Imagine, living life as one

They stand about and ponder the arrival that is sunrise.

Walter Kaufmann and Thomas Berry turn each to own version of Lauds.

It is Bodhi Day, Buddha’s Enlightenment Day!

It is Immaculate Conception Day, Mary begins form in the world with no obstruction no abstraction   -- only open heart open mind open body. 

Imagine!

What is itself before God? Ha!

 What is your original face, show it to me, the one you had before your mother and father were born?

Meister Eckhart said, “God is a great underground river than no one can dam up and no one can stop." God is a great underground river, and there are many wells into that river. There's a Taoist well, a Buddhist well, a Jewish well, a Muslim well, a Christian well, a Goddess well, the Native wells—many wells that humans have dug to get into that river, but friends, there s only one river: the living waters of wisdom. All of us have to go down a well today; we all have to do spiritual practice to find divinity. But whether your well be Buddhist or Christian or Sufi or Jewish, when you do your work you will come to the same source of wisdom. Dr. Thurman said, “A strange necessity has been laid upon me, to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide. Human life is one, and all people are members one of another. And this insight is spiritual, and it is a hard core of religious experience.” ...God is totally biased in favor of diversity. We better get into that stream, because the ethnic divisions, the racial divisions, the sexual divisions, the sexual preference divisions, the class divisions are eating up the human soul and literally eating up this planet. Howard Thurman says, “ It is my belief that in the presence of God there is neither male nor female, White nor Black, Gentile nor Jew, Protestant nor Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist nor Muslim, but a human spirit stripped to the literal substance of itself before God." That is our basic identity, who we are before God. And he predicts that some day our species will discover this very same truth. He says, "Community cannot feed for long on itself. It can only flourish where always the boundaries are giving way to the coming of others from beyond them, unknown and undiscovered brothers and sisters." Community itself is not an enclave, it’s not a defense, it's not a castle with moats and thick walls of dogma and differentiation, and segregation. True community melts the walls, because true community warms the heart, and the heart's first effect is melting. When the heart learns to love, the first gift is melting.  

(--from p.24, In Honor of Dr. Howard Thurman by Matthew Fox,1997, Creation Spirituality) http://creationspiritualitymag.org/wp-content/uploads/1997/02/vol-13-howard-thurman.pdf

Sit. Have a think.

May I have this one with you?

A morning's meander.

God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of him. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him that I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere.  (--Thomas Merton (1915-1968), New Seeds of Contemplation)

Then, referencing from whence the words appeared:

Jason Gardner (@Gardnerblurb) tweeted at 3:44pm - 26 Nov 13: 
'God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself' mind and heart blown! Thanks Thomas Merton (https://twitter.com/Gardnerblurb/status/405437021004390402) 
...
Marcus Honeysett (@marcushoneysett) tweeted at 4:23pm - 26 Nov 13: 
@Gardnerblurb our joy is not that of having woken from a pleasant dream but awoken to the fact that we are a dream. & real reality is ahead (https://twitter.com/marcushoneysett/status/405446662174146560) 

 I am made of words. 

Speak me, or hold me silently. 

Either way, we dance.

From here to nowhere.

graced dance

We love reading fiction.

It could be said that one of the ways we learn about (what-we-call) ourselves is by "reading" the fictional narratives presented by others about ourselves.

What I mean by fiction is that the story told is told about "something" not there.

My "self" is not mine, not contained in the form of this body, nor is it

separate from you and you and you.

By learning how to read we similarly learn how to deconstruct what is being read. By hearing clearly the narrative we learn about transcending the data and moving into the place between what is considered self and what is considered other. This between space, this middle ground, is what is interesting.

Interesting, inter-esse, to be between. 

It is in this between space that the dance dances itself.

What we have called God is the graced dance of life turning and moving as living being.

This is love with itself without exclusion.

We are outsiders.

No system, no mechanism, no technology encloses us without our complicit involvement.

As outsiders we drift in and through and with the one we call God in formless poetry of movement.

We are what happens in the empty reflective place between two mirrors.

We are the door that closes nothing in and holds nothing out. The door itself. Opening and closing as itself.

Fiction is not not true; it is true only as itself.

Woman working all through night; as we all are, in a sense, in essence

Everything

That is

Is

Living 

Being.

Evening practice

Low-lit solitude.

Bell rings to begin.

No end.

Living beings -- a new trinity

A trinity to consider:

 Gaston Bachelard, the late twentieth century French philosopher, comments on what happens when cosmos and psyche reconnect. In the Poetics of Space he talks of the holy trinity of Immensity, Intensity and Intimacy. When you have an experience of Immensity—in Thomas’ words, an experience of the cosmos, or relationship to it, it is an intense experience. All awe is both an intense and intimate experience. Humans cannot separate the immense, intense and intimate experience and Thomas Berry by leading us into a cosmic awareness again, an awareness as important for our hearts as for our minds, is bathing us anew in Immensity, Intensity and Intimacy far beyond any mere anthropocentric relationship could ever do for us.   

Bachelard declares that “grandeur progresses in the world in proportion to the deepening of intimacy…a primal value.” We have to take back immensity as a primal intimate value where “we are no longer shut up in the weight of the prison of our own beings.” The new cosmology helps us to do this and so do solitude and meditation. I honor Thomas and Aquinas and others who are helping us to name the vastness of our souls. Ernest Holmes put it this way: “Spirituality is a word that is often misused.” (He said this 100 years ago!) “From our viewpoint, spirituality is one’s recognition of the universe as a living presence of the good, truth, beauty, peace, power and love.” Holmes recognizes that spirituality is not spirituality if it is psychologized—if it is not about the universe. Holmes was right and Thomas Berry is right. 

(--from, Some Thoughts on Thomas Berry’s Contributions to the Western Spiritual Tradition, by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox) https://www.wisdomuniversity.org/Thomas-Berry.html 

A student in a posting called it “living being.” This might be a new name to umbrella cosmic being, plant being, animal being, human being, and divine being. 

The person you are becoming

Going back through time we meet ourselves before we become who we are going back in time.

What do you say to yourself?

Watch out, you say. You are becoming the person who will ask you what you will say to yourself before realizing you are the answer to the question.

When this happens, see yourself at that moment as the person you are becoming.

How long we wait

All silence, sound, stone, fire, awareness, inter-nexus, journeying...

Day watches the work of God.

Which is inter-nexing, which is the core-center-betweening.

Is the work of God finding ground where each is all and all is each at one?

Does the watching of this work engender the creation of place, both solitary and communal, for stillness and swirling engagement of core center between one and all?

Watching-with, the work of God!

Just walking in drizzle following snow

Farmington-Wilton morning walk.

Time to track down grippers.

Although, dogs don't mind my not having  better traction.

The path is fine as it is.

Humans!

Creative Energy in a proleptic realm of anticipation

In the middle of night.

Hear words as we begin to try to translate the New Testament in more Hebraic terms:          

   In the beginning was the DABHAR the Creative Energy:            The Creative Energy was with God            And the Creative Energy was God.            It was with God in the beginning.            Through it all things came to be,            Not one thing had its being but through it,            All that came to be had life in it            And that life was the light of persons,            A light that shines in the dark,            A light that darkness could not overpower…            The DABHAR, the Creative Energy was the true light            That enlightens all people;            And it was coming into the world.            It was in the world            That had its being through it,            And the world did not know it…            But to all who did accept it            It gave power to become children of God…            The Creative Energy was made flesh,            It pitched its tent among us,            And we saw its glory,            the glory that is its as the only Child of the Creator,            full of grace and full of truth.  

Creation itself is a sacrament.  Creation itself is the primary sacrament. 

(--from, DABHAR and the ISNESS of GOD, blog of pastor dawn, 21st Century Progressive Christian Pastor) http://pastordawn.com/2012/06/12/dabhar-and-the-isness-of-god/ 

(cf. John 1:1)

In the middle of night I hear your name.

Thus all of creation contains the living wisdom and word of God, and all of it is for all of us. The human word is only one among billions of words that God has spoken and that therefore emanate from the divine splendor. To make contact with wisdom is to go beyond human words, which have, after all, existed for only about four million years -- and have appeared on paper for only a few thousand years and in print for only five hundred. We are invited to return to the many billions of years of ongoing creation that also constitute god’s talking. 

What happens when when we let go of a chauvinistic control of words, which means exclusively the human word, and return to Dabhar as the creative energy of God? According to [Gerhard] Von Rad, truth happens; and affection happens; and God happens. For “creation not only exists, it also discharges truth.” 

(p.37, in Original Blessing, A Primer in Creation Spirituality, by Matthew Fox, c.1983)

And that name is night itself.

At dawn, it is dawn itself.

And you, friend, when you appear, that name is your name. 

Unhollowed heart; following Dabhar

Here is, remarkably, hopeless.

No need for hope here.

Abandon hope, the poet says, all ye who enter here.

Not an admonishment; rather, wise directive reminder.

Here is its own present.

The playwright reminds us to remember to leave the wall. An ambiguous, and invitatory, koan.

Are you expecting?

There is no outside.

This is the intimation of the new liturgical consciousness.

Everything is within everything else.

It has been a long, long pregnancy.

Advent, 2013

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

(--from poem, Mending Wall, by Robert Frost) 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173530

Zen, Saturday morning, imagination

Non-intellectual, like first light through bamboo blinds, only a space of seeing what is emerging.

Let's not make anything other than what it is.

Zen is seeing what is being itself.

Nothing else.

All of existence is coming to understand

It takes the whole of humanity to be God.

All of it. From out of nowhere. 

Thanks

Is

Given

The word becomes you pronouncing it

What are you . . . saying? 

"Every creature is a word of God." (Meister Eckhart)

Yes!

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” (Meister Eckhart)

Fine words!

Passing observation

Wind winds through

bare brown branches 

blown smooth 

empty 

after rain

As dawn so death

Cat and mouse debate Wednesday morning under window by bed as sound of rain, low growling, and unfinished argument patter over motley colored rug.

If I were to die today, like mouse having wandered from walls to open space, would I know the difference between anything? Or would I not be there to consider anything, having fallen into the open with no boundaries or references to suggest anything other whatsoever?

Two cats, agents of no-othering, prowl the contours of steel shelving for signs of what seems to be considering itself still other.

Walking where once I walked

Every day twice a day.

Thirty two years ago this was my daily sojourn.

Today is that time by means of place.

We are never that far from whence we've been.

What is...your being...seeing

If every year is a marble, how many marbles do you have left? How many sunrises, how many opportunities to rise to the full stature of your being?     

     --Joy Page

 After an eternity of seeking the sudden threshold of seeing and finding leaves one filled with a strange paradox of ecstasy and grief. I was born to see.

        -- Joy Page

Seeing Through Illness is spiritual practice and community engagement with one another

MEETINGBROOK STILL,MARBLES CENTER: An Initial Invitation

Twitter post, Sunday 24Nov2013:  We’d like to begin: STILL,MARBLES. (Seeing Through Illness, Meetingbrook at Ragged Bald Life Experiencing Spirit.) Interest in investing?

hermitage@meetingbrook https://twitter.com/meetingbrook/status/404615625135640576

ABSTRACT:

We learn that the property across Barnestown Road is on the market. We’ve walked it. We were shown it by a broker. Several members of the wider meetingbrook community have also walked and thought along with us. It consists of 50 acres, an animal barn, an extended house, open lawns, woodland, a pond, two streams, and our own rise of mountain. It is ideal for an extension of meetingbrook hermitage

We are inviting investors to support the purchase of this property to be used as a center to see through illness, for learning, conversation, groups, support, therapeutic meditation, movement, soul-friend interaction, community outreach, gardening, creative projects, various re-entries, and an open place for quiet visits, prayer, reading, solitude, hiking, or just sitting.

STILL,MARBLES CENTER 

The name is an acronym signifying: Seeing Through Illness, Meetingbrook at Ragged Bald Life Experiencing Spirit.

The goal is to focus on the oftentimes difficult navigation individuals experience through illness, be it cancer, heart condition, or other unsettling emotional, spiritual, mental, or physical issues. Particular interest will be extended to those making the journey through illness to share their attendant steps and views in communal conversations.

The Center would consist of a Meditation Room, a Community Room, a Hospitality Kitchen, a Chapel, Meeting rooms, Respite Rooms for overnight stays, and lovely grounds with streams, pond, trails, woods, mountain, and decks for quiet enjoyment of nature’s healing gifts.

Those in transition, caregivers, family members, healthcare personnel, friends, veterans, and other interested folks looking to learn and experience simple care and presence would be invited to STILL,MARBLES to enjoy the ongoing conversations, groups, respite, arts, poetry, films, talks, seminars, ordinary hospitality and relaxation.

MEETINGBROOK HERMITAGE is a place of collation and recollection between Ragged & Bald Mountains. Our personal practice, which for 20 years we’ve done at the hermitage, in the marketplace bookshop and bakery (for 13 years), state prison, hospital, libraries, nursing home, with the dying, hospice volunteers, university students and church communities, and an idiorhythmic extended meetingbrook community, is a practice that is open to and responsive with all traditions both East and West, all denominations, faiths, or none of the above, those who are looking to find their way through life with its difficulties and joys. We are not alone. Meetingbrook is committed to seeing through illness, wherever the individual is, however their path winds its way.

Please consider investing to acquire the property and invest your spirit in being of service to others at MEETINGBROOK STILL,MARBLES CENTER.

Best,

Saskia Huising, Bill Halpin

Meetingbrook Hermitage, Camden, Maine, 04843  207-236-4346

STILL,MARBLES

Three hours before dawn thinking about possible use of neighboring property.

If a man does not think too much, he rejoices at rising in the morning, and at eating and drinking. He finds satisfaction in them and does not want them to be otherwise. But if he ceases to take things for granted, he seeks eagerly and hopefully during the course of the day for moments of real life, the radiance of which makes him rejoice and obliterates the awareness of time and all thoughts on the meaning and purpose of everything. One can call these moments creative, because they seem to give a feeling of union with the creator, and while they last, one is sensible of everything being necessary, even what is seemingly fortuitous. It is what the mystics call union with God. Perhaps it is the excessive radiance of these moments that make everything else appear so dark. Perhaps it is the feeling of liberation, the enchanting lightness and the suspended bliss that make the rest of life seem so difficult, demanding and oppressive. I do not know. I have not travelled very far in thought and philosophy. However I do know that if there is a state of bliss and a paradise, it must be an uninterrupted sequence of such moments, and if this state of bliss can be attained through suffering and dwelling in pain, then no sorrow or pain can be so great that one should attempt to escape from it.

                          (--Hermann Hesse, in Gertrude, as translated by Hilda Rosner)        http://dshenai.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/

STILL,MARBLES

Seeing Through Illness, Meetingbrook at Ragged Bald Life Experiencing Spirit.

Start again

President Kennedy's death

It showed us something we'd never recover from.

Mistrust.

Georg Friedrich Handel gives us, as consolation, this St. Cecilia's Day Ode.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hbHHieh6v98

At end, ad libiduum.

What we no longer see passes us by

Train tracks no longer carry sidetracked caboose shorn of yellow paint.

And yet, golden prayer wheel sounds like the clickity clack round iron discs along spiked rail as it spins homage to what is within everything.

Thursday afternoon long miles from home.

Stirb und werde

After film Wit in class, Ikkyu concludes the evening:

I won’t die.  

I won’t go anywhere.  

I’ll always be here.  

But don’t ask me any questions.  

I won’t answer.  

                          (– The Death Poem of Ikkyu)

 From death mask, a brief pause, to eternal face.

Sometimes

When walking

Everything seems

So

Spacious

Om mane padme hum

See what is revealing itself within!

Some days Emanuel feels closer than others.

(Hebrew: עמנואל, God is with us)

Peace and good will.

As well.

Spiegel im Spiegel

Meditation is presence looking as, not at, itself.

Mirror in the mirror.

A never-ending reflection with no beginning.

Arriving home; nowhere else

No closing this gate.

On its way becoming gateless.

Moo!

The end sound as religion

The koan "Mu," the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, and Philippians 2:6-11 are the same teaching.

No stretching out hand to reach for or ask for what is already there, what is already true, what belongs as you.

As, not to.

Perhaps "I am!" finds contemporary translation in "I as!"

Moonrise, Camden, Saturday

No peapod bobs

Harbor, only white sphere

Looks at nothing there

Low tide

6:18am

Not only are we not alone, we are what alone would be if it were us.

Alone, the Alone is alone.

We are what longs to be alone with the Alone.

As first light morning is to day, you and I are nascent presence to Inchoate Presence Itself.

So arrives 6:23am.

3:16am

Vigils.

Nothing.

Emptiness surrounds solitude.

Until stillness in vast open space.

Looks in as itself.

Gazing 

One last observation

Just before I die I expect to be breathing.

What happens after that is anybody's guess.

Bowdoin soccer field

The day is chill gifted with sun. Leaves play tumble at center field.

Score: wind two, grass one.

read this many ways

No fear is now here.

Do you remember?

I remember.

11 Nov, world over

Remembrance Day includes all hurt and dead after war, after resistance to war, after longing for peace.

Time to see the teaching

View from morning window.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.-- Dalai Lama

View from a lovely teaching. 

ཐུགས་རྗེ་ཆེ་། (tujay-chay) ཐུགས་རྗེཞེ་དྲག་ཆེ་།.           (Thank you!)