Simone Weil said: "Absolute unmixed attention is prayer."

Like entrusting yourself
To a brave person
When greatly afraid,
By entrusting yourself
To the awakening mind,
You will be swiftly liberated,
Even if you have made appalling errors.
- Majjhima Nikaya

To pray always is to practice this absolute unmixed attention.

Begin again.

You are in my prayer.

Very wet and rainy.

John Dewey says that totality is continuity.

Totality means continuity -- the carrying on of a former habit of action with the readaptation necessary to keep it alive and growing. Instead of signifying a ready-made complete scheme of action, it means keeping the balance in a multitude of diverse actions, so that each borrows and gives significance to every other. Any person who is open-minded and sensitive to new perceptions, and who has concentration and responsibility in connecting them has, in so far, a philosophic disposition.
(John Dewey, in Democracy and Education)

Go on.

All of you.

If you haven't seen the film Departures, do.

Pine trees murmur in the wind.
Spring water bubbles in stone.
The moon sets at dawn.
An owl hoots in the mountains.
- Jinkag Haesim (1178-1234)

Off you go.

We'll meet again.

That's what the gate-keeper said.

Temporary site for events and update.

For Events, see http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/Home/events-at-meetingbrook

Dying is safe. That's what Singh said in her book. Good words.

Once the human mind goes astray,
Truth, the true pattern of the Tao,
Is lost.
Once the human mind is gathered in,
The true pattern of the Tao is there.
- Hu Juren (1434-1484)

My personal response to the themes of hospice conversation:

• To understand the spiritual significance of death and dying :

Be still with it, listen with a silence that sorts; a silence which is “an ordering instinct [which] sends people into the hush where the voice can be heard." (Patricia Hampl)-

• To recognize the difference between spirituality and religion:

Spirituality is the longing for true home, for true belonging; religions are the attempts to organize that longing. One is not the other. We each have an innate spirituality. Sometimes that spirituality finds a welcoming organization for it to visit.

• To identify the spiritual concerns of the dying person:

Trust the dying person and yourself to allow the revealing of what needs revealing in its own good time. No forcing. No fretting. No trying to save or change the dying person’s view. Only loving, compassionate, presence.

• To respect the spiritual needs and perspective of the patient:

We are guests and visitors to their journey. We are not teachers and guides. We must learn with them their way at this time in this place.

• To learn to respond to questions relating to life after death:

We respond with our presence and our appreciation of the questions. Honest open conversation follows honest open listening.

• To learn to provide support and understand the role of the volunteer:

To serve as a companion on the way. Be “voluntary” in your support and understanding, i.e., “voluntary (of your own free will or design; done by choice; not forced or compelled”-

• To provide an overview of the role of cultural attitudes in death, dying, and bereavement:

Not everyone says there is a heaven or a hell somewhere else. Not everyone says we live on only in those who remember us. Not everyone says we will rest a while then experience rebirth on earth. Not everyone says reincarnation is based on karma. Not everyone says we dissolve back into the one ocean of being. Not everyone says there is a spirit world, multiple dimensions of physical/mental/spiritual dwelling beyond this visible dimension we occupy. Not everyone says there is nothing after death, just this life, that’s it. Not everyone thinks a priest, pastor, imam, sheik , rabbi, roshi, guru, shaman, pagan leader, chaplain of any denomination, or official representative of any other religious or spiritual point of view -- is necessary to minister to the dying person.

Some do. And that’s the wonder of being alive amid so much diversity. There are many ways. The task of the volunteer is to be open and responsive to the particular focus and questions of the dying person, and to be of whatever assistance you can be. You do not need to know the answers to all questions. But you can help to assist the dying person and the family feel more comfortable in the search.

'Safe': from Latin 'salvus' meaning 'uninjured.' Not likely to be harmed or lost.

We are safe. Dying is safe. Death is safe.

Dance well!

Don't be stingy. That's the 8th precept. It was table reading tonight.

We haul water from the brook. Well pump died.

Subhuti, does it occur to you that I believe that through me living beings are led to liberation? Never think that way, Subhuti. Why? Because there is no separate being to lead to liberation. If I were to think there was, I would be caught in the notion of a self or person or a life span. Subhuti, what I call a self is essentially not a self in the way that an ordinary person thinks of it. But neither do I think of anyone as an ordinary person. However, knowing the essence, I can use the name, ordinary person.
(- from Diamond Sutra)

We walk pastures and back fields today on other side of Ragged near Alfred Lake. So little snow remains.

"Prayer only looks like an act of language; fundamentally it is a position, a placement of oneself. Focus. Get there, and all that's left to say is the words. They come: from ancient times, from the surprisingly eloquent heart, from the gush and chatter of the day's detail longing to be rendered.

So what is silence?

Silence speaks, the contemplatives say. But really, I think, silence sorts. An ordering instinct sends people into the hush where the voice can be heard."
(—Patricia Hampl, excerpted from Virgin Time; quoted on 'Speaking of Faith' with Krista Tippitt, Krista's Journal, May 22, 2008)

We'll talk about prayer and spirituality tomorrow at hospice training. An open invitation to invite the open.

"[The French philosopher Simone Weil said, 'Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.'] I love that. I think that could be as close as someone can get to a wonderful definition of prayer. In that sense, prayer has nothing spiritual or religious about it. A mathematician working at a problem or a little kid trying to pick out scales on the piano is a person at prayer. She's not saying prayer is absolute unmixed attention; it's the other way. The attention itself is the quality that she wants to call prayer. So whatever context you're putting it in, whether it's inside a church or inside a toy box, that's the quality that is the sacred one."
(--from Krista's Journal, May 22, 2008, quoting Translator Stephen Mitchell)

Pray always. Don't know prayer. Be it.

In everything you do.

There is
nothing wrong
with silence

Rethinking Ralph Nader. He didn't spoil the 2000 nor 2004 elections. He ran for office. That's that.

The mighty ocean has but one taste,
The taste of salt.
Even so, the true way has
But one savor,
The savor of freedom.
- Majjhima Nikaya

I like the idea of freedom. Even more, I like the practice of it.

Something difficult creeps into the politics of this country.

What shall we call it?

Something Naderless.

We need to find a cure.

Soon.

Enter my mind and take off your body.

God's invitation.

How I love the natural Buddha
Who waters the wide world with his mercy.
No place to hide in the vast sky;
Even inside the overturned bowl it's wet.
- Jinkag Haesim (1178-1234)

We grow old. The body says it is time to fail. As the poet wrote: "There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."

Tattoo

What once was meant to be a statement --
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart -- is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

(Poem by Ted Kooser, from Delights & Shadows, published by Copper Canyon Press, 2004,)

Soft and blue.

Sit a while. Tell me a story. Let it be sad if it wishes.

I can hear it.

I've got no place to go.

Nothing else to do.

Merely a mindless and nescient nobody.

The peanut butter is organic from the co-op.

The wind is natural from northeast.

Freeman Dyson, theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his work in quantum field theory, makes a distinction about being a practicing Christian, not a believing Christian:

I am myself a Christian, a member of a community that preserves an ancient heritage of great literature and great music, provides help and counsel to young and old when they are in trouble, educates children in moral responsibility, and worships God in its own fashion. But I find Polkinghorne's theology altogether too narrow for my taste. I have no use for a theology that claims to know the answers to deep questions but bases its arguments on the beliefs of a single tribe. I am a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian. To me, to worship God means to recognize that mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our comprehension. When I listen to Polkinghorne describing the afterlife, I think of God answering Job out of the whirlwind, "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?... Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.... Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?" God's answer to Job is all the theology I need. As a scientist, I live in a universe of overwhelming size and mystery. The mysteries of life and language, good and evil, chance and necessity, and of our own existence as conscious beings in an impersonal cosmos are even greater than the mysteries of physics and astronomy. Behind the mysteries that we can name, there are deeper mysteries that we have not even begun to explore.
(in The New York Review of Books, Volume 49, Number 5 · March 28, 2002, Science & Religion: No Ends in Sight, By Freeman Dyson, reviewing: The God of Hope and the End of the World, by John Polkinghorne http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15220)

God is love. Perhaps there's no need to believe in God or anything else.

There is a need to practice love, to practice God. Here, and here, and here.

"Nescere Ama Nesciri." There. Something belonging to itself.

It is a good motto. "To not know... love... to be unknown."

Psalm 102 (103)

The Lord is compassion and kindness,
full of patience, full of mercy.
He will not fight against you for ever:
he will not always be angry.
He does not treat us as our sins deserve;
he does not pay us back for our wrongdoing.
As high as the sky above the earth,
so great is his kindness to those who fear him.
As far as east is from west,
so far he has put our wrongdoing from us.
As a father cares for his children,
so the Lord cares for those who fear him.
For he knows how we are made,
he remembers we are nothing but dust.
Man – his life is like grass,
he blossoms and withers like flowers of the field.
The wind blows and carries him away:
no trace of him remains.

Don't know.

Be unknown.

Only love.

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
(--from poem Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot)

No.

Beginning.

No.

End.

Fort Kent, Caribou, Presque Isle, Houlton. We skirt the edges of Canada. Things look different up here.

Stop and look around you.
Look out from the frameless window
Of a long pause.
Let the images come to you
Rather than chasing outward after them.
Allow yourself to reorient so that
You're no longer pulled along
By the stream of events.
If you want to see differently,
You'll have to look differently.
(- Journeys on Mind Mountain)

A man with balloons on his hat greeted us on our walk tonight along the streets of Houlton. He thinks it will snow.

The masons erected a bust of George Washington in a center square.

A martial arts group went through their storefront exercises.

It's Tuesday night. Tomorrow will be Wednesday.

Nothing more.

Seen clearly.

Here is what love is.

Overcome your uncertainties
And free yourself
From dwelling on sorrow.
If you delight in existence,
You will become a guide
To those who need you,
Revealing the path to many.
- Sutta Nipata

Love is what God is.

And that is this:

Love is this moment speaking.

God is what is being said.

Practice Ahimsa, do no harm, avoid violence,

I've never been fond of violence, sacred or profane. Violence is too easy to perform, too easy to rationalize.

I dislike violent terrorist attacks on people and places. I dislike violent retaliatory attacks on people and places.

I dislike that the United States is engaged in two wars, or that we conduct assassinations, coups, secret hostilities in at least three other MiddleEast countries. I dislike that we are the major provider of guns and money to powers using both against their people or neighbors. These are troubling times.

I dislike cynicism and simple-mindedness, mine and others'. I cannot see any upside to the meanness and intransigency of right-wing propagandists and divas. I shake my head at the lack of resolve and courage on the part of left-wing placaters resulting in meaningless half-steps. I'm afraid slogans and placards have replaced the practice of reasonable dialogue.

I think we regress to a primitive and dangerous place when the only strategy used by ideologues and pretenders is fear and violence.

In the Christian metaphor, who understands the cross and crucifixion? Perhaps not even Christians. Which makes the task of moving beyond belief and egoic delusions of divisive duality desperately difficult.

Sacred Violence
No summary could convey the subtlety of the Girardian theory, and an oversimplified presentation of it would lead to misconceptions, defeating the very purpose of an introduction. Suffice it to say that Girard has uncovered the role violence plays in archaic religion and the role these religious systems play in human culture. Human history is the relentless chronicle of violence that it is because when cultures fall apart they fall into violence, and when they revive themselves they do so violently. Primitive religion is the institution that remembers the reviving violence mythologically and ritually reenacts its spellbinding climax. Primitive religion grants one form of violence a moral monopoly, endowing it with enough power and prestige to preempt other forms of violence and restore order. The famous distinction between “sacred” and “profane” is born as the culture glorifies the decisive violence (sacred) that brought an episode of chaotic violence (profane) to an end and made warriors into worshipers. Distinguishing these two forms of violence is always an extremely arbitrary affair, but that does not keep the distinction from having beneficial effects. Religion makes possible these benefits by bestowing sacred status on a socially tolerable form of violence to which the culture can resort as an alternative to greater and more catastrophic violence. “It is better that one man should die,” said Caiaphas of Jesus, “than that the whole nation be destroyed.”

Caiaphas was invoking a mechanism for preserving culture that is as old as culture itself. Whether it is the Assyro-Babylonian myth declaring that Marduk created the world by killing the monster Tiamat; or the Teutonic myth telling how Odin formed the world by raising the corpse of Ymir from the sea of Ymir’s own blood, or Pope Urban II declaring that God willed the first Crusade; or Thomas Jefferson saying that the tree of liberty must be periodically watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants; or Lenin saying you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs — cultures have forever commemorated some form of sacred violence at their origins and considered it a sacred duty to reenact it in times of crisis. The logic of sacred violence is nowhere expressed more succinctly nor repudiated more completely than in the New Testament, where the high priest solemnly announces its benefits and the crucifixion straightaway reveals its arbitrariness and horror. The New Testament account of the crucifixion reproduces the myths and mechanisms of primitive religion only to explode them, reveal their perversities, and declare allegiance to the Victim of them. As the theologian Robert Hamerton-Kelly, one of Girard’s most astute interpreters, puts it: “Christian theology provides a trenchant critique of religion.”

The Waning Of Scapegoating Violence
There was, however, something profoundly true about what Caiaphas said. Up to this very day, cultures rely on scapegoating violence to a far greater degree than we realize. The reason culture is now in such disarray, however, is that this ancient recipe for generating social solidarity has ceased to have its once reliable effects. It has been gradually shorn of its religious mystifications, and, as a result, its ability to promote cultural order has waned. By mystifying human violence and attributing it to the gods, archaic religion endowed a certain form of physical might — usually the most powerful form — with metaphysical significance. As long as the myths that mythologized certain human violence remained in effect, this sacralized violence was able to ward off other violence or crush it with religious conviction when it arose. As the myths that divinized the violence were weakened, the difference between order-destroying violence and order-restoring violence likewise began to break down.

Which brings me back to the hole in the parlor floor (a metaphor used by the poet Richard Wilbur whereby a carpenter’s work in progress allows the observer to see the foundation of the house). As Girard explained in his next book — Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World — the hole in the parlor floor into which he had peered in Violence and the Sacred was made by the Galilean Carpenter who was publicly executed outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago. As profoundly novel as Girard’s insights seem, he insists that they simply clarify and explicate a revelation of sacred violence that has its seeds in the Hebrew Scriptures and its stunning climax in the New Testament passion story. The Carpenter made a hole in the parlor floor and Girard simply looked into it and saw there things hidden since the foundation of the world. “Thus,” writes Robert Hamerton-Kelly, “Girard points us to a possible restatement of biblical faith that places it at the center of the struggle for a culture beyond violence.”
(--from: paying attention to the sky, blog, an entry quoting Gil Baille's book Violence Unveiled, Humanity at the Crossroads, interpreting Rene Girard's work on violence.)
http://payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/02/12/gil-bailie-interprets-rene-girard//

The carpenter for the bookshed leaves with his dog. He is nearing completion. He has done good work.

There's a used fed-ex truck for sale. It tempts as a bookmobile/bakemobile. It's the right size and right price. We'd have to have someone look at the engine and chassis and save us from ourselves.

Trying to be in the world nonviolently involves awareness of the impulses and thoughts urging violent responses to disrespect, dishonesty, and debilitating hypocrisy. To long for heaven is to long for a change in one's personal response so as to permit others to change their personal attacks, to change one's personal attack thoughts so as to invite others to change their responses.

To the Jewish mind, heaven is not a fixed, unchanging geographical location somewhere other than this world. Heaven is the realm where things are as God intends them to be. The place where things are under the rule and reign of God. And that place can be anywhere, anytime, with anybody.
(from Ch.1, God Wears Lipstick, in book Sex God, Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality

I hope we haven't grown weary of the longing for heaven. Even setting aside wrong-minded location and direction, the longing itself speaks to us through deep silences. We continue the vigil. We are looking for nonviolent relationality rooted in respectful appreciation engaging dialogic solving of problems encountered in this world.

A heavenly embodiment; an emergence worth awareness!

Even here.

At this very moment.

With one another.

Emergence. That's the word I left out last night in class.

Your patience with each other is your patience with your selves. Is not a child of God worth patience? I have shown you infinite patience, because my will IS that of our Father, from whom I learned of infinite patience. His voice was in me, as it is in you, speaking for patience towards the Sonship, in the name of its Creator. What you need to learn now is that only infinite patience CAN produce immediate effects. This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite patience calls upon infinite Love, and by producing results NOW renders time unnecessary.

To say that time is temporary is merely redundant. We have repeatedly said that time is a learning device which will be abolished when it is no longer useful. The Holy Spirit, who speaks for God in time, also knows that time is meaningless. He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time, because it is His special function to return YOU to eternity and remain to bless YOUR creations there. He is the only blessing you can truly give, because He is so truly blessed. And because He has been given you so freely by God, you must give Him as you received Him.
(from ch. V, Time and Eternity, A Course in Miracles)

Encounter, engagement, experience, experiment, embodiment.

That's the movement of being, existence, and knowledge.

Then -- emergence.

"Christ is emergence."

That was spoken in a 4th floor apartment building on Belmont Avenue in the Bronx in 1970.

Zen is this seeing through.

Time is.
Running.
Out.

Of
Wednesday.

We barely miss deer on route one -- but we do.

Good fortune for the moment.

A near deer death experience.

"So, to come back as a worm wouldn't be a career ender?"

We were talking about reincarnation. It came to the possibility that "being reborn" is not the problem in the Buddhist or Hindu or even Christian tradition. Rather it is the continuation of the ego. Every atom continues. Energy has no half-life. We're all part of everything. But -- to identify yourself with what you become due to some karma is the localizing-by-ego effect of not yet having been released from the illusory control of ego.

We all come back. For a very few, it is no problem. They've been through "Mu" (or "Wu") and become what they are. For the rest of us, we so want to be this or that, attain this reward or avoid that punishment -- we fail to surrender to the facticity of emptiness, and remain a solid continuation of false identification.

He unasks.

"So, to come back as a worm wouldn't be a career ender!"

That's what Dean said.

And like a man with a pool cue in his hand, circling the table, in the zone, he cleared the green felt.

The cheddar veggie chowder was delicious.

Maine is cold and dry. Old snow has been packed solid by tires in dooryard. Not so in places south this weekend.

Forecasters were predicting that the mountains of West Virginia and Maryland, west of the nation's capital, would receive the most snow -- possibly 3 feet.
"Tomorrow will be a day when everybody's digging out," Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said. "And Sunday, for that matter, too."
Accumulations of 20 to 30 inches are expected in the D.C. area. It could turn out to be one of the heaviest snowfalls Washington has seen, forecasters said.
The storm is expected to produce record snowfall for Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and metropolitan areas, according to the National Weather Service.
(-- from: Travel grinds to halt after powerful Mid-Atlantic snowstorm, From Greg Morrison, CNN, February 6, 2010 4:01 a.m. EST)

These quiet hours pre-dawn!

Friday morning was conversations at Maine State Prison, (Paramahansa Yogananda in Protective Custody, Kahlil Gibran's "On Freedom" in Education Department). Friday afternoon was poetry at Quarry Hill (May Sarton, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Simic, Rudyard Kipling, Walt, Gertrude, Baron Wormser, Hafiz) with a dozen residents in a circle of elderly smiles. Friday evening conversation was re-engaging John O'Donohue's Anam Cara -- (the first time six of us sat in reflective circle in the upstairs of nearly completed BookShed -- the fruit of Jay's Chief Codger Construction Formaning begun last August). Afterward, Friday night was sitting with someone looking at their decision-in-progress to transition through a change in focus. Now Saturday morning, a couple will come by to have us witness their wedding with each other.

We are surrounded by Being, Consciousness, Bliss.

'The Unmanifest Absolute according to Sri Aurobindo'
In Indian philosophy, the Absolute is conceived of as being Sat-Chit-Ananda, of the nature of pure Being, Consciousness, and Bliss. On the basis of this, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the "Upper Hemisphere" or "Supreme [Absolute-Divine] Nature" which constitutes infinite and unitary existence, and which he divides into the planes of Pure Being (Sat), Consciousness-Force (Chit-Tapas), Bliss (Ananda), and Truth-Consciousness ("Supermind"). The latter constitutes a somewhat more manifest level then Sachchidananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss), a sort of "logos" or "Divine Mind" between the true Unmanifest and the Creation. But all these realities are eternally pre-existent, and constituting the modes or qualities of the Absolute. At the level of the Absolute, there is no differentiation. As Sri Aurobindo puts it,
"Existence is Consciousness and there can be no distinction between them; Consciousness is Bliss and there can be no distinction between them;"[The Life Divine, p.126].
Here existence is "solely and simply a pure identity in oneness." [Ibid, p.320]. So there is only one Sachchidananda, but this contains within Itself specific modes. And although these three attributes - Sat-Chit-Ananda, existence, Consciousness, and Bliss - are in inseparable unity, each "can stand in front of the others and manifest its own spiritual determinates, for each has its primal aspects or inherent self-formulations, although all of these together are original to the triune Absolute"[Ibid, p.314]. http://www.kheper.net/topics/Aurobindo/Sachchidananda.htm

The morning fire leans against the morning cold. The elderly Waterford wood stove yawns before slowly chewing frozen logs with red teeth.

It is an illusion, they say, that we seem so alone and separated.

The Mahavakyas are "Great Sayings" of the Upanishads, the foundational texts of Vedanta. Though there are many Mahavakyas, four of them, each from one of the four Vedas, are mentioned often as "the Mahavakyas". The subject matter and the essence of all Upanishads being the same, all the Mahavakyas essentially say the same in a concise form.

The four statements indicate the ultimate unity of the individual (Atman) with God (Brahman)
The Mahavakyas are:
Prajnanam Brahma - "Consciousness is Brahman" (Aitareya Upanishad 3.3 of the Rig Veda)
Ayam Atma Brahma - "This Self (Atman) is Brahman" (Mandukya Upanishad 1.2 of the Atharva Veda)
Tat Tvam Asi - "Thou art That" (Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7 of the Sama Veda)
Aham Brahmasmi - "I am Brahman" (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10 of the Yajur Veda)

The Kanchi Paramacharya says in the book "Hindu Dharma" [1]:
“ It is to attain this highest of states in which the individual self dissolves inseparably in Brahman that a man becomes a sannyasin after forsaking the very karma that gives him inward maturity. When he is initiated into sannyasa he is taught four mantras, the four [principal] mahavakyas. ”

(from Mahavakyas, (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahavakya)

Rokpa sleeps on daybed at end of Wohnkuche. The Yule Tree will slip out of ornaments and lights today. It has served so well, beautifully illuminating the darkest time of the year in New England. Now that mid-winter lengthens light earlier and later, the lovely tree will return to the earth, leaning against barn a while, then laying down to rest as it is drawn back into its origin-soil with our deep gratitude.

Trees

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
(Poem by Joyce Kilmer. 1886–1918)

Only God.

God Alone.

We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have

named this circle God. We might have given it any other name

we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light,

Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.

We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.

(From The Saviors of God, by Nikos Kazantzakis, 1927; English 1960)

The epitaph on Nikos Kazantzakis' tomb is: "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free."

We read his words, and wonder.

God is with us as we are with one another.

As each day arises and falls.

We greet one (as, with, within) another.

I sit in silent stillness with and in all my brothers, sisters, sentient beings everywhere this morning. May each and all be well within themselves!