Bob suggested it be called "BLB." Those were the letters of the first names of the three people sipping tea and eating peanut butter cookies talking about the dissolution of the Roman Catholic Church, the heartlessness of capitalism, and the need for more cookies.

Between bites we decided to found something between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches. It would be Catholic without the traditional Roman, male, hierarchical structure. And it would be Protestant without the multitudinous denominational varieties.

Catholics who'd fallen away could fall back into the ready elemental symbols of water, fire, breath, earth, seeing, and hearing - all with aesthetic luminosity. Protestants weary of whatever Protestants are weary of can choose personal invigoration without being against anything or defining oneself as not being something else.

At the center of this church is the wholeness of what is here.

At the center of this church is the wholeness of what is here.

At the center of this church is the wholeness of what is here.

(Are you concerned that no name has been mentioned? Perhaps No-Name need be for what or who or how what is here is what is here. What do you usually call it? Do you call it Christ? Do you call it Jesus? Do you call it Buddha? Do you call it Ha Shem? Do you call it Ram? Do you call it El Shaddai? Do you call it Allah? Do you call it Kami? Do you call it Tao? Do you call it Brahman? Vishnu? Shiva? Do you call it No-God? Do you call it Shunyata? Do you call it Gaia? Do you call it Cosmos, Theos, Anthropos? Do you shudder in silence and awe at the immense unknowability of the centric reality of everything that lives and breathes and has its being?)

In this church you can call it what you will. When you call it, when you speak it -- please do it with service and reverence for each name and each person calling each name.

Maybe we'll call it The Church of Integral Cosmotheandric Ecospirituality. If that's too inconvenient, something one-worded, like Ciao, or Servus. Maybe, Meetingbrook. (The last suggested title is wonderfully unknown but self-explanatory.)

Like God, this church would have no edges, only unlimited centers. The structure would be null. There would be no rules or dogmas, only cups for tea, coffee, or fresh water. Dancing and laughter and solitary walks with respected friends (like dogs or people) would be liturgy, horarium, and sacrament. Conversation, the circle of listening and speaking, gazing and being present, would be eucharistic.

(I, it goes without saying, will have nothing to do with this church. My hermit-nature would smile with tears in eyes from a short distance out of sight seeing the sweet inclusive kindness of the gathering. I probably wouldn't want to belong to it, nor would anyone else want to have me as a member.)

But here's the bottom line: time has come to find One's Self.

And to find One's Self where it is found -- within oneself and, correspondingly, between you and every other being. This quiet revelation will be the core contemplation of the so-called church. It would be a nice coincidence.

The Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Churches, The Mainline Protestant, and the Many Denominations have exhausted themselves trying to define their differences while attempting, reluctantly, to cite unity with their different counterparts.

Name it this: This New Integral Cosmotheandric Ecosystem -- Community of Interdependent Nature Collating Insight, Devotion, Enlightenment, Numinosity, Compassion & Enthusiasm. (NICE -- COINCIDENCE)

We proclaim this NICE -- COINCIDENCE to hereby emerge, exist, and include everyone.

	"How did we get here?" "How long is the road?" However it ends, it begins with us, this feast by which we come to see how beautiful we are.
	from poem "Mysteries of The Incarnation" by Kathleen Norris, in Little Girls in Church

Bring only your attention and being present. You are this place. You are that place. Call it Here. This is a good name for a church. (Help each revere each: Here).

(Send no money to this new place. Save your money. Maybe give a few dollars to someone who can immediately put the money to good use.)

And pray without ceasing -- saying: I am what is looking for what is looking for all of us.

Be happy. Love everyone. Try not to be a jerk.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) © 1985 Br. Robert Lentz, OFM

For inspiration we'll invite Thomas Merton to mentor us.

Whatever your vision, show it here.

Whatever your belief, share it here.

Whatever your prayer, be it here.

Two of us at morning practice. Later, three cars pull in dooryard. A forth even later with two folks who will be married visiting to discuss the order of the ceremony.

They will say 'yes' to relatedness.

What the dharma brings us, what it teaches us, very essentially, is to be pure, authentic, and natural. The first and most important thing is pure motivation. There’s a famous story about a hermit long ago in Tibet called Geshe Ben. He was in retreat, and one day he heard that his sponsors, who were financing his retreat, were coming to visit him. So he cleaned his room, arranged the shrine very neatly, set out all the offerings perfectly, and then sat and waited for his sponsors to arrive. Suddenly, just before they arrived, he reflected on his motivation and said to himself, “What am I doing? This is all fake. I’m just hoping to create a good impression, that’s all!” He snatched a handful of ash from the stove by his side and flung it all over the shrine and the offerings. A great master called Padampa Sangye who heard about this called it “the greatest offering in the whole of Tibet.”
-Sogyal Rinpoche

My practice is to allow what is moving through to move through.

Some day I'll pick up the mess in my room.

Even if not, there's no order of benefit in pretending to be what we are.

God does not will things to happen; but what happens is the longing of God for compassionate response.

Peter brought in David Hawkins' Power vs Force and said some things about kinesiology. Joseph brought in the book he was reading, The First Circle, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Patrick talked about the Abnormal Psychology course he was taking and the notions of deviance, distress, dysfunction, and danger. Joe spoke about ekpyrosis (but he inferred palingenisis). Ryan referenced Therese Huston's Teaching What You Don't Know and felt that perseverance was the hallmark of a good teacher, not necessarily insight or dazzling skill.

It was a good morning in prison. The conversation was afire with chapter 29 of the Tao Te Ching, the noble and eightfold teachings of the Buddha, and, finally, Merwin's poem, "Thanks." We managed to laugh and learn by respectful deliberation.

Believe nothing because a wise man said it.
Believe nothing because it is generally held.
Believe nothing because it is written.
Believe nothing because it is said to be divine
Believe nothing because someone else believes it.
But believe only what you yourself judge to be true.
- The Buddha

We're surrounded by our source and we surround our origin.

We read Dale's aunt's poem "I Remember" about the horse sled with bells taking uncle away for winter then bringing him back from logging camp for spring. Ricky joined us between sit-ups and running the treadmill.

Prison was a kindly place today.

There is no match for the longing of minds to see through their lives.

No bugs yet. Morning walks along trails on Ragged Mountain with Rokpa are kindly and tiring. Trees listen. Mud constricts with sodden leaves.

In seven and a half hours hiking over the last four days I have met no one and passed no one. Where have I been?

Who isn't happy when it rains during drought?
Everyone washes off the dirt.
Every leaf of grass opens its eyes and dances,
Every flower drinks and is refreshed.
Farmers in raincoats are busy in the fields,
Herb-gatherers have no time to rest.
Watching this natural course of events,
I marvel at the innocence of the universe.
- Naong Haegun (1320-1376)

I have gone missing.

The innocence of the universe -- its not knowing -- seems truer each time I look. There is only walking. There is only dog running. There is only mountain.

In class last night someone asked why I watch things like the 2007 strafing killing in New Baghdad if such sights are so upsetting.

No reason. Only feeling.

Not to allow this horror to be seen is to pretend the world is a disjointed and fragmentary compilation of dissociated and unrelated shards of something broken that we cannot remember whole.

Much like our individual lives in this world.

We don't like suffering. Why should we? This is not about choosing suffering over non-suffering. This witnessing is about choosing not to live in an illusory egoic world where what happens does not happen and what does not happen does. I part company (for now) with those who insist that if you don't think about it, it does not exist -- not in itself and not in you.

THANKS

by W.S Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from tables we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving

dark though it is

The world is given. As attractive as it might be to ponder, I have not made the world. As terrifying as it might be to consider, you alone can retrieve the word that restates the world.

It's not that the world is what you say it is. Rather, the world is re-created with the word or words coming forth into it from and through you.

It's why we pray. Prayer is not "spin" trying to refashion a story so as to get the best interpretation from it. Prayer is the origin of reality reaching through silence and words to reveal its true nature to the seeker longing to see what is truly the core of this existence.

We pray to be the origin of the world -- not to correct the wrongs, but to be what is right as it passes through us from the invisible to the visible.

The life of prayer is listening for the intonation of the soundless. The life of prayer is looking for the materialization of the mere-breath. The life of prayer is stopping -- it is the radical cessation of all attempts to construct an alternative to what is disturbing, and an allowing of stillness to shape the contours and parameters of compassionate being with oneself and others.

Like railroad track crossings at countryside roads the imperative to stop, look, and listen suggests that something might be coming, that it's been there, and the rails are both remnant and promise. Ours is to act on the evidence. Ours, to cross over to the other side.

What is on the other side?

What is on this side?

What is anything I do?

Perhaps it is what is longing to be authentically encountered, engaged, and energized with what is itself Encounter, Engagement, and Energy.

Once, we called this 'God.'

Now?

We call it to and through itself to be what it is within and through us. And the world. And each person, place, living-thing, and being-presence.

Each tree teaches me this. Each stone teaches me this. Each parasite and virus. Each animal. Each person. Each and every manifestation of the One-we-call-God teaches me this.

We know this.

If we become what we know...

If we actually were to be what we are...

If we find the origin of the world and dwell as this origin...

Long walks on mountain.

White Border Collie with black spots runs alongside and ahead.

Deep solitude. Expanded silence. A gliding stillness.

Illusory Hermitage

My body is like an illusory flower:
No way to touch it;
The window and the moon of its six windows
Contain clear emptiness.
It looks like something
In the midst of nothingness,
But its four walls are beautiful,
I stay there for a moment.
- Naong Haegun (1320-1376)

Piece by piece the illusory life crumbles.

Hard to say what reality will endure.

Only the mountain.

Only the mountain walking.

Only the mountain walking feels like prayer.

Making zazen before Pascal candle and Tibetan incense a quiet mediation meditation.

Watching video from 2007 during Iraq war, 30mm cannon fire killing between 12 and 18 people, is not the Easter Monday activity I would prefer to write about. The 17 minutes sicken.

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
(Collateral Murder. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/wikileaks-exposes-video-o_n_525569.html)

I would rather write about light and hope and emancipation and unity and consciousness of what is beyond the veil of ignorance.

The nature of the one Reality must be known by one's own clear spiritual perception; it cannot be known through a learned person. Similarly, the form of the moon can only be known through one's own eyes. How can it be known through others?
- Shankara

But war with its ugliness was inserted into the mix. I stopped to look. I saw the arrogance of fear and exuberance for destruction firing death and suffering into the bodies of men and children.

Christ rises. Citizens are murdered. Cruelty is what war is.

Through the bottomless mercy of our God,
one born on high will visit us
to give light to those who walk in darkness,
who live in the shadow of death;
to lead our feet in the path of peace.
(--from Benedictus, morning prayer)

Don't watch the video.

If you do, you'll be changed.

Don't think about Resurrection.

If you do, you'll change the world.

Christ is Risen!

Ego doesn't stand a chance.

Easter morning, Meetingbrook Hermitage:

"Come, all you who are thirsty,

come to the waters;

and you who have no money,

come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

without money and without cost.

Why spend money on what is not bread,

and your labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,

and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

(from Isaiah 55)

As the rain and the snow

come down from heaven,

and do not return to it

without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is my word that goes out from my mouth:

It will not return to me empty,

but will accomplish what I desire

and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

(from Isaiah 55)

That the yielding
Conquers the resistant
And the soft
Conquers the hard
Is a fact known by all people,
Yet utilized by none.

-Lao tzu

You will go out in joy

and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills

will burst into song before you,

and all the trees of the field

will clap their hands.

(from Isaiah 55)

We begin in the dark.

Slowly, comes dawn.

Awaking birds.

Awakening earth.

Finally, sunrise.

Now, Resurrection!

We wish all the joy and liberation of a new beginning!

"...[B]ut see, I who am life itself am now one with you."

Reading From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday
(The Lord's descent into the underworld)

Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.
See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.
I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.
Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.
(--from Office of Readings, Holy Saturday)

Let's enter completely this place. Then, let's leave this place. For where? I can't say...not today. Today is emptiness itself. The silence and stillness bid me mute.

The resurrection is the complete triumph of Christ over the ego, not by attack but by transcendence. For Christ does rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and His Kingdom.
Would you join in the resurrection or the crucifixion? Would you condemn your brothers or free them? Would you transcend your prison and ascend to the Father?
(--fromA Course in Miracles/Text/Chapter 11,Section VII, Waking to Redemption, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Course_in_Miracles/Text/Chapter_11)

But see.

I who am.

Life itself.

Am now.

One.

With.

You.

Emptiness...

Is it me?

Yes it is.

Still, taste.

And see.

Reasonable dialogue.

The Tao is as deep as can be. Who is willing to pursue it closely? If you don't go into the tiger's lair, how can you catch its cub? If you don't wash out the stone and sand, how can you pick out the gold? Carefully seek the heart of heaven and earth with firm determination. Suddenly you will see the original thing; everywhere you meet the source, all is a forest of jewels.
- Liu I-Ming

Don't look left. Don't look right.

Look through the unnecessary divisions and distractions.

Look carefully.

There.

You are.

HaShem is the Name.

We pause at bridge over brook and sing: "Blessed be the Name of the Lord from this day hence and forever. From the rising of the sun to its setting the Name of the Lord is to be praised."

The Name, says Saskia last week, is all this.

Meditation is not about getting away from it all, numbing out, or stopping thoughts. Without trying to be rid of pesky thoughts and feelings, we learn how to practice being aware of them in the fleeting immediacy of the very moment in which they present themselves. We can cultivate awareness of any object: sounds, smells, physical sensations, perceptions, and so forth. Everything is grist for the mill - even those things we find terribly unpleasant. As the Tibetan Dragon Master Gyalwang Drukpa says, “Everything must be meditated!”
- Lama Surya Das, "The Heart of Buddhist Meditation," (Tricycle, Winter 2007)

With spade in hand I contour rivulets and torrents coming down mountain into agreeable flows to lower places free from obstruction of leaves and silt and away from places where harm could be done.

Maine's rivers are flooding tonight.

Like a mind swelling with resentment over the success of another, we fabricate grievances. In politics the Republicans grieve health reform even though many of their ideas were incorporated in it. Theirs is a political choice: defeat their political private enemy; let the people be enslaved during the pique of partisan battle.

Give up grievances. It is exhausting finding fault in everything. Find something more inchoate.

Never in this world does hatred
Cease by hatred;
Hatred ceases by love,
And this according to a law
Which has existed forever.
- Buddha

The time of Passover reminds that in the worst of slavery there is a way through and out. However impossible things seem, we are shown the way though, we are surprised by finding out.

For the righteous, the little they have is better
than the abundant wealth of the wicked.
The limbs of the wicked will be broken
while the Lord gives his strength to the just.

The Lord knows when the day of the perfect will come;
and their inheritance will be eternal.
They will not be troubled in evil times,
and in times of famine they will have more than enough.
(from Psalm 36)

What is your name?

Blessed be that.

We have enough.

We are enough.

L'Chaim!

To Life!

Rainy Week. Contemporary alternative to Holy Week. Maine is getting soaked.

It is the hermitage this season. The alternative doesn't present itself this year. We'll stay at the mountain, so to speak, on our own.

Therefore, be as a lamp
Unto yourselves,
Be as a refuge to yourselves.
Take no external refuge.
Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp;
Hold fast to the Truth as a refuge.
Look not for a refuge in anyone besides yourselves.
- The Buddha

The Catholic Church is on the ropes. An aging pug with little spring left in legs it is pounded by its own inability to practice what it preaches. Molesters and cover ups have taken the church out drinking and carousing the night before the fight and lied about its whereabouts in the morning.

A beat reporter has her take on the sorry condition of the heavyweight:

If the church could throw open its stained glass windows and let in some air, invite women to be priests, nuns to be more emancipated and priests to marry, if it could banish criminal priests and end the sordid culture of men protecting men who attack children, it might survive. It could be an encouraging sign of humility and repentance, a surrender of arrogance, both moving and meaningful.
...American bishops have gotten politically militant in recent years, opposing the health care bill because its language on abortion wasn’t vehement enough, and punishing Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights and stem cell research. They should spend as much time guarding the kids already under their care as they do championing the rights of those who aren’t yet born.
(--from OP-ED, A Nope for Pope, By MAUREEN DOWD, Published: March 27, 2010, NY Times)

The people once in pews are moving out into the countryside. The symbols and rituals survive the transition but transfigure and transform into more ordinary expressions of humanity, cosmos, and divinity all rolled into one.

Even in the traditional narrative there was a new appearance of the man disfigured in the power lust thrown against him by both religious and political addicts. He was not recognized in his new manifestation transcending their obscenely perverse and pettifogging pretenses to patronize the populace.

We're meant to come through differently. The story of this week is our transmogrification.

It happens of itself.

When we allow.

Itself.

To be.

Each.

One.

Of us.

Today we do nothing out of the ordinary.

Yo Hermitage



Within its boundaries - no people, no birds. 


Falling petals gather on the moss.


An old monk has nothing to do


But gaze at the moon in the pine tree


And smile at the passing clouds. 




- Taego Bowoo (1301-1382)

In chapel-zendo, as wood stove warmth dissolves, a solitary candle holds silence following practice.

Everyone is welcome here.

I light the fire at 5:30AM in anticipation of morning practice in the chapel/zendo. Rumi's story of the string of longing was a good beginning to the day following silent sitting.

The story of Christianity is changing.

A once blood-demanding God is becoming a soother of victims. Has God changed -- or are we changing?

Bamboo Hermitage

Empty inside; it's always clean.
No one will peek into its inner garden.
Only a dragon's whistle
And a phoenix's whisper break
The Zen Mind.
The bright moon on a fishing pole
Fills the river around the castle.
(--Taego Bowoo, 1301-1382, DailyZen)

I'm told there is a style of Christianity that believes only Christians will be able to enter heaven -- no other religion, no one who hasn't accepted Christ as their personal savior.

The change is timely.

It strikes me that we are in heaven -- except for those who create hellish unkindness and violent intolerance. Heaven is the acceptance of God in all God's mystery. Those who claim non-christians cannot go to heaven are speaking this from an unawareness so profound as to contribute to the creation of non-heaven.

I opt for God, heaven, Jesus, Buddha, et al -- and all who dwell therein -- along with all my brothers and sisters who, with a changing, growing awareness, allow themselves into such an open and compassionate realm of love and acceptance we've called heaven.

Of course the dogs are in heaven.

They're waiting for us to arrive there.

They want us to know that there is here with attentive presence.

Seven first-time visitors arrived for Thursday Evening Conversation. Four men from New Brunswick, Canada. You never know.

The water in the stream
Looks as if it was dyed with indigo;
The green mountain outside the door
Is never painted.
The colors of the mountain
And the sound of the water
Betray the whole,
But who will be enlightened
To No-reality here?
- Baekoon Kyunghan (1299-1375)

Snow and ice this morning. Saskia finishes her deadlines. I build palate porch at main door to bookshed. Rick finishes his cedar shingling, leaving (as we requested) the southeast wall for us to complete. Jay has one more soffit. Then the building work is done and the landscaping, book transferring, and final touches, remain.

It is a lovely building. Jay did well.

Just one thing matters. When that is seen, all is well. Until then, all is nonetheless well.

It is the Solemnity of The Annunciation.

Would I say 'yes' if asked to embody the presence of the great creative reality of love and wisdom?

I would have to live and die in and with justice, compassion, kindness, healing, acceptance and forgiveness.

Tall order.

Can I think about it?

How long?

I'll get back to you.

"Beep..."

Words matter. The rhetoric used in politics turns violent. It's not right. It's not right for the right to be so wrong.

If a fleeting thought conjures the whole,
How can I describe Reality in figures?
While empty moonlight
On the water shows everything,
The mirror of No Mind reflects
Only Nothingness.
- Baekoon Kyunghan (1299-1375)

The health care bill is now law.

Congressional leadership must help change the rhetoric and ease up dangerous opposition to everything. There are citizens in this country who do not understand the posturing and game playing on the part of elected political leaders, strategists, and pundits -- these citizens mistakenly think the orators believe the inciting rhetoric they issue. They don't. Not really.

It's a partisan game being played for fear-based financial gain. But the citizenry might come to think violent action needs to be taken to protect the country. Let's not become confused. Let's remember kindness.

Democracy understands that after argument and debate a decision is made based on votes and tallies. True, the rules of the process are arcane and dizzying, but the invitation is there to participate positively. It is odd behavior to be invited to the party and then to bitterly complain that you chose not to attend. Your rage and frustration rants that someone should rid us of those troublesome people responsible for holding an opinion different than ours. Then, and very frighteningly, comes heteronomous wickedness -- where after violence or criminal behavior someone claims they were only following the instructions or suggestions of others.

Non-negotiating ideology attempts to overtake and overrule democracy. When that attempt is made someone is bound to get hurt. Violence has a way of changing the subject. It becomes no longer about laws and debate, but egos, pain, and revenge. Afterwards, conciliatory comments and apologies are made. It helps if they are sincere. It's a fragile time.

Still it is hard to understand why any individual would not want what is best for all individuals. But that attitude, some will contend, is itself an ideology. Just because it appears to some to be the compassionate and caring way to behave toward all people, others might differ in their perception and sensitivities.

We can hope and work for equality. If we don't, things will either get worse or they will continue in a holding pattern. Fearful pronouncements, warning innuendo, and not so subtle invitations to inflict damage or pain do not make for a trusting, collaborative citizenry.

"A man who has been in danger,
When he comes out of it forgets his fears,
And sometimes he forgets his promises."
---- Euripides - Iphigenia in Tauris (414-12 BC)

The promise of democracy for this country was and is nice. It still could become a reality. It is based on equality, life, liberty, and (might I suggest) a communion of common longing for our deepest nature.

I'd like to see its promise replace the fear currently being sold to a lathered citizenry.

Spring rain drenches.

Mountain out back and across way run with water.

A wide icy river floats to far uncertainty.
The autumn rain is eternal in the mist.
You ask me about Deep South Mountain.
My heart knows it is beyond white clouds.
- Wang Wei (699-759)

I once thought it mattered what you did in life. Job. Family. Accomplishments. Recognition.

No longer.

It's how, not what.
I'd rather fill for a second the space between two raindrops as they touch earth.

Splash!

Giggling joy.

Then, no more.

Such sweet uncertainty!

Hundreds of quahogs beached by storm, broken open by seagulls, abandoned shells strewing the sand on Old Orchard Beach.

One snail, large and still at home, is tossed back into the swells.

There's no explaining who continues who departs and who wonders at the difference.

Feel healthier?

Take a walk. Drink water. Eat a banana. Turn your mind with authentic and transcending prayer. Look carefully within everything.

Here's the point: we are not other than it, than any or all of it.

I'll still die, sometime. Still, with it all, aren't we healthier?

A vote, soon.

Tomorrow the sun will appear in its rotation around the earth. (Maybe I, like the bill's opposition, have it wrong.)

Either way, even if it rains and the earth revolves around the sun, even through rain, daylight.

Spring!

Clean meditation cabin.

Place rugs in bookshed.

Delusion, enlightenment
just fox-words fooling
Zen practitioners everywhere.
- Daito (1282-1334)

Thank you winter.

Hello spring

Deep bow!

was winter
then (wait,
wait...wait)
will be
spring
when winter
no longer
is
but was

Let's say the truth is love.

Let's say that grievances are the ego's way of saying there's something greater than love and truth. Some call it fairness. Some, justice. Some even self-preservation.

I'm not sure about this.

Pushed along by wind,
Clouds layered along the peaks
Diffuse at daybreak:
Honking geese who've crossed
The mountains open the fall.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

I think that truth-telling is best.

I think that love-creating is best.

There's nothing beyond truth-telling and love-creating.

And that nothing is what we are about.

There's nothing better than best.

Only this.

This.

This truth-telling.

This love-creating.

Let's call it love-truth.

Nothing more.

Nothing else.

When younger this day was a bigger deal. I'm just happy to remember that once it was and now...it's just the 17th, I wear a bit of green, and finish stacking wood.

The Rose Tree

“O words are lightly spoken”
Said Pearse to Connolly,
“Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea.”

“It needs to be but watered,”
James Connolly replied,
“To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride.”

“But where can we draw water”
Said Pearse to Connolly,
“When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our own red blood
Can make a right Rose Tree.”

(Poem by William Butler Yeats)

A melancholic theme.

The 18th nears.

Parker Palmer suggests that to transcend is not to get out and away, but rather to enter in, to in-spire, to breathe within the reality. Those who want out are doing something else.

We must resist the popular tendency to think of transcendence as an upward and outward escape from the realities of self and world. Instead, transcendence is a breaking-in, a breathing of the Spirit of love into the heart of our existence, a literal in-spiration that allows us to regard ourselves and our world with more trust and hope than ever before. To experience transcendence means to be removed -- not from self and world, but from that hall of mirrors in which the two endlessly reflect and determine one another. Prayer takes us out -- not out of self and world, but out of their closed circular logic.

(p. 13, in To Know As We are Known, Education As A Spiritual Journey by Parker Palmer, c.1983)

It is, they say, a complicated world. Take the financial meltdown.

Complicated.

Michael Lewis writes about some few who saw the disaster coming.That these sub-prime mortgage bonds were going to tank was obvious to a few people. Why not more people?

In Ireland, Switzerland, and Germany (so far) there are scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church and sexual abuse. Some folks knew it was happening when it was happening. Why not more people?

In the wars America fights in Iraq and Afghanistan there have been egregious criminal shootings and killings committed against civilian men, women, and children. These precipitous shootings, done by both military and mercenary private contractors, were cloaked under rhetoric proclaiming noble patriotic safety behavior -- essentially the ethic was: we have the guns and the vehicles and you are in our way. Some knew the abusive and criminal acts were taking place. Why not more people?

I suspect that we all knew. Ignorance is no explanation or excuse. We knew but decided not to know what we knew.

Lewis, speaking with Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" about The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, his book assessing the Wall Street fiasco, says that it was a folly of perception. He says we are incentivized not to see what we see.

What is it that I don't see? I don't see the source of being -- even though I most likely do, as do you.

I have just three things to teach:
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
You return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
You accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
You reconcile all beings in the world.
- Lao Tzu

The back roads to Bangor were clear and sunny.

I have no idea about anything in my life these days. Not why I exist. Not what I am doing. Not why so much seems so silly. I do know I am alive, and, here. That, for the time/being, is enough.

Root Cellar

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
(Poem by by Theodore Roethke)

There is only bare breath remaining.

This one. And this.

And this.

New moon.

New moon, seemingly, with no light, no moon.

The moon shining in the middle
Of the sky swallows the lights
Of all creation.
The light in every age so clear
And mysterious that no words
Can describe it.
- Baekoon Kyunghan (1299-1375)

Wind sways trees. Rain pauses.

Students, when you want to say something, think about it three times before you say it. Speak only if your words will benefit yourselves and others. Do not speak if it brings no benefit.
(--Dogen)

Silent today.

I ask how I am within myself today? Am I particularly tired, stressed, or off-form?
If any of these characteristics apply, can I try to let go of the concerns that disturb me?
(--in Sacred Space, http://www.sacredspace.ie/dailyprayer/index.php?lang=en&d=15&m=03&y=2010#consciousness)

Only today. There is no tomorrow.

Of course, nothing that exists exists for its own sake; it exists for the sake of the whole. In origin, the whole is pregiven for man; it takes on for man its conscious character in the time-free present, for consciousness is not restricted to time and space. It cannot be concretized in conceptuality since conceptuality deals with abstractions and absolutes. It can be fathomed only dimly in vital, magic life, and is realizable through imagination and experience, as in myth and mysticism, only in a twilight of consciousness. It is approached in thought, but thought immediately closes itself off since in its process of deduction discursive thought always eludes any openness in its compulsion to system.
The new mutation of consciousness, on the other hand, as a consequence of arationality, receives its decisive stamp from the manifest perceptual emergence of the spiritual.
(--p.541, Ch 12, TheConcretion of the Spiritual, in The Ever-Present Origin, by Jean Gebser,c.1949)

The arational, that which is not based on or governed by reason, in Gebser is acausal and integral.

The answer to the question "Why?" in no longer "Because!"

The new answer is "Be acausal!"

As I said, what is there...

To be said?

Wind blows down from Ragged Mountain. Rain runs for lowest places. It is an hour later than yesterday at the same time.

Don't talk about awakening.

The Second Patriarch Hui-k'o stood in the snow, cut off his arm, and awakened. The Sixth Patriarch heard someone recite the Diamond Sutra phrase "arouse the mind without placing it anywhere," and he awakened. Ling-yun saw a peach blossom and awakened. Hsiang-yen heard a tile fragment strike bamboo, and he awakened. Lin-chi was given sixty blows by Huang-po, and he awakened. Tung-shan noticed his own reflection when he was crossing a river, and he awakened. In each case, these men met the Master. - Daito (1282-1334)

Finally get to stack strewn wood. Wind tosses the tarps. I set them again. And again.

When a woman used the word 'spirituality' at conversation on Friday, I asked her what she meant by that word. She thought then said "universal connectedness..." which seemed right to me.

To live a solitary spiritual life sounds odd. The realization that we are universally connected means that to live is to live as one, whether together or alone.

Like the Willie Nelson song, solitaries and cowboys are always alone -- even with someone they love. The distinction used to be between the eremitical and the cenobitic life -- the solitary and the communal life.

Today it could be thought of as the Asperger Contemplative Outsider and the Socializing Active Insider.

Solitude

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1855-1919)

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone.

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.

Sing, and the hills will answer;

Sigh, it is lost on the air.

The echoes bound to a joyful sound,

But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;

Grieve, and they turn and go.

They want full measure of all your pleasure,

But they do not need your woe.

Be glad, and your friends are many;

Be sad, and you lose them all.

There are none to decline your nectared wine,

But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;

Fast, and the world goes by.

Succeed and give, and it helps you live,

But no man can help you die.

There is room in the halls of pleasure

For a long and lordly train,

But one by one we must all file on

Through the narrow aisles of pain.

(From: Poems of Passion by Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

It need not be pain. Just a walking through something that feels formless. A psychical uninhabitation.

There's no one else there.

Even if you are there, there's no one there. It doesn't seem right.

"The sense is obscured whenever we focus only on small, finished segments of being." --Chuang-tzu

Feast and fast.

Take your time.

I look at you.

You look at me.

If we learn to listen and speak with open mind and open heart we are practicing the promise of conversation. It is the practice of faith most needed today.

Almost a Conversation

I have not really, not yet, talked with otter
about his life.

He has so many teeth, he has trouble
with vowels.

Wherefore our understanding
is all body expression—

he swims like the sleekest fish,
he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles.
Little by little he trusts my eyes
and my curious body sitting on the shore.

Sometimes he comes close.
I admire his whiskers
and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.

He has no words, still what he tells about his life
is clear.
He does not own a computer.
He imagines the river will last forever.
He does not envy the dry house I live in.
He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship.
He wonders, morning after morning, that the river
is so cold and fresh and alive, and still
I don't jump in.

(Poem by Mary Oliver)

Nobody's death in particular, but every death today.

I listen to "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" by Moby from soundtrack of film "Heat." It is a death scene set to a creation theme. The good guy and the bad guy at end clasp hands. We are not to think anything. We are to feel.

Mourner's Kaddish

Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba (Cong: Amein).
May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified (`Cong: Amen.)

b'al'ma di v'ra khir'utei
in the world that He created as He willed.

v'yam'likh mal'khutei b'chayeikhon uv'yomeikhon
May He give reign to His kingship in your lifetimes and in your days,

uv'chayei d'khol beit yis'ra'eil
and in the lifetimes of the entire Family of Israel,

ba'agala uviz'man kariv v'im'ru:
swiftly and soon. Now say:
(Mourners and Congregation:)

Amein. Y'hei sh'mei raba m'varakh l'alam ul'al'mei al'maya
(Amen. May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.)

Yit'barakh v'yish'tabach v'yit'pa'ar v'yit'romam v'yit'nasei
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled,

v'yit'hadar v'yit'aleh v'yit'halal sh'mei d'kud'sha
mighty, upraised, and lauded be the Name of the Holy One
(Mourners and Congregation:)

B'rikh hu.
Blessed is He.

l'eila min kol bir'khata v'shirata
beyond any blessing and song,

toosh'b'chatah v'nechematah, da'ameeran b'al'mah, v'eemru:
praise and consolation that are uttered in the world. Now say:
(Mourners and Congregation:)

Amein
Amen

Y'hei sh'lama raba min sh'maya
May there be abundant peace from Heaven

v'chayim aleinu v'al kol yis'ra'eil v'im'ru
and life upon us and upon all Israel. Now say:
(Mourners and Congregation:)

Amein
Amen

Oseh shalom bim'romav hu ya'aseh shalom
He Who makes peace in His heights, may He make peace,

aleinu v'al kol Yis'ra'eil v'im'ru
upon us and upon all Israel. Now say:
(Mourners and Congregation:)

Amein
Amen

http://www.jewfaq.org/prayer/kaddish.htm

We don't know what happens after death.

We barely know what happens after birth.

Look at me.

I look at you.

There's nothing else.

Only the gaze.

Like John Crichton in Farscape series, we seem to be mostly through the wormhole. The star system outside the window today is bright and sunny. The remainder of the website is drifting toward a new location.

Astronaut John Crichton assumes he'll be home in time for dinner. But a freak accident during an experimental space mission catapults him across a thousand galaxies to an alien battlefield. Suddenly, he's trapped among alien creatures wielding deadly technology - a battle that 20th century sci-fi pop culture never prepared him for. Hunted by a merciless military race, Crichton begins his quest for home from a galaxy far, far away...

(--from The Jim Henson Company website, http://www.henson.com/fantasy_scifi.php?content=farscape)

With the help of Bob O'C, who arrived from an unspecified galaxy, we have begun to transfer the domain, hosting, and blog so ably created and maintained by Karl G for so many years into a new search for a new home that should resemble the place we began before the wormhole.

Home is no place to lose.

And, there is no place like it.