It's time to change tactics concerning Iraq.

I expected to see only pink blossoms,
But a gentle spring snow has fallen
And the cherry trees are wearing a white coat.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Naomi Klein writes:
The administration says the war was about fighting for democracy. That was the big lie they resorted to when they were caught in the other lies. But it's a different kind of a lie in the sense that it's a useful lie. The lie that the United States invaded Iraq to bring freedom and democracy not just to Iraq but, as it turns out, to the whole world, is tremendously useful -- because we can first expose it as a lie and then we can join with Iraqis to try to make it true. So it disturbs me that a lot of progressives are afraid to use the language of democracy now that George W. Bush is using it. We are somehow giving up on the most powerful emancipatory ideas ever created, of self-determination, liberation and democracy.

And it's absolutely crucial not to let Bush get away with stealing and defaming these ideas -- they are too important.

Then:
So what is our role here? We need to support the people of Iraq and their clear demands for an end to both military and corporate occupation. That means being the resistance ourselves in our country, demanding that the troops come home, that U.S. corporations come home, that Iraqis be free of Saddam's debt and the IMF and World Bank agreements signed under occupation. It doesn't mean blindly cheerleading for "the resistance." Because there isn't just one resistance in Iraq. Some elements of the armed resistance are targeting Iraqi civilians as they pray in Shia mosques -- barbaric acts that serve the interests of the Bush administration by feeding the perception that the country is on the brink of civil war and therefore U.S. forces must remain in Iraq. Not everyone fighting the U.S. occupation is fighting for the freedom of all Iraqis; some are fighting for their own elite power. That's why we need to stay focused on supporting the demands for self-determination, not cheering any setback for U.S. empire.
(in "How to End the War" by Naomi Klein, published May 5, 2005, by In These Times ) http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0505-23.htm

Her words suggest we must now truthfully do what the Bush administration has winked and nodded it was doing -- we must work for democracy in Iraq. Not the substitution of Saddam's tyranny for the United State's imperial puppetry. Just because the invasion wore the mask of "for democracy" after the disguise of WMD fell off, doesn't mean the deception used couldn't become the real thing in honest hands.

Same with spirituality. People give up spirituality because they see its abuse and control by those for whom religion and institution are goals substituting for authentic experience.. Spirituality is practice. It is the grace of transparency, presence, and transcendence come home to everyday interaction.

The people of Iraq deserve, finally, their own country. It is a longing to be ordinary, free from both tyrant and usurper.

Tyrant is gone, but we cannot be sure if usurper will let Iraq belong to itself. That will take time and courage. Iraqis need to be confident Americans are not behind the pillaging of their country and resources. We must find again and retrieve our soul -- the one that recognizes and distinguishes fairness, justice, and purity of heart. It might not be too late.

It is a good idea that government must serve the people. There's been enough of the opposite. It is time to take the war away from the administration and work -- Americans and Iraqis -- for transparence, more authentic presence, and the grace to transcend.

Dan Berrigan wrote: "Bodies belong where words are."

It is time to embody authentic democracy and peace.

What do you say?

What do I say?

Are we free to?

Some stayed late after poetry this evening. It is courageous to attempt wording one's life.

To this place of retreat,
The world does not follow;
But many old ailments heal here.
I polish words of old poems;
View mountains, and sleep
Outside my hut.
Colored clouds
Cross the setting sun;
Cicadas ring in the leaves
Of trees.
With this my heart again
Knows happiness;
And who would have thought it,
Without wine or money?
- Yao Ho (831)

It's what makes Saturdays rich. Poetry, Tea, and Literature is really about Berrigan's "Bodies belong where words are." Some poems we write are prelude to the poem writing itself.

Every poem is a good poem. Some think they're good. One or two are goodness itself. It is these we listen for; these we can't hold back when their time comes.

Are you willing?

Write yourself.

We go into prison for conversation. We come out with something harder to comprehend.

Pat, Saskia, Bernard, Steve and I talked about V.I. Lenin's article "What is to Be Done?" about professional revolutionaries; Raymond Carver's poem "At Least"; and the final lines of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye spoken by Holden Caulfield -- "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do you start missing everybody.".

So taken with
The faultless face and radiance
Of an alluring moon,
My mind goes farther, farther
To reach remote regions of the sky.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

At Interreligious Dialogue this evening Sri Aurobindo's translation and commentary of the Bhagavad Gita. It might be true that by their fruits you may know them, but Sri Krishna says it's unimportant to know the fruits, just to perform each act with pure mind and open heart unattached to the results. We have a right to the act but not to the fruits.

Aurobindo says: "With devotion, without desire."

All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of name and form. But it is a veiled manifestation and there is a gradation between the supreme being of the Divine and the consciousness shrouded partly or wholly by ignorance of self in the finite.
The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in man; the human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world.
(Sri Aurobindo)

The ordinary -- there's something ordinary about conversation. Even in prison.

I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy -- I have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what's going to happen.
(from poem "At Least" by Raymond Carver)

You see -- something takes place. What follows is anybodies guess. You open your ears and listen; you open your mouth and speak. Whatever takes place is...gift.

We don't bother to wait -- we can't. We leave. The saluting corrections guards honoring their brothers and sisters as they entered and left are gone from front door. The room we occupied with inmates is empty and dark. The visitors' desk vacated. The wind has shifted northeast.

Like the question asked on Ascension Day, we ask: Where does conversation go when nothing but silence remains?

Each is left to reach their own conclusion.

We have so much to be thankful for.

We try to comprehend.

Without desire.

With devotion.

Gone where?

This Ascension Thursday I sit on porch of cabin reading student's papers. They are mythic writings on experiences and engagements with life. We wrestle with the ordinary each attempt to place the ordinary into words.

Pure seeing, or mere seeing, is itself the ambiguous gift of being in the world. Where did Jesus go during that event scripture and tradition calls his Ascension?

Are we willing to merely look? Are we capable of seeing in and of itself?

And from this, it appears that pure meditation without thought or object -- practiced in order to achieve pure mind or "purity of heart" and thereby enter the Kingdom of Heaven -- is the one authentic strand of Christian spiritual practice that can be traced through at least fourteen centuries back to Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. (p. 121 in Zen and the Kingdom of Heaven, Reflections on the Tradition of Meditation in Christianity and Zen Buddhism, by Tom Chetwynd, Wisdom Publications, 2001)

Where'd he go? Today is the anniversary of my mother's death. Where'd she go?

"Only by purifying the heart -- the depths of the feeling-mind and the seat of passion -- can we free ourselves from our particular egoistic reactions to which we are tethered by long conditioning. The storm of the ego is always on the surface, but in the depths of the mind there is unlimited peace." (Tom Chetwynd)

Theological and historical speculation aside, there is an opportunity to see through the Ascension.

The heart-mind is what is seeing itself.

In this case, Jesus and Katherine. Purity of heart and depth of mind assist their see through and our seeing through.

They were still staring into the sky when suddenly two men in white were standing near them and they said, "Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there."
(Acts 1:10 - 11)

Calm the storm of ego which always wants things its way. No need to look for reflection when looking for someone. What is looking is what is seeing through the looking.

The same way as you have seen.

Him.

Her.

Today.

We do; we run after illusions.

Sons of men, how long will your hearts be heavy?
Why do you seek for vain things?
Why do you run after illusions?
(from Psalm 4)

The day was odd in the shop. Some talked of NAACP involvement. Some, of dislike of conspiracy theories. Later, reading from book someone left for us, a scatter of opinions that were contentious. The range of opinion fluctuated wildly all day.

Walking along a little path,
I find a footprint on the moss,
A white cloud low on the quiet lake,
Grasses that sweeten an open door,
A pine greener with the rain,
A brook tumbling from a mountain source,
And, mingling with Truth among flowers,
I have forgotten what to say.
- Liu Chang-ch’ing

Four of us -- two dogs, two humans -- walked between streams of divided brook this morning. The flow has cut deeply the ground. It is the way of nature to expose elements to change.

It is good that prisoners find commonality for learning. It is awful to think some in government would use tragedy to manipulate their agenda. It is curious that fidgety reaction would follow the words of someone whose sincerity is surrounded in suspicion.

Even if someone is questionable in our minds, we must first ask ourselves the selfsame question formed for the other.

We must investigate.

No doubt it is the sliver moon.

Practicing respect tries patience.

We suffer seeing only by looking.

Consciousness is changing. That's news to many of us.

Old standards used for thinking about the world have rotted like barn sill with north-west exposure tired from too many storms. New ways of thinking are kidnapped and held for ransom. Until a dollar worth can be affixed, new mind is held captive. Once amortized, new consciousness is parceled like real estate to new entrepreneurs for distribution after signature on loyalty oath.

Everywhere you look
The mountains are covered
With mist and blooming cherry trees.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Dawn rain gives way to sun as Cesco and I climb path along Ragged Mountain. Water sits on every grass blade. Underground springs cannot be contained; they gurgle through soaked surface and run in mime of skiers.

Two planes go down in Iraq. Who will be blamed? Who attacked? Which way war's expansion? In this country we are regaled with news of pedophiles and politicians -- both who use their power to grab what they want.

On the mountain, soft with wet, spring growth burrows through and out. Meditation cabin becomes Wallace Stevens' jar in Tennessee

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
(poem by Wallace Stevens)

It's only, some say, a poem. The first time I heard it (from visiting English teacher Geoffrey the beat poet/singer in New Hampshire in early sixties) I had the old awareness. Now, nearly none. Do I understand? Not much. Nary a clue.


Wallace Stevens is, at times, the exemplary figure of the austere Modernist, shorn of Transcendental excess, wary of its expansionist programme for consciousness: 'Anecdote of the Jar' has been mined by generations of students teasing out its seemingly endless self-referentiality to demonstrate that 'less is more'. The poem is, of course, an ironic critique of the Romantic yearning for the creative interfusion of consciousness and nature as the basis of art. Its circular self-enclosing form seems an austere rebuke to Emerson's more expansive solipsism. Emerson wrote, "The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end', but Steven's circling is a demarcation line, an exclusion zone. Similarly the poem cheats the reader's desire for narrative lift-off; this is an anecdote which leads nowhere, which fends off chatty familiarity, and in which there is no significant joining that transcends its constitutive elements.
(On "Anecdote of the Jar" by Pat Righelato)

In the executive, legislature, and judiciary -- in the media, including news, celebrity, and sports -- there is powerful pressure for each to become what someone thinks they should be.

In the cabin nothing becomes itself.

Chatty ceases; transcending unties.

No identity.

Clueless.

As if as is.

"We'll just have to spend some time silent," said man to woman after she noted him coming in and asked him why there was nobody in church at 8:03am. She went up front. Empty churches are inspiring. On back bench he read yesterday's readings. He's a day late for everything.

Simply reverence the Lord Christ in your hearts, and always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have. (1 Peter 3:15)

Got 4.9 gallons of gas for $11.00 at McDucks at corner of Elm and John. Coffee and donut came to $1.20. A classical version of "Knocking on Heaven's Door" was playing on WERU driving Hosmer Pond Road home.

Last night leaving shop Tommy asked what I thought about the conversation that afternoon where somebody was talking about the five Israeli men filming from New Jersey the lower Manhattan crash, burn, and collapse in September 2001 attack. I told him I didn't know what to think. Most times I don't know what to think. If there's evidence, look at it. If there's opinion, listen to it. If there's something to research and investigate, do so.

Form one's own point of view, after investigation and meditation, and continue an open mind. My hope is that there is truth, love, service, and hospitality to be found and shared. I'm willing to opt for attentive presence and compassionate relationality.

21. Flowers Don't Return
A monk asked Kegon, "How about when an enlightened man returns to illusion?" Kegon said, "A broken mirror does not reflect; fallen flowers do not go back to the branch."

[Commentary] This does not mean that an enlightened man is infallible and cannot make mistakes or do bad or foolish things. It means that he partakes of the inevitability of things. Just as flowers make no effort to return to the branch or the broken mirror to be whole again, so the enlightened man does what he does without regret or self-pity.
(from p.89, in Games Zen Masters Play, Writings of R.H. Blyth, ed by Robert Sohl and Audrey Carr)

For now, I'm staying with Blyth's words about partaking of the inevitability of things.

On 61st street and Bay Parkway in Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn there is a church named after St Athanasius. Today, in another, empty, church, I pray with and for all known at that time in that place and from there to here.

Spending time silent.

Hope, if that's what it is, spings from silence.

Workers untie!

In a short time the world will no longer see me;
but you will see me,
because I live and you will live.
On that day you will understand that I am in my Father
and you in me and I in you.
(John 14:19-20)

Sitting in silence, stove hot, walking three times round, chanting Compline.

There are no half measures but in mind. Everything done, wholeheartedly, is practice. Dogen says, that's enlightenment. And enlightenment?

Dogen said, that's practice.

Each way is whole way.

Sitting at table, sipping soup, words of Hua Hu Ching precede bread.

Cesco barks. It is May.

Untie, untie, untie!

Sometimes a review is necessary.

Back from sitting, lectio with Hua Hu Ching, walk at Snow Bowl along swelled Hosmer Pond, and back from chores picking up food for cat and provisions for hermitage -- I ask Saskia as she begins baking in kitchen whether she considers herself Buddhist. "Yes," she says. I ask if she considers herself Christian. "Yes," she says. Then she asks, "And you?" I answer, "Certainly."

A Buddhist Retreat Behind Broken Mountain Temple

In the pure morning, near the old temple
Where early sunlight lights the tree tops,
My path has wound, through a sheltered hollow
Of boughs and flowers, to a Buddhist retreat.
Here birds are alive with mountain light,
And the mind touches peace in a pool,
A thousand sounds are quieted
By the breathing of a temple bell.
- Ch'ang Chien

Sando and Cesco join us for silent sitting. Mu-ge went across Sally's land to the Spencer's to see if they, at least, had cat food out for their cat. The half-stick of Tibetan incense lasted 38 minutes. My knee thought the incense was malingering.

A superior person cares for the well-being of all things. She does this by accepting responsibility for the energy she manifests, both actively and in the subtle realm. Looking at a tree, she sees not an isolated event but root, leaves, trunk, water, soil and sun: each event related to the others, and "tree" arising out of their relatedness. Looking at herself or another, she sees the same thing. Trees and animals, humans and insects, flowers and birds: These are active images of the subtle energies that flow from the stars throughout the universe. Meeting and combining with each other and the elements of the earth, they give rise to all living things. The superior person understands this, and understands that her own energies play a part in it. Understanding these things, she respects the earth as her mother, the heavens as her father, and all living things as her brothers and sisters. Caring for them, she knows that she cares for herself. Giving to them, she knows that she gives to herself. At peace with them, she is always at peace with herself.
(# Thirty-Seven, in Hua Hu Ching, by Lao Tzu)

Woodchips are rippled on path to cabin from torrential rain. Tumbling brook's joyous sound fills inside of cabin with moving stillness.

"Guess what?" says Saskia as oven beeper tells end of baking time for croissants. "Ok, Ok I'm here, relax," says Saskia to oven.

The Unmanifest manifests.

There is a simplicity to practice.

Awareness transfoms each presentation. Each vibration is filtered and transformed by the presence of each one of us. That's what Rodney, KJ, Everett, and Greg thought about as we worked (ostensibly) in prison yesterday on punctuation by reading Rilke's "The Archaic Torso of Apollo."

In that practice, we must change our lives.

Rilke knew we must change our life. He knew there was no place that didn't see us. He was an artist. He was a poet. They know such things.

There is nothing that can be attained,
no form that can be sought.
Even good things are dispensed with,
so birth and death must be left far behind.
- Records of the Lanka

"Sez who?" asks the woman who peeled an orange during break in class. The woman who quoted that woman was outside. When everyone returned we read interview between Andrew Cohen and Eckhart Tolle:
The enlightened consciousness is rooted in the unmanifested, and ultimately is one with it. It knows itself to be that. One could almost say it is the unmanifested looking out. Even with a simple thing like visually perceiving a form -- a flower or a tree -- if you are perceiving it in a state of great alertness and deep stillness, free of past and future, then at that moment already it is the unmanifested. You are not a person anymore at that moment. The unmanifested is perceiving itself in form. And there is always a sense of goodness in that perception. So then all action arises out of that, and has a completely different quality from action that arises out of the unenlightened consciousness, which needs something and seeks to protect itself. That is really where those intangible and precious qualities come in that we call love, joy, and peace. They are all one with the unmanifested. They arise out of that. A human being who lives in connectedness with that and then acts and interacts becomes a blessing on the planet, whereas the unenlightened human is very heavy on the planet. There is a heaviness to the unenlightened. And the planet is suffering from millions of unenlightened humans. The burden on the planet is almost too much to bear. I can sometimes feel it as the planet saying, "Oh, no more, please."
(from "Ripples on the surface of Being" an interview with Eckhart Tolle by Andrew Cohen, in What Is Enlightenment? Magazine Fall/Winter 2000)

Living in connectedness is not bothered by the distinction made between life and death. It is a false distinction. Talk, if you will, about birth and death as a contrast; life surrounds birth and death. When we surrender to life, we surrender to surroundings.

She was deep within herself, like a woman heavy with child, and did not see the man in front or the path ascending steeply into life. Deep within herself. Being dead filled her beyond fulfillment. Like a fruit suffused with its own mystery and sweetness, she was filled with her vast death, which was so new, she could not understand that it had happened.

She had come into a new virginity and was untouchable; her sex had closed
like a young flower at nightfall, and her hands had grown so unused to marriage
that the god's infinitely gentle touch of guidance hurt her, like an undesired kiss.
(from "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes" -- Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell)

The exquisite tenderness of the procession.

"Who?" asked Euridice when Hermes told her Orpheus had turned around.

Far away, dark before the shining exit-gates, someone or other stood, whose
features were unrecognizable. He stood and saw how, on the strip of road among
the meadows, with a mournful look, the god of messages silently turned to follow
the small figure already walking back along the path, her steps constricted by the
trailing graveclothes, uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
(Rilke, final lines to poem)

This is a good way to end today -- uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.

It is good practice.

After sitting still for a long time, any sane meditator will come to the question, "What the hell am I doing sitting still?"

When suddenly awakened, although you are the same as Buddha, the energy of many lifetimes of habits is deep seated. Though the wind stops, the waves still billow; though noumenon is manifest, thoughts still invade. How can we neglect subsequent cultivation because of a single awakening?
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

That question is a heads-up to the mind that something is going to change. What will change? The mind is put on notice that stupid behavior like sitting still for long periods must be pointing to something, and painful knees, back, and psyche are damn interested in discovering just what it is.


Getting the Machine

It was good to hear
my own voice again
when I called, after
being gone for weeks.
I sounded the same.
I hadn't changed my name;
didn't have a foreign accent.
I just said I couldn't
come to the phone right then,
exactly the way I'd been
saying it for years,
and so I left myself
a little message
saying how sorry
I was I wasn't there,
and that I'd be
home soon. I tried to
think of what I'd want
to hear myself saying
and say it right.
(Poem: "Getting the Machine" by Joyce Sutphen from Naming the Stars. © Holy Cow! Press, 2004.)

Imagine a grand jury. They are attentively waiting for you to wade into the silence of the ripples following the echoes of the question just asked. "Why," asked the prosecutor, "did you and do you sit so long?"

Every inch of you, every joint and extra pound, every belief that sinew and dna have been foolishly hoodwinked into behaving like a stone perched atop a boulder -- all wait for you to open mouth to answer.

Yes, it is stupid, isn't it?

You might even say so.

Except for one thing.

You're not sure why you do it.

You don't know why, do you?

Why do you?

Say it right.

People wait for the unsaid to be finally said. Then, they think, it will all come clear.

No it won't.

Overcome your uncertainties
And free yourself
From dwelling on sorrow.
If you delight in existence,
You will become a guide
To those who need you,
Revealing the path to many.
- Sutta Nipata

What we have in common is the unsaid. The common language is not explanation, apology, or enunciation of some secret teaching. There is no secret teaching.

Be calm and keep watch. The Devil, your enemy, is circling you like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, strong in faith. (1 Peter 5:8-9)

Our common language is deeper than circling and roaring. Our common language is silence; it is stillness.

Silence and stillness is where we go when called into intimacy with what is most real.

Sit a while. Breath naturally. Keep watch. Carefully.

Word is in conversation with the unsaid.

Rain falls through silence splashing roof and earth.

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

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

Mere loveliness of Sunday Evening Practice. Cabin under rain. Deceased elder Janet's table in middle room during rain. Trungpa's story of Buddha's (as Delia called it) Christmas story. There are times when hermitage feels like what it is.

Song of T'aego Hermitage

I've lived in this hermitage
How long I don't know
Deep and secret and
Without obstructions
Heaven and earth meet
Like box and cover:
There's no turning toward
Or turning away.
I do not stay in the east, west,
South or north
The jewel tower and the jade palace
Do not stand opposite me.
I do not take guidelines from
Bodhidharma as a model
As the light shines freely through
Eighty four thousand gates
- T'aego (1301-1382)

Rain is guideline. In middle-night, at least, it is teacher. You see -- community is teacher, teacher is learning, and learning is community. It rains now. I recall other 3:30am's in Trappist guest chapel under rain-chant roof just before entoning voice began night office -- "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise." Invitation joining rain in plain-chant.


Atavistic

I wanted to walk without clothing
in the woods beside the creek,
and to come to the barn at night.

and sleep beside the horses, curled
in the smell and scratch of hay
with the bitch and pups.

The life of the house was flat,
filled with monotonous talking,
passing to and fro among the rooms,

and for what. My mother hated
animals, the way they ate the
food and dirtied the floor.

They were her enemies; she fought
their right to be there and
would have wiped them off the earth

if she could have. If a cat or a dog
came too close to the back door she
threw scalding water on it, and

was righteous in her anger, shouting
that they were not human and
didn't feel real pain.

If we must choose sides, I said
as a child, I take
the side of the animals.
(Poem: "Atavistic" by Irene McKinney from Vivid Companion. © Vandalia Press. )

at·a·vism n.
1. The reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence, usually caused by the chance recombination of genes.
2. An individual or a part that exhibits atavism. Also called throwback.
3. The return of a trait or recurrence of previous behavior after a period of absence.
[French atavisme, from Latin atavus, ancestor : atta, father + avus, grandfather; see awo- in Indo-European Roots.]

Mother Church sometimes sides with scalding water and not gentle healing rain. Thomas Cahill said on Meet the Press Sunday morning that Jesus communed with the divorced woman by the well in Gospel story, and did so with clarity and kindness. Why, he wondered, won't the Catholic Church do the same? It does not allow divorced people to receive communion -- to commune with Jesus.

Andrew Sullivan elsewhere warns that all this presentation of softer, kinder image of new pope will wear away and the former Joseph Ratzinger will throwback.

U.S. Prison Population Keeps Growing (From Times Wire Services)

Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week starting in mid-2003, by mid-2004 the nation's prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported.

By June 30, there were 48,000 more inmates, or 2.3%, more than the year before, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The total inmate population has hovered around 2 million for the last few years, reaching 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and just below that mark a year later.

While the crime rate has fallen over the last decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, the report said. (latimes.com)

During his five years in the SuperMax, Steve said, he wrote some children's books and his life story. The children's books are for his own kids. The cleaned up autobiography -- he's not sure who that's for. K.J. took his social studies test Friday. He said his brain hurt. Joe will get a rest for 30 days away from ordinary duties. He said he did something stupid. We thought it might be a good chance to do some writing for the course. Chris, Greg, and I reviewed material that said comma is called for before conjunction.

We take pause as we connect. The act of joining, of binding together -- One resulting from or embodying a union -- this is the invitation to commune. Communion curls in the smell and scratch of hay; encounters the purrs and yelps as they spontaneously occur.

The Rain

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent --
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be, for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.
(Poem by Robert Creeley)

The rain remembers me. It falls. Cat stretches on my lap as words fall under rain -- as in dream where I am dancing with (who is it?) Nicole Kidman or my cousin Janet on gymnasium balcony of old grammar school. Diffidence surprised by grace.

Ah! Sound of first Mourning Dove!

Time has fallen to 5:07am.

The grace of it!

Faint light.

Thirty years ago Marge inscribed Fowles' The Magus, "Is anything ever what it seems to be?"

Blessed the one who does not follow the counsels of the wicked... (Psalm 1)

With all the banter and bravado surrounding moral and political issues -- such as America's invasion of Iraq -- there is a remarkable inability on the part of the vast majority of us to accurately and insightfully "read" what is taking place. The current president of the United States, the current pope of the Catholic Church, and the newest "individual" in power, namely, the chief executive officers, the hollywood celebrities, the athletic superstars -- all combine to preach a unified gospel. That gospel is that power, wealth, control, and privilege are what really count in this world -- my will, my belief, my talent, my influence, and my exposure.

The gospel teaching of Jesus is scarcely followed by the church founded in his name. Nor are the words "created equal" or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all people -- followed faithfully by those entrusted with their care. Add other wise and insightful views such as those by thinkers, mystics, and creative artists and poets throughout history -- these, too, scarcely attended to. We witness a pattern of dull inattentiveness and claim it to be our special freedom -- not seeing it as our sorry fate.

It's the anniversary of the Easter Uprising, in Dublin (1916). A band of Irish nationalists, led by poet Patrick Pearse, occupied the General Post Office and declared Irish independence from Great Britain. The English executed 15 rebels, including Pearse, who promptly became a great Irish martyr.(in The Writer's Almanac, 24April)

Tara Is Grass
The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered like dust
Alexander, Cæsar, and all that shared their sway:
Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low --
And even the English, perchance their hour will come!
(Poem by Padraic Pearse)

Pretender greats and overbearing weighty celebrants of special election or remittance package -- all go to grass and will be given sod as their paycheck. As will we all. It's just that it is difficult to ignore the element of waste and suffering that follows upon false gospel.

Today I long for something more original. I'd rather we saw something worth sharing life and body.

Tara, Goddess of Peace and Protection

The goddess Tara is worshipped in many forms, but the best known are the peaceful, compassionate White Tara, the goddess Tara who protects and brings health, long life and peace, and the more dynamic Green Tara, who is the goddess Tara that brings fertility to the earth, overcomes obstacles, and saves us from physical and spiritual danger.

In Buddhist tradition, Tara is much greater than a goddess -- she is a female Buddha, an enlightened one was has attained the highest wisdom, capability and compassion. The goddess Tara is "one who can take human form and remain in oneness with the universe".

Best known in her Chinese and Hindu incarnations, a version of the Goddess Tara exists in virtually every culture. Indeed, it is said that the Goddess Tara will assume as many forms on earth as there are needs for by the people.

The Celts called their "Great Goddess" Tara. Her name is thought to be the root of the word Tor, which is a mound of earth or hillock imbued with spiritual energy or connection to the spirit world. In Native American legends, the Tara goddess is known by the "Star Woman".

The ancient goddess Tara in her many incarnations has many gifts to share with contemporary women.

Tara embodies the feminine strengths of great caring and compassion, the ability to endure stressful and even terrifying moments, the acts of creation, and the source of sustenance and protection.
(http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/goddess_tara.htm)

Maybe it's the full moon, or the damp raw rain in the middle of a depressing news cycle, but I'm ready to declare independence from the idea of nation and country, the idea of race and class, the idea of anyone telling how to become great and secure power and defeat enemies and eliminate threats to your way of acquisitional life.

Socrates, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Gandhi, Krishnamurti, and Robert Lax help with perspective.

And in the beginning was love.
Love made a sphere:
all things grew within it;
the sphere then encompassed
beginnings and endings,
beginning and end.
Love had a compass
whose whirling dance
traced out a sphere of love
in the void: in the center thereof
rose a fountain.
from Circus of the Sun, by Robert Lax)

When I forget sphere, compass, and center -- I forget love. It is a desolate forgetting.

It is during this desolation I attend words reminding what needs to be embodied, great caring and compassion, the ability to endure stressful and even terrifying moments, the acts of creation, and the source of sustenance and protection.

If these words are grass and earth, I miss the counsel of the old sod.

Return home.

"The brothers usurped." That's what Will said after chapter one of Aurobindo's translation of the Bhagavad Gita begun tonight at the shop. Those that usurp are particularly odious.

Mind is the root of the myriad phenomena. All phenomena are born from mind. If you can completely comprehend mind, the myriad practices are complete. It is like a great tree: all the branches and flowers and fruits grow based on the root. The tree grows only if the root survives. If the root is cut, the tree is sure to die. If you cultivate the Path by comprehending mind, you save effort and success is easy. If you cultivate the Path without comprehending mind, then you waste effort and there is no benefit. Thus we know that all good and evil come from one's own mind. If you seek outside of mind, it is impossible.
- Bodhidharma

Morning teaching. Then conversation in afternoon. It was a long day at prison. In his article a man named Sparrow said that only when he is writing is he a writer. We are reminded that it is not a state of being in which we remain fixed; it is an engaged activity of participation that whiles our existence moment to moment changing.

Nostos

There was an apple tree in the yard --
this would have been
forty years ago -- behind,
only meadows. Drifts
off crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor's yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from tennis courts --
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.
(Poem: "Nostos," by Louise Glück, from Meadowlands (Harper Collins).

Arjuna fights because his home and resources have been usurped by those without regard.

The seduction is not to look. Or, if we happen to look, to explain away what we see.

I think David's complaint in his psalm is the complaint of someone ready to turn and smile at his adversity and its source.

Is it for the dead that you perform your wonders?
Will the ghosts rise up and proclaim you?
In the tomb, will they tell of your kindness?
Will they tell of your faithfulness in the place of the lost?
Will your wonders be known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of oblivion?
(from Psalm 88)

The final frame is fresh in our minds. We watch the character as he watches those questioning him, those waiting for a response.

"Yes," he answers.

"Yes they will."

Return home.

Can we travel through the negative? What dwells between what we call the negative and the positive?

Iraq remains a troubling place. The temptation is to run away or explain away the difficulty of the issue that has taken up residence within our hearts, minds, and country. Is there a way to dwell in peace with the horror of Iraq and our involvement in it?

With proliferation of words and sophistication of spin it becomes ever more difficult to discern simple truth. Simple truth, (if there is any), is on its own, as it is, transparent and self-revealing, present and pertinent here and now.

I notice car-bombs exploding in Iraq, military helicopter crashing and burning, 50 bodies of kidnapped Shiites pulled from Tigris River, assassination of political leader, death of human rights worker, attempt to kill prime minister, two US soldiers killed, four wounded in car bombing in the Al-Amil area of Baghdad.

The War News report for April 20 is somber:
Nineteen Iraqis soldiers shot to death in a soccer stadium in Haditha. One child and one adult killed, at least five wounded in car bomb attack aimed at a US patrol in the Amiriyah district of Baghdad. Eight wounded in car bombing near the Bilat police station in Baghdad?s Dora district. Three civilians wounded in a third car bombing in Baghdad. A driver working for the health ministry killed, another individual wounded in attack by gunmen in east Baghdad. One Turkish truck driver killed when his truck struck a mine near Shorjat. Two Iraqi soldiers killed, three insurgents captured in clashes near Dujail. One Iraqi soldier killed, another wounded by mortar fire near Duluiyah. Basra tribal leader assassinated in Zubair. A 50-strong group of guerillas unsuccessfully attempted to overrun one or more local police stations in Mosul on Monday.
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/

It's not only war that is troubling. It's the disspiriting explanations and brushoffs made by those who say it is the price of democracy, the cost of freedom. It simply might be the result of ideological blindness, reactionary, self-serving, and power-wielding aggression by one country over another. You can't be sure which it is. You can, if you wish, trust your conscience if it is informed, as well as your heart, if not hardened by cynicism.

It is a long slog from ill-informed conscience and cynical heart to simple truth. I suspect the majority opinion is that there is no simple truth. Here's one: the pope, president, mailman, pet dog, Atlantic salmon, spider, black fly, and early spring ant -- will each die. In fact, as far as we know, every living thing will die. (Absent speculation about afterlife, what we are most conversant with is the duration between birth and death. "Life-Itself" might be the ever-present reality undergirding and transcending temporal existence -- nevertheless, everyone dies.)

Do not imagine that an integral being has the ambition of enlightening the unaware or raising worldly people to the divine realm. To her, there is no self and other, and hence no one to be raised; no heaven and hell, and hence no destination. Therefore her only concern is her own sincerity.
(# 27, from Hua Hu Ching, By Lao Tzu, Translated by Brian Walker)

Is one's own sincerity the only concern? It's an interesting thought. The Latin word "sincerus" means genuine. The genuine actually possesses the alleged or apparent attribute or character. It is questionable, even doubtful, that genuine sincerity is the driving motivation in those perpetrating the chaos in Iraq -- whether American government or insurgent rebels.
sincerity: n 1: an earnest and sincere feeling [syn: earnestness, seriousness] 2: the quality of being open and truthful; not deceitful or hypocritical; "his sincerity inspired belief"; "they demanded some proof of my sincerity" [ant: insincerity] 3: a quality of naturalness and simplicity; "the simple sincerity of folk songs" [syn: unassumingness] 4: the trait of being serious; "a lack of solemnity is not necessarily a lack of seriousness"- Robert Rice [syn: seriousness, earnestness, serious-mindedness] [ant: frivolity] (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sincerity)

A basic ingredient is lacking.

Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever
again, this soil'd world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin -- I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
(Poem: "Reconciliation," by Walt Whitman.)

Are we in danger of making "enemy" anyone not us? As individuals, is this true? As communities? Is it true of us as a nation?

Have we forgotten, or choose not to remember, who we are? In the sphere of Truth (with a capital "T") are we dificient thinkers, forgetting what Being, Life, Love, and Truth call to us to remember?

We have substituted false thinking, saying, they are enemy, they have what we want and we will take it from them, they are other, alien, ungodly, not freedom loving, anti-christs, un-american and thereby inferior, unimportant, and expendable. But more than this false reasoning is a subtext -- even the poor, the sick, the hard-luck folks, the racially religiously ethnically and economically deficient are those who are not white, Christian, Anglo-Saxon, and wealthy.

It is a dangerous opinion and a volatile cynicism that criss-crosses airwaves and jingoistic pages.

It is a troubling time. We are troubled.

A Christen theologian. Anselm of Canterbury, Archbishop, Doctor of the Church, 1033-1109 A.D. -- has his feast celebrated April 21.
He said, "I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand."

O Lord, through your Son you command us, no, you counsel us to ask, and you promise that you will hear us so that our joy may be complete. Lord, I am making the request that you urge us to make through your Wonder-Counsellor. Give me then what you promise to give through your Truth. You, O God, are faithful; grant that I may receive my request, so that my joy may be complete.
Meanwhile, let this hope of mine be in my thoughts and on my tongue; let my heart be filled with it, my voice speak of it; let my soul hunger for it, my body thirst for it, my whole being yearn for it, until I enter into the joy of the Lord, who is Three in One, blessed for ever. Amen.
(From the Proslogion by St Anselm, in Office of Readings)

He hoped for what is promised through Truth.

Do we remember? Do we have memory of the call that once echoed within us? Are we capable of dwelling in that call? Do we possess the courage to live in the midst -- in the middle place between running away and explaining away what is difficult and troubling?

The idea of the call, is, perhaps, Heidegger's most theological concept. He defines the call in Enowning* [*see below] as the "essential swaying of the truth of be-ing in the shape of the last god", a phrase which calls for careful exegesis. "Truth" for Heidegger is something which is always in a state of becoming. It is the "there" [Da] of Dasein: that which is, at once, closest to Dasein's own authentic being, but also furthest away and most difficult for us to grasp. "Truth never 'is' but rather holds sway". As such, it is neither something "out there" to be discovered, nor something "in here", created by subjective and arbitrary opinions, but rather the "midpoint" in a mutual mirroring of call and belonging. Truth is that kind of being which is most fitting to a being in its originary givenness. It is genuineness, "a creative strength for preserving what is given along with . . . creative strength for effecting what is given as a task". This last point touches upon Heidegger's views about how one way aspire to being truthful. Certainly not by the assertion of opinion or perspective. Certainly not by assuming the powers of a Cartesian subject, which makes itself the measure of all things. No. For Heidegger, truthfulness has more to do with the capacity for a "deep awe" in the face of the inscrutability of being. And this is not a comfortable thing at all. Because awe requires that we relinquish our onto-theological passions for objectification, possession and mastery. It requires a recognition that the truth of being actually withdraws from us in proportion to the force of our desire for mastery. Rather than the desire for mastery, Heidegger recommends an aptitude for contemplation: "We must give up the habit of wanting to secure this essential swaying of be-ing as representable for everyone at any time one chooses . . . Rather, we always achieve the uniqueness of the resonance . . . [in the] essential sway of stillness, the most finite and the most unique". In silence, says Heidegger, there is both a capacity to "listen" for the call of authentic being, and an appropriate reticence to name the content of that call with too much inflated certainty. And silence, he says, is "nearness to the last god". But who, or what, is this "last god?" And what has "god" to do with the call to truthfulness?
(from "Martin Heidegger: a theology yet to come," http://www.southcom.com.au/~gjd/heidegger.html)

No easy answers here -- not in the middle-place. The task is to become what Heidegger was pointing to -- to respond to the call of authentic being and become an authentic being.

God, truthfulness, and authentic being are not Three.

Life and death are not Two.

No country, belief, or ideology is the One.

What remains? Where, or to whom, do we belong? Is human dwelling that which dwells in the middle place between negative and positive? Is there room for hope?

Ask, sincerely.

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

*The only marginal note by Heidegger to this piece in his hand written copy is to be found here and reads 'en-own-ment'. This marginal note says that the memory of being is to be thought out of en-own-ment. Human being belongs along with that which, as the crossing through of being+, calls forth existence, and that thinking which emerges out of existence, in the claim to an original, that is, originating (in distinction from beginning) proposal [Geheißes]. 'Belonging' as that which in appropriating projection turns being toward the essence of human being tells us what 'en-owning' [Ereignen] means. The primary meaning of enowning is, as can be gleaned from Beitrage zur Philosophie: human being conceived as the property [Eigentum] of being (50). Out of the appropriating turning toward of the truth of being+ as the fourfold, the being of human being is determined as 'belonging' to being+ so that human being becomes the being enowned of projection and covering uncovering. Being enowned [Ereignetsein] means: being determined as the 'property' of being. The enowning of turning toward and the being enowned of revealing-concealing have to be understood out of this primordial meaning.
(from TOPOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF NIHILISM, From the debate between Ernst Jünger and Martin Heidegger, by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Introduction: 'On the Line' -- "On: 'The Line'" http://www.onlineoriginals.com/showitem.asp?itemID=287&articleID=13)

Nominees stall, or are laureated, or become pope. It is great sport to put names forward. Then we investigate.

As world takes measure of new pope, I wonder about everyday language and memory. As nominee for US/UN post hears his name bobbing downstream over rocks, I wonder whether patronage pockets are the only political option remaining. As the new poet laureate sits back in his chair surveying the universe through his pencil, I wonder whether my sub-atomic particles are wandering around Rome, DC, and Nebraska on their own and happy to be so dispersed.

At the Cancer Clinic

She is being helped toward the open door
that leads to the examining rooms
by two young women I take to be her sisters.
Each bends to the weight of an arm
and steps with the straight, tough bearing
of courage. At what must seem to be
a great distance, a nurse holds the door,
smiling and calling encouragement.
How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.
(Poem by Ted Kooser)

Particles in hospital practice slowing down. I pass rooms where compressed air, like lives exhaling their final few breaths, remind me that all the fuss about this and that will soon be over. The drama of holding on then letting go is never taken for granted. It is our theater. Mere glance is applause.

After Years

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.
(Poem by Ted Kooser)

Carol's mom dies. The ride back and forth, for now, is done. Tea water steam rises into morning at kitchen table for the two minute recollection her busy life allows.

Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
(Ted Kooser, Published in Flying at Night)

We manage a little system of our care.

In this system nominees for prayerful attention are articulated and passed on to the inner dwelling of life itself.

What I call "I" is a nominee attempting to appear in forms wherever particles that have passed through and passed on have temporarily come to be. What I mean by that is that the sub-atomic transfer of what we call "me" and "mine" is taking place every instant of this existence. We are everywhere we have ever been, everyone we have ever been near, and geometrically, exponentially visiting by proxy everyplace there is to be.

Carrie

"There's never an end to dust
and dusting," my aunt would say
as her rag, like a thunderhead,
scudded across the yellow oak
of her little house. There she lived
seventy years with a ball
of compulsion closed in her fist,
and an elbow that creaked and popped
like a branch in a storm. Now dust
is her hands and dust her heart.
There's never an end to it.
(Ted Kooser, from Sure Signs, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980)

Goethe wrote that, "Names are but noise and smoke / obscuring heavenly light." I like to think that "obscuring heavenly light" means that heavenly light obscures.

Readings of "obscure" include:
-- "So faintly perceptible as to lack clear delineation; indistinct."
-- "Not readily noticed or seen; inconspicuous;" or,
-- "Of undistinguished or humble station or reputation."

I know we like clear and distinct ideas with similar words seriatim. We're not fond of symbolic, metaphoric, or dusty references.

In fact, we prefer not to think of ourselves as dust.

That's the odd thing about nominees -- we share, dustily, the name and the presence of anyone or anything called into being.

As I am, that thou art.

Your name again?

Benedict the 16th, or, in Rome, the XVI. Hans Kung says he should be given a chance. I like the irony.

Contemplative emptiness:
The moon suspended over
The village at midnight.
Suddenly, my soul is startled
By the howl of an ape.
Who could know that it would
Arouse me beyond my senses,
And bring me an inner vision from
Mount Sumeru?
- Kita Genki (1664-1698)

It doesn't matter what does it, but the fact of being startled is useful. What inner vision is brought? At Buddhist Conversation tonight I wish the new Pope well, a healthy productive reign.

It was the time when the feast of Dedication was being celebrated in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the Temple walking up and down in the Portico of Solomon. The Jews gathered round him and said, "How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus replied:
"I have told you, but you do not believe.
The works I do in my Father's name are my witness;
but you do not believe,
because you are no sheep of mine.
The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice;
I know them and they follow me.
I give them eternal life;
they will never be lost
and no one will ever steal them from me.
The Father who gave them to me is greater than anyone,
and no one can steal from the Father.
The Father and I are one."
(John 10:22 - 30 )

I like that Jesus was walking back and forth, up and down the portico. Such repetition helps mindfulness. In that mindful state he adds, as afterthought, "The Father and I are one."

This pope will end the sanctioning of war. He will end the reign of abusive priests. He will end the falling away from the church. He will change his view that only the Catholic Church is that of Christ. He will preach that God is beyond any one faith -- and that we must relinquish snide separative superiority and embrace the spirit of truth in all its manifestations.

Am I too optimistic? No one can steal from the Father -- the Father gives it all away.

The Father has taken away Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and given instead Benedict XVI. (His street name will be Benny16.)

There is always an open space at the beginning of anything.

Into that space we send our fond hope and cheerful heart -- for a good start without fear and with courage.

Many of us bow in solitary silent respect.

May he live and reign in the Light of One!

At origin.

From atop Midcoast Maine mountain we look out at Penobscot Bay, its islands, sunshine over water, tree, and hills. The credit bank is selling its vast holdings in the area, and we'd never been to their summit. So much money, so much power, so much remodeling of nature.

It is nearly always about money, isn't it? Who has it; who collects it; who spends it?

Who is the benevolent person, the one who gives all without counting or costing out?

Holding his stick, he points directly to a person,
Yet, originally without form, this portrait is not true,
His form cannot be seen as form,
His benevolence is merely his natural benevolence.
If, all of a sudden, you can understand this law,
Then your spirit can roam beyond this world.
- Mokuan (1676)

We've been thinking about hermitage. It is a queer notion to live the hermit's life in the open. Such a life entails each person being with one another as they are, with reverence, attention, and surrender.

RL: I do give a damn about what everybody thinks. Because I think we all should care about what all of us think. It's good to think of other people's feelings, and its good to check on what they're thinking about you too. The gift of seeing ourselves as other people see us is a gift.

PF: But doesn't this modify the way you are?

RL: Maybe so, but it doesn't give me a false persona. We're all part of one sea of consciousness, and I think that any tips we can get from each other on how we're moving along in it probably help us. We check with each other, and I suppose that if you really were too far from the sea of consciousness you might -- anyone might -- get pretty quirky and you might be glad if somebody reminded you to put your hat on when you should, or tie your shoe laces and things like that. If you're doing something offensive, you won't mind if somebody sets you right.
(p.202, ch.8, "A Hermit for Our Time: Robert Lax on Patmos" interviewed by Peter France in his book Hermits The Insights of Solitude, c.1996)

We're already brothers and sisters of nature, of our common humanity, of God. We'd grown accustomed to the metaphor calling us children of God. A new metaphor asks if we'd be willing to consider ourselves members of the family if we were brother and sister of God. We come from the same origin God comes from. That origin is ever-present. It is our origin too. It has no name. It cannot be known. It is mystery itself. It shares kinship with island and tree, sky and mountain, dogs and humans, breeze and silence. It is what is. Each and all of a piece, endlessly reminding each other that we are not to separate out what is not to be separated out. What is of a piece is original not-twoness.

Maine and Massachusetts took the day today.

In 1775 on this day, Paul Revere took the famous ride that was immortalized in poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. At the time, the British regulars wanted to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams (who were in Lexington) and made what they thought were secret plans to capture the two men. Their plans were discovered, however, and Revere had made arrangements to signal the patriots by lighting two lanterns in Boston's North Church steeple if the British were coming by sea, and one if they were coming by land. Revere rode out on the night of April 18th to warn Hancock and Adams that the British were on their way. Longfellow immortalized the day with these lines:

From, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere:

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town tonight,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light -
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country fold to be up and to arm.
(http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/)

Hancock and Adams lived to other days. Those wishing to continue the movement of independence and keeping things flowing freely, prevail that day, and still do.

From the mountain top it is easy to see what approaches and recedes. Robert Creeley was able to say it:

A STEP

Things
come and go.
Then
let them.
(Poem by Robert Creeley, in Pieces, c1969)

Poet Jared Carter in an interview is quoted: As Robert Creeley says, "Nothing just happens. It depends on who comes along." (http://jaredcarter.com/archives/interviews/indi/)

We're just looking out.

Seeing who comes along.

Brother. Sister. Let them.

All of a sudden.

Set us right.

Originate.

Someone said we are made in the image of God. But God is no thing, therefore has no image.

What does that make us?

One who strives to make Truth their home
May at times be lonely.
Peer deeply into transcendent reality
And think about the body you will have
After this one is gone.
- Hung Ying-ming (~1596)

We sat in cabin, ate at table, now those once here are gone. There is something very basic, something elementary we are missing. Why do we have such difficulty with what is here and not here?

So Jesus spoke to them again:
"I tell you most solemnly,
I am the gate of the sheepfold.
All others who have come
are thieves and brigands;
but the sheep took no notice of them.
I am the gate.
Anyone who enters through me will be safe:
he will go freely in and out
and be sure of finding pasture..."
(from John 10)

At St. Bernard's this morning after Gospel reading I say to Saskia, "How lovely; Jesus is quoting from the Heart Sutra of Wisdom, saying he is the 'gate'."

The Sanskrit ending to the Heart Sutra is "gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha" -- "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awake, rejoice!" (Or, as another translation by The Engaged Zen Foundation has it, "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond the idea of gone beyond the awakened state of mind.")

What does it mean to be gone?

Fix

The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives
Buying what they are told to buy,
Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,

Baseball and football, romance and beauty,
Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling --
True believers in liberty, and also security,

And of course sex -- cheating on each other
For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,

Or on the violent screen, which they adore.
Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy
Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.

They are mostly puzzled and at a loss
As if someone pulled the floor out from under them,
They'd like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.

You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station
--Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want,
Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud --

The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try
To keep smiling, for when we're smiling, the whole world
Smiles with us, but we feel we've lost

That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us,
Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires
And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable

So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.
(Poem: "Fix" by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, from No Heaven. © University of Pittsburgh Press)

At Mass today the priest said the difference between sheep and cows is the difference between shepherd and cowboy. The shepherd leads by walking ahead of his sheep. The cowboy stays behind and drives the cows from the rear. I'm sure he didn't mean to suggest we have a cowboy pushing us to war in this country, but it sure was a reasonable application of his words.

We've had enough of cowboys pushing war. Our need is for something far more real and far more loving. We need one gone beyond the moon-shaped blankness engulfing this country these days.

If Jesus is what is gone beyond, are we willing to follow?
If this body, as Hung Ying-ming suggests, is gone, do we think about what body we will have when transcendent reality is upon us?

What has been broken might not be able to be fixed. We might have to drop off broken mind, drop off broken body, and make Truth our home.

Forget the cowboy.

Pray for shepherd.

Everything is on loan. Even waking.

What is better than this? Uncountable white lights in night sky. Rising before dawn. Call of starlight to prayer. For a few minutes, the stillness of slowly turning earth, the animals greeting from their doze.

People cling to their worldly possessions and selfish passions so blindly as to sacrifice their own lives for them. They are like a child who tries to eat a little honey smeared on the edge of a knife. The amount is by no means sufficient to appease his appetite, but he runs the risk of wounding his tongue.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

We cut tongue each time we try to slice away opposing views. Intelligent discourse engages differing views. The temptation to ridicule and dismiss is strong in contemporary culture. There is a creeping consensus that might is right and power is perfection. We need to be cautious when the urge to pontificate and prevail overcomes the need to investigate and reveal.

At Friday Evening Interreligious Dialogue Conversation we finish Rabbi David Aaron's book Seeing God, Ten Life-Changing Lessons of the Kabbalah He urged we be kind to each other, that we consider community, that Hashem is beyond any narrow conceptions we might try to impose.

These days corruption is considered the right of those who have taken power from the community to themselves. Cynicism is the residue left for those who feel they have no way to change the usurpation of power and will by leaders who have lost touch with those they represent.

When the life-giving Word of God dwelt in human flesh, he changed it
into that good thing which is distinctively his, namely, life; and by
being wholly united to the flesh in a way beyond our comprehension,
he gave it the life-giving power which he has by his very nature.
Therefore, the body of Christ gives life to those who receive it. Its
presence in mortal men expels death and drives away corruption because
it contains within itself in his entirety the Word who totally
abolishes corruption.
(From a commentary on the gospel of John by Saint Cyril of Alexandria,
Saturday of the 3rd week of Eastertide)

Spending time looking up to near and distant stars this morning puts me all day in a sober quiet. The pretense and hubris of those intent on corrupting and damaging the human spirit takes on particular malaise. The smug and arrogant hold simplicity and humility in contempt.

We try to practice an antidote of open conversation where difference is suffered and revelation encouraged. Last evening Tom, Lloyd, Saskia, Richard, Michael, Tina, Mike, Pia, Jayen, Maria and I listened to one another and Rabbi Aaron. At Saturday Afternoon Poetry, Tea, and Literature, Sara, Richard, Joanie, Saskia, Michael, Jayen, Lloyd, Alana, Garrett, and I read poems and pieces of stories after Sam and Susan, Myles, Jeff, and Cheryl, Hugh, Virginia, and Karl clear out before getting trapped by the circle.

Waiting for Icarus

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets,
a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added : Women who love such are the
Worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.
(Poem: "Waiting for Icarus" by Muriel Rukeyser, from The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser.)

Sometimes there are those who fly too far from common comfort and decent retrieval. It is insufficient to say, "That's their problem." It is our common responsibility to remind one another that life on earth is not a joust and duel. We are not here to play king of the mountain or last man standing, or "Screw them, we're the best."

We're not the best, none of us. We're who we are. We have to remind one another that the night is over when we see each other as brother and sister and not as someone to be bested.

Starlight; sunlight; moonlight; truelight.

When we wake.

Sliver moon disappears into morning blue; rounded sun climbs over Melvin Heights into winter zendo where sleep sits on cushions.

Only faint recollection of incense from walls and ceiling. Dogs stay upstairs. Cat stares past Buddha, empty cross draped with white, paschal candle, mother and child icon; he has movement-of-bird on his mind.

Moved by their selfish desires, people seek after fame and glory. But when they have acquired these, they are already stricken in years. If you hanker after worldly fame and practice not the Way, your labors are wrongfully applied and your energy is wasted. It is like burning a stick of incense. However much its pleasing odor is admired, the fire that consumes is steadily burning up the stick.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

I calculated the number of years that have accrued to this body awkwardly seeking comfort on black cushion -- too many, too uncomfortable, too soon (some might think) to be my own cooling ash faintly sensed by snoozing sangha friends.

How long, LORD? Will you stay hidden forever? (Ps.89:47)

For many God is faint recollection of simpler apperception from more innocent times. I wonder if we ever grow comfortable with the notion of hidden God. When hidden, God could be anywhere. We want to locate God, interrogate and have God explain what we cannot understand about human behavior as well as pattern of stars in galaxies further away than a billion billion thoughts across. And yet, the hidden has a nearness to it. Hidden does not mean secret. Secret is when someone claims to own the hidden, and they don't.

Hidden is wide open. It is what we make art of, make music, poetry, make our way through the morning, afternoon, and evening. At night the hidden visits in dream. The hidden is what the artist lets out through hands given to the hidden to use.

Last evening Jayen said that "Nature is spirit made manifest." Tom, who brought article from Utne Reader by John O'Donohue, liked her words. Nature, whether of and in itself, or with modifiers Human, Divine -- is hidden within, yet manifest, coming to appearance, when invited, or when it feels like. Nature, mostly, is in and of itself. Nature looks as itself through each and every thing, through each and every being.


What You Cannot Remember, What You Cannot Know
-for Abigail

When you were two you used to say
I can do it all by myself, then when you were three
You had tantrums, essentially
Because you wanted to go back and be a baby like before,
And also to be a grownup.
It was perplexing,
It was a mini-rehearsal
For adolescence, which lurks inside your body
Now that you are almost nine,
Like a duplicate baby, an angel
Or alien, we don't know which,
Forceful and intelligent and weird,
Playing with the controls.
Fetal eyes blinking, non-negotiable demands
Like Coke bubbles overflowing a glass,
It strengthens and grows.
When you read it stares through your eyes,
It vibrates when you practice piano,
The cotton dresses hang in your closet
Like conspirators, wavering in its breeze.
We watch you turn inward, your hair
Falls over your face like a veil that hides whatever
You would rather others don't know,
You lean your head listening
For its keen highstrung melancholy voice.
Here comes the gypsy caravan,
Ding-a-ling, the icecream man,
Plenty of glee and woe up the road.
We would do anything for you,
Sweetie, but we can do nothing?
You have to do it all by yourself.
(Poem: "What You Cannot Remember, What You Cannot Know" by Alicia Suskin Astriker, from No Heaven. University of Pittsburgh Press.)

Recently I've read writings from folks relating the hurts of being human. I read each word with reverence. These are my sisters, and brothers. We gather each other in the words we use to tell where we have been, what we have experienced, what we now feel. This ceremony of appearance is not always done in common or in public. Appearance through one's nature is personal as poem and quiet as indentation before new paragraph relating "my own mythology" or "personal original pieces." The hidden longs to reveal and be revealed through watchful eyes or willing hands.

"Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute," Ramakrishna continued, "is like a shoreless ocean. In the ocean visible blocks of ice are formed here and there by intense cold. Similarly, under the cooling influence, so to speak, of the devotion [bhakti] of its worshippers, the Infinite transforms Itself into the finite and appears before the worshiper as God with form. That is to say, God reveals Himself to His devotees as an embodied Person, Again, as, on the rising of the sun, the ice in the ocean melts away, so, on the awakening of Knowledge [jnana], the embodied God melts back into the infinite and formless Brahman,,,, Therefore people compare the love of God to the cooling light of the moon, and knowledge to the burning rays of the sun.
(from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, trans with preface by Swami Nikhilananda, c1942, in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, metaphor as Myth and as Religion, p.69, by Joseph Campbell, c.1986)

We will be burned away. Whether by funeral pyre, cremation, supernova, or the incense stick of earthly life -- all will be burned through. We can practice this return of the manifest to the hidden by diligence and presence to what is here and what is passing. The hidden receives back what it has given -- with gentle watchfulness and comforting hands.

We have to do it by ourselves.

Still, and yet, and notwithstanding -- our solitariness is surrounded by infinite watchful eyes, gentle hands, and most of all, the hidden-forever-love that is with, through, and in our very being.

Call it what you will -- Brahman, Adonai, Buddha, Christ, Allah, Nature, Self, Mind -- it is done by itself.

Each one of us.

As itself.

Some say life is a dream. Some think it is a hologram -- that we are elsewhere; what happens here in real-time is projection of inner thought and emotion.

I can't say. I haven't awakened yet.

There have been 1,722 coalition troop deaths, 1,547 Americans, 87 Britons, eight Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 21 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 17 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of April 12, 2005. (Forces: U.S. & Coalition/Casualties, www.cnn.com)

And counting.

A leaf of a boat drifts across the
Endless expanse of water,
Lifting and dancing the oars
To a different melody now.
Clouds on the mountain,
Moon over the sea:
All tossed away;
This done, Zhuang Zhou's butterfly dream
Will last forever.
- Miaozong (1095-1170)

Life is full of fancy and distraction. In fact, some say, very few live real life in real time. Most drift off in memory or worry, anticipation or fantasy -- abandoning what actually is taking place in the here and now.

The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
(inspired by the ancient Chinese tale, 'Chuang Tzu's dream'...)

If Zhuang Zhou's (or Chuang Tzu's) dream is to last forever, will the nightmare of war also? Are we dreaming? Even with the hard steel pain of wound and illness, are we about to wake up and understand something thought and emotion have not yet revealed to us?

Thomas Friedman's column wonders why the United States has not experienced a homeland attack since 9/11:
To the extent that the Baathists and Jihadists have a coordinated strategy, their first priority, I think, is to defeat American forces in the heart of their world. Because if they can defeat America in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, it will have so much more resonance than setting off a car bomb in Las Vegas - especially now that 9/11 has set the terrorism bar so high in terms of effect.

If the Jihadists can defeat us in the heart of their world, and force us from Iraq, it will have a huge impact on the Arab street and shake every pro-American Arab regime. The Jihadists have always understood that Iraq is the ballgame. Iraq is the big one. Winning there is what really advances their agendas.
(from "The Calm Before the Storm?" By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, April 13, 2005)

The thought occurs that it is a brilliant strategy to toss live bait out into the ferocity of devouring enemies rather than stay behind doors in fear of what might be approaching. Hence, administration rhetoric of "fight them there rather than here," is not so much a goal of defeating terrorism but of diverting terrorism. If true, it is a chilling dream. "Bait" (my word, not Friedman's) is hardly a word to be used about men and women called upon and responding to the call to protect America. Still, we have to decide whether the goal is defending, defeating, or diverting.

I don't know what to say about Chuang Tzu's dream. That would entail my knowing -- and I don't know. I don't know why we are at war. I don't know why those who murder, maim, and mystify one another do what they do. I don't know whether the label Christian, Muslim, Jew, Jihadist or Patriot makes any difference -- they employ the same behavior, only with varying sophistication of weapon.

I don't know why it matters that the aspiring candidate Cardinals of the Catholic Church attempt to declare the recently deceased Pope a saint-to-be by official proclamation. I don't know whether it matters that Republicans own the United States and the rest of us are aliens in this newly strange land. I don't know whether the skunk will return to the barn and the stink of unwanted presence will waft again. Or whether the putrid spray of rotten ideas and ugly war that turn us sick with disgust at the real time stench of death will morph into everlasting declaration of insouciance; and fragrance of memorial flowers becomes perennial gravesite smell; and the convoluted dream-like pronouncements everyone tries to desperately make up to justify what is happening becomes national mantra of partisan hermeneutic. I don't know

Perhaps the Monarch Butterflies are not dying from genetically modified crops.

Maybe we as a people are not dying because others "resent our freedom."

Possibly there is a dream -- a dream of justice, equality, and unity -- and this dream is one of which we are terrified.

Imaginably, all tossed away, we will never know -- but continue on in a dream of unawareness, pretending we are this person or that kind of country or maybe neither as it suits us.

I'll have none of it.

I'll stay a while with two things said by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
1. Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.

2. Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

I'd rather we synthesize and collaborate in real time in real life.

With duty. With love.

Where was he going?

Those who are known
As Real People
Are united in essence
With the Way,
So they have endowments yet
Appear to have none;
They are full yet
Appear to be empty
They govern the inside,
Not the outside.
Clear and pure, utterly plain,
They do not contrive
Artificialities but return
To simplicity.
- Lao tzu

He's dead. At least what we call dead. And yet the writer says he's on the road to Emmaus. So, he's not dead. Or, what we call death isn't.

When they drew near to the village to which they were going, he made as if to go on; but they pressed him to stay with them. (from Luke 24)

Jesus on road and at table. The wonder of mythic writing is that it transcends yet includes magic thinking. And at a time when integral mind is a possibility more understood now than before, the story has a new twist.

And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; but he had vanished from their sight. (from Luke 24)

Where'd he go?

So much is made of Jesus' death and resurrection, appearances and ascension, and the anticipation on the part of his followers he will return again to end it all and sort out who should be rewarded and who punished -- you've got to be impressed at the story's staying power. Equally impressive is the way the storyteller has Jesus live, be killed, rising, showing up, disappearing, reappearing, going away, and biding time somewhere until history comes to abrupt halt.

Luke writes, "he had vanished from their sight." Just like that. Gone. The two guys look at each other, no doubt asking: Who was that? Where'd he go? The story doesn't say where he goes. We don't know where he's gone. We guess; we say "heaven," as though that pins it down. He's with the Father and the Holy Spirit, as if that explains anything but narrative construct.

Where are we going? Where have we gone? Are we waiting, like some bedtime rendition, for the story to be finished by the storyteller tucking us in for history?

He disappeared from sight.

With a mind no longer restricted to magical one-pointed now-you-see now-you-don't, a mind able to move beyond mythic interpretations that someone or something other will determine what's next, and with a mind ready to enter a new twist -- a new wholeness of appreciation -- we look at the words again.

"He made as if to go on"..."they recognized him." And they were left to themselves. Jesus leaves them to themselves. Like some odd last will and testament, he leaves them to themselves. Jesus does the same thing to them that the Buddha did to his companions. The Buddha's last words instructed his followers to work out their salvation with diligence, to be a light unto themselves, to stand on their own two feet.

Similarly, Jesus left his friends with words and bread. "Break them both," he seemed to tell them, "and find me there."

Jesus is not in sight. He is in the broken. He is in the empty space felt by hearts that long to be what they think they've lost. We're not lost. Hemingway is quoted as saying something like: The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. It's the word 'many' that gives pause. Not all. Many. Some, by inference, are not strong, do not mend strong. Is Jesus, simply, in the broken, no matter how they mend or do not mend?

Is there new behavior we need to learn in the presence of the broken? Do we, in addition to (or instead of) nodding to the triumphant splendor of other-worldly ecclesiastical magnificence, need (also learn) to bow deeply to the everyday faces and daily experiences of this-worldly existence?

Where'd he go? That's our meditation. No matter where throughout history some have decided to put Jesus, the question remains vital for us -- especially during this time when some call him back to punish and destroy, or hierarchy plan to vote for his successor in the church they've held tight to. Where we think Jesus is -- matters.

Where'd he go? Where is he?

The letters stretch out: N- o- w- h- e- r- e.

And you and I? No where? Now here?

Don't bother looking in the mirror; step into the mirror. Don't think there's someplace else to go to look for Jesus; let's look at each other wherever we are.

Break and share a piece of that bread?

Yes.

Let's be bread.

Thank you.

Let's.

Just so. There is corruption. There is secrecy. There's no real place to hide. Not even in the warm glow many feel following the funeral of the recent Pope.

Reading about Archbishop Paul Marcinkus who said, "You can't run a Church on Hail Marys." He's retired from Vatican Bank he ran for a while. He's in his eighties and lives in Arizona. He didn't run the church on Hail Marys. Same say his way was far more sinister and dark. I thought of him as I was thinking about Albino Luciano (Pope John Paul I) who lived as Pope only 33 days. Some say he was poisoned. Some say he knew too much about massive corruption in Vatican Bank. But that's just rumor. Truth has a way of hiding under cloak and diplomatic immunity of rumor. Marcinkus won't talk about anything having to do with his years in power at the Vatican. That's the thing about secrecy.

I ask a man by the harbor about how he lives with corruption and secrecy. "I try to stay in the open," he says.

You should each individually clarify your own mind, getting to the root without pursuing the branches. Just get to the root, and the branches come of themselves. If you want to get to the root, just get to know your mind. This mind is basically the root of all mundane and supramundane phenomena. As long as the mind does not become obsessed with all good and bad, you will realize that all things are basically just so.
- Ta-mei (ca.805)

Sometimes there's a desire to hide away. Then I remember that mind is where I am, where each is. I must look into and through this mind.

Heaven-Haven

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
(poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins)

I'm uncertain at times whether heaven is haven or if it is open confrontation with everything as it is -- where we meet both those who have shown us the true light of love and those who've shown us the darkness of deceptive power.

Hopkins's words for describing meaning are borrowed from the scholastic philosopher Duns Scotus and they complicate any theoretical understanding of meaning in the extreme, as they are not concepts with a positive, palpable content, but merely empty slots, 'deictic words' containing an indication or, figuratively speaking, a peg marking the place where individual, local, particular meanings can be hung in actual life. Hopkins coins the English word "thisness" for Scotus's "haecceitas", the impulse behind any individual and momentary materialization of essential existence. http://www.unibuc.ro/eBooks/lls/IoanaZirra-VictorianAge/11.htm

Annie says I'm grumpy today. "I'm always grumpy," I say. We decide that I'm in a foul mood today. That's the word. We settle on foul.

I'd prefer to be informed and aware of things -- however conflicting -- than be uninformed and asleep. This is a challenge to finding the "just so" mind -- where "thisness" is replete with every which way.

If we are to learn to stand authentically in the middle of contradiction -- just so -- we need to hear the fair and foul sides both. This, if we are to maturely settle into the center of things, the middle way. This center, or middle way -- as pointed to in Christian or Buddhist thought -- where we have to recognize the tilts and turmoil, the off-balanced and ill-fastened realities that suck us all from sacred rest in the heart of things.

"Haecceitas."

Libera nos!