s t o p -- (a way to go)

seeing

this,

our

practice

appreciatory, a heart condition

It is the orientation of heart that entices the mechanism of mind to rationalize justification for action. It is not conditioning of mind that influences heart.

We often see this wrong. We want to train the mind, thinking heart will follow.

Perhaps "right heart" will become the 9th addition to the eightfold path.

Stoney heart creates hard thinking action. Open hear creates complementary thoughtful action.

Have a heart -- let it be clear and flowing with appreciatory love!

Ora et labora

Loon cry across silence where dawn opens eye and birds shower song into stillness.

Wu Wei -- effortless awakening.

Father Benedict, founder (they say) of monasticism, find here a suitable community of fellow creatures praying reality into god, god into reality, heart/mind into integrity of place!

Pane, not pain

A saint, the book said, is someone who, like a window, let's light show through.

Holiness allows translucence. It need not be its cause. It allows.

Here's to windows, light, and effect.

Madre Mia

Night grows quiet.

Only one thing 

made him happy 

and now that 

it was gone 

everything 

made him happy. 

(--Leonard Cohen, "Leonard Koan")

Room is quiet.

A yawn.

Blessings of birth anniversary to you!

Kinhin

Walking meditation at corner of Tire Warehouse parking lot right angle of shade from two trees in Bangor for thirty minutes.

No waiting. Rather, walking.

Nothing to wait for. Only, this step, this step, pivot, turn, this step, this step.

As the title of the book says: Practicing Mortality

It is courageous to spend time consciously with someone dying.

It might be with someone other than yourself.

It might be with yourself.

It is time well spent.

Entering

Present

Feeling

Aware

Truly,

Alive.

acquainted with night

Something odd has taken center stage. Personal interest in any professional sport, any personal news about any celebrity, or direct or oblique reference to body size, body part, or who’s doing what with whom -- is not the least bit interesting.

Center stage is empty.

Emptiness.

Bodhidharma, the reading tonight said, didn’t go to China to bring zen or the Buddha. He went to find one person not deluded by people.

Since 6th century C.E. looking around for the non-deluded!

Good luck!

Have mercy Lord and hear my prayer

We cut broken tree by road.

READING Deuteronomy 6:4-7 

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today. Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest.  (--from Compline, Saturday night)

We pray for what and who needs praying for.

finding oneself within

How lovely the idea of shared responsibility for the world.

If this sounds like a lot of emotional tumult, it is. When we engage in a creativity recovery, we enter into a withdrawal process from life as we know it. Withdrawal is another way of saying detachment or nonattachment, which is emblematic of consistent work with any meditation practice.

We ourselves are the substance we withdraw to, not from, as we pull our overextended and misplaced creative energy back into our own core.

(--Julia Cameron, in The Artist's Way) 

How is it so few keep so many from it's realization? 

Friday the 4th

A woman we know writes from prison. She is not free today.

Mid afternoon prayer plays from ipad.

What we do is listen. To her. Our prayer.

HYMN 

Come and See, what I have done: I’ve given My only Son. He lived for you, and He died for you.Come and See. 

Lamb of God, Lamb of God, have mercy on us, forgive us, Lord. 

Come and See, what I have done: I’ve given My only Son.He lived for you, and He died for you.Come and See. 

Creator of Love, source of all life, have mercy on us, forgive us Lord.Come and See, what I have done: I’ve given My only Son.He lived for you, and He died for you.Come and See. 

“Pieta” by Melinda Kirigin-Voss; The Pietà (pl. same; Italian for pity) is a subject in Christian art depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, most often found in sculpture.

thanks, Chris

Let’s say we were going to contemplate listening.

 No Going Back 

No, no, there is no going back. 

Less and less you are 

that possibility you were. 

More and more you have become 

those lives and deaths 

that have belonged to you. 

You have become a sort of grave 

containing much that was 

and is no more in time, beloved 

then, now, and always. 

And so you have become a sort of tree 

standing over a grave. 

Now more than ever you can be 

generous toward each day 

that comes, young, to disappear 

forever, and yet remain 

unaging in the mind. 

Every day you have less reason 

not to give yourself away. 

                     (~poem by Wendell Berry)

Listening is good communication.

It’s not what you say --

it’s what you are listening

to

as.

Apologies to Shakespeare & Steinbeck

This is the summer of our dissing Cheney.

One prayer

Hear me now.

( Says God.)

Now hear me.

(Say we each.)

believe half of what you read, and nothing of what you see

EXPLANATION, (a spin haiku for Snow Bowl)

it’s not so bad, look

over there -- even hay strands

tap, tap, tap -- let’s dance 

Yes, and it probably always will be so; for now

Let's not call it hiding. Let's say it is climbing ladder in chapel zendo to loft, opening glass window to screen, and sitting in white cushioned metal chair looking out to trees shading hermitage path.

A light breeze rustles still soft leaves. Old stone wall hasn't moved in decades. Young slender maple alongside cabin stretches itself in early evening new summer warmth.

In prison this morning we spoke of Westman's Structure of Biblical Myths, and Hazony's The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture. Two wonderfully skeptical and agnostic men in prison continually surprise themselves with their observations and insights about the things they read and the discussions we have. Saskia brings vital participation. 

Prison is prison. We do our best to listen through it.

Mosquito bobs against screen looking for flaw to penetrate.

Lori and Mark spend three nights. They are sweet kids (if at their third and fourth decades they can be called kids!) They visit their aging uncle and are good sports in the presence of idiosyncratic spirituality and dozing crankiness. They eat lobster. I go to bed.

Saskia says that one of the women in our yurt colloquium mentioned how grateful she was (as an atheist) that meetingbrook has never once attempted to convert her all the years she's known us. I wonder what we'd try to convert anyone to. We are a certain distance away from any particular belief, a nodding acquaintance with every sincere attempt or abject indifference to find meaning in systems that need rubbing oil and dust cloth to have them appear out of the obscurity they've become.

Charlie nailed it with what will become a new blessing in prison this morning. He says, "Fuck it; It is what it is!" I suspect, yes, and it probably always will be so; for now.

I imagine this phrasing will take its place next to the “God bless you's" favored by the believing folks there. It has all the characteristics of detachment, acceptance, and clear sight so important to a meeting of the esoteric and exoteric traditions.

The day ebbs.

Birds begin evening antiphons.

No matter what part is wrong, it's all right!

Flow flow flow and float eventually damn the stream

The snow bowl closes barn door now that horses are gone. Silt in brook. Silt in pond. Silt like lava flow down our path.

Shame that it all went downhill.

This is a badly mixed metaphor.

It's time

Wallace's Infinite Jest is on the 4th shelf down behind standing lamp. I get to see it because I'm sitting on futon opposite wood stove. I could begin it. But not tonight. There are visitors. They put lobsters in a pot. The white dog searches for green ball. I sip water. It is Saturday. Soon I can go to bed.

Live hope, love hope; not for something else -- for itself

The phrase from my sidewalk days, "Cross your heart, hope to die!" takes on new meaning.

The heart is holy.

Stay within it: everything, everyone, dwells in that within.

If hope dies, become its resurrection.

It is the feast of sacred heart(s).

What's left us

I was going to comment on the state of the state, the federal government, the world international situation, and the question of whether anything precedes or follows this existence in the realm of time.

But I think not.

Old friends, memory brushes the same years / Silently sharing the same fears / Time it was and what a time it was, it was / A time of innocence, a time of confidences / Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph / Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you  (--from, Old Friends + Bookends - by Simon and Garfunkel.  Lyrics by Paul Simon)

I'd rather contemplate old friends.

And friends as yet unknown.

Something more sane.

Not so crazy as the world becomes.