Here is how it begins

Awake.

Bring in firewood.

Christmas morning. 

Only candle flame, wood stove, sunrise.

No other power.

And old reheated coffee.

Earth born

Earth rise.

NASA image AS8-14-2383, taken by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission, 24Dec1968)

Earth wise.

Christus natus est!

In the middle off the night

Rokie, the white border Collie, barks.

In the middle of the night we call your name.

Jitai, (自体 = itself)

This. Itself.

How near?

The absolute near-side.

So close

Earth sees.

So near.

Winter

Ice

Snow

Mute Rockport Harbor.

Dancing herein, therein, and therefore

Something's coming.

“… somewhere in the last 50 years we have crossed a mysterious limit set by Providence and have entered a new era. We have, in some sense, passed a point of no return, and it is both useless and tragic to continue to live as if we were still in the nineteenth century. Whatever we may think of the new era, whether we imagine it as the millennium, the noosphere, or as the beginning of the end, there has been a violent disruption of society and a radical overthrow of that modern world which goes back to Charlemagne.”  

(p. viii, Introduction by Thomas Merton, from THE PRISON MEDITATION OF FATHER DELP, Herder and Herder New York, 1963.) http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2006/12/prison-meditation-of-father-delp.html

A creative resolution, a creative tension.

 The issue of interhuman tension is secondary to earth-human tensions. If humans will not become functional members of the earth community, how can humans establish functional relationships among themselves? It is not exactly the question of whether the nations can survive each other, nor is it even the question of whether intelligent beings can survive the natural forces of the planet; it is whether the planet can survive the intelligence that it has itself brought forth. 

My proposal is that the cosmology of peace is presently the basic issue. The human must be seen in its cosmological role just as the cosmos needs to be seen in its human manifestation. This cosmological context has never been more clear than it is now, when everything depends on a creative resolution of our present antagonisms. I refer to a creative resolution of antagonisms rather than to peace in deference to the violent aspects of the cosmological process. Phenomenal existence itself seems to be a violent mode of being. Also, there is a general feeling of fullness bordering on decay that is easily associated with peace. Neither violence nor peace in this sense is in accord with the creative transformations through which the more splendid achievements of the universe have taken place. As the distinguished anthropologist A.L. Kroeber once indicated: The ideal situation for any individual or any culture is not exactly “bovine placidity.” It is, rather, “the highest state of tension that the organism can bear creatively.”           

(-- from final chapter, "The Cosmology of Peace" in "The Dream of the Earth" by Thomas Berry, c.1988)

 That middle, that middle place, that middle way, that place the gospel refers to when it cites Jesus as saying "The kingdom of heaven (the kingdom of God) is between you." (Cf. John1:26, Luke 17:21) -- it is there that peace is found, not off and away and not oblivious to the push and pull of this and that in the ubiquitous and perennial vying for dominance and bettering. Step, rather, into the between, the center, the middle, the heart of what is being revealed in our midst.

The Pax Gaia is earth and all beings with and through earth coming into proper and true relationality.

Step out.

Step in.

Step between.

Dance herein, therein, and therefore encircle the center of existence.

Listen!

Something's near!

Revealing, itself.

morning after Handfasting

Newlyweds toboggan down from yurt laughing.

They kiss outside barn.

Everything is ice and grey.

Except their laughter. 

Breathing meditation

Sound of cat jumping to floor. Moving something not nailed down.

Puzzling episodes

As solstice gives itself on earth to early darkness, still, only now with the increase of returning light.

JE: OK, thanks for the interview Malcolm. I love the revival of Lewis / Tolkien’s theology of imagination, and their sense of the power of story, metaphor and myth to transform us. But it seems to me that way of thinking can end up in the postmodern idea that everything is a story or metaphor, that the gospels are just another inspiring myth. We just need to find some ‘sacred fiction’ that works for us, whether that’s Star Trek, Doctor Who or Lord of the Rings (which by-the-by was voted the most popular book of the 20th century, and is obviously much loved by non-Christians.) 

MG: That’s the opposite of what Lewis and Tolkien were saying. The point is, it’s about the re-marriage of the divorced parents – Imagination and Reason. It happens that it was our mother, Imagination, rather than our father, Reason, who’s been absent, and who we need to get to know again. But the point of bringing them together – the reason, for CS Lewis, why coming to Christ was so transformative – was that he loved myth, but as long as it was just myth, however moved by it he was, he didn’t feel he could re-connect it to Reason. The problem with Reason by itself was that as long as it was devoid of resonant story, it was just facts without meaning. The point about the Christian story was not simply that it was mythically resonant, but also that it was (they believed) historical fact. Tolkien said Lewis should think of the Gospels as a great myth written by God in the material of history. The previous poets had used language to tell a story, while the Author of the cosmos was able to tell a story in and through the actual material fabric of what happened. 

JE: But it sounds like Lewis was saying ‘there’s various different myths, of Dionysus, Oedipus, Balder the Brave etc but my myth is true’. 

MG: Well he’s not simply saying it’s true, he’s also saying it’s the truth of all the other myths as well, it’s the one that gives the other ones their grounding. It would not be sufficient to say ‘we all need a story to live by’, because someone could come back and say ‘you’re just making it up’. If you can show that something actually happened, which seems to make sense of all these other myths….There’s a great essay of Lewis’ called The Grand Miracle, in which he refers to the life, death and resurrection of Christ as like a missing chapter in a great work, the great work being the Cosmos. He says ‘if someone proposes to me that there is a missing chapter to a book I know very well, they’d have to show not only that it’s in the style of the rest of the novel, but that it makes sense of otherwise puzzling episodes’. And that’s exactly what he thinks the resurrection did.

(--from  "Malcolm Guite on poetry as a door into the dark" at the Website of Jules Evans, Philosophy for Life) - See more at: http://philosophyforlife.org/malcolm-guite-on-poetry-as-a-door-into-the-dark/#sthash.CVKdhm47.dpuf

So it is incremental anticipation holds still in exchange a pivoting intuition into its own rediscovery.

Turning light

“silence is the language of god, 
all else is poor translation.” (-Rumi)

and the wisdom to dwell in the difference

Alone, we can do nothing.

Another instance of Heidegger's use of the hermeneutic circle occurs in his examination of The Origin of the Work of Art (1935–1936). Here Heidegger argues that both artists and art works can only be understood with reference to each other, and that neither can be understood apart from 'art,' which, as well, cannot be understood apart from the former two. The 'origin' of the work of art is mysterious and elusive, seemingly defying logic: "thus we are compelled to follow the circle. This is neither a makeshift or a defect. To enter upon the path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of thought, assuming thinking is a craft. Not only is the main step from work to art a circle like the step from art to work, but every separate step that we attempt circles this circle. In order to discover the nature of the art that really prevails in the work, let us go to the actual work and ask the work what and how it is."[2]^:18 

(--Wikipedia, re. Hermeneutic circle) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutic_circle

Together, there’s something.

O come all ye lightfilm

Short day-

light, long dark- 

night; winter sol-

stice rain and

ice: moving

picture

Listening Itself

At first poetry seemed precious.

Then it became interesting.

Now, it is the creative energy of existence.

My word! (As the saying goes.)

Prelude to final class

It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.

(--from "The Opening of Eyes," poem by David Whyte)

Night prayer

Here.

Alone.

Words, too, stretch morning exercise

The quote arrived in this form:

"Only in God is man capable of living fully." (p. 35,  Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, 1963 Herder and Herder, New York)

It thought about transforming into: Only God! Only Cosmos! Only all existing beings and things! Only this awareness will allow life to fully be capable of meditating within itself.

How will we know when it is time?

Day will become itself.

And the tiger cat will lie down with the border Collie.

Sun will pass through cedar branches

.

And we will "See what is revealing itself with and through this becoming." 

(Om mane padme hum!)

David Whyte: Preserving the Soul (excerpt) - Thinking Allowed with Dr. J...

Starting on the path with a poet-guide.

Plowing job ok?

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” (--Simone Weil)

Window evaluation.

What does orange hatted Buddha and Celtic cross have to do with me?

I don't snow.

Sunday morning service of light and snow and trees

Deus, in adjutorium meum intende!

Snow cancels

 everything

remains still

Nothing moves

Except this question:

Domine ad adjuvandum me festina?

It is curious that Latin word for God (Deus) could be misspelled (dues) thereby fashioning a completely different theological emphasis.

Woods things be different still if trees and snow and light were our reverent soul companions?

Saskia speaks new mantra

"Be it. Do it. Shut up."

Thus endeth Saturday Morning Practice.

Exeunt omnes.

Zero

Start here for first pre-winter storm.

Poetics just-eyes

Poetry sees itself in words.

What words say

Before dawn.

They say: We are awareness which is . . . not read.

Look at us.

Carefully.

Eternity is...

Space without time.

Still, it is cold tonight.

Stay with inspiration

A story I first heard today.

A young man was taking a religious studies exam at Oxford nearly two centuries ago. He and his fellow classmates had been asked to write about the spiritual significance in the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine. For two hours all the other students busily filled page after page with their thoughts. However, the young man just gazed out of the classroom window through most of his allotted time. Nearing the end of the period the examiner came over to him and insisted that he start writing or fail the exam. The young man, who happened to be Lord Byron, took up his pen and wrote only one line: “The water met its master and blushed.”   (As told by Catherine Ingram in Passionate Presence, Gotham Books, 2003, page 129.)

Poets!

let God live in us

 From “a theological essay by Sheila T. Harty” --

Merton told a story about a Tibetan lama who escaped his country to save his life. Before leaving, when still faced with the decision of whether or not to go, he sent a message to an abbot friend, asking: “What do we do?” The answer that came back was: “From now on, Brother, everyone stands on his own feet.” Merton thought that an extremely important monastic statement. What Buddhist or Christian monasticism is about, he said, is that we can no longer rely on support by social, political, or economic structures, which may be destroyed at any moment by the dominant forces in the world. Truly, standing on your own is reliance on God. 

Toward the end of his talk, Merton referred to a traditional representation of the Buddha seated in the lotus position with one hand pointing to the earth and the other hand holding a begging bowl. This image is relevant for monasticism, Merton said. The begging bowl represents the ultimate theological belief in the interdependence of all living things. This concept is the most central to Mahayana Buddhism. The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of this mutual interdependence. 

Merton said that beyond monasticism, Buddhism, Marxism, or even student revolution is a kind of freedom and transcendence that is attainable. 

If you once penetrate, by detachment and purity of heart, to the inner secret of the ground of your ordinary experience, you attain to a liberty that nobody can touch, that nobody can affect, that no political change of circumstances can do anything to. 

Buddhist tradition uses spiritual masters to help people attain this. But this transcendent kind of monasticism, Merton said, represents an instinct of the human heart, a charisma given by God to man that is available to all. That is what the young French student revolutionary meant when he said: “We are monks too.” 

Merton ended his talk in deference to the Buddhist and Hindu traditions that have gone much deeper into this than in the West. From them, we could learn how to reach that full and transcendent liberty beyond mere cultural differences and externals. Then, with a remark reflecting that he knew questions for the morning lectures would be held until the evening session, Merton said: “So I will disappear from view and maybe we can all have a coke or something.”23 And by midday he was dead.  

(--from Thomas Merton’s Last Talk: Bangkok 1968, a theological essay by Sheila T. Harty.) http://www.sheila-t-harty-speaker-editor.com/Thomas%20Mertons%20Last%20Talk%20in%20Bangkok%201968.pdf

...   ...   ...

Then, from,  louie, louie, Exploring contemplative awareness in daily life, drawing from and with much discussion of the writings of Thomas Merton, aka “Father Louie”.

If there is a feast day for Father Louie, December 10th is it. This is the day, in 1941, that he arrived at the Abby of Our Lady of Gethsemane to begin his life as a Trappist monk. Twenty seven years later, on this day, he died in Bangkok Thailand while participating in a monastic conference. 

This year I would like to share Sr. Luke's telling of Merton's last words.  The passage is transcribed from a talk that she gave.  I believe that it gives a great deal of insight into the person of Merton from someone who knew and understood him. 

I want to conclude by telling you about Merton's last words.  Merton gave a talk in Bangkok, a final contribution, and he talked quite a bit about alienation, the separation of ourselves, tearing ourselves into parts: that which somebody else tells us we are, and that which we know ourselves to be as a center where God is present.  Now if we choose from that center, as Merton continually instructed his novices, then we are choosing according to a unified sense of self.  If we choose from what other people tell us we are or tell us we should do, or tell us anything else that we should do, or have or whatever, we have broken ourselves into two.  That's alienation.  And that's what Merton talked bout so much in his last days, that alienated self, brought all the way over to what others say we should be rather than choosing from one's center.  That is what I think was the great message of prayer and everything else that Merton taught.  At the end of it he asked for the blessing of God for himself and for all these others that are there. 

 In the very last of his life, he gave this final talk in Bangkok.  I went to the place in Bangkok, and I visited the room where he gave the final talk, and I visited the little bungalow where he died.  I remember then what I heard about his last words.  Merton, as you know, gave his talk, and then sat down and said. "We are going to have the questions tonight.  Now I will disappear."  Many people repeat that as a prophecy.  I think Merton meant he'd leave.  And we'll have the questions tonight. 

 So then he went from there to the lunchroom and had the lunch they had prepared, and then he walked over to his room accompanied by a French monk who talked to him as they walked along to Merton's room and said to him, "Well, thank you for the talk you gave this morning.  Everybody didn't exactly appreciate it, though.  We had some question."  And I thought to myself, "Yes, this is the way it always is.  Yes, I know they said some good things BUT."  There's always that little part, and Merton was experiencing that there.  Actually, it was a nun that said that, but usually I don't say that because we have a bad enough press as it is, so I don't usually set up the nun as the one who said that.  Anyone could have.  She happened to say it, and what she said was repeated to Merton: "I thought he would talk more about converting people to Christianity.  I thought that's what he was going to be talking about."  She enlarged on that.  This is a pagan area where we are working, and we're missionaries, and it's a pagan area, and here he's talking about something else and alienation, whatever.  But I thought he'd talk about bringing people to Christ. 

 Merton, when he heard that, instead of getting upset the way many of us would get upset, said simply, "Well, I don't think that is what we are asked to do today.  All the preaching we get on television telling us who God is -- honestly, you wonder what the word 'God' is to mean in all of that."  Merton has it better.  "today I don't think it is what we are asked to do.  I think today it's more important for us to so let God live in us that others may feel God and come to believe in God because they feel how God lives in us."  These were Merton's last words that we know anything about and were said right before Francois de Grunne took him to his room where he tragically died, tragically for us, in any case.  Certainly he had completed what was his journey.  In other words, so let God live in us, so allow God to be the center where we make our decisions, where we live our lives, so let God live in us that others may find God by seeing how God lives in us, by somehow grasping how God lives in us.  Better than any long television explanation of who God is.  A beautiful last message, and I'd like to leave that with you as we conclude the talk on prayer because prayer, that presence of God, that reality of God, which each of us possesses, is our good fortune, "All love's luck."  We have achieved it.  Thank you very much.  -- Sr. Mary Luke Tobin SL  

(from, Monday, December 10, 2012, Merton’s last words, from website: louie, louie, Exploring contemplative awareness in daily life, drawing from and with much discussion of the writings of Thomas Merton, aka “Father Louie”.)http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2012/12/mertons-last-words.html 

Thank you both.

And you, Thomas. We sat in silence then reaffirmed promises in our Merton Bookshed Retreat this evening.

Happily so!

Promises and Considerations for meetingbrook monastics

Each year on 10December, the anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death, we reaffirm our three promises. This is our 15th year since first pronouncing them in public in 1998.

Three promises: 

Contemplation,  Conversation,  Correspondence.
 ...as held by Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage “m.o.n.o" (monastics of no other).

Contemplation  is the promise of simplicity. It is a gift of poverty inviting open waiting, receptive trust, attention, and watchful presence. It is a simple Being-With. 
It is attentive presence.

Conversation  is the promise of integrity. It is a chaste and complete intention to listen and speak, lovingly and respectfully, with each and all made present to us. It is a wholeness of listening and speaking. 
It is root silence.

Correspondence  is the promise of faithful engagement.  It is responsible attention and intention offered obediently to the Source of all Being, to the Human Family, to Nature. It is a faithful engagement with all sentient beings, with this present world, with existence with all its needs & joys, sorrows & hope.
It is transparent service.

…………………………………………………………………

MeetingbrookDogen & FrancisHermitage invites & welcomes individuals interested in the practice of these 3 promises in their life. Whether the interest is in conversing, praying, deepening, learning, or even holding these 3 promises, we invite you to enter the inquiry and stillness. May the loving light and the compassionate peace of the Christ and the Bodhisattva accompany and support the efforts of each one.

………………………………………………………………..

Quotes: 
1.  We are going to have to create a new language of prayer.  (Thomas Merton, Calcutta 1968)

2.   When you go apart to be alone for prayer…see that nothing remains in your consciousness mind save a naked intent stretching out toward God. Leave it stripped of every particular idea about God (what he is like in himself or in his works) and keep only the awareness that he is as he is. Let him be thus, I pray you, and force him not to be otherwise.   (Anonymous)

3.   I long for a great lake of ale. / I long for the men of heaven in my house. / I long for cheerfulness in their drinking. / And I long for Jesus to be there among them. (Brigid, Celtic saint)

4.   It is not by closing your eyes that you see your own nature. On the contrary, you must open your eyes wide and wake up to the real situation in the world to see completely your whole Dharma Treasure, your whole Dharma Body. The bombs, the hunger, the pursuit of wealth and power - these are not separate from your nature….You will suffer, but your pain will not come from your own worries and fears. You will suffer because of your kinship with all beings, because you have the compassion of an awakened one, a Bodhisattva. (Thich Nhat Hanh)    

5.   He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion.  (Sokei-an)

 ...   ...   ...   ...   ...

Considerations for a life

a lay monastic meditation

• Be With God Alone. What we know of God is revealed by God’s creation, all of creation. Therefore, attend to creation.

• Be wholeheartedly listening. God is nameless. Listen in silence for the sound and presence of God.
Every voice, every sound, every face is our contemplation & attention of God.

• Be still, and pray continuously, with each being and all creation. Receive grace and truth with simplicity and humility. Let the loving light & the compassionate attention of the Christ and the Bodhisattva surround & shine through you.

• Be gratefully with what is near. We suffer each other, and we love each other.
Here is God’s home. Be what is here. Become God’s presence.

• Be Alone With God. Solitude is how we engage What-Is-God.
When with God we are with everyone.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Quotes:

       . 1. Be still and know that I am God.  (Psalm 46:10)

         2. For the Great Spirit is everywhere; he hears whatever is in our minds and hearts, and it is not necessary to speak to Him in a loud voice.    (Black Elk)

         3. Have the courage to be alone - for once try to endure your own company for a while. Don’t speak, then, not even with yourself nor with the others with whom we dispute even when they are not there. Wait. Listen. Endure yourself! (Karl Rahner)

          4. Praying is not about asking; it is about listening. It is just opening your eyes to see what was there all along.   (Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche)

          5. It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation He answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer. We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us. “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me.” (Thomas Merton)

Learning to read

In prison last week we asked the question: What will the dharma come to look like in the 21st century?

We'd have to learn to read. Read fiction. Read fact. Read one another. Read the world. Read one self.

And as Francis of Assisi pointed out about preaching at all times, sometimes reading entails reading words.

By reading we mean allowing what is being written in our surround to be seen with our being as it is presented.

Not judged, not interpreted, not compared nor contrasted, not evaluated, not assessed, not made negative nor positive.

Not anything else nor other.

Only witnessed.

Faithfully witnessed, that is, seen in its own place, on its own terms, as it is being created by itself.

In our presence. composed, decomposed, recomposed, co-composed.

To learn to read is to comprehend the poetics of expression wherein each of us is writing the other, or, put differently, each of us is the other being illumined in creative composure in the movement of witnessing gaze.

The everyday ordinary revelation of truth will look like this.

And this will be the 21st century coming of the dharma/gospel between us -- no barrier, no boundary, no fooling!

Now, let’s open to the first page and begin reading one another authentically.

Eagle Lake

Snow begins.

Prayer continues,

Life, only and alone.

Opens here.

In New York the expression is,"Hey, I'm only askin'!" And, "I'm just sayin'!"

Is the Palestinian Jewish woman Miriam really the hollow barrierless conduit for the messiah to find form in word-laden humanity?

Is the Shakya regal Indian Siddhartha really the initial spark lighting up human consciousness to finally see through everything?

All my life, until today, I have been content to ask questions. All the while knowing that the real questions, those that concern the Creator and His creation, have no answers. I'd even go farther and say there is a level at which only the questions are eternal; the answers never are.
And so, the patient that I am, more charitable, repeats, "Since God is, He is to be found in the questions as well as in the answers."
(--p.69, in Open Heart, by Elie Wiesel)

What do we really know about God?

Is anyone who thinks they're enlightened really not?

Are you and I really not about God?

Time, Stone, Sound, Scent, Enlightenment, Openness

Be, yourself, that which is, open!

"allowing access, passage, or a view through an empty space; not closed or blocked up:”