Upon considering my net worth; nothing

Of course I'm naive.

I have no wisdom, experience, or judgment.

Wisdom suggests something that does not belong to earth. Experience believes there are objects to be experienced and a subject to experience. Judgment implies a calculating rational mind and a scale to analyze and evaluate.

Not me. Not here. Not now.

When I look at the foolish template of progress based on technical and economic advancement I can only look without understanding.

When I see any suffering ignored or deprivation manipulated I can only look without understanding.

Where to look?

I look into silence and mere connecting and I begin to see that there is a great mistake being made by myself, my brothers and my sisters.

We have forgotten what it means to be in the world together.

Money and power, progress and security, certainty and ideology -- these are coordinates of the mistake continually plotted.

"Look around," the quiet room says to me.

"Look within," the stillness whispers to me.

"Look out," the smiling monk glances without words.

Naïveté wanders the lane by itself; footprints following no pattern.

I am lost.

Only the empty everything surrounds, accompanying the no one along the pathless open.

There is no way for me.

No way out, no way within, no way around.

generous koan; cheerful contemplative realism

In America Magazine this week, an intelligent and thought-provoking article:

The Shape of the Church to Come, by James Hanvey S.J.  -- Reflections on where we are going.   http://americamagazine.org/issue/article/shape-church-come#comment-58170 

As light snow falls and painful back slowly returns to functional capability, soft-boiled egg settles into strained mid-section, accompanied by green tea with honey and ginseng, I send a response comment:

From a similar darkened, hidden, and discarded place James Hanvey refers to, I read his article with reluctant cheer. I have so wanted to feel part of the community dear to my history and heart, the Catholic Church, but it has been remarkably difficult in the interstice between the Aggiornamento of the early 1960s and the Absurdity, (read: ridiculously incongruous or unreasonableness), of Church governance and awkward theology in this nascent 21st century. 

Augustine recollecting the angel's words, “Why seek the living among the dead?” -- might have been a converting impetus for him, but resonates today as a departing trope for the disaffected leaving the empty tomb of Jesus and empty seat of Peter for more reasonable, accepting, and compassionate spiritual environs.

That said, I agree with the template of acknowledging desolation, moving through new sensibility, and standing at the unknown but heuristic emergence of a self which is willing to incorporate the mystery, mysticism, and mindful awareness of what is coming to be unconcealed. 

The catch, and it is an important one, is that this emergence, this Christ-Minding and kenotic resignation might not need the ancient structure and archaic mindset of our hierarchical prelatry. 

A Trappist monk once said to me: “Cheer up, Bill, things are only going to get worse!” It was a generous koan he offered me from the depths of his cheerful contemplative realism.

Hence, the abandoning exodus of the faithful to other horizons, where similar experiences of desolation, revived sensibility, and prayerful emergence will, no doubt, recur. But the experience, tried and suffered, will be without the heavy burden of disappointment that is an unhearing institution -- a weight disturbing enough to extend the stations of the cross and innumerable fallings of the suffering servant beyond their typical end.

Still, I remain, poised and open, in the dark.

...

Birds in cedar tree snowy branches are audienced by Panta Rhea at window. Then she turns her attention to more immediate, accessible options.

As do we all.

Then, say it...

Ευχαριστώ!

It's the right thing to say.

Vatican vacancy; a long while

Now that Peter's seat is vacant, a recent New Yorker poem seems timely:

TAKING A WALK IN THE WOODS AFTER HAVING TAKEN

A WALK IN THE WOODS WITH YOU

Now I cannot not see

the blight everywhere

                                          (--Poem by Maureen N. McLane)

It is the pause, like Camus' Sisyphus as rock rolls downhill, and before beginning the shoving labor uphill again, it is the pause . . . wherein wonder arises.

Non habemus papam

Arrivederci Papa!

May what follows assist light in the world!

Being me what is not available

Young woman in Maryland has another spinal fusion. She is weary of her many surgeries.

Class cancelled tonight; snow, sleet, rain.

Physical fragility visits this front room. Cars barely make hill outside. Liquids.

The world becomes encrypted. No one knows the code. It is random, unstable, and with no extant key to unlock.

Welcome to technical being!

Would you like to sign in?

weary; traveling

Where we come from appears once we've been there.

Where we are going is sometimes scouted by members of our animal family.

We walk, appearing our presence, no trace of us before us, following tracks. 

Sometimes, there's no place to go.

Over-looking winter harbor on mount desert island

Being, says Heidegger, withdraws from us.

Technology makes things available to us.

Thinking looks to what is beyond us, beyond the graspable.

Thought captures what we know and, invariably, freezes it.

Poetry gives us, in words, what we cannot have. It creates a longing and insight, saying, "Look!" The trace of what is beyond it is intuited; the unnaming following loss enters silently. Uselessness, a sacrifice of words to unknowing nearness, twilights a fullness of holiness for each at hand.

Listening to Heidegger conversation.

Light, I am; of the world, compose a new way of being

Robert Lowell in his poem "Epilogue" wrote: "All's misalliance. / Yet why not say what happened?"

It's what Camus said of Sisyphus and what survivors say of war. The fatal casualties of war say nothing.

We have to find an earlier creative voice -- learn to become poets of life, and peace, and human service -- a preemptive sound antidote to the absurdity of war.

hay in field, hole in ground; moving through experience, seeing oneself here

We try to avoid what will accompany us through.

We are being conveyed and carried. It's ok not to know where we are going. It's good enough to realize we are here.

Epochs of great confusion and general uncertainty in a given world contain the slumbering, not-yet-manifest seeds of clarity and certainty. The manifestations of the aperspectival world... show that these seeds are already pressing toward realization. This means that we are approaching the "zenith" of confusion and are thus nearing the necessary breakthrough.
(--Jean Gebser, 1953; The Ever-Present Origin)

Driving as child with parents the roads before Catskills turning to Delaware River above Port Jervis, Shohola, Barryville, Callicoon. Hay fields through northern New Jersey ringed with wire fence or split rail. Cows loll afternoon laze near lone tree far from road.

Pastures in Brooklyn were different. Rusting iron with pointed tops circle brick building, trucks parked like civilian armory transports, empty weekend factories. Walls with squares, strike zone for stickball, fast pitching in white paint, 'Strike! You are out!' Stand ready.

I went heying in city streets. "Hey, Bobby! Hey Joey! Hey Geraldine!" To the schoolyard, sandlot, sewers in center of asphalt streets; punchball, touch football, bounce stickball. Our liturgy of experience!

Bundled papers bicycle delivery as cloth man's harnessed nag clopped down bay ridge avenue grandfather cupping Chesterfield at front green fence by maple tree.

Later great hole in wall led to walking out of church. Falling through hole in ground.

Walking into great whole as partial falls away. Feeling no partiality as awareness, plena gratia, embraces all, gazes with compassion. The whole watches you tumble with nothing to hold -- you fall, falling through all you think will buoy you up. Thought doesn't. Nor dogma. Neither constriction. Not anything -- but love seeing us through.

I loved the quiet of the unknown. Now I love the silence of unknowing.

All around are purveyors of certainty and security. They do not interest me.

From early years it has been the unseen unheard unexplainable presence without shape or form. No definition, no explanation, no reasonable proof moves my curiosity -- rather, magnetic dissonance turns me around, dizzying, looking up: unfathomable distance of enormous space; looking down: unquenchable delicious nearness of brown earth under white snow.

God is Being Itself.

Being seen through.

Are you yourself?

Am I myself?

Do we see God? Believe in God? Touch the wounds of each and every being? Thing? Idea? Experience?

Gaze and blink. It's all here, no matter what we think.

This snowy morning in Maine!

Think of the Via Crucis as entering and departing separation

I listen to lectures on Martin Heidegger while inputting numbers in bookshed all afternoon. In 1969 I studied with John Macquarrie on Being and Time at Union Theological in NYC. I was hooked then. Still being pulled aboard four decades later.

Dr. Macquarrie wrote about two dozen books. Reviewing one, “Paths in Spirituality,” for The New York Times Book Review in 1972, Nash K. Burger wrote that “unlike some modern theologians, John Macquarrie writes about God as though he believes in him.”
The God in which Dr. Macquarrie believed was Being itself, a definition that to him made it meaningless to suggest that God was dead or did not exist. In this, he adopted aspects of Heidegger’s search for the meaning of being, although he eschewed Heidegger’s pro-Nazi views.
Dr. Macquarrie wrote that all language about God was symbolic and not to be taken literally. But it must be taken seriously. To him, what separated believers from nonbelievers was that believers had experienced the revelation that the creation and its existence are good.

“Faith’s name for reality is God,” Dr. Macquarrie wrote in “Paths in Spirituality.”
(from obituary, "Rev. John Macquarrie, 87, Scottish Theologian, Dies,"), by Douglas Martin, published June 3, 2007, New York Times)

 God as Being itself. That must have been ground zero for theological preference and philosophical intuition.

I order another hardcover of Zein Und Zeit. Mine is boxed away somewhere. Besides, some kindred mind might wish to break on it someday.

It's not everyday the core of thought collapses at your feet.

Or the Open reveals itself as empty and promising project.

Would you like another? No thanks. Not even the one.

No one can help him. He's alone. There's no place for him to go.

I crossed seas and rivers, climbed mountains, and
Forded streams in order to interview the masters,
To inquire after Truth,
To delve into the secrets of Zen;
And ever since I was enabled to recognize the path.
I knew that birth and death are not
The things I have to be concerned with.
For walking is Zen,
Sitting is Zen,
Whether talking or remaining silent,
Whether moving or standing quiet,
The Essence itself is ever at ease;
Even when greeted with swords and spears,
It never loses its quiet way,
And all that befalls cannot perturb its serenity.
- Yoko Daishi

I knew a drunk who never stopped being a drunk. He's a sober drunk. He just got tired of lying.

Seeing myself doing what my self cannot see

Another you? In a parallel life, another you?

When the thinking mind takes a break for even a few seconds, a kind of relaxed awareness replaces the usual stream of thoughts. We need to encourage this and not fill this space with anything else; just let it be.
- Tsultrim Allione, "Feeding Your Demons"

It's not esoteric.

Only recognition there is awareness behind action, seemingly separate from it.

The act goes by.

You remain.

Without doing anything.

Just aware you are doing and not doing anything.

Tricky, eh?

When distance does not appear as measurement

Maggie dies.

Margaret Ray Eddy

December 17, 1920 - February 18, 2013 

Good journey Maggie! We have been so fond of your and Walt's many year participation in Poetry, Tea, and Thee at Quarry Hill. Your kindly spirit and keen listening gave the gatherings a deeper feel for the words everyone read. To Walt and the family: our gratitude for Maggie! Continue well in her memory!

Soon, a few feel, there will be no death.

I wonder.

Camden to Fort Kent to Presque Isle to Camden. Three days, 600 miles.

How far do you travel, dear Maggie?

Free the worms!

Glorious day in Fort Kent. We have to depart early for Presque Isle. Ten to twelve inches of snow will begin this evening.

I'm concerned for the worms.



Walking with Rokie earlier this morning at UMFK, this sign. I don't feel it is fair to worms that they cannot dig in the earth. The sign excludes no one else. They must have had difficulty with overachieving worms in the neighborhood. Another man-made rule.

I can see the worms carrying signs quoting Psalm 22:6, King James Version (KJV):

⁶ But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

No doubt, Obama had something to do with this. Get me the Republicans on the line. Just one more thing!

Where are you; going

Route 11 to Fort Kent. White out blowing snow across roadway. We walk campus for evening stroll.

In room we watch the debacle a decade ago leading up to Iraq war. Such a sad and distorting group of  bellicose prevaricators! It is astounding no one answers to war crimes.

Is awareness disappearing? Is opening presence the horizon? Will our ignorance be penetrated?

Father, Son, Spirit.

Mother, Daughter, Spirit.

Metaphors all.

Take us beyond ourselves!

A human being is the universe seeing itself.

Dark matter, the space scientist said, is like love.

At table someone quoted an astronomer saying that God is the boundary of the unknown.

Someday we'll learn about both.

Love; the unknown.

It is a very very huge canvas.

Step back; look carefully.

Curiosity skills our at...tempt bypassing death

The bald doctor feels he is healed even if the cure lags behind. It's the same phrasing a woman named Anita Moorjani uses to describe her return from near death coma and advanced cancer.

I listen to REM's "Everybody Hurts." I wonder how it is I'd never heard the song in the 20plus years it has been around. I send it to a young woman in Maryland coming through her second spinal surgery.

Bells chime in strong wind snow laden.

The futurist Kurzweil thinks he will live without dying. The cusp is at hand. Death thou shalt die.

I don't know.

Maggie is nearing death. We chanted a farewell yesterday to her worn and weary body. Her husband and two sons were in the room as we arrived and left. Walt is stricken. After 72 years together.

As curious as curious is
life is
just so
curious.

with only their faces showing

Statistics are faceless.

Here are faces that remind us life is personal.

Politics draws us away from human feeling.

Can you experience the feeling? The sorrow, the anger, the innocence, and the importance of paying attention?

Palestinian Funeral Shot Earns Award for Photographer                                               

Details Published on Friday, 15 February 2013 14:03

HENSEN'S WINNING PHOTO (COURTESY OF: AFP)

by Associated Press 

Swedish photographer Paul Hansen won the 2012 World Press Photo award Friday for newspaper Dagens Nyheter with a picture of two Palestinian children killed in an Israeli missile strike being carried to their funeral. 

The picture shows a group of men marching the dead bodies through a narrow street in Gaza. The victims, a brother and sister, are wrapped in white cloth with only their faces showing. 

"The strength of the pictures lies in the way it contrasts the anger and sorrow of the adults with the innocence of the children," said jury member Mayu Mohanna of Peru. "It's a picture I will not forget." 

Hansen's Nov. 20 shot won top prize in both the spot news single photograph category and the overall competition. It portrays 2-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and her 3-year-old brother Muhammad, who were killed when their house was destroyed by the Israeli attack. They are being carried by grieving uncles, as their father Fouad was also killed, and his body can be seen in the background of the picture. 

The children's mother, whose name was not provided, was in intensive care. 

"This prize is the highest honor you can get in the profession," Hansen told The Associated Press. "I'm very happy, but also very sad. The family lost two children and the mother is unconscious in a hospital." 

(from, Palestine News Network: http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/culture/3938-palestinian-funeral-shot-earns-award-for-photographer)

I'm trying to.

I feel it.

I can.

Je t'aime...

Love, they say, is what this day is about.

That's a nice thought.