Stick with what is known. What is known is what is taking place at any given moment.

The Hidden Singer
The gods are less for their love of praise.
Above and below them all is a spirit that needs nothing
but its own wholeness, its health and ours.
It has made all things by dividing itself.
It will be whole again.
To its joy we come together --
the seer and the seen, the eater and the eaten,
the lover and the loved.
In our joining it knows itself. It is with us then,
not as the gods whose names crest in unearthly fire,
but as a little bird hidden in the leaves
who sings quietly and waits, and sings.
(Poem by Wendell Berry)

The battle isn't between words or silence; nor is it between thinking or feeling. The crux of our discontent and disillusionment is getting caught in the snare of egoistic narrative -- the narrative of isolated, separated self. That's what was said at table during practice. When the fog horn sounds, it gives itself to any within hearing. It might be saying, "Here I am, stay away;" or, "Here I am, hear me on your way through."

Cesco, our dog, is deranged monk again during zazen. He is idiorhythmic practitioner biting at stuffed toys, barking sharply as if carrying stick to wake up drifting meditators.
Elsewhere it is written:
Two monks and/or nuns assist in zazen. The first is the jikijitsu, who is in charge of the meditation hall, and is thought of as the strong leader, like a father. The jikijitsu has a two-fold role. First, he or she keeps track of the time spent in the zendo. He or she rings the bells to signal the beginning and the end of each sitting. Secondly, the jikijitsu keeps order in the zendo. If, during zazen, a participant is making noise or moving, the jikijitsu will remind him or her to be still, either with words, or by use of the keisaku, or encourager, a wooden stick used to strike the shoulders, usually at the request of a participant made by bowing to the jikijitsu. The jikijitsu also leads the meditators in and out and leads walking meditation. (From Mount Baldy Ritual)

Cesco, our old Border Collie, serves us well in this role.

It snows. Fog horn sounds from harbor. Joanie will leave in the morning for new home south of New England.

Two Haiku
(for Joanie)
1.
Home away from home?
This is your passport: Hereby
Admit one… dear friend!
2.
No one can replace
Your inimitable face –
Go… return… with grace!

(We sign it "With all our love, the meetingbrook irregulars." She aways.)

What would we be without words? We try to be the words with which we say ourselves.

Even if a cherry tree bears no cherries, it holds snow on branches during winter drift.

What do we hold as we drift?

The very fact of one another!

Lloyd brought a book in 1912 donated to the Bangor Library on The Intellectual Life.

He said he likes coming to Poetry Tea & Literature on Saturdays.

What We Need Is Here
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
(Poem by Wendell Berry)

There was some talk about names after readings.

No name is more interesting than the names we call ourselves.

The one we call "God" has no name.

And no address other than nameless presence.

Go ahead -- call on God.

Call again.

A Warning To My Readers
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
(Wendell Berry)

See first. Speak later, reluctantly.

Fear is the monster blocking the threshold. Beyond it is what we cannot understand, what we cannot control.

The whole great canon of spiritual teachings spoken by Buddha are expedient means to point out the inherent enlightened nature of all people. Although the expedient means are many, in essence they teach of the Pure Land of mind and Amitabha of inherent nature. If mind is pure, then the buddha-land is pure. If reality-nature appears, then the buddha-body appears. This is precisely what the scriptural teachings mean.
- T'aego

The monster isn't real. Walk to it. Walk through it. Beyond it is the other side.

When you take them away, they will be nothing but a dream;
like the grass that sprouts in the morning:
in the morning it grows and flowers,
in the evening it withers and dries.
(from Psalm 90)

No need to fear the terrors of the night, nor the arrows that fly by day.

You cannot be concealed or contained.

Without fear. Beyond fear.

You are released.

Go on. Step.

Through.

When Paul saw he was not alone, everything he was -- just fell away.

To illuminate this mind is called being a buddha.
To speak of this mind is called the scriptural teachings.
- Anon

When he heard the voice asking him who he thought he was -- persecuting and torturing, he went blank with startling comprehension.

The most important thing of all to him, however, was that he knew himself to be loved by Christ.
(From a homily by Saint John Chrysostom, bishop)

There are no rotten men. Only rotten ideas followed by deluded minds.

Paul's war ended this day on that day on his way elsewhere..

Book a plane for George to Damascus.

Riding stationary cycle looking out dooryard window, reading seven threats to ethics, listening to Gregorian chant

When the master
Without a word raises his eyebrows
The posts and rafters
The cross beams and roof tree
Begin to smile
There is another place for conversing
Heart to heart
The full moon and the breeze
At the half-open window.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

No masters hereabouts. Only dog and cat, man and woman, snow and topfen kuchen after kohlrabi on rice. Evening becomes night, dog barks at door, let in, settles in as we too will do. It is January. Winter.

Lord, I do not puff myself up or stare about,
or walk among the great or seek wonders beyond me.
Truly calm and quiet I have made my spirit:
quiet as a weaned child in its mother's arms --
like an infant is my soul.
(from Psalm 130)

At shop, mother and daughter attend "Maybe Zen, Maybe Not" conversation. Joanie's daughter is up from New Jersey. They're packing up to return there. Joanie looks tired.

There were over 23 people for Sunday dinner over shop in harbour room. They had turkey.

Tide came in. Tide went out. As does Tuesday.

Driving snowy roads to Bangor, to Lincoln, cars off road in ditch in morning skid, in evening skid, roads greased with white.

Like a broken gong
Be still, be silent.
Know the stillness of freedom
Where there is no more striving.
- Dhammapada

Silenzio was the sign in video on Francis of Assisi. The tone of the twenty five minute paean little pious, but nice.

Tonight, readying sleep, every fact only a fact. Every sight just that, Every moment merely a prayer of passing presence.

Snow slows. Returning home, noodles, feta cheese, grape tomatoes.

Safety for all.

Notturno! Silenzio!

Grazie!

Presente!

Who'd have guessed neither church nor state would inspire the world in its need?

Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. (C.S. Lewis)

Hard ground in dooryard. Cold air through barn. Fragrance from soup at practice climbs last step on stairs.

They will see the face of the Lord, and his name will be marked on their foreheads. There will be no more night: they will not need sunlight or lamp-light, because the Lord God himself will shine upon them. (Apocalypse 22:4-5)

Night quiets hillside. What light there is resides inside.

Up on.

Each.

Face.

God.

Watched "Control Room," the film about Al-Jazeera, the Arabic news agency. It made me wonder about the ability of all ordinary people to listen through the propaganda (both the US and Iraq versions) and hear literal truth, see factual reality in the theater of war.

The sage looks at the unity which
Belongs to all things,
And does not perceive where
They have suffered loss.
- Chuang Tzu

It is frustrating not to be able to discern truth -- it is so cleverly hidden.

At morning prayer I note the second half of the "Glory be" prayer:
...as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

I am repulsed by the mind that believes innocent lives are disposable. I detest the mind that pretends war is exactly what should put one political party again in the driver's seat. I sorrow at stupidity and laziness of mind that manipulates emotions and puts smiley-faces on human suffering in a time of war.

Why is it so hard to stop war criminals? Where has decent and just courage gone?

Theologians, politicians, educators, and religious leaders stumble on the issue of war, terror, and national patriotism. Their deference is ambivalence. I want no part of rationalization.

War is wrong. This war against Iraq was wrong. This war against terror is a wrongly used triumphal tool to advance political agendas too large to be detected. The country, as I see it, is in trouble.

Why are we so hesitant to see the problem? How is it so few men can cause so much suffering.

Pray for mystics! Write away for them. Import them if need be.

A poem:
Escaping for Sight
The mystic sees the world as it is;
"As-it-is" sees the world through mystics' eyes --
Close them. Open us. See ya...
(poem, wfh, of a Saturday objection seeking conscience)

The lovely is lovely. The unlovely is unlovely.

Our task is not to confuse them -- not to call the lovely unlovely and the unlovely lovely.

It is time to pray.

Time to see.

Film, "Three Days of the Condor," thirty years later, chills.

A soaring endlessly curving path,
every few miles we have to rest.
I look around for my friends.
They've vanished in the wooded hills.
Rain floods the pine trees
and flows hushed among the rocks.
There are silent words deep in hill water,
a long whistle over the summits.
When I look at South Mountain
the sun floats white through the mist.
A blue marsh is luminous and clear.
Green trees are heavy shadows, drifting.
When I am tired of being closed in,
suddenly I come upon a clearing,
and the mind is at peace.
- Wang Wei (699-759)

Oil. And games. Disregard of innocence.
What has changed?

Is it for the dead that you perform your wonders?
Will the ghosts rise up and proclaim you?
In the tomb, will they tell of your kindness?
Will they tell of your faithfulness in the place of the lost?
Will your wonders be known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of oblivion?
(from Psalm 87)

In prison, Pat and Joe talk about Holocaust and Slavery. They are alight with insight and passion.

I opt for insight and passion.

Damn the games.

Full mind intent!

Dwell between hope and guilt.

Avoid both.

Hold intention.

I finish application to satisfy the Nameless One we call God.

"Wait," the One says, "and see."

I gaze on myself in the stream's emerald flow
Or sit on a boulder by a cliff.
My mind, a lonely cloud, leans on nothing,
Needs nothing from the world and its endless events.
- Han Shan (early 9th century)

Who knows what God wants? Who knows anything about God? Or even if there is a God, or gods, or only our longing there might be one?

When we speak of Christ's priesthood, what else do we mean than the incarnation? Through this mystery, the Son of God, though himself ever remaining God, became a priest. (From a letter by Fulgentius of Ruspe, bishop)

The incarnation seems right. Here we are, all abodied, wondering why, and wherefore, whither, and what the hell?

The good fellow of Ruspe centers in on incarnation. We know of which he speaks. And we are all priests, being sound and body, with God as source.

A Native American prayer says we are the one we are waiting for.

We are ministers of earth. We try to honor, save, and resurrect that from which we come, on which we stand, to which we shall return.

Earth.

God.

(A pair of ducks.)

Waiting for, encircling, one and another.

(Just ducky, eh?)

Ritual is dress-up. At end of day, it is a conveyance for presence. People gather in a space for a recognized pattern of interaction. What comes through depends on those holding the space and time open.

Nature may be compared to a vast ocean. Thousands and millions of changes are taking place in it. Crocodiles and fish are essentially of the same substance as the water in which they live. People are crowded together with the myriad other things in the Great Changingness, and their nature is one with that of all other natural things. Knowing that I am of the same nature as all other natural things, I know that there is really no separate self, no separate personality, no absolute death and no absolute life.
- T'ien T'ung-Hsu (8th century A.D.)

Albert Camus in "The Myth of Sisyphus" says the only serious philosophical question is that of suicide.
Richard Hugo in "Villager" says that "What's wrong will always be wrong." He says "No two hurts are the same, and most have compensations / too lovely to leave."
Camus with Sisyphus and Sophocles with Oedipus convey that all is well; we assume them happy.

The mystic sees the world as it is.

"As it is" sees the world through the mystic's eyes.

Everything, said Saskia at tonight's conversation, is paradox -- each view pointing to and from the corresponding point of view.

In this way we are held in the play of reverence.

A lovely ritual.

Icy wind on wharf in St. Andrews by the Sea drawn in across Passamaquoddy Bay.

Nowhere!
Not in the sky,
Nor in the midst of the sea,
Nor deep in the mountains,
Can you hide from your own mischief.
Not in the sky,
Nor in the midst of the ocean,
Nor deep in the mountains,
Nowhere
Can you hide from your own death.
- Dhammapada

What about that house on Queen Street?

An overnight. Waking to low tide.

Just enough imagination.

Morning muffin with coffee by Celtic cross facing Minister's Island.

Sorrowing a Canadian's death in America's war.

Freedom isn't a private possession. No one is completely free as long as someone somewhere is denied freedom.

For the awakened ones,
The sorrows of this world are over.
Though they possess finite bodies,
They remain united with the Infinite.
Their hearts know no anxiety.
They are said to be free even in this life.
- Shankara

Shankara is right. Still, the question remains: How does one person's freedom affect another's imprisonment?

I read today, finally, the article in a local paper a few months ago about the Special Management Unit (formerly, the Supermax) at the Maine State Prison. The article spoke about harsh treatment, some claim torture, suffered there.

Sunday Evening Practice at the hermitage was filled with strong quiet energy. After sitting, then chanting, we listened to a CD of a talk given by Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee for 10 minutes at table. His talk was on Anima Mundi, the soul of the world. We wondered, after eating in silence Saskia's Siebenburger's Kraut, about the alchemical light in all matter. We pondered how even a small light taken into a dark place near a person closed inside a deeper darkness invites the light residing there within them into a communion of light.

It is wearying to be placed in the dark or kept in the dark by someone who has to keys to do so. (It is similar to receiving messages -- whether from parents or others -- saying "You are wrong!" Those who perpetuate such indictments weary the soul.) It is much more interesting, if not more difficult, to find what is right and light about a situation. It's something we can do -- attend to light.

Judy told that her husband had died last July. We remember Bob in prayer. She takes the Lee CD with her.

Freedom is like the thin membrane between worlds. If it shines authentically on one side, it conveys through to the other. Free individuals convey freedom, they extend light. Locked up individuals (in mind, or heart) convey dead end absence of energy.

What is outside us is inside us. What is inside us is outside us.

The answer to "How are we?" cannot be given without the corresponding question "How is the world?"

If we are the world, then if we practice peace and cultivate light, the world has the experience of peace and light.

No matter what the world or the other chooses to do with the experience, it is there for it, for them, for us, to ponder.

Our practice is the pondering of how the inside and the outside become no inside, no outside.

Only peace.

And light.

His faithfulness will be your armour and your shield.
You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day;
nor the plague that walks in the shadows,
nor the death that lays waste at noon.
(from Psalm 90, Compline)

We're all...right...because of someone like Dr. King.

Martin Luther King Jr, whose birthday we celebrate, was right. He brought light and freedom with his life.

All are better, know it or not, because of him.

Anything done in the name of war is now allowed. If it is done to make America safe, it is permitted. Nothing is as important as ensuring the United States is right and victorious in its never-ending crusade to exact revenge for 9/11. Maddened politicians and hair-triggered military are free to do anything they want, unchecked and immune from accountability. America is showing signs of ugly anger and arrogance.

Just as the pure crystal takes color from the object which is nearest to it, so the mind, when it is cleared of thought-waves, achieves sameness or identity with the object of its concentration.
- Patanjali

The object of concentration is mistrust and deception. Claiming to be trying to ferret out dangers to the safety, health, welfare, and security of the United States, it seems the powers of Department of Defense, National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and Federal Bureau of Investigation are contributing to the undermining of law, decency, rights, and good will of the country and those in the world in any way getting in its way.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 14 -- Pakistani officials said Saturday that a U.S. missile strike intended to kill al Qaeda deputy Ayman Zawahiri had missed its target but had killed 17 people, including six women and six children.
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis staged an angry anti-American protest near the remote village of Damadula, about 120 miles northwest of Islamabad, where Friday's attack took place. According to witnesses, the demonstrators shouted "Death to America" and "Death to Musharraf" -- referring to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- and the offices of at least one U.S.-backed aid organization were ransacked and set ablaze.
"Pakistanis Condemn U.S. Attack" By Griff Witte and Kamran Khan, Washington Post Foreign Service, Saturday, January 14, 2006; 7:51 PM)

It is a fools errand to fight fire with fire. Wisdom would prescribe a more thoughtful method of recognizing and reconciling hostility with actions aimed at relieving underlying causes so as to relieve overt antipathy. We are not innocent victims who were attacked for no purpose whatsoever -- we have a history, covert and overt, of imposing our will on reluctant targets. We target anyone in the world that appears to be in opposition to our vested interests. We are fast becoming the bully we've fought wars in the past to defeat. It is not an optimistic schizophrenia.

We do our single-minded defense of wealth, privilege, and power at a time when something new and vital longs to find its way into our midst.

An awareness of global oneness has begun to constellate. The idea of the unity of life, that "we are one," no longer belongs just to a spiritual or ecological fringe, but is becoming part of the mainstream. But this awareness is lacking an essential ingredient--it is still an idea, it is not fully alive. When it becomes alive the heart of the world will open and we will hear the song of the divine oneness of life.

The world has to awaken from its sleep of forgetfulness--it can no longer afford to forget its divinity. More than any pollution it is this forgetfulness that is killing the earth. Collectively we are dying--we have forgotten our purpose and a life-form that has forgotten its purpose cannot survive. Its fundamental reason for existence fades away. The awakening of the heart of the world can redeem what has been desecrated, heal what has been wounded, purify what has been polluted. The song of the world will remind us all why we are here and the whole of life will rejoice.
(-- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, in "The Awakening of the World")

We cannot allow horrors to be committed in our name. The blind fascination with war and heroic images of ridding the world of evildoers is crippling the spirit of truth and freedom. The world is full of good and evil, right and wrong -- and we are tasked with finding peace in the middle of antagonistic dualities. In the middle, not at some fantastical end that is reached by elimination of everything between the reality of life as it exists and some ideological utopia that doesn't and never will exist.

The coincidence of opposites and the harmony of opposites is grounded on the experience there is a middle path, a core resting place, that exists in the very center of all the contentious opposites encountered in life. It takes a special kind to dishonesty to convince people only you are right, powerful, knowledgeable, and empowered to bring about the world as you see it ought to be.

Be clear about one thing -- if we do not forbid our leaders to kill, plunder, and lie, then we earn the unenviable fruits of their dishonesty.

Once trust and reputation are lost, all that remains is brute force and deluded ideology.

We have to talk. We have to sort this out. We have to change the mind that leads us to destruction into a mind that sees the way into a sacred awareness that leads to authentic peace.

Do not be deceived.

Something is wrong.

We must pray, yes, for one another.

But more -- we need to change our mind. (God is not in our mind. We must attend first and foremost to God, as God is, in the world.)

Come back to earth.

Look around.

Ken, in prison, said, "I feel you," when we spoke to Lifetime Recovery Group about spirituality.

There is a point of correspondency between two views which is called the pivot of the Tao. As soon as one finds this pivot, he stands in the center of the ring of thought where he can respond without end to the changing views; without end to those affirming, and without end to those denying.
- Chuang Tzu

Matt, the chaplain, is resigning to go the New Hampshire.

There's a correspondency between Ken and Matt.

God is correspondency.

We breathe together.

It's a promise.

Pivot point.

There's no going back. Names and faces surface and fade again from a long ago life. No longer. You can look back. But no going. Which is a a great kindness.

Follow the truth of the way.
Reflect on it. Make it your own.
Live it.
It will always sustain you.
Do not turn away what is given you,
Nor reach out for what is given to others,
Lest you disturb your quietness.
- Dhammapada

Dripping rain from full gutters under kitchen roof. That's what religion is. If someone asked if I had religion, I'd open an umbrella. Religion is looking around at stillness inside kitchen. Spoon leans from soup bowl next to water glass work done resting empty.

Once I was somewhere else. That was long ago. It is hard to remember why I was not always here. Some other state. Some other work. Some other dissatisfaction.

No longer. Now. Here. Doing this. Aware of suffering, its cause, and path through.

Boots face each other on rug. No steps are taken. Slippers under desk do not shuffle. Feet are on chair across from another chair holding me up.

Religious life is the kindness of emptiness gone midnight sheltered under roof from torrential rain.

A leper came to him and pleaded on his knees: 'If you want to" he said "you can cure me". Feeling sorry for him, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. "Of course I want to!" he said. "Be cured!" And the leprosy left him at once and he was cured. Jesus immediately sent him away and sternly ordered him, "Mind you say nothing to anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest, and make the offering for your healing prescribed by Moses as evidence of your recovery". The man went away, but then started talking about it freely and telling the story everywhere, so that Jesus could no longer go openly into any town, but had to stay outside in places where nobody lived. Even so, people from all around would come to him.
Mark 1:40 - 45

Part of religion is staying in places nobody lives. Another part is saying no more than one should.

Learning to listen to thunder alongside mountain.

Leaving anyplace else for the nowhere right here.

Grateful for bread. For soup. For apfelkuchen with whipped cream. Or the love of God.

No place is as good as this place we are.

So it is.

Place yourself.

Go nowhere else. Humbly return to one's own profound heart.

Sufism is a path of love and also a journey to self-knowledge, of carrying the light of consciousness into the core of our being. The spiritual journey is always inward, a gradual process of self-discovery as you realize the real wonder of being human. The wayfarer makes the most difficult and courageous of journeys, turning away from the outer world of illusion, and turning back to God, not as an idea but as a living reality that exists within the heart. This is a journey of self-revelation, a painful process of leaving behind our illusory nature, the ego, and entering into the arena of our true Self. And as another hadith explicitly states, on this journey you have to "die before you die": before you can experience the innermost state of union with God, the ego has to be sacrificed; you have to be burnt, consumed by the fire of divine love.
(-- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Excerpt from Love is a Fire : the Sufi's Mystical Journey Home )

Once consumed by the innermost fire of sacred love, who remains to go anywhere else?

Gazing on the once-was, turning quietly, gently, returning to the only place remaining.

Who you are, as you are, where you are. Dissolving what is not you.

Each is invited into this humbling loving gift.

For this is each ordained.

Do this, mindfully!

As does the rain, itself!

We are invited to let silence.

Not every thing speaks to us. At times we can't hear some things. Nothing special. It is a decibel above or below our hearing range. It fades. Never makes it to our mind. Or heart. That's all.

From the passions arise worry,
and from worry arises fear.
Away with the passions, and no fear,
No worry.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Tonight we read three pieces prelude to conversation. The range of each was particular. Each reading (Sufi, Zen, Jewish) touched someone (at least). Not all for each.

It struck me that there is a temptation to find something wrong with the one that doesn't speak to you. It's nothing special, it's just what the mind does when looking for something to judge.

I'm learning how to listen carefully to each. If one falls outside my tuning frequency, I let it stay for a while outside my hearing. There's nothing wrong with the author, or the piece, or me. It is merely not a conversation I can have with what is presented.

I let it have silence.

No top one, two, three bottom.

I am often surrounded by silence.

I learn from what I don't hear.

At conversation a woman trashed religion.

She would not be dissuaded. No reason passed her certainty. She's convinced.

Her proof is spiritualism, channeled teachings she affirms.

After stopping at grocery store, we drive home, eat spaghetti, feel filling fall from tooth, watch part of film, get tired, climb stairs.

"How come there's no resistance?" Saskia asks, trying stationary bike.

What is there to resist?

Opinion or faith?

Either way, practice is that which fits between.

Early morning zafu.

Without knowing.

An open emptiness.

Back by brook, at bend by protruding root of oak tree cheering parade of tumbling mountain spill ahead of ice, the graves of three dogs and one cat, watched over by winged angel statue shouldering snow, hands cupped in perpetual prayer or gassho at its beginning or end. These dead animals converse with root and stone and earth in dawn assembly speaking of the day alighting and of the night gone by.

We do not hear what they say. Rumor has it, (borne by red squirrel passing up and back to ridge) they have been talking about snow.

Koto said, "I used to lay down on snow and stay as long as until called to something else. I would find the last mountain patch of snow in late spring and scratch at it and roll on back to sweeten my coat. I died in a snowstorm, the sight of it falling, the sounds of 'Ode to Joy' and my mistress' head in front seat of car. That was a good death."

Jitai said, "I would bound like a gazelle through snow, my Norwegian Elk ancestors proud of my young skill, like cousin kangaroo I'd boing boing boing through dooryard drifts. We'd have such fun, those squirrels and I, racing behind barn and over hill by runoff. How jubilant our roundy rounds. I couldn't keep up that one morning the yellow school bus ran over me as we tore across the road. That was great fun. Then I came back here."

Sando said, "The walks we had! Everywhere those fourteen years, and everywhere we drove. Such great times in snow and rain, in sunshine and icy paths. My paws would melt the granules on the path and I'd work the clumps gone solid between my pads...and she, my human friend, would hold my leg and pick them clean, and off we'd go again. The walks, the walks, the glorious walks, the walks across that life! And to spend my final day in their cabin chapel, surrounded by flowers, tennis balls, and incense, red squirrel peeking in window to see how things were going, and Cesco (always the thief) quietly stealing one of the balls -- what lovely play we'd had -- I wish I had just one more stick that he could take from my mouth, I loved the give and take!

Mini said, "I was too delicate for snow, except in my basket on kitchen bed looking up at cedar tree and Bald Mountain behind it. That year a herd of deer in deep snow would set their path in clearings high above by open rock. My baton paw conducting cold when I had to step outside. Your big doggy tails swinging overhead coming in from snow, begging for a swipe hello passing woodstove feeding tray. Then there was that night, and in that night (I was so tired) in front room, I let myself to sleep under window altar, in middle prayer of silence."

The whole race is a poet that writes down
The eccentric propositions of its fate".
(--from poem "Men Made Out Of Words" by Wallace Stevens)

The morning snows.

Cesco goes out to pee. Mu-Ge claws at boor to barn ready to go out again fortified with kibble feed. The fire warms from kitchen Elefos stove, as Saskia wipes snow from old border collie's back.

The trees and ice and tumbling waters -- the dogs and cats and passing squirrels -- never tire of their silence. Never tire of allowing one another their talk of what is happening.

Here is a proposition...

As eccentric as here is, here is our fate.

And we are poets writing here, as it is, again and (never repeating) again.

The dogs and cats, the trees and stones, the earth and sky -- all the falling flakes, fell wood, and silent gaze -- each human breath -- all written here, are writing here, here as here, "its."

The eccentric proposition of "its" fate.

Glory be to "its!"

Everything belongs!

Morning fire coaxes creaks in stovepipe.

Their conversation enlivens after cooling through the night. Blue daybreak and red sunrise mute behind gray cloud. It is Sunday morning. "Pause," the trees say, "consider your life. Listen to the Creating Sound in quiet awhile."

We are coming to our true inheritance of the world,
we are broadening our consciousness, ever seeking
a higher and higher unity; ever approaching nearer
to the one universal truth which is the All-comprehensive all embracing.
- Rabindranath Tagore ( 1861-1941)

Christian Church calendar is disjointed this time of year: When is Christmas? For Greek Orthodox? For Russians following Julian calendar? When is Epiphany? When Baptism of the Lord? On traditional dates or Sundays? For some it is the Great Christmas. One tradition (how recent?) the Sunday after Epiphany favors the liturgizing and baptizing of Jesus. I'm not sure it matters. We're only reflecting on narratives and stories and mysteries that transcend fixed appointments. Jesus is vagabond to our schedules and appointment books.

Water spoke to him. Water spoke to those quietly near him. Water speaks to Saskia in baptismal shower in next room.

Jesus stands zazen in the water.

"In whom," says water, "in whom I am," it continues, "well" (imagine, well) -- "pleased."

Entering new profound silence, water glides over body, saying nothing, falling to ground, entering earth, finding level truth. Resting there, going on.

He does not cry out or shout aloud,
or make his voice heard in the streets.
He does not break the crushed reed,
nor quench the wavering flame.

Faithfully he brings true justice;
he will neither waver, nor be crushed
until true justice is established on earth,
for the islands are awaiting his law.
(Isaiah 42: 2-3)

When innocence opens eyes, glancing this way and that, what is born is every new and included life, all in all.

Embracing all.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.