the circumstance, poetics, and semiotics of living/dying

At hospice gathering yesterday we speak about what might be called the semiotics of living/dying.

       *semiotic

/ˌsɛmɪˈɒtɪk; ˌsiːmɪ-/ adjective1. relating to signs and symbols, esp spoken or written signs2. relating to semiotics 3.of, relating to, or resembling the symptoms of disease; symptomatic             Word Origin C17: from Greek sēmeiōtikos taking note of signs, from sēmeion a sign Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Cite This Source 

Word Origin and History for semiotic adj.1620s, “of symptoms, relating to signs of diseases,”from Greek semeiotikos "significant," also "observant of signs," adjective form of semeiosis "indication,"from semeioun "to signal, to interpret a sign," from semeion "a sign, mark, token," from sema "sign" (see semantic). Its use in psychology dates to 1923. Related: Semiotical (1580s). Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source

Our culture is reluctant to observe the signs of dying and death. 

In hospice we learn from the poet Hölderlin and philosopher Heidegger:

In "What Calls for Thinking" Heidegger describes our concealing linguistic familiarity as "common speech" and implicitly proposes that poetic language steps toward resolving that problem by using uncommon speech. According to him, “We meet [the common speech] on all sides, and since it is common to all, we now accept it as the only standard.”21 When this common speech becomes “current speech” by invading the consciousness and the communication of the species we begin to conceal, to seal off options. That is part of the cost of quick, efficient communication: we no longer have to think very deeply about the words themselves. We rarely have to think deeply at all because the prosaic nature of our language does not call for it. Continuing the previous thought, Heidegger says this split from true thinking comes, “as soon as we regard the common as the only legitimate standard, and become generally incapable of fathoming the commonness of the common.”22 

Holderlin interested Heidegger particularly because his poetry uses uncommon speech to depart; “to inhabit the formerly habitual proper speaking of language.”23 Along the lines of Heidegger’s previous claim that the pre-Socratics used aletheia more as uncovering than truth, Heidegger thinks that humans used to speak much more carefully and properly in their communication. Referring back to Plato’s fateful truth-as-supremacy turn, Rorty says that Heidegger wants to “direct our attention to the difference between inquiry and poetry, between struggling for power and accepting contingency.”24 Heidegger sees the Greeks as doing philosophy as much in the poetry of the language they used as in anything else. They had no previous tradition on which to draw, no “accepted” terminology about which to debate, so their language had to be particularly meaningful, particularly poetic. 

In light of this, Holderlin’s lines from a draft of “Mnemosyne” are particularly meaningful:

We are a sign that is not read, 

We feel no pain, we almost have  

Lost our tongue in foreign lands.

Common language does not require us to read signs very deeply, whether those signs be beings in the world or other humans. Heidegger sees us as losing “our tongue in foreign lands.” We still communicate, certainly, but our tongue and heritage are not often enough the aletheia of the pre- Socratics, the tongue that spoke in the world instead of breezing over it. (—from,  Poetic Uncovering in Heidegger, by Ben Rogers)

We are the signs that are not read.

We do not feel the pain of others in our surround who undergo the oblique approach of death.

We have almost lost our ability to gracefully speak with one another about the circumstance, poetics, and semiotics of uncovering and presencing one another’s real meaning.

* yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, y si no la salvo a ella  no me salvo yo.  (I am I and my circumstance, and if I do not save  it, I do not save myself.)                   —Jose Ortega y Gasset We are still infants in our abilities to see and speak what is here. We continue to refuse wisdom because we do not like where it comes from. Is reference to that which is yet beyond us while residing within us something we still cannot recognize? Domine, labia mea aperies.- Et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.  (Lord, open my lips.— And my mouth will proclaim your praise.) (--Invitatory) It is time to begin to read the sign we are and the sign that surrounds us as well as the sign that appears before us in the poetics and circumstance of one another. From Rachel Naomi Remen: The Buddhists talk about samsara, the world of illusion. It is the place that most of us live. Mistaking illusion for reality is said to be the root cause of our suffering. Yet in some immensely elegant way suffering itself can release us from illusion. Often in times of crisis when we reach for what we have considered our strength we stumble on our wholeness and our real power. How we were before we fixed ourselves to win approval. What has been fixed is always less strong than what is whole. In a time of real need we may remember and free ourselves.  ......... Actually, we are all more than we know.  Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten. Integrity rarely means that we need to add something to ourselves : it is more an undoing than a doing, a freeing ourselves from beliefs we have about  who we are and ways we have about who we are and ways we have been persuaded to “fix” ourselves  to know who we genuinely are. Even after many years of seeing, thinking , and living one way, we are able to reach past all that to claim our integrity and live in a way we may never have expected to live.  (--in, kitchen table wisdom, pg 105ff) (recommended here by a chemo patient between drips)  Let us speak with one another!  The entire world awaits being revealed in the conversation.

it won’t be; long now

Waning moon up over east this 10/10

Time for sleep

Let the world go away

two trillion galaxies — to become feeling and aware

At Sunday Evening Practice we read from:

What is Aboriginal spirituality? (Creative Spirits):

Everything is connected 

For the Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal people from north-west South Australia the law of Kanyini implies that everybody is responsible for each other. [10] It is the principle of connectedness that underpins Aboriginal life. [11]. And because of connection, Kanyini teaches to look away from oneself and towards community: “We practise Kanyini by learning to restrict the ‘mine-ness’, and to develop a strong sense of ‘ours-ness’,” explains Aboriginal Elder Uncle Bob Randall [21]. 

Uncle Bob continues: “We do not separate the material world of objects we see around us with our ordinary eyes, and the sacred world of creative energy that we can learn to see with our inner eye. …. We work through ‘feeling’, what white people call intuitive awareness.” [12]. “White people,” he says, “separate things out, even the relationship between their minds and their bodies, but especially between themselves and other people and nature… [and] spirit.” [13] 

Aboriginal spirituality sees the interconnectedness of the elements of the earth and the universe, animate and inanimate, whereby people, the plants and animals, landforms and celestial bodies are interrelated. These relations and the knowledge of how they are interconnected are expressed in sacred stories. These creation stories describe how the activities of powerful creator ancestors shaped and developed the world as people know and experience it. [14] 

Those sacred Aboriginal stories (also known as Dreamtime, Dreaming stories, songlines, or Aboriginal oral literature) find expression in performances within each of the language groups across Australia [15]. 

What Mudrooroo and Uncle Bob Randall are referring to when they use the terms ‘feelings’, ‘inner eye’ and ‘intuitive awareness’ are ‘things’ that cannot be defined by words and thoughts because they are beyond the mind. Only by negation – what they are not – can we start comprehending what they might be. 

https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/spirituality/what-is-aboriginal-spirituality

It was Canadian Thanksgiving weekend and while we were not in Cape Breton this year, we hear the roots of all cultures in music, story, and felt awareness.

How lucky to hear the results of Hubble’s discoveries:

An international team of astronomers, led by Christopher Conselice, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Nottingham, have found that the universe contains at least 2 trillion galaxies, ten times more than previously thought. The team's work, which began with seed-corn funding from the Royal Astronomical Society, appears in the Astrophysical Journal today. 

Astronomers have long sought to determine how many galaxies there are in the observable universe, the part of the cosmos where light from distant objects has had time to reach us. Over the last 20 years scientists have used images from the Hubble Space Telescope to estimate that the universe we can see contains around 100 - 200 billion galaxies. Current astronomical technology allows us to study just 10% of these galaxies, and the remaining 90% will be only seen once bigger and better telescopes are developed.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-universe-trillion-galaxies.html#jCp

That’s a lot of stories, songs, and things with which to become feeling and aware!

from dépêcher "to dispatch,"

We’re alone.

God is the Alone.

We are alone with the Alone.

Forgive me — I don’t understand what I am nor where I am.

This odd and crowded world!

explore and learn, deepen and care

In prison yesterday conversation about mirror neurons. Here, specifically, regarding dementia. http://drdavidhamilton.com/how-mirror-neurons-can-help-dementia-patients/

Reminded of Flip Wilson character Geraldine's, "what you see is what you get!"

Or, more currently: what you put your attention on you become.

We've got to be careful too closely observing the current president's mentality and articulation.

On the other hand, not to watch and witness might take us, without awareness, to the precipice of ugly desperation.

The men in prison with their eagerness to explore and learn, deepen and care, give me an alternative to the current administration's political circus.

Yesterday's men are hospice volunteers, meditation practitioners, college students, investigative conversation participants. Their crime is not their identity. Their current actions and intentions now shape them.

I enjoy their company.

Perhaps their mirroring neuronic diffusion will positively affect the simpering moronic confusion of our faux-DC-leadership.

(I'd best get back on my meditation cushion.)

paradise

It seems a hermit’s cell is the only safe place to be.

Or the solitude of one’s bodily environment.

The aloneness of heart and mind.

The American presidency has been frighteningly compromised.

Thank you, Bruno, for your inspiration.

until the sea can free them

The “Unacknowledged” documentary is thought-provoking.

The Disclosure Project and Dr. Steven Greer invoke questions about how private interests and wealth so often subvert common good and public innovation.

Time has come.

Things will change.

Stupid power and flaccid ignorance will no longer hold sway.

Can I hear an Amen?

after evening prayer on Hosmer dock

Yesterday, feast of Francisco de Assis, I asked friend about God.

She responded:

“When we serve all beings with care, devotion, & patience — there is God.”

Francis of Assisi, 4 October

The name Francis and the man from Assisi run through our family.

Four years of St. Francis high school in Brooklyn ny. Five years of Franciscan college novitiate seminary. A lifetime of eremetic retiro-isolamento-in-the-world attempts to mature in the calling of Francis.

Our Border Collie, Rokpa, was born on the feast day of Francis ten years ago.

The chapel/zendo was dedicated to the honor of Janet our elder and the generosity of Jim her son and Paul the builder on October 4, 2003.

The hermitage itself is named after Francis of Assisi and Dogen Eihei Zenji, those two 12th/13th century spiritual practical visionaries. We practice in their glow and example.

So, today, we step into the day with earth our guide through Francis our father and brother to serve as best we can all our brothers and sisters who also step out onto the earth to enter as instruments of peace and presences of Presence wherever eyes and feet take all of us.

Francis might well have been the guiding light of the prayer named in his honor:

Peace Prayer of Saint Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen

Oración por la paz (San Francisco de Asís)

La Oración por la paz es una oración tradicional que suele relacionarse con san Francisco de Asís. San Juan Pablo II la rezó frente a los representantes de las Iglesias cristianas y las religiones del mundo cuando se reunió con ellos para rezar por la paz en 1986.

Señor, haz de mi un instrumento de tu paz.

Que allá donde hay odio, yo ponga el amor.

Que allá donde hay ofensa, yo ponga el perdón.

Que allá donde hay discordia, yo ponga la unión.

Que allá donde hay error, yo ponga la verdad.

Que allá donde hay duda, yo ponga la Fe.

Que allá donde desesperación, yo ponga la esperanza.

Que allá donde hay tinieblas, yo ponga la luz.

Que allá donde hay tristeza, yo ponga la alegría.

Oh Señor,

     que yo no busque tanto ser consolado, cuanto consolar,

ser comprendido, cuanto comprender,

ser amado, cuanto amar.

Porque es dándose como se recibe,

es olvidándose de sí mismo como uno se encuentra a sí mismo,

es perdonando, como se es perdonado,

es muriendo como se resucita a la vida eterna.

Amén.

And so: 

Grazie, Francesco/Giovanni di Pietro di Bernadone; Siamo nel tuo debito.

read we do

From cultural philosophy to ordinary philosophy, some words about Herbert Marcuse and Hugh Hefner:

But the way that the philosopher’s “joke” strikes us - simultaneously amusing and jarring - is precisely Marcuse’s point. Sexual desire is structured by social norms. Marcuse saw this as tending to objectify and commodify participants – in the case of Playboy, its readers and the women featured within it (the “bunnies”). In Marcuse’s view, this undermined the possibility of fully connecting our sexuality to our humanity.  

While Playboy has had certain cultural effects that, within a limited historical context, can be seen as positive, Marcuse saw Hefner’s philosophy as a narrow and simplistic version of “liberation”, equating “anti-puritanism” to social freedom. 

Heffner, via Playboy, did bring sexuality a little more into the open, in a context where that was sorely needed. And his contribution to various liberal causes, including civil rights, has rightly been praised in recent days. His simplistic sexual philosophy, however, is already something of a museum piece - historically significant in its way, but ultimately adolescent male fantasy. 

It was a different story for Marcuse. Former student, Angela Davis, recalls that for his work in support of radical gender equality, one of the early organisations in the women’s movement took the extraordinary step of declaring Marcuse an “honorary woman”.  

(—from, The philosopher who was too hot for playboy, by Christopher Pollard, in The Conversation)

Note: for a no-nonsense blistering ‘obituary’ on Mr. Hefner, see https://ordinaryphilosophy.com/2017/10/01/o-p-recommends-speaking-ill-of-hugh-hefner-by-ross-douthat/comment-page-1/1. 

 So much to read, so much philosophy. Perhaps, rather, how little we’ve thought, how scant is wisdom!

Still, read we do!

whe re do es th e ti me go on ce bro ken

the

re’s no

t much t

ime left

why no

t look a

t the harb

our sparkl

ing sunlit da

nce on wa

ter coo

l bree

ze blo

wing thro

ugh car wind

dow cof

fee al

most go

ne

do we know what is needed

What is needed is kindness --

who has the courage for this?

kindness -- ​​the quality of being generous, helpful, and caring about other people, or an act showing this quality       US /ˈkɑɪnd·nəs/ (--cambridge dictionary)  noun [ C/U ]

kindness (n.)c. 1300, "courtesy, noble deeds," from kind (adj.) + -ness. Meanings "kind deeds; kind feelings; quality or habit of being kind" are from late 14c. Old English kyndnes meant "nation," also "produce, an increase."(--online etymological dictionary )

after bullets and stark realization of cowardice

Don’t ask why

Cry

Then change

light and guard, rule and guide,

Angels

they say

better our

nature

october

comes cool

at night

weeds from last

season wilt

earth receives

leaves

hospice sitting

1.
in room

sound of tired motor

flywheel grab for turnover



2.
not knowing

which goodbye is goodbye

attending each one



3.
each leaned into

one in bed

whispering

Kol Nidre

Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement.

This from the Jewish Encyclopedia:

Form of Prayer.

Before sunset on the eve of the Day of Atonement, when the congregation has gathered in the synagogue, the Ark is opened and two rabbis, or two leading men in the community, take from it two Torah-scrolls. Then they take their places, one on each side of the ḥazzan, and the three recite in concert a formula beginning with the words  , which runs as follows:

"In the tribunal of heaven and the tribunal of earth, by the permission of God—blessed be He—and by the permission of this holy congregation, we hold it lawful to pray with the transgressors."

Thereupon the cantor chants the Aramaic prayer beginning with the words "Kol Nidre," with its marvelously plaintive and touching melody, and, gradually increasing in volume from pianissimo to fortissimo, repeats three times the following words:

"All vows [], obligations, oaths, and anathemas, whether called 'ḳonam,' 'ḳonas,' or by any other name, which we may vow, or swear, or pledge, or whereby we may be bound, from this Day of Atonement until the next (whose happy coming we await), we do repent. May they be deemed absolved, forgiven, annulled, and void, and made of no effect; they shall not bind us nor have power over us. The vows shall not be reckoned vows; the obligations shall not be obligatory; nor the oaths be oaths."

The leader and the congregation then say together:

(Num. xv. 26). 

"And it shall be forgiven all the congregation of the children of Israel, and the stranger that sojourneth among them, seeing all the people were in ignorance"

This also is repeated three times. The ḥazzan then closes with the benediction, : "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast preserved us and hast brought us to enjoy this season." In many congregations Num. xiv. 19-20 is recited before this benediction. After it the Torah-scrolls are replaced, and the customary evening service begins.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9443-kol-nidre/

when the temptation is to make heaven and divine the desired reality, remember

Human

Is what we are

All of it

michaelmas

Festival of strong will.

Defend us in battle!

Michael is a ... name that comes from מִיכָאֵל / מיכאל, derived from the question מי כאל mī kāʼēl, meaning "Who is like God?". (Wikipedia)

Good question.

Who is like God? 

Om Mani Padme Hum (see what-is here now within all)

Today I arrive at my translation:

see what-is here

now within all

Excerpt:

The six syllables purify the six realms of existence in suffering.

For example, the syllable Om purifies the neurotic attachment to bliss and pride, which afflict the beings in the realm of the gods.

---

	Purifies	Samsaric Realm
Om	bliss / pride	gods
Ma	jealousy / lust for entertainment	jealous gods
Ni	passion / desire	human
Pe	stupidity / prejudice	animal
Me	poverty /  possessiveness	hungry ghost
Hung	aggression / hatred	hell

---

"Behold! The jewel in the lotus!"

---

This phrase is often seen as a translation of the mantra. However, although some mantras are translatable, more or less, the Mani is not one of them; but while the phrase is incorrect as a translation, it does suggest an interesting way to think about the mantra, by considering the meanings of the individual words.

H.H. The Dalai Lama has provided just such an analysis, in a Web page The Meaning of Om Mani Padme Hum.

He concludes his discussion with this synopsis: "Thus the six syllables, Om Mani Padme Hum, mean that in dependence on the practice which is in indivisible union of method and wisdom, you can transform your impure body, speech and mind into the pure body, speech, and mind of a Buddha."

http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/meaning-of-om-mani-padme-hung.htm

translating

This
http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/prayer-wheel.htm
and this
http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/meaning-of-om-mani-padme-hung.htm

An excerpt:
The Mantra Om Mani Padme Hum

---

The Mani mantra is the most widely used of all Buddhist mantras, and open to anyone who feels inspired to practice it -- it does not require prior initiation by a lama (meditation master).

The six syllables of the mantra, as it is often pronounced by Tibetans -- Om Mani Padme Hum -- are here written in the Tibetan alphabet: 

Reading from left to right the syllables are:

Om (ohm)

Ma (mah)

Ni (nee)

Pad (pahd)

Me (may)

Hum (hum)

The vowel in the sylable Hu (is pronounced as in the English word 'book'. The final consonant in that syllable is often pronounced 'ng' as in 'song' -- Om Mani Padme Hung. There is one further complication: The syllable Pad is pronounced Pe (peh) by many Tibetans: Om Mani Peme Hung.
 

Here's the sound of the mantra, chanted by a Tibetan refugee:

Play Mantra Windows .wav

Play Mantra Real Audio download player

The mantra originated in India; as it moved from India into Tibet, the pronunciation changed because some of the sounds in the Indian Sanskrit language were hard for Tibetans to pronounce.
 

Sanskrit form	Om Mani Padma Hum mantra of Avalokiteshvara
Tibetan form	Om Mani Peme Hung mantra of Chenrezig

---

The True Sound of Truth

An old story speaks about a similar problem. A devoted meditator, after years concentrating on a particular mantra, had attained enough insight to begin teaching. The student's humility was far from perfect, but the teachers at the monastery were not worried. 

A few years of successful teaching left the meditator with no thoughts about learning from anyone; but upon hearing about a famous hermit living nearby, the opportunity was too exciting to be passed up. 

The hermit lived alone on an island at the middle of a lake, so the meditator hired a man with a boat to row across to the island. The meditator was very respectful of the old hermit. As they shared some tea made with herbs the meditator asked him about his spiritual practice. The old man said he had no spiritual practice, except for a mantra which he repeated all the time to himself. The meditator was pleased: the hermit was using the same mantra he used himself -- but when the hermit spoke the mantra aloud, the meditator was horrified! 

"What's wrong?" asked the hermit. 

"I don't know what to say. I'm afraid you've wasted your whole life! You are pronouncing the mantra incorrectly!" 

"Oh, Dear! That is terrible. How should I say it?" 

The meditator gave the correct pronunciation, and the old hermit was very grateful, asking to be left alone so he could get started right away. On the way back across the lake the meditator, now confirmed as an accomplished teacher, was pondering the sad fate of the hermit. 

"It's so fortunate that I came along. At least he will have a little time to practice correctly before he dies." Just then, the meditator noticed that the boatman was looking quite shocked, and turned to see the hermit standing respectfully on the water, next to the boat. 

"Excuse me, please. I hate to bother you, but I've forgotten the correct pronunciation again. Would you please repeat it for me?" 

"You obviously don't need it," stammered the meditator; but the old man persisted in his polite request until the meditator relented and told him again the way he thought the mantra should be pronounced. 

The old hermit was saying the mantra very carefully, slowly, over and over, as he walked across the surface of the water back to the island. 

it’s possible

everything’s failing

I think I’ll eat some worms

starting now

this from beth cioffoletti‘s blog, louie, louie

---

Poem: (from beth cioffoletti’s blog “louie, louie”)

When in the soul of the serene disciple Posted: 26 Sep 2017 12:35 PM PDT Photo by Thomas Merton When in the soul of the serene disciple With no more Fathers to imitate Poverty is a success, It is a small thing to say the roof is gone: He has not even a house. Stars, as well as friends, Are angry with the noble ruin. Saints depart in several directions. Be still: There is no longer any need of comment. It was a lucky wind That blew away his halo with his cares, A lucky sea that drowned his reputation. Here you will find Neither a proverb nor a memorandum. There are no ways, No methods to admire Where poverty is no achievement. His God lives in his emptiness like an affliction. What choice remains? Well, to be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom Of men without visions. ~ Thomas Merton

beyond spelling

Do not write

About love

It does not

Fit

In words

a disadvantage

If what is wanted is destruction of current political class, it is happening.

If the pentagon suspects funding change or defense antipathy, they will react.

If bankers and stock mavens see any reduction of protection, measures will be taken to close down.

I no longer think we might be in danger of catastrophe, I think it is a slow-moving inevitability.

We are a little stupid. That’s not a flaw.

Just a disadvantage.

response to new york times dialogic opinion writers

Good for reasonable disagreement. 

A worry I have is how to communicate the genuine worry and distress felt about Mr. Trump without hair-pulling screams or darkly-sinister allusion. 

I understand the impetus to humor and satiric mockery of the man and his flawed excesses, but danger and division, solipsistic off-the-cuff foreign policy pronouncements and downright crude errant modeling for children and other impressionable types — beg new writing by sharp-eyed visionaries articulating an antidote to current absurdity and a path to mature representative leadership.

Write on!

wherein we dwell as impeccable truth

At table Sunday Evening Practice a woman said she wanted “impeccable truth”.

Thomas Merton wrote about “refusal” in reference to the “sin” of early Genesis.

Peccare  (from pecco, transgress or sin) roots impeccable.

Impeccable truth, then, suggests an unrefusing presence, i.e. not refusing to acknowledge that we are and who we are in every situation or circumstance.

Are we not what is to be done in each moment in each circumstance?

Does that make sin the refusal to be who, what, where, and how we are in each present and presence moment and every circumstance/situation wherein we dwell as it arises and reveals itself?

A new invitation — to become and be impeccably true?

Soften to this revelation, like candlelight in late September meditation cabin, as we chant Prajna Paramita as seasonal light dims, sounding with and remembering fondly, all our brothers and sisters, in all times and all places, not refusing them their being with us.

Aniah

This is my perennial name:

Aniah

(And now I am here)

This is what, where, who, and how I am.

personal foul

While in Canada there’s no need to read about the fight the president of the USA has picked with black professional athletes.

So I don’t.

I walk long wharves. I imagine what Americans must think of their president. I enjoy chocolate creme pie and water with lemon.

I’ll leave the contretemps between millionaires to their good strategies.

And fall asleep with easy mind.

sip what I cannot

Weary, perhaps of trying to enunciate the aphasiac-incoherent.

But if I say, “I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name, “his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in, indeed, I cannot. (-Jeremiah 20:9 NIV)

Our bodies are the language we cannot decipher or articulate.

Oral wording fails.

Is the body of Christ the silent expression of presence in communion?

Interrelationality with no need for explanation?

A not-one/not two arising of nondual chiaroscuro after you Alphonse after you Gaston no you/no you?

Prophets and mystics are fishermen and beachcombers in our current age.

It is the tide that reveals and conceals. It speaks by approach and withdrawal, by rising and falling.

If we are to pray we might become novices of water.

As we are water itself.

As what-is-called-God is water itself baptizing bodies, oceans, rivers, lakes, brooks, ponds, rain puddles, faucet drip, and tears of recognition.

Morning dew.

Damp deck.

Sip.

Sip!

friends (חברים)

Shanah tova u’metuka: (a good year and sweet) —

this Rosh  Hashanah 

this new year,

חברים

in smooth stone

Afterglow of sunset from Hall’s Harbour deck table alone outside

Back in dark to Harbourville and apple pie tiredness from waterside walks all day

Nothing matters but earthly matters in smooth stone under craggy cliffs

Standing at wharf edge as Fundy Bay offers itself to the God we do not know

remoteness and solitude

Andere Gesichter, andere Stimmen! (Other faces, other voices).

That’s what we came up with after Sunday evening conversation reading the piece about a Dalai Lama and a Lama Hum. We are clowns attempting to cheer or veer others, wearing masks, disguising voice, pretending to not be who we are, thinking what we see or what we hear is not us.

A woman across the table offers, “Me in another moment.”

Tide comes in, tide goes out. Boats sit on bottom, boats rise to wharf.

Right speech, harmlessness, 

Restraint in speaking ill of others, 

Moderation in food,   

At peace in remoteness and solitude, 

Devotion to higher meditation. 

This is the teaching of the Buddhas. 

- Dhammapada

This higher meditation, surely, must pertain to the movement of fishing boats to tucked-in corner of Harbour after two weeks out fishing for mackerel for winter lobstering. As well as the ways we recognize ourselves in the cadence and visage of someone appearing in our surround.

We are, as God is, alone and one, once we hear, once we see.

the sound of what is being said

Earth is sill.

And silent.

Earth's stillness and silence is prayer.

We pray to the extent we listen to earth.

Still and silent we learn what act is, what action means.

Walking dirt road above fundy waters fingering beads kwan seum bosal (perceive world sound).

Mountain Ash and walking stick curving hilly stretch.

as time goes by

faces

voices

change --

(watch)

It is the

play of

appearance and

fade away

(makes)

life

itself

e-

motion-

ally

fascinating 

monday aft 81° easterly

In a different country

An hour left behind at border

Ferry crosses Bay of Fundy yawing

Fog surrounding temporal disappearance

Grey water grey sky grey horizon

sun eve practice

Now that
Everything has Become clear We see That we are No w here