Not yet dawn. Water dark. No horizon. Lights from building across harbor waver on outgoing tide. Church steeple bell tolls hour. Prayer, if this be prayer, is mere presence. No words suffice. One candle. One stick incense. One stillness.
Unseen choir chants soto voce their love; "Ama nesciri!"You provide me a form;
I entrust you my Mind.
Though the body is filled
To the full by you,
The ten thousand things
Have become light.
Roaming in the universe,
In and out of mountain forests,
Why should I admire the beauty
Of red and purple robes?
I seek only that which
Frost and snow cannot harm.
- Han-Shan Te-Ch'ing
Outskirt of Skowhegan yesterday two old timers work to load antique John Deere onto flatbed. Rear right wheel frozen, bigger tractor sets plow rig against tire, other fella chains up come-along rocking inch by stubborn inch up ramps braced by lengths of beam. I step up onto metal trailer, offer help, am given gloves, and ratchet iron bar like some railroad hand switching tracks back an forth for sluggish train. Comes along, slowly, slowly. Shorten chain for last eight feet. Come to end. Done.
Reciprocation.
Around corner, green element leans to left, white dog looking out wondering why his walk has been delayed. Tractor with hard of hearing driver backs in. Chain attached to under-hook. Easy tug. Right front wheel lifts from snowy ditch. Much obliged!
The Rain Poured Down
My mother weeping
in the dark hallway, in the arms of a man,
not my father,
as I sat at the top of the stairs unnoticed—
my mother weeping and pleading for what I didn't know
then and can still only imagine—
for things to be somehow other than they were,
not knowing what I would change,
for, or to, or why,
only that my mother was weeping
in the arms of a man not me,
and the rain brought down the winter sky
and hid me in the walls that looked on,
indifferent to my mother's weeping,
or mine,
in the rain that brought down the dark afternoon.
(--Poem, "The Rain Poured Down", 2005 by Dan Gerber)
Maybe what we think is the point is not the point. Rather ways we get lost. Sorrows holding us close taking the form of what we feel we can name.
Light lengthens from behind islands in the bay. Covered sky. No name for what it drops.
One way to navigate the places where there be dragons is to go straight ahead. Dragons or salmonella or dread of the unknown is no inhibitant to one foot in front of another -- or one ratchet of a come-along, or one sorrow more or less along the way.
Thus says the Lord: ‘As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do.’ (--Isaiah 55:10-11)
Silver-tone chiaroscuro inner and outer harbor. Not knowing what is being done is no excuse for not allowing it to be done. We are entering a post-knowing age. Get used to it. There's no knowing what is most real -- only the presencing attention given us and given by us in its presence.
If a man who was rich enough in this world’s goods saw that one of his brothers was in need, but closed his heart to him, how could the love of God be living in him? My children, our love is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active. (-John 3:17-18)
Candle doesn't talk. Incense has burned itself through. Dawn has no words.
I pray for something for each of us -- something real. Something active.
Something out of hiding.
Seagulls circling with daylight.
May our throats be healthy with clear light blazing open sound!
