a waste of time

“Sometimes people have the idea that
practice means going to Dharma centers
or sitting in meditation or performing
rituals and this sort of thing. They think
that all this is practice while the rest of
the day is a waste of time. People think
there is this big split,, and they often
despair, feeling that their families and
their children are an obstacle that takes
them away from the spiritual life. But the
fact is … our family, our children, our
partners, our parents – they are our
practice and the ones who need our
loving – kindness, our compassion, our
patience, our joyous effort.”

https://zenflash.wordpress.com/2018/05/22/the-most-real-and-most-difficult-practice/

~ Tenzin Palmo, pp. 17-18, in, Into the heart of Life, 

 Buddhist Teachings on Wisdom and Compassion

Thich Nhat Hanh Quote Collective

unknowing possibility

Mail is placed in red box roadside.

Chainsaw down the road works on next winter's wood.

Cars climb Barnestown for Hope and Appleton.

I take day off.

I'm happy in this room.

Jesus and Jo-Ann icons overhead.

Water bottle on side table.

If there is God I wouldn't know.

And since I don't know -- there must be God.

But I still don't know what God is or how it matters we believe in God.

I will, no doubt, be surprised when it becomes clear what God is.

Appreciating those in monasteries and convents, ashrams and zen huts, temples and mosques -- who follow the unknown of their heart to the boundary of dark emptiness.

Until then, I continue to pray.

Not to.

But with.

Unknowing.

Possibility.

words belong to us

Justice, we might conclude, means someone remains responsible and accountable for actions taken or not taken with regard to laws, legal or moral, in the course of their engagement with others in our society.

Some say that justice has been compromised by those tasked with making laws, administrating laws, or ruling on the application and relevance of laws. These compromises have been felt in both the secular, civic, and religious sectors and the compromisers are those we thought were guardians and protectors.

Some go further and say there is no justice any longer.                    

Where do we look to for restoration?

The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it. It’s not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place. Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity and challenge. The offering of that gift—your true self—is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs. —Bill Plotkin [1] 

[1] Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (New World Library: 2003), 13.             (--in, Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation)

 The words, "No Justice, No Peace" -- have become part of our soul's curriculum.

To find real belonging there is a need to have those words belong to us.

to become real

 Woman says of her medical situation, "It's time for prayer."

We pray because the disproportion of human misery and human compassion is so enormous. We pray because our grasp of the depth of suffering is comparable to the scope of perception of a butterfly flying over the Grand Canyon. We pray because of the experience of the dreadful incompatibility of how we live and what we sense. 

Dark is the world to me, for all its cities and stars. If not for my faith that God in His silence still listens to a cry, who could stand such agony? 

Prayer will not come about by default. It requires education, training, reflection, contemplation. It is not enough to join others; it is necessary to build a sanctuary within, brick by brick, instants of meditation, moments of devotion. This is particularly true in an age when overwhelming forces seem to conspire at destroying our ability to pray.

(--from, On Prayer, by Abraham J. Heschel)
 http://www.notredamedesion.org/en/dialogue_docs.php?a=3b&id=417

We pray not so much to make things better.

We pray to become real. 

the real must be found again

Reality is responsive relationality infused with caring compassion.

We seem to have forgotten what reality is.

That’s why I ask what reality is.

Some things are worth remembering.

the dead and deadened this memorial day

Yes, the dead and deadened:

This Memorial Day we remember and pray for

All dead and deadened by war.

sistence, ek-sistence, in-sistence

Trinity.

Here, there, and everywhere.

Father, son, spirit.

ten minus nine finds one

Start here

with beginner’s mind

there are rocks and trees and small animals


As it is

there is only

one commandment — don’t steal, share

breathing’s silent prayer

Han sounds. It asks: Will you practice now?

Here, I wonder: Is that all there is?

A response: This, this is what that longs to be.

Morning birdsong.

Breathing's silent prayer: I am here we are this you are now — practicing dawn — as it is as is presenting itself.

waving to Karl

Yes.

One year later Saskia and Rokie return to front desk of prison in a few hours.

A cheerful dream about Karl followed by children as he leaves town walking down street up across bridge. Man at bar wants to buy my shirt. A b&b where Beatles stayed and wrote some song. Young Hispanic child in tank top limping being helped by younger Black child make way down corridor.

Yesterday at Quarry Hill met first hospice patient not immediately breathing last breaths. Meet former student arriving there for work. She still has her written work these dozen or more years later.

The gift I’ve been given is to still be able to see, hear, speak, walk, and think. None of these done that well.

Cat stretches on desk. Breeze, cool and fresh, blows through open windows.

Morning in Maine! 

on patch of island between two bridges where brook tumbles on either side, two people part ways

Trusting Continuance

1. Things have a beginning, a middle, and a continuance.

2.  We remember beginnings. We experience middles — (some delights, some difficulties).

3.  We don’t know what continuance will look like.

4.  We just step, and step; we flow, and flow.

5.  How do we continue when we don’t know, can’t know, where it goes?

6.  Look! (At branches of brook flowing by, going their way.)

7.  Our task — to let it go! To trust continuance, to

8.  Trust the mountain, the bridges, the fallen tree, and

9.  Trust ourselves as we go on with presence: boundaries of edges provided by earth’s natural sluice.     

          This —

10. Helping us go on,     trusting,    continuance. 
                                                                          
                                                                                                     (wfh/24may18, Parting Ways Ceremony,)

We stood with them as they moved toward silence.

don’t waste a moment

Morning twilight, woodpecker awakens at tree hits wooden Han* calling practitioners of zen to their practice.

Songbirds grumble their way into dawn zendo finding branch zabuton sprig green zafu measured anicca breath silently reciting: “The awakened way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.”

This Thursday morning.

No, thing, special — woodpecker stalwart in its invitation.

Surely our neighbors are meditating on impermanence.

*Han: A wooden block hit with a mallet to notify sitters that zazen is about to begin. On the back of the han appear the following words of the Buddha:

Great is the matter of birth and death
Life flows quickly by
Time waits for no one
Wake up! Wake up!
Don’t waste a moment!

https://www.torontozen.org/glossary.html

ex nihilo

I prayed today

I said: I don’t know

how to pray —

that was enough

to awaken god

and set the world

right. God loves

fools and unknowing

how words matter

I

am not

a poet

flip the coin

The president of the United States might be on his way out.

Or maybe it is merely the dissolution of the American experiment.

It was a nice try.

And it's a complicated political world.

But we no longer want flimflam or echolalia.

There will be no tears.

money comes from: thin air.

Just when you think that we have money problems in the US, you have another
think coming.

Which changes everything.

In one of her most important academic papers, published in 2000, Kelton  

maintains that government doesn’t actually finance its activity by levying  

taxes or issuing bonds.  

Instead, it creates money by spending it into existence. If a government  

wants to build a road, it calls some contractors and puts money in their bank  

accounts to pay for it.  

Where does this money come from? The same place all money comes from:  

thin air. 

(--from, Stephanie Kelton Has The Biggest Idea In Washington, Once an outsider, her radical economic thinking 

won over Wall Street. Now she’s changing the Democratic Party. By Zach Carter, 05/20/2018 07:23 am ET, 

Huffington Post) 

We knew it all along, didn't we? All the economic, tax, and banking stress
played on ordinary working stiffs is and has been a ruse.

I'll have to sit and have a think on this.

psalms -- read them with your whole self, praying

Yes.

Attraction and revulsion surround and interpenetrate each other like a sumie Ensō rolling at bottom of page with Four Vows of the Bodhisattva exploding where beginning and ending smash into one another as if surprised to learn they'd arrived where they departed and departed from where there was no point unarriving.

Who would use terms like wholeness or enlightenment when the startling point is a rereading of the maxim 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained.' No longer the 'Go do it!' interpretation but rather a sobering realization that nothing begins nothing ends.

We cannot understand this. It evades reason and hides in riddles. Like sitting with a dying woman as turkey walks back and forth outside patio door along split rail fence as dimming daylight hurries ground feeding songbirds sorting through broken open shells to wing back to night nest.

Psalms, as my dimness descends, attract and repulse.

Richard Rohr arrives this Sunday morning with his meditation:

The Psalms
Sunday, May 20, 2018

So much of our lives is dictated by our preferences, what we like and don’t like. We all naturally gravitate toward what we find attractive, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But we need to be aware that there are things deeper than our preferences. If we do not recognize that, we will follow them addictively and never uncover our soul’s deeper desires. Often the very things that don’t appeal to us have the most to teach us spiritually.

If you’re like me, you’d much rather spend time in the classical, medieval, or renaissance galleries than in modern exhibits. We tend to be attracted to whatever version of art makes us feel comfortable or reflects our worldview. We play this game of preference even in what we we’ve deemed the “sacred art” of the psalms. We prefer the calm bucolic scene of Psalm 23, but cringe when the psalmist mirrors back to us the messiness, violence, and confusion of being human. St. John Cassian (c. 360–c. 435) taught that the psalms carry in them “all the feelings of which human nature is capable.” [1]

Poet Kathleen Norris writes of her experience singing the psalms three times a day as a guest in a Benedictine monastery:

The psalms demand engagement, they ask you to read them with your whole self, praying, as St. Benedict says, “in such a way that our minds are in harmony with our voices.” [2] . . . You come to the Bible’s great “book of praises” through all the moods and conditions of life, and while you may feel like hell, you sing anyway. To your surprise, you find that the psalms do not deny your true feelings but allow you to reflect on them. . . .

But to the modern reader the psalms can seem impenetrable: how in the world can we read, let alone pray, these angry and often violent poems from an ancient warrior culture? At a glance they seem overwhelmingly patriarchal, ill-tempered, moralistic, vengeful, and often seem to reflect precisely what is wrong with our world. And that’s the point, or part of it. As one reads the psalms every day, it becomes clear that the world they depict is not really so different from our own; the fourth-century monk Athanasius wrote that the psalms “become like a mirror to the person singing them.” [3] . . . The psalms remind us that the way we judge each other, with harsh words and acts of vengeance, constitutes injustice, and they remind us that it is the powerless in society who are overwhelmed when injustice becomes institutionalized. . . .

In expressing all the complexities and contradictions of human experience, the psalms act as good psychologists. They defeat our tendency to try to be holy without being human first. [4]

The Psalms—like all great art—lead us to a truer image of ourselves, reality, and God.
http://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/0670169C6ECABD3C2540EF23F30FEDED/D7E1331FA0AEA466942A2DF08F503B7C

two of our compañeros, two statements, both worth a hearing

One brother tells it stark: Christopher Hitchens was once asked where he gets his free will from. He answers "From the acceptance of my solitude, sole responsibility. I cannot refer my problems up to a dictator."
(42:10 into clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuX028G9oBo&t=1000s)

As a counterbalance, here's a brother who knows how to preach:

“Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. delivered an impassioned sermon at the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgluP3BkVaA

You've got to love the freedom and ability to listen to, hear, and cogitate what our family is saying.

time's right

A friend will marry in Belize in June.

How kind of him to go where I will not.

My gift to them was Hitchens tonight.

Inchoate vs innate, daimonium throughout.

me, an I? (ng!)

A

Cross

Word

omg, is that the right word

No.

One

Can 

Stop

These people

From their 

Appointed tasks

And so

We

Wait to

See

How it

Will end

Because

It will end

Hopefully

The bloodshed 

will

Be

Minimal

And you, 

yes

You

Survive

In tack.

non sum qualis eram (latin)

 Horace, translated as, "I am not as I was."

The title of Dowson’s poem is taken from the Roman poet Horace, and specifically from Book 4 of his Odes. It means ‘I am not as I was in the reign of good Cynara’. (Cynara, by the way, means ‘artichoke’ in Greek.) That phrase, ‘I am not as I was’, points up the poem’s speaker as somebody who is past his prime, whose best days are behind him. As we will discover, the speaker of the poem is lovesick: ruined by the hopeless love for a woman. 

(--from, A Short Analysis of Ernest Dowson’s ‘Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae’, in interesting literature)

I heard the Latin phrase while listening to Christopher Hitchens give a talk, his last public appearance.

On October 8 2011 Christopher Hitchens received the Richard Dawkins Award at the Texas Freethought Convention on behalf of Atheist Alliance of America, presented by Richard Dawkins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFqIiddsoKM 

He died 15Dec2011. He was intelligent, and colorful.

Another Latin epigram has interested me. At times, to the consternation of some:

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Quotidie morior from the Mysterium Cosmographicum, 1621 edition.
Epigram attributed to Ptolemy

The commonplace of dying I admit 

but when I ponder Heaven's form close-knit, 

My feet don't touch the ground. 

Instead, with ZeusI taste ambrosia, sip celestial juice. 

               translation©2002 Leonard Cottrell

*Epigramma Ptolemaeo adscriptum 

Quotidie morior, fateorque—sed inter Olympi 

Dum tenet assiduas me mea cura vias, 

Non pedibus terram contingo, sed ante Tonantem 

Nectare, divina pascor et ambrosia.

...   ...   ...

This epigram has its use in a different metaphor, namely, I must decrease.

I tire of my and therefore the culture's insistence that puffery and bloviation, celebrity and notoriety are the crowning achievements of an individual. We seem to love the Royal family or presidential family pomp and drama. We marvel at the 25+million per year salaries of athletes and media personalities. We are attracted to the loudest and most outrageous person in the room.

I prefer decreasing and disappearing.

Death refers to life.

So death, i.e. pointing attention to life, especially life in its subtle origination in each moment and its passing away in the next, interests me.

I wish to assert nothing but life itself.

I am not as I was.

I am as I am.

Inshallah!

all there is

We walk around in narratives.

Stories we tell ourselves.

Interpretations that seem reliable and familiar.

We've heard them before.

What if we dropped our narratives?

Stopped telling ourselves stories?

Ceased interpretations?

No longer listened to the voices in our head?

I don't know.

What would happen if everything was merely itself?

Would we walk around as itself?

In itself?

difficulties and quicksand

Watching old debates between Christopher Hitchens and individuals aligned with religious faiths.

Listening to news shows telling latest breaking of ethical or legal precedents by the current president or his attendants.

Religion has its difficulties.

Politics is quicksand.

It is a task to try to maintain equilibrium in wobbly realms of religion and politics.

today is today

I wake up. It is Wednesday. Birdsong. Sunshine. Cool air comes in open windows. Foolish news from radio.

Silence now.

I look back on days where it mattered what priests or ministers rabbis or imans elders or pundits presidents or congresspeople ceo's or actors celebrities or athletes local cop or school principal loud knowitalls or experts of any stripe those who claim to know and those who don't know but have power to influence -- those days no longer exist.

Today is today. That's all we know.

No one knows anything other than whatever is emerging in the moment just now.

Birdsong.

Sunshine.

Your eyes.

Breath.

whatever vanishes

Yes

Whatever happens

Whatever you say

Whatever failures

Whatever vanishes

Remains

Yes

trying to de-fence the injustice they receive and the injustice they distribute.

Our smiling political first family are safe and sound in Jerusalem.

On the other hand:

"ZEITOUN, Gaza Strip —   Israeli forces killed 55 Palestinians on the boundary fence with Gaza on Monday...""More than 2,400 people were injured, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, including 1,200 from live ammunition. " (Article, Washington Post, 14may18)

...

HAIKU        

               (a proportional response) 

Ivanka, Jared 

are OK. They celebrate 

their new embassy

The inmates of Gaza Strip, and the inmates of the Trump administration, are trying to de-fence the injustice they receive and the injustice they distribute.  

'yes' is saying nothing other than presence

Someone at Friday Evening Conversation recently said they'd been watching a Netflix Documentary titled "Wild, Wild Country" about Rajneesh, Antelope Oregon, and Ma Anand Sheela, his secretary.

An interview with Sheela posted on Vulture:

Were you ever surprised by his requests? 

In the beginning, I was and I questioned him. His answer to me: the way you are on television, you will protect the community by deterrent. You will become the deterrent. 

He said also that outrageous performance will bring more interest from other television companies or television channels or news media. Media is very expensive, advertisement is very expensive, so every performance must bring new performances. Nowadays you see this on a daily basis with Trump. 

I was going to say that, yeah. 

He creates every day a new sensation and media gets exhausted what to do. Every day — five, ten breaking news. I think Trump is a better student of Bhagwan than me in that sense.

The Daily Beast compared you to Kellyanne Conway, but you didn’t seem to like that comparison. 

No I don’t like it. What I’m saying is a joke, and I’m not comparing Bhagwan and me to Trump under any circumstances. 

But the approach is similar. 

Because people only understand sensation. They don’t understand, other than negativity and sensation. People remain stuck in negativity. 

By appealing to that, aren’t you just propagating that quality? 

You can look at it that way. You can also look at it that the negative approach brings you more media, and you want to remain on the tubes for self-protection. 

I can tell you something. A small story. There was a man who goes to a master and says nobody pays attention to me, everybody ignores me. That hurts me very much. And master said: Next time somebody starts talking, you just say no. No to everything. It will create a counterreaction and then everybody will pay attention to you. The man tries this thing and suddenly he becomes a big important person from simple “no.” That is our mankind’s stupidity. When you say “yes” nobody listens to you.

(from, Wild Wild Country’s Ma Anand Sheela Did It All for Love, By Mallika Rao, Apr.23, 2018)

This recalls the line in "Man for All Seasons" where playwright Robert Bolt has Sir Thomas More, on trial for his life, say, "Qui tacit consentiri, the maxim of the law is, Qui tacit consentiri -- Silence means consent."

It suggests to me that all the news and hoopla about and from Rajneesh and Trump, the din and drumbeat, distractions and incessant caterwauling comprising our contemporary culture -- is our way of saying NO to what is true and beyond obvious, meaningful and nourishing to our lives.

Silence, the silence of mere moment within itself, is what YES sounds like -- affirming, forgiving, and allowing unadorned emergence of what is guileless humility to stand without pretense in the light of day and be unafraid of the womb of night.

May we be blessed with nobody listening to us!

Yes is saying nothing other than presence.

qui tacet consentiri

Morning.

source silentium 

creative verbum 

listening actus

Monday.

quies ab initio 

conversatio in creatio  

movere auscultare

Mnemosyne. 

there

is no

         time --

like the

        present

inspiration and careful investigation

After reading opinion columnists of an evening:

Columns like this are becoming ledger sheets for tonnage of garbage carried to landfills. 

I wonder if there is any leftover value in the writings of the fourth or fifth estate to have any real effect on this morass of an administration currently occupying Washington DC and assorted golf courses frequented by drivers of the garbage. 

Where are the intelligent, skilled, prescient, witty, and biting commentators who might inspire us with genuine options of thought that could spark a tipping point response to the sludge-entrepreneurs  pouring stink on the people, constitution, and democracy once held in high esteem?  

We need more than descriptive snark. We long for inspiration and careful investigation lending pragmatic hope to a dismal landscape. 

Maybe the pen is no longer mighty. If so, we are left with the sword of insouciant mockery swinging with disdainful recklessness by chief and vice executive and cabinet sycophants unstoppably bloodying everyone within the wide arc of its grim thrust and grimy reaping.

saturday afternoon haiku

              for jo-ann


hand
     
   offering

flower



breeze --



she is

       in  bamboo

hollow

what silence does with itself while waiting

Morning after Friday Evening Conversation.

A trinity for meditation following Saturday Morning Practice:

1. con-vivium    (to live with)
2. com-patior    (to allow together)
3. co-relatio      (to carry-back the story told to itself) 

...   ...   ...

(1) When we live with one another and all that is comprised of our being with whatever is with us, (2) and allow what longs for acceptance to belong to itself, (3) we practice retrieving the stories we tell ourselves during our everyday experiences and let them sit in silence until they realize that reality itself needs no story from us -- only whole sight and loving presence and compassionate listening.

...   ...   ...

They're only words, eh? 

"It's only words, and words are I have..." (Bee Gees)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTjnV7XrvQ4 

We are made of words.

Words are what silence does with itself while waiting for a deeper resting, and more stable rooting, in reality.

...   ...   ...

1. vivo, vivere, vixi, victus

verb

• conjugation: 3rd conjugation 

-- be alive, live
-- reside
-- survive

...   ...   ... 

2,  patior

patior, pati, passus

patior, pati, passusverb

• conjugation: 3rd conjugation

• voice: deponent 

-- allow
-- suffer
-- undergo, endure 

-- permit

                 (Latin Dictionary) 

...   ...   ... 

3.  (a) co-  

                    Origin and Etymology of co-

Middle English, from Latin, from com-; akin to Old English ge-, perfective and collective prefix, Old Irish com- with  

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/co

     (b) relatio, relationis  noun

declension: 3rd declension

gender: feminine   

        Definitions:           

-- act of carrying back
-- figure of speech
-- narration, relating of events, recital 

http://www.latin-dictionary.net/definition/33201/relatio-relationis 

what you get is to be changed.

Poetry helps.

Here's one:

Prayer
BY JORIE GRAHAM

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
                                                                      infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water’s downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
                                    motion that forces change—
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

Notes: 

PRAYER (“minnows”) was written as a turn-of-the-millennium poem for the New York Times Op-Ed page, and was originally dated 12.31.00 

Jorie Graham, “Prayer” from Never. Copyright © 2002 by Jorie Graham. Used with the permission of HarperCollins Publishers. 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47197/prayer-56d2277b19acb

These are good words:

This is the force of faith. Nobody gets  

what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing 

is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. 

I'll sit with them. 

each and all, as it is, within itself -- ascension

Second reading          

From a sermon by Saint Augustine, bishop
No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven 

Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. For just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies. 

Christ is now exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his body, have to bear. He showed this when he cried out from above: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? and when he said: I was hungry and you gave me food. 

Why do we on earth not strive to find rest with him in heaven even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to him? While in heaven he is also with us; and we while on earth are with him. He is here with us by his divinity, his power and his love. We cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love. 

He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. 

These words are explained by our oneness with Christ, for he is our head and we are his body. No one ascended into heaven except Christ because we also are Christ: he is the Son of Man by his union with us, and we by our union with him are the sons of God. So the Apostle says: Just as the human body, which has many members, is a unity, because all the different members make one body, so is it also with Christ. He too has many members, but one body. 

Out of compassion for us he descended from heaven, and although he ascended alone, we also ascend, because we are in him by grace. Thus, no one but Christ descended and no one but Christ ascended; not because there is no distinction between the head and the body, but because the body as a unity cannot be separated from the head.

https://divineoffice.org/easter-ascension-or/?date=20180510 

Or, the final sentence translated differently:

Thus, no one but Christ descended and no one but Christ ascended; [up and down, in and out are dualistic designations nullified by nondualism]; not [only] because there is no distinction between mind and the body, but because the body as a unity cannot be separated from the mind. 

This, perhaps, is the real meaning of the story of the Ascension. The evolution of consciousness, the maturing of morality, and the realization transcending fragmented, partisan, and venal competitive control over persons and resources -- inaugurating a new vision, a new way of being, and a new embodiment of reality that has, metaphorically, been called 'heaven.'

Unity holds each and all, as it is, within itself. 

ascension thursday

In the morning

birdsong and sunshine

Nothing to do

nothing to say --

Love,

see yourself now

You the song

you the light

The silence --

inside everything

does anybody know how to pray

The president believes in torture. The nominee for the CIA believes in torture.

The Christian Right believes in the president. They believe God tortures.

I don't believe in any of them.

What remains of the idea of a loving God is something I continue to believe in.

And in good men and woman throughout time -- they have my respect and attention.

It's what prayer used to be.

בס”ד

This has been added as a meaningful signature.

Besiyata Dishmaya (Aramaic: בסיעתא דשמיא) is an Aramaic phrase, meaning "with the help of Heaven". The acronym BS"D(Mostly written in Hebrew: בס"ד) has become a popular term among Orthodox Jews, reproduced at the top of every written document (beginnings of correspondences, letters, notes, etc.) as a reminder to them that all comes from God, including the following content, and to contextualize what is really important in the text, that without God's help, nothing can be done successfully. BS"D is not derived from any religious law of the Halakha, but it is considered an old accepted tradition. 

B'ezrat HaShem (Hebrew: בעזרת השם‎, "with God's help") is a similar phrase.^[2] The acronym is B"H (Hebrew: ב"ה‎),^[1] which is also often read as "Baruch HaShem".
The book "Toldot Yitzhak" (‘The Offspring of Isaac’), by Yitzhak Karo, Yosef Karo's uncle, offers the meaning of this custom of writing ב"ה (B"H), at the top of every letter, with accordance to the biblical verse: "In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct thy paths" (Book of Proverbs 3:6)."  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besiyata_Dishmaya

Aspiration, prayer stepping forward.

Sending it unknowing to unknown recipients in order to affirm an unknowable source.

sir, no sir

Some think the corruption, lies, and deceit of this president make the American people corrupt, liars, and deceitful.

Either that, or America has decided to remake itself in an image it has been keeping in the closet.

Have we always been corrupt, mendacious, and without honor all along?

And is this president merely opening the closet door, taking off the disguise, and showing us ourselves at long last without camouflage?

Some ask -- is he merely the most corrupt, lying, and treacherous person to hold the office of president of the United States?

There is someone unwilling to salute.

This world

          by Ryokan

English version by John Stevens
Original Language Japanese

This world
A fading
Mountain echo
Void and
Unreal

Within
A light snow
Three Thousand Realms
Within those realms
Light snow falls

As the snow
Engulfs my hut
At dusk
My heart, too
Is completely consumed

-- from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan, Translated by John Stevens

turns

Peanut butter on old saltines

water with remnant grapefruit juice

slice of pie, coconut ice cream sandwich --

between sounds, midnight silence

schweigen

Des zweiten Buches erster Teil

                                                      (The Second Book First Part)

      Initiale

Gib deine Schönheit immer hin 

ohne Rechnen und Reden.

Du schweigst. Sie sagt für dich: Ich bin. 

Und kommt in tausendfachem Sinn, 

kommt endlich über jeden.

                                          {-- Rainer Maria Rilke  (1875-1926)

       Aus: Das Buch der Bilder / Des zweiten Buches erster Teil (1906)}

initial
Give your beauty always
without arithmetic and speech.
You are silent. She says for you: I am.
And comes in a thousand ways,
finally comes over everyone.

[or]

Beginning.                                         Simply give your beauty              without calculating or talking.                       You are silent. She says for you: I am. And comes in meaning thousandfold, at last comes over everyone. 

neither optimistic nor joyful

Sunday morning opinion columns are rife with Mr.Trump, ubiquitous and ridiculous. I respond to one of them:

I no longer worry that Mr.Trump is the problem. He, like all unpleasant, undesirable, and self-obsessed irritants, will always be a type that is ever with us.

But we are the problem. We. It is our response that is troublesome. We are not so much addicted as we are afflicted.

The pain and suffering coming at us and the world is a given. Our inauthentic response is both a disappointing and sobering diagnosis of what's to come.

The way we giggle and squirm, jump on the bus and careen down the twisted, dangerous, mountain road of blinding voyeurism, is a terrifying commentary on our intellectual unwillingness to think clearly in the face of vapid threat.

We miscalculated Osama bin Laden. We overlook the assault rifle infestation because we want to be able to shoot whomever we wish whenever we wish. We ignore the truth -- not because it will set us free, but because it will reveal the more disturbing reality that we love our chains and our torturers.

Mr.Trump is our blind spot. He is the perfect storm of latent ideological terror, tormented gunman in crowds of innocent people, and demented kidnapping of human slaves for underground pleasure and pornographic consumption.

This failure to understand what is happening in front of us is sad and tragic.

Contrary to Sir Kenneth Clark's partially hopeful ending words in the 1969 BBC "Civilization" series -- we might not be able to be optimistic nor joyful at the prospect before us.

We are sleepwalking toward a sheer drop.