remembering cape breton

Celtic Colours

Was lovely streamed

These last nine nights

metanoia

 Love is

Not what

You think;

It is

What you are

Completely 

Beyond

Thought

looking after

 Inmate sends email 

yesterday morning

“are you coming in?

no, we weren’t.

“no worries, get well” 

our prison friends

keep tabs on us

the incapacitated

looked after

by the incarcerated

aegrotare non iam idem est atque olim

 they used to say

only when you’re sick

of being sick

will you no longer 

be sick

now I say

that’s not true

only when you’re sick

of being sick

will sickness continue

until you give up

turn to stairs

go up to bed

turn on heating pad

and fall asleep

shikantaza. (只管打坐)

 I am

Awareness

Attending to

Itself

mb

 Of course I’m not going to buy an MB baseball hat just because it could stand for Meeting Brook.

The Milwaukee Brewers and everyone else would see right through my self-serving patronage.

an awful truth

 Children are murdered

In Gaza

In Ukraine

In Bend, Oregon 

I’m not sure

We care

Repeat, I’m not

Sure we care

missing everybody, feeling everything

Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was one determined woman. Today is her feast day.

1. Teresa of Ávila, religious name Teresa of Jesus, was a Carmelite nun, prominent Spanish mystic and spiritual reformer. Active during the Counter-Reformation, Teresa became the central figure of a movement of spiritual and monastic renewal, reforming the Carmelite orders of both women and men. Wikipedia 
2. Of all the movements in the Carmelite order, by far the most important and far-reaching in its results was the reform initiated by St. Teresa of Ávila. After nearly 30 years in a Carmelite convent, she founded in 1562 a small convent in Ávila, Spain, wherein a stricter way of life was to be observed. Teresa’s order became the order of Discalced Carmelites (O.D.C.). In spite of opposition and difficulties of many kinds, St. Teresa succeeded in establishing not only convents but also, with the cooperation of Juan de Yepes (later St. John of the Cross), a number of friaries that followed this stricter observance. The aim of the reform was to restore and emphasize the austerity and contemplative character of primitive Carmelite life. Because Reformed Carmelites wore sandals in place of shoes and stockings, they came to be called the Discalced, or barefooted, Carmelites, to distinguish them from the older branch of the order. In 1580 the reformed monasteries were made a separate province under the prior general of the order, and in 1593 this province became by papal act an independent order.    https://www.britannica.com/topic/Carmelites

      3.

• Target of the Spanish Inquisition: In 1574, a court of the Spanish Inquisition investigated her mystical visions, ecstasies, and supposed levitations, though she managed to escape formal condemnation.      (Faith+Lead) 
• First Female Doctor of the Church: Because of her deep spiritual writings—including The Interior Castle, The Way of Perfection, and her autobiography—Pope Paul VI named her a Doctor of the Church in 1970, making her one of the first women to receive the title.        (Britannica)
• A Keen Sense of Humor: Known for her grounded wit, she once complained to God about a muddy, rain-drenched journey, saying, "If this is how you treat your friends, Lord, it's no wonder you have so few”.
• An Eclectic Patron Saint: She is the patroness of Spain, chess players, lace makers, people suffering from headaches, and those ridiculed for their piety       (Christianity.com)

The history of religious men and women contains significant names and attempts to counteract the somnambulance of professing individuals seeking their once sincere attempts to enter a realm of dedication and fidelity to their spiritual conscience and public exemplifcation. Their fates and treatment by peers were often harsh and cruel. 

It’s an odd occupation to attempt to achieve some sort of integrity and fidelity to the practice of spirituality in a publicly declared, albeit, cloistered way.

These days, it seems a contrarian methodology might be in order:

• profess nothing
• be what you would profess
• tell nobody anything you are doing
• be what you are doing

In our contemporary ecclesiality and religious intentionality, silence and invisibility might be the braver behavior. Not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing could be the aphasic prayer and good work of the suppliant novice of piety and mendicancy.

Do you remain connected if you remain silent?

Do you belong if no one knows that you are there and what you are doing?

What was the last line of “The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger?

    "Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." [1]

lux et tenebrae

 light

at night

doesn’t go

out

it goes

within 

rests in

dark

while

what is

to be seen

composes itself

small accomplishment in such a small place

 Someone has taken my energy. Walking out barn with Ensô’s morning gruel, placing it on ground, bowing to him, I walk down to close gate by road. Something snatches my energy and each step feels like a meander at edge of cliff in a time of mudslide. I count my steps back up dooryard so that I might remember what number I was at when the tumbling slide off into free-fall might draw me down.

It’s like that these days. We have no ring bell on barn door so it’s hard to figure who or what is clubbing me with fatigue as I pass through the cluttered narrow pass-way into autumn sunshine after forty eight hours of rain. The new gutter atop barn roof seems to work nicely. 

I’ve been thinking about assisted  (so-called) suicide. The excellent medical staff doing somersaults arranging ct scans, specialized chemo medication, and taking more blood than I have, are not yet aware I might ask their approval of such a desire. It is a consideration especially after a bad night when I’m sure I died but woke up astounded the distress and turmoil within had subsided and I was looking out at the faint grey of civil dawn.

I hear the Pope has lung cancer. We wish him well. The other hermitage dweller here has begun the process of placing her sailboat on the hard after a long season of sails taking cancer sufferers, survivors, their families, their caregivers on Respite Sails into Penobscot Bay, her islands and shorelines. She also twice took resident-inmates and correction officer off into the wind and sun. She and her wonderfully accessible volunteer crew made the season a joy and highlight for so many.

I’m uncertain how far I wish to push through these sloughing and energy-less days. My steps up Ragged Mountain have resigned and turned back to clear out their desk and headed for the elevator banks sixty three years ago in that tall insurance building where i'd probably have retired as a company vice president were it not for the insanity of attraction to seraphic vows and simple attentiveness to the contemplation and action engaging to world, reality, and soul of each being therein at an early age.

For meetingbrook, some thirty years later, poverty, chastity, and obedience morphed the early nineties into contemplation, conversation, and correspondence -- promises renewed yearly on the anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death.

Looking back I see how absurd my life has been. Perhaps how absurd most our lives have been. The pretense of planning and control, the well-meaning attempts at betterment and improvement, the late realization that we are vassals of the rich and powerful who take what they want, the corporations and the state, compelling the rest of us to do their bidding.

And now, the obscene behavior of the president, congress, and Supreme Court stripping power from the people and abjuring democracy, all laws, and the people. It is now corruption, greed, and delusional intent that hovers over the land. There is precious little the people can do in response. “Vote” we’re told, "that’s the power.” While the conspiring collaborators of chaos make plans to subvert and invalidate votes the people look to the knowledgable few who see the perversion, talk about it, and seem equally powerless to thwart it.

Planet earth is such a small place. The learning and technology, the art and poetry, the joyful celebrations of life and the aspirations of enlightened awakening are small accomplishment in such a small place.

Earth is a tiny speck compared to the vastness of the cosmos, where the scale shifts from thousands of kilometers to billions of light-years. [1]

Earth vs. The Solar System

• Earth's Size: Earth has a diameter of about 12,742 kilometers (7,900 miles).
• Gas Giants: Over 1,300 Earths could fit inside Jupiter, and about 63 Earths could fit inside Uranus.
• The Sun: The Sun is about 109 times wider than Earth, and more than 1.3 million Earths could fit inside its volume. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Earth vs. The Milky Way Galaxy

• The Solar System: The Solar System spans roughly 2 light-years across.
• The Milky Way: The Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 to 125,000 light-years across and contains roughly 400 billion stars.
• The Analogy: Comparing Earth to the Milky Way is like comparing a single grain of sand to an entire continent. [1, 2, 3]

Earth vs. The Observable Universe

• Larger Structures: Moving outward, the Local Group of galaxies is 10 million light-years across, and the Virgo Supercluster spans 110 million light-years. [1]
• Observable Universe: The observable universe has a diameter of about 93 billion light-years and contains an estimated 2 trillion galaxies and 30 billion trillion stars. [1, 2]
• Scale Analogy: If the entire observable universe were scaled down to the size of the United States, the Milky Way would be the size of a car, the solar system would be the size of a virus, and Earth would be smaller than an atom. [1]
• search

Yet, our human psychology has such grand inflation, and certain individuals among us have perhaps figured out there is nothing beyond this obscure and pathetic existence with all its creation stories, origin myths, religious metaphors and personal ambition. They say “Grab it now, forget everyone else, we are the chosen ones, try and stop us!” Are we missing something?

I suspect at least I am missing something.

Is there something here?

Something beautiful and inspirational?

But mostly beyond us?

Beyond what we call either material or spiritual existence -- categories we’ve settled on in our ontological and metaphysical thinking.

Panta Rhea, the cat, wakes, grooms herself on chair opposite mine, eyes half closed, turns, glances at wind, blowing leaves, rain and trees outside porch, decides there’s nothing she can do about them, then settles in for another temporary oblivion.

Is there, in this idiorhythmic temporary oblivion, something (someone) watching us watching one another with grace and understanding, praying with us our daily longing to inhabit and comprehend our belonging?

Prosit!

rêve

 I

Still

Do not

Know

How

To pray

no grasping

 It’s hard to save the world

When your world in collapsing

Or what’s a haven for

condenando toda a superstição religiosa

 Spinoza (1632-1677) was right.

The main philosophy of Baruch Spinoza is pantheism and rationalism, famously summarized by his Latin phrase Deus sive Natura ("God or Nature"), meaning that God and the physical universe are one and the same single, infinite substance.  

Metaphysics. Spinoza writes in Part I that only one substance is absolutely infinite, eternal, and self-caused (causa sui): "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature"). The whole of the universe therefore consists of one substance (God, or, what is the same, Nature) in an example of substance monism. Spinoza's entire mature philosophy, including his views on the mind, knowledge (epistemology), psychology, ethics, politics, and religion, unfolds from this metaphysics.^{[133]. wikipedia}

The enormity, the silence, and the undifferentiated suchness -- of nature, creation, God -- leads me to a prayer that incorporates everything, from within, as it is, as a longing that what is true and good would attract us more than lies and evil.

And when I die, there I am, nowhere, within it all.

kein verständnis, diese worte

 I think I died

Through the night

Suddenly a cool breeze

I can breathe again

Surely some revelation

Is at hand

This surprise

I’d given up

No understanding

These words

now

 This

Is it

Thanks

And love

such large numbers

 The observable universe contains an estimated 2 trillion galaxies and roughly \(10^{22}\) to \(10^{24}\) (10 sextillion to 1 septillion) stars. [1, 2]

And yet, and yet …

Such exquisite and unexplainable silence!

o canada, bonne fête

used to be

we’d be in Cape Breton

for Celtic Colours

on Canadian Thanksgiving

a week of fiddles reels step

dancing glowing hills 

and the overall loveliness of

Canada and her people

this year we stream the concerts

once was is always

I no longer travel

but I am there -- the hikes

tenting, campfires drives around 

island, the lure to live there --

these days, the refuge

l'ultimo turno di guardia ha termine

 comes midnight

this day prepares

for eight bells

someone will replace you

give your watch away

go to your bunk

below deck, wellies

off, feet under covers

giving up, going under

noise and smoke

They walk passed gate. I hear them. I cannot see them.

Words. 

Words cannot express things;
Speech does not convey the spirit.
Swayed by words, one is lost;
Blocked by phrases, one is bewildered.

Mumon

They don’t look in. They don’t see me. There don’t know I’m there.

Words.

The voices walking road by gate do not know I am listening for the few seconds of their pilgrimage.

Words

They pass me by. I cannot grasp them. 

Rien.

ciò che segue il sonno

 Nothing feels right

Let’s try sleep

And if not sleep —

I don’t know what