror and secrecy sneak their wares through public everydayness and detonate their belief they are saviors, martyrs, and conquering heroes – the destructive and despondent spoils of delusion.

We wonder if Jesus embodied God. We listen to his words for an echo of God’s voice. We look at his deeds for an intuitive resemblance to God’s actions. We wonder, and our uncertainty keeps us wondering. If Jesus is nothing special, he is God’s nothing special.

All the other posturing and preening, the coveting articulation and demurring denials – these are the sad and sullen lines of demented characters in the play of power running on stages in our times. Who in their right mind kills people for applause and theatrical curtain calls? Our imaginations are not engaged. Something else is asked for. Strike the set. Lower lights. Empty the house. Can anyone find a script we can live with?

The light fades and Bald Mountain looms ghostlike across Barnestown Road. The last squiggly line of incense wafts by crucifix. Twilight, dusk, finally darkness.

When bowing, head to floor, the very gesture tells the body what sacred honoring it is doing. Each small, quiet bow following that one extends filaments of enclosure to each recipient of familial inclusive recognition.

I bow to you. I greet you there.

A hard heart doesn't hear the voice of God. Not in silence, not in the conversations that intersect our thinking. "If today you hear God's voice..." Psalm 95 says, "harden not your heart."

Do not accept anything simply
Because it has been said
By your teacher,
Or because it has been written
In your sacred books,
Or because it has been
Believed by many,
Or because it has been
Handed down by your
Ancestors.
Accept and live only
According to what will enable
You to see truth face to face.
- Buddha

Seeing God face to face is death -- death to ego, death to separate self, death to the powerful illusion we are alone. The voice of God sounds through everything and every sentient being. Seeing God face to face is a heart that is broken with compassion.

In the parking lot outside the restaurant there are screams. A young (man/woman?) was punching themself in the face and nose. Blood smeared. An older man and woman were in attendance. He tried to hold the hands. The person began banging their face on the car, Finally they agreed to get into the front seat, to have the seat belt buckled, to be driven away. This scene, autistic sorrow, covered the afternoon. The few in the shop spoke softly about the sorrow of autism.

One need not be supernaturally inclined to hear the voice of God. God screamed in the parking lot today. Our hearts sorrowed, softened, and stood ready to assist with helpless attention.

To enter God's rest is to pray -- that is, to open heart and mind to the sound of what is being said, the sight of what is taking place. Open mind, open heart, and open eyes -- without judgment, without separating oneself from the whole that is there -- this is how we learn to pray.

I pray for those three in the parking lot today. I pray for those hearing, seeing, and sorrowing the encounter.

I almost forget: he’d do anything for you. Love him
for what you might have become
and love him for what you are, not that far
from him. We are never that far. Love
everyone you can. The list gets longer and shorter.
We’re seldom better than weather. We’re nearly as good
as a woman we met in passing once at Invergarry.
Don’t be sorry, for him or for self. Love the last star
broken by storm. And love you. You hold it together.

( -- from poem Villager by Richard Hugo, in The Right Madness on Skye)

Bookshop/Bakery closed today. No open poetry reading there this afternoon.
.............................

White pail fell back down cliff from the spot alongside icy path we climbed up from rocky shore. I watched it bounce. It wanted to stay where I'd found it this morning.

Silent Illumination

Silently and serenely, one forgets all words,
Clearly and vividly, it appears before you.
When one realizes it, time has no limits.
When experienced, your surroundings come to life.
Singularly illuminating is this bright awareness,
Full of wonder is the pure illumination.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)(dailyzen)

Take nothing for the journey, bring nothing back.

Poetry is one of the forms of joy, the most articulate, the most expanding, and, therefore, the most fulfilling form. It is no separation from the world; it is the mankind of the world, the most human language of man's uncertain romance with the universe. -- John Ciardi

Mu-ge finds crevice between table leg and file cabinet, hunkers down on spilt-over paper behind wires suckling electricity from strip plug, and watches me.

Poetry returns what is in words to itself.

It is Thursday.
For that fact
alone,
I am grateful.