Puer natus est pro nobis. A child is born. To us. With us. Each child.
What are we missing in the story? What in our story are we missing?
"Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses,
nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath."
— Kabir
Maine Coon cat crouches on white remnant facing bird activity beyond glass door. Gregorian chant plays to drying dishes and pots in wooden rack. Solitude is its own monastery.
‘Brother will betray brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all men on account of my name; but the man who stands firm to the end will be saved.’
(--Matthew 10:17-22)
What's his name?
Is his name "the practice of love without exception"?
No practice, no love, thus no name. We become nameless when we steal from others their i
tself-fullness."I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.
You don't grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house;
and you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!
Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to Calcutta or Tibet;
if you can't find where your soul is hidden,
for you the world will never be real!"
— Kabir (The Kabir book: Forty-four of the ecstatic poems of Kabir)
It is not difficult to ask of this world, or country, or neighborhood, "Where is the sound of the true name of peace? Of love? Of truth? Of acceptance without reservations or conditions?"
It is not difficult to hear in response the crack of a gun, the blast of a bomb, the snicker of mocking denigration, the shuddering ice of disdain, the resolute sarcasm of professional hatred on radio and cable talk show. Or the mimetic recitation of our own suffering aimed at another or others.
What is difficult is to be Stephen (in today's feast) or myriad others (in daily history) in the course of their being murdered still staying with the holy name of "the practice of love without exception." Real martyrdom is not being killed or suiciding yourself for something you believe, Real martyrdom is the active incorporation of your murderer (or daily executioner) into your name with the holy name as you travel beyond the limitations of this existence.
"I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?
We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves birds and animals and the ants -
perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in your mother's womb.
Is it logical that you would be walking around entirely orphaned now?
The truth is you turned away yourself,
and decided to go into the dark alone.
Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten what you once knew,
and that's why everything you do has some weird failure in it."
— Kabir (The Kabir book: Forty-four of the ecstatic poems of Kabir)
The 'dark alone' is not the 'Alone' -- that is, we cannot travel alone to the Alone. The Alone is Reciprocity-Itself. When we come to see the reciprocal (Latin
reciprocus returning the same way, alternating {Merriam-Webster}) -- we come to see one-in-two, two-in-one. It is our nature, for this time, to have to go out in order to come in, to go in so as to find out.
Waking from Sleep
by Robert Bly
Inside the veins there are navies setting forth,
Tiny explosions at the waterlines,
And seagulls weaving in the wind of the salty blood.
It is the morning. The country has slept the whole winter.
Window seats were covered with fur skins, the yard was full
Of stiff dogs, and hands that clumsily held heavy books.
Now we wake, and rise from bed, and eat breakfast!
Shouts rise from the harbor of the blood,
Mist, and masts rising, the knock of wooden tackle in the sunlight.
Now we sing, and do tiny dances on the kitchen floor.
Our whole body is like a harbor at dawn;
We know that our master has left us for the day.
(--Poem, "Waking from Sleep" by Robert Bly, from Silence in the Snowy Fields. Wesleyan University Press, 1962.)
Christmas season is a celebration of birth. The birth of Jesus, yes. The arriving of one with God-life. Whose name, we are coming to learn, transcends names. The coming, in a profoundly mythic narrative, of what saves us. And more. Your birth. My birth. Each birth.
What saves us? Maybe we could call it: "Being-With ... What Is ... Loving."
To be with what is loving requires a presence beyond appearance or words. A silent engagement of one within the other.
Without exception.
No conditions.
There is much in this story to catch up with. So much has gone missing.
There's a papyrus scroll gathering dust in our inner cave of forgetfulness.
It wants to be found.
Inside our own house.
There in the next seat.
