cheers, sir

Fathers die

We remember

As best

We can

soon enuff

Let the days begin to shorten.

I’m ready for winter.

It’s Maine.

Summer is a chore for us.

Soon enough, snow.

Soon enough, war.

echad

hermit’s life 

lives alone 

present 

moment

the persian camel

Do we have any straw remaining? 

Bellicose rhetoric, hostilities, and escalation against Iran are leading reasonable people to step inside sanity’s barn door. 

What they see there, desolate and dangerously alone on America’s barn floor, the last straw.

no relief coming

Trump will not be president in January 2021. 

Why not? 

Because American voters, like a good hitter in baseball, will not be fooled twice by a change up slider. 

With only junk fastballs and tired predictable curveballs, his throwing arm has nothing but memory of a lucky pitch against a hobbled hitter two years ago, 

The bullpen remains seated. There’s no relief coming. 

Fans are heading for the exits. TV cuts to commercial. The juice is gone. 

The franchise is taking no more questions.

a pathless land

In passing, quotes from Jiddu Krishnamurti:

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Truth is something you cannot experience. It cannot be told to you, the word is not that. But if you live on words, it is that.

(~ J. krishnamurti)

Observing the question itself, there is no time.

Just watching, no thought, no time.

you cannot mention everything

Sun on new leaves.

Silence of the dead.

Bugbite on back of arm. 

“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life. But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made. Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.” 

(~ Anthony de Mello)

Mitch McConnell and the principle of one man running the legislative car into a tree.

Donald Trump and the absence of conscience.

Money.

China looking at the United States and wondering how to teach a toddler not to strike matches.

BECKETT ON THE EPHEMERAL “And if I failed to mention this detail in its proper place, it is because you cannot mention everything in its proper place, you must choose between the things not worth mentioning and those even less so. . . . And if all muck is the same muck that doesn’t matter, it’s good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another a little further on, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral.” 

(~ Beckett, Molloy)

Sometimes negative phrasing makes the wisdom more emphatic. Indeed we are forced to choose between “the things not worth mentioning and those even less so. . . .”A friend’s remark, “It’s only a poem,” which first made me want to strangle her, eventually became a life-saver.  

And the moment when I understood, truly understood, that we ARE ephemeral was life-changing. I was finally able to cease living for the future. It even became possible to feel happy 

(—oriana-poetry, blogspot)

The way time has no shape.

Or money has no idea why so many love it. 

When absurdity realizes no one recognizes it.

Or cares.

Two day old coffee is exactly what is wanted.

doing nothing, day after day

Reading Mosab Hassan Yousef’s Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices, written with the assistance of Ron Brackin, published in March 2010

He writes about time in prison.

The struggle with Israel.

The beatings.

Odd and hard choices.

The life there.

“God, the creator, show me the truth. I’m lost. I’m confused, And I don’t know which way to go.” (Mosab Hassan Yousef)

all around dying well

Sunday Evening Practice table reading led us to consider art, suffering, despair, and hope.  

Theater, opera and television director Peter Sellars, interviewed in 2004 for thePBS series The Question of God, had this to say: 

For me the 20th century was most profoundly witnessed by Simone Weil in the heart of France, during the Nazi occupation. And in the tradition of the women mystics — whether it's Hildegard of Bingen, or Theresa, right through our own period with Weil, women are the ones asking the question of — What are we really doing? Who is starving? What are the conditions of the workers all over the world? These are the proper questions for theology. These are the proper questions about how we are doing, as humanity. 

And it took a woman like Weil to say — I'm not just going to correspond with my colleagues in the philosophy department. I'm going out to this Renault factory, and I'm going to work on the assembly line. — Simone Weil trying to teach Plato in the Renault factories, in 1930s France. And it took a woman intellectual to say in 1943 — Yes, I'm living here in London. It's comfortable. There's enough food. But I will not eat one more bit of food than my fellow citizens are eating in the camps at this moment. — Recognizing that our fates are that intertwined. Recognizing there's no backstage and forestage. We're all one picture. 

That penetration, that courage, and that willingness to put the suffering of others into your own body, and experience it in your own body — that is a particularly feminine spirituality. And a spirituality that comes from cooking for people, caring for people. Being with the helpless, and helping. So the 21st century is about that — community building at the grassroots, setting aside our institutional thinking, and just starting to take care of each other much more attentively.  

You're very much an optimist. In the 21st century, what is going to cause a shift away from self-absorption? 

SELLARS: Despair. When people search and search, and feel empty and betrayed and hopeless, through their own vulnerability and desperation, they finally are broken.God is fond of a contrite spirit. And sometimes the only way to get past the ego is when it's finally, horribly, violently crushed. And you feel like nothing. And you can take your first honest steps. So, "optimism" is not the word I would use. I would say "hope."It's no accident that societies that have the most material advantage have the least hope. If you spend your life in parts of the world like Bangladesh, or central Africa, where people should not still be alive, how can they be alive one more day? It can't be possible. And yet, they're alive, again, today. That's about hope.

(--from, Peter Sellers,  The Question of God, Other Voices, PBS, 2004) 

I related a dream I'd had the prior night in which a man helped me look for something mislaid. He wes kind. It wasn't until hours after awaking it occurred to me who it was -- a man, Rob, who'd attended practice with us for a month or two. We received news of his death. We were saddened. It sounded like a despairing death. Few or no details. In the dream he looked good. Perhaps some added weight. When recognition came I was pleased. At table it was pointed out that it was around the anniversary of Rob's death. We were pleased with his visits then, and his visit now. Sorrow and joy.

So, with all that you believe, how do you deal with the loss of someone that you love? Or the pain, the grief, and the suffering of seeing friends ill. How do you deal with that pain?  

SELLARS: The great Muslim philosopher, al-Ghazzali, has a beautiful sentence in his book, The Alchemy of Happiness, where he describes pain and sickness as a chord of love by which God draws those closer to himself that he wants to be with. 

Sickness takes you out of the affairs of the world, out of all these petty things that you think are so important every day. And the pain itself sharpens your focus. I mean, it's very moving, because I think a lot of physicians in terminal wards are recognizing the limits of science. And that actually science, technology can't help you with a good death. What does it mean to die well? It's the science of the heart. And in the long view, the absence is as important as the presence. Who's still with us, really, and how we live for them still. 

You know, in most cultures, theater, dance, and music were never intended for the living. They were always for the dead. In Korea, in Africa, in aboriginal Australia, you danced for the spirits of the dead. To let them know you're still thinking of them, you still care about them, you still cherish them. And if they died in pain, if they died in unhappiness, if they died with something incomplete, or in the midst of injustice, you spend those years making it up to them. And letting them know that your life won't be in balance either, until it's made up for them.  

Most of the history of art, over and over again, is about death. We're a society that can't really deal with it, but most of Bach's music is about dying and how to die, and the meaning of death. The culture in Tibet is all around dying well. The science of the heart, in Central Asia, is totally understanding every day of your life in terms of death, because it's your meditation on death that empowers your life. As soon as you acknowledge that you may not be here five minutes from now, or five days from now, you ask yourself, "What is important to do?" Death is the best guarantee against wasting time.

(--Ibid) 

 Our lives are intertwined. We dance for one another. We dream each other into awareness of presence.

We practice this intertwining, dance, dream.

If there is hope, we love one another.

whispering

Yes

Change

God.

I’m gonna count to three.

One

Two...

(Three

is where

one and two

go to disappear)

Birdsong

whispers

numberless reality

One

Two

Three

Two

One

north

Yes!

us you near

Birthday Haiku 

            (for Saskia)

Earth knows when spring comes

Flowers break through edge of soil

Feeding beauty light

          /12june19

Thank you for your light to all of us you near!

With love,

R+P+C+B

may be enlightened

A professional basketball player hurts his leg. Commentators speculate how it will affect a four year 140 million contract.

A friend has been given three months to live. Over rhubarb pie and water he tells us the story of his life. His wife looks tired and sad.

Monks in France chant Lauds this feast of Barnabas.

It rains.

Everything matters.

Consequently, that brilliant lamp which was lit for the sake of our salvation should always shine in us. For we have the lamp of the heavenly commandment and spiritual grace, to which David referred: Your law is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Solomon also says this about it: For the command of the law is a lamp. 

Therefore, we must not hide this lamp of law and faith. Rather, we must set it up in the Church, as on a lamp-stand, for the salvation of many, so that we may enjoy the light of truth itself and all believers may be enlightened. 

Second reading, (From a treatise on the Gospel of Saint Matthew by Saint Chromatius, bishop. Office of Readings, Feast of St Barnabas, Apostle)

Nothing -- the place where no separate thing can be -- attends the light of truth itself.

In this solitude resides the sound of earth transforming itself.

As once and forever, what we call the incarnation, is transforming itself in never ceasing manifestation.

If itself is now what we've called God, let each being become itself by being nothing other than what is emerging through this creation.

Such is

the law, the dharma

a lamp guiding

through darkness

אֶשְׁכָּר — gift, present

If you are sitting by window, light breeze mixed with tire sound, bird song, beep from answering machine, breathing dog on rug with scattered seed husks from under feeder, weightless thought with eyesight scanning room, book titles that sit and wait for dust to be brushed off.

There is an unhurried inevitability. 

I am a visitor here.

There is no place I call my own other than reverie without purpose.

Japan and Argentina are nil-nil at end of women’s World Cup match. Auburn scores 13 runs in first inning over Carolina in college baseball. Judiciary committee gavels hearing into mueller report. Helicopter crashes into 7th Avenue Manhattan.

On hospice Saturday night I sit with woman who, at end of string of breath, does not drop it as cna’s moisten mouth and model hand washing leaving room.

Like the confluence of great rivers, our lives are a series of different moments, joining together to give the im- pression of one continuous flow. We move from cause to effect, event to event, one point to another, one state of existence to another—which gives an outward impression that our lives are one continuous and unified movement. In reality, they are not. The river of yes- terday is not the same as the river of today. It is like the sages say: “We can’t step into the same river twice.” 

Each moment is born and dies. And in a very real way, we are born and die with it. There is a beauty to all this impermanence. In Japan, people cele- brate the brief but abundant blooming   .of the cherry blossoms each spring. In Idaho, outside the cabin where I teach, blue flax flowers live for a single day. Why do such flowers appear so much more magnificent than plastic ones? The fragility, the brevity, and the uncertainty of their lives captivate us, invite us into beauty, wonder, and gratitude.
[...]
(Excerpt from: "The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully" by Frank Ostaseski)

It is Monday. Passing thought of trip to Canada has passed and gone. No desire to go anywhere. Put differently, where I am is enough. The stillness of every movement. The curious emptiness of any intention. Buddha on wood zabuton. Christ on bronze cross. Green on everything growing across mountain.

I am born and die in this quiet and radical revelation of ordinary reality.

Bicycle wizzes down barnestown road. 

If someone were to ask what to do in the face of sorrow, anger, or frustration — say, in the face of death and accompanying turmoil with family difficulties — I would not be much help. 

Daniel Berrigan, in Consequences, Truth And... wrote these words: “the point at which one can do nothing — the point of truth.”

I feel near that point.

Moreover, it feels like אֶשְׁכָּר (eshkar) — gift, present.

As if — the gift is present, the present is gift.

What we are...

For and with —

One another.

sunflower seed casings on back

Clink clink clink clink clink

Spoon against metal bowl —

Morning food for border collie 

manifesting what is interconnecting

When we say "Come Holy Spirit" we invite something unseen but in its being experienced.

In this being experienced, what we call the Holy Spirit is the unexplainable cooperative interrelationality that appears between one and the other in the moment of felt need and realized connection.

In essence, it is that which allows us to feel our being in the presence of other beings, a feeling relationality of well-being and gratitude in the midst of whatever is happening -- a trust that all is well and all shall be well.

It is hidden undifferentiated suchness coming to be where once we thought emptiness was impossible.

Here, today, emptiness reveals our true nature as one-another.

This, from introduction to todays feast from DivineOffice.org:

Last Sunday of the Easter Season, Pentecost, Solemnity 

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly, a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together…” [1]Acts 2:1-6 

Pentecost Sunday is one of the principal celebrations in the liturgical life of the Church. It marks the Descent of the Holy Spirit, the end of Eastertide, and it falls 50 days after the Resurrection of Our Lord. 

In ancient Jewish tradition, Pentecost was ‘the feast of weeks’ where Israelites offered ‘first fruits’ to God in thanksgiving of the full harvest which was to come. Also traditionally, Jewish Pentecost came to honor the day Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai. On that day, God spoke to His chosen race through Moses with thunder, lightning and trumpet blasts, guiding his people with the Law of the Ten Commandments. [2][3] 

Christian Pentecost, with the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, builds on the Old Law but brings new meaning to it. In this Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is trumpeted and the New Law is Great News; Christ has been crowned in Heaven and he desires for us to join Him. He gives us the birth of the Church and shows us how to be united in faith. Modeling Jesus Christ and aligning with God’s Spirit produces in us rich fruits including; “…charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity.” In these twelve Fruits of the Holy Spirit, we are shown how to live in union with God and with our brothers and sisters. [4][5][6] 

Written by Sarah Ciotti. https://divineoffice.org, 

 Let's get more fruits into our typical diet!

not going beyond

Looking into mirror
The narcissist
Seeing only himself

Is surprised
Mirror no longer
Shows anything

Outside itself

For narcissist
Reflection is lost
In flat surface

Forgetting
We are only what
Present abounds

Not fixed nor final

to hear ‘yes’

These are depressing times in the US. Mr Trump is erratic and untrustworthy in executive responsibility.. Mr McConnell is cynical and obstructive to legislative integrity. Republicans dismantle protections for the people in matters of health care, women’s autonomy, and electoral fairness. And Democrats are like a football team refusing to leave the huddle while endlessly deliberating the calculus of the next play.

Our president in Normandy was a robotic speech without anyone believable presenting the words.  We so long for inspirational and genuine representation on the world stage. Instead we see someone who fails to comprehend the play, the lines, the role, and the art of representational interior empathy.

I am neither optimistic nor joyful about our prospects to effectively serve either our own population’s needs or attend to the sorrows of the world. Where do we turn? And, more to the point, can we?

I would love to hear ‘yes’ — to say, ‘we can.’

room 2, 7:18

You might say she is

breathing

I rather think she is being

breathed

Spring leaves arriving

We both breathe

Our last breath —

This one, this one

Never certain

Another

To follow