awakening from a dream

 The pattern is the same — pull up covers, sleep, dream, awake to pee, sip some water, pull up covers, sleep, repeat through night.

It’s the dream part that this morning catches my attention. Who went there? Where was there? Fading away what there was there? Sunlight through leaves still holding on after yesterday’s wind.

Friends lay yellow in dooryard. 

Yearning for friends in my rocky cave,

I am captivated by the singing of small birds;

The wind entering deep into the grotto

Mingles with the voice of the stream.

Awakening from a dream,

This hermit exists beyond the world.

A quiet life, off by myself,

Fulfills my spirit.

—Fugai Ekun (1568-1654)

Spirit, a quiet life, off by itself, awakening from a dream.

More and more, it seems to me, what I have naively called ‘me’ is a fluctuating pattern of dreams arising and departing in unfathomable traverse across and through a thin string of awareness untied at both ends. 

Yes, the belt buckle feels solid, the tomato soup creamy, the tonic water cold. The checking account is functionable, the registration sticker is placed on lower right of NOW plate on pickup, night was dark last night, new asphalt roof settles in.

It seems I might be merely passing awareness flowing in and out of physical materiality swirling across an arising landscape twirling October with all its stories of angels and saints, Celtic music in Cape Breton, crossword and wordle, doctor’s appointments and calendar erasures interrupted by naps, blankets, peeing, and the periodic respite of something poetry-like.

All of it…nothing of substance.

All of it…something accidental.

(Thales and Anaximander, Parmenides and Heraclitus, Aristotle and Plato, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre.)

Each of them philosophical fiction writers sorting words into puzzles side by side yielding fantasies of thought encircling our longing for pattern.

Buddha and Lao Tzu, Jesus and Paul, Mohammed and Ibn Arabi, Francis and Clare, Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh — depatterning assembled thought into this and this encounter.

Until…I am what is appearing and departing.

A dream that pees and finally takes mercy on the skulking mewing hungry cats this lovely pattern of October morning.

the real meaning of terminal

 Departing?

Arriving?

Neither

Morning is here

Once you are here

There

Is no place to go

avec grand plaisir

 St. Bruno (1030-1101) founder

Of Carthusians, the grand silence

Tonight here in this room, each thing

Articulating God wordlessly 

With great pleasure

going nowhere, doing nothing, just here

 Ah, heating pad on back,

Small respites, small moments —

How lovely to be here

weathering well

 Thunder rolls off west

Monday afternoon — friend

Notes bell — joying back trail

At prison this morning

We are played portfolio

Songs written for Berklee degree

There’s no need for anything

Other than listening to one-another’s 

unknown becoming known

respeculative respecification; revising

 Morning

Shows up

God

Looks through

These words

Sees

You

Looking

If you

Long to

See God

Speculate

Unsounding words

recollection, going forward

 at end of day

one thing matters

one day nothing

will matter

if you understand

it is end of day

origin has a source

 Francis was going blind at end of life

Like Kwan Yin he especially heard the cries of suffering in the world.

Vibrating within

The ear are many voices

But their origin

Has a source which may be called

The sound of no sound.

—Takuan (1573-1645)

No-sound is the mind of creation deeply listening to creation.

Mere presence.

Without anything else.

creation, yes; characterless creature, no

 Rare

Simplicity

Cannot

Imagine

False

Character

Holiness can

Only hear

Twisting

Leaf falling 

Yellow from

 Top branch

chapel/zendo 4oct26

 

morning what is nicely passing

 Forgive me my solitude

It’s all I have and nothing

Sunlight through trees

Cool air through window

I will go out to sit 

with yellow leaves

Keep watching with mountain, 

pray for the passing everything

It is Francis Day

The earth his bible

Each leaf a breath

Reading what is near

retell it in words and in touch

Saint Francis and the Sow 

 

Galway Kinnell

1927 – 2014

 

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don't flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

 

From A New Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell, published by Houghton Mifflin; copyright © 2000 by Galway Kinnell.

it’s only polite

 If death

Wanders by

Tonight

Tell him

There’s

Chocolate milk

In fridge

It’s his

If he wishes

hola, buen trabajo, amigos

Ecuadorians shingle roof

put new gutter on front of barn

move ladders, play music, 

do fine work for the elderly

who don't climb ladders,  

point chimneys, seal skylights

amicitia praeterita

 thing about friendship is

it slows and fades into

what once was, not now

Gibran wrote “your needs 

answered” and left it at that --

no need to answer, no longer

ad usam

 As a Franciscan

I am not able to

Own what belongs

To Itself

eight hundred years ago tonight

 The premise is Jesus

Someone beyond creation

Becoming creation itself

Then Francis, realizing

Creation, embodying and

Mirroring, imaging itself

The insane replication

Looking into, as, looking

Through What Is Itself

of a sudden

 When I didn’t fall unconscious eating

I was reminded of past anesthesias

The dropping off the edge into oblivion —

It makes me wonder, this near drop off

nor could i

 Did you ?

No, you?

port tack

 She looked out over gunnel 

At years before, her son, his

Suicide, the rolling waves

to light and guide

message and 

messanger

what are we

being told

listen, can we

listen, just there

something said

an inference

we are being

spoken to

(lovingly)

our name kissed

saints anges gardiens

 If you believe

Even if you don’t

There’s a good possibility

You have a guardian angel

Whatever they are

Accompanying you

Throughout your life

Like a leaf tumbling

Between high branch

And solid ground  —

October’s fated visual

We say “how lovely”

No encumbrance

Nothing untoward

Just that gasp of breath

When something lovely lands

proportion

 I see no one I know

I know no one I see —

And no one sees/knows me

coming out into open

 bunch of angels huddle

hands rise up “let’s go”

run out to field to city street

sidle up their guardianship

glance around ease to side

begin their watch for good

changing watch on deck

September runs out of hours

October unzips duffle bag --

shirts and sweaters on wood hangers

first hours first day of tenth month

aged accounting

 this drops that drops

it all begins to fall away --

adding nothing to

little flower

simplicity, they say

shows through what is 

merely true

no cynicism

this young woman

loved life and lord

prairie fence

 One by one

They fade and fly

Across the edge of caring

What was the name

The way they spoke

What once was the connection

i’ll have another, sir

 Light breeze

Over Buddha’s shoulder

In window

Stomach grips and clutches

Each simple breath

This end of September 

eremita monachusque litteratus

Hermit monk scholar Jerome (c.342-420) is usually depicted in one of two settings — scholarly monk in his study, or hermit in the desert. He translated the Bible into Latin, the Vulgate.

Antonello da Messina’s St Jerome in His Study, painted around 1475, is a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance art

https://christian.art/daily-gospel-reading/matthew-13-47-52-2026/

yes

 If there be angels

Let there be angels

Swift to good these times

reminded again

 Republican senators

Questioning special counsel

Jack Smith

Indistinguish themselves

Reminding us of

Our misfortune with them

seulement

 Pain is only pain

Rain only rain

God is only God

truth only truth

If you and I were wise

We’d live and love the only

after long drought

 Lovely rain

Mountain sings

Water

Tumbling stones

this from hugh curran today

Dear Friend,

I thought this article might be of interest to you. Please feel free to email a response.

Hugh

On the Implications of Truth and Untruth by Hugh J. Curran (pub in "Informed Comment"; "Countercurrents" 9/27/26 

 

In classical Greek, opinion is referred to as “doxa” with a clear distinction between doxa and truth (Alethia). We have a President in the U.S. who gives daily information by way of a news program called “Truth Social”. “Truth”, to him, seems to be transactional, expressed in his assertions that Canada become the 51st state, with additional threats against Greenland, But his “truth” is, in reality, opinion (Doxa), in which his assertions are all too often misleading. 

 

Being misled is the essence of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave which tells a story of people shackled in a cave facing a wall, watching images projected in front of them. Their reality is based on these flickering images, and their comprehension based on opinions(doxa) shared with each other. When one of the shackled decides to free himself he emerges into the light of the sun and realizes that he had been seeing only images, not reality itself. In this allegory, the Sun is a metaphor for Truth and Knowledge. 

 

Mark Twain’s humorous phrase: “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” illustrates how we are easily deceived, even by numbers, which can give a false appearance of objective information. Twain also notes that “Truth is the most valuable thing we have.” The Irish philosopher Edmund Burke used the phrase: “economy of truth”, meaning “prudent management”, while others shifted the phrase to: “being economical with the truth”, implying deliberate untruthfulness. 

 

A Hebrew proverb states “the Truth is a heavy burden that few are willing to carry”. Mahatma Gandhi defined Truth (Satya) as awakening to a deeper reality. To Gandhi “God is Truth and Truth is God”, meaning Truth is the foundational reality behind existence while relative truth is dependent upon conventional views and opinions. 

 

Relative truths are expressed in the story of the “River Lethe” in Greek mythology which portrays souls drinking its waters to forget memories of their mortal life. Yet when the letter “A” “is added  “Lethe” becomes “Alethe”, an active process of awakening to truth. 

 

Christian theology defines Truth as a dependable reality and Christ as the ultimate embodiment of Truth, contrasted with self-deception, and spiritual blindness. 

 

Other religions are equally devoted to awakening to Truth. In Buddhism it centers on the practical realities of human existence and liberation, by way of the Four Noble Truths and the Path out of suffering, as well as the doctrine of the Two Truths (absolute Truth (paramartha satya) and relative truth (samvriti satya) 

 

In Islam Muhammad was known as Al-Sadiq (The Truthful) and Al-Amin (The Trustworthy). The Quran urges believers to align themselves with the truthful and stand firmly for justice, even if it goes against personal interests. Hadiths (traditions of the Prophet) teach that truthfulness guides a person toward righteousness, whereas lying leads to moral decay and hypocrisy. 

 

How do these definitions of Truth relate to wars in Iran, Israel and the Ukraine? The oft-repeated phrase that “the first casualty of war is truth” is reflected in the conflicts that are currently afflicting us. Like many conflicts they are emotionally driven with rationalized justifications, and a compulsive need to demonize and dehumanize adversaries. 

 

There is a medieval Welsh legend illustrating truth-telling. It involves Lludd and Llefelys, brothers ruling Wales and France. Three plagues by malicious forces menaced their kingdoms, which were guided by demons capable of overhearing conversations taking place anywhere. The brothers agreed to meet in the middle of the channel to discuss how to handle the plagues, so they constructed a long brass horn so as to communicate without being overheard. But the demons infiltrated the horn and distorted their words so that only hateful, hostile insults could be heard.  Llefelys then poured a medicinal wine into the brass horn to cleanse it so that the virtue of the wine flushed out the demons. At that point the brothers were able to communicate without deceptive speech and made plans to save their kingdoms from the plagues. 

 

Miscommunication often results in bitter conflicts, especially those taking place in the Middle East as misunderstandings continue to be fomented. The U.S. has deliberately aligned itself with the government of Israel’s policies, which is intent on expanding a Jewish homeland to be carved out of traditional Palestinian territory. Although both sides accuse each other of bad faith and malign intent, a few Israeli scholars have taken the side of Palestinians, Ilan Pappe, a well-known example who has written a widely read book: “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. 

 

As Pappe notes, political bias obscures Truth-telling, making it difficult to discern deeper realities from falsehood. The demons of misunderstanding proliferate, especially since ownership of the land is the most central concern with both sides resorting to historical narratives to prove their claims. Palestinians state that for many centuries they have had continuous habitation and ancestral presence in the region. The Israeli side looks to biblical narratives to support their claims, although it must be said that, although scholars acknowledge the spiritual and inspirational  value of biblical scripture, they do not consider biblical history to be a true measure of accurate history. 

 

There is a similar misunderstanding in the Ukrainian-Russian debacle. Ukrainians insist they have been in possession of the land for over a millennium and have a distinctly different history than Russia. Professor Timothy Snyder, an historian, has taught courses concerning the “Makings of Modern Ukraine” and supports the Ukrainian interpretation of history. In this account, Swedish Vikings (known as Varangians or Rus) arrived in Kiev by river routes in 800 CE for the purpose of trading. Oleg of Novgorod, also a Swedish Varangian, in 882 CE captured Kiev and established Kievan Rus. Ukrainians consider this to be the origin of Ukraine, but in the Ukrainian view it maintained its independence of Russia and sustained itself as separate from Russia by its more than two hundred year connection to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the same time a Ukrainian culture and language evolved while the Orthodox churches of Moscow and Kiev developed separately. 

 

According to the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, Ukrainians were a former province of Russia and their lineage is traced to Kiev, the “mother of all Russian cities”. He uses the Kievan Rus’ origin story to insist that Ukrainian sovereignty is fictitious, and that modern Ukraine was carved out by Soviet leaders, although Ukrainian historians, such as Dr Björn Alexander Düben, insist that Ukraine has been through most of its history, independent of Russia. 

 

Truthfulness about the origins of a nation are often obscured by a need to create a narrative to justify possession. When Doxa (relative truth/opinion) is insisted upon, it looks for a coherent theory to correspond to whatever fits into one particular group’s narrative. Yet Truth, on a deeper level, is a search for fairness, clarity and freedom from obscurities. 

 

In Israel, scholars and archaeologists consider the biblical narrative to be an allegorical and spiritual text and not an historical document. Yet the leaders of Israel interpret the biblical narrative to justify expropriating land from Palestinians who have lived there for at least1500 years. Western powers have been supplying weapons used to devastate Gaza, resulting in the slaughter of at least 20,000 children and 55,000 adults by bombing Gaza’s residences, schools and hospitals into rubble. The complicity has been unconscionable, even to the point of allowing the extremist Israeli leadership to label indigenous Palestinians as terrorists, especially when they resort to protecting themselves against massacres. 

 

Eventually, the horrific nature of the mass killings being perpetrated in Gaza will need to be confronted by Western nations. Israeli historians, including Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe,  the Canadian scholar, Yakov Rabkin, as well as holocaust and Genocide scholars such as Omer Bartov are making their research available to a wider audience. In this way the enormity of what has taken place will have to be faced by those who were complicit, including the governments of the U.S, UK, and the EU which have helped provide the weapons of destruction. Their studied indifference to the moral wrongs perpetrated upon the indigenous people of Gaza and Palestine will eventually necessitate a powerful reckoning. 

 

Omer Bartov has noted that the moral burden that conscientious Germans have carried for 80 years as a result of the Holocaust, will also have to be shouldered by  western powers, due to their complicity in the slaughter of innocents in Gaza, many still buried under the rubble. 

 

Hugh Curran has been teaching courses on Peace & Reconciliation at the University  Maine for 25 years.

deciding mortality

 Word says

Spell me

Walks in

Silence

Saying

Nothing

yes I hear the rain

 Heat on back

Old electric pad

This rainy night

It is a time

Of tightness and 

discomfort

Two nitro pills 

from ten years ago

Do nothing

ne personne

 No

I am not

 Chronicling 

My death

There are

No words

For

That

sitting across

from dusky

mountain

one bird

comes out

from cedar

pecks ground

flies off as

light rain 

begins

if I am having 

a heart attack

I will have walked

up and down

driveway

four times

noon prayer

 Ambulance

Passes

Lights and

Siren

Up hill to

Hope

Perhaps some

Will be found

άγιος

       (For Robert Lax)

Dying twenty six

Years ago today

You probably 

Forgot to

Leave milk

For the cat

By your

Unlocked door

On 

Patmos

My saint

Friend

combing

 sleep

at times

elides night

passes through

into

wakeful watch

schooner

offshore

beating 

down to east

dawn breaking

thin greyblue

sky-sea

mid watch 

that hoary

horizon

where sea-burial

ghosts

take a moment

to look around

catching your eye

a swell returning

to itself out

beyond buoy

renaissance

reminiscing

what never

could be grasped

starboard tack

what happens

between launch

and beaching

the dry withered

timbers

one’s life

eight bells 

correction unneeded

 lobby officer

said it was

10:52 as I took

pen to sign-out page

and it was, I

suspect, I wrote 

10:52 in last column,

I didn’t check, just 

said thanks

that was it

just breathing through

 it’s just pain

nothing else

there it is

just pain

it comes it goes

just pain

nothing else

do you understand

prolambanein (προλαμβάνω)

Talked about sleep paralysis and dreams in prison today. And what, if anything, comes of life after death without our familiar physicality.

Corrections commissioner, in his last week, gives big wave and smile walking by windows to our room.

There’s a proleptic quality of dreams. 

    Prolepsis

[pro-LEP-sis]

Part of speech: noun

Origin: Ancient Greek, 15th century

1.

The anticipation and answering of possible objections in rhetorical speech.

2.

The representation of a thing as existing before it actually does or did so, as in, “He was a dead man when he entered.”

Examples of prolepsis in a sentence

"Tyrell expected objections, so he tried to include answers to possible questions in a prolepsis of his proposal to the HOA."

"The new biography of Charlie Chaplin begins with his birth, then in a prolepsis, jumps to the height of his fame."

About Prolepsis

This word entered Late Middle English via Latin, from the Greek "prolēpsis," which comes from the word "prolambanein," meaning "anticipate."

“He’s dying!” the Christian Science big guy said to the Catholic big guy stepping in to say hello. The medium size Greek Orthodox shook his head at the unexpected proclamation, and the Muslim big guy, getting ready to head out, stood.

We’d been talking about Yom Kippur, vows, and the reconstructing of reality. 

After the tiring walk out, after one of the men trying to extract a promise I wouldn’t die this week and would be back next week, we got some curly fries, peach yogurt and ginger ale, drove to Rockport harbor, and watched the comings and goings there.

And it hits me -- it’s all comings and goings. 

Now I sit facing Bald Mountain as contrails and thin clouds ready for the rainy weekend.

God is

not only

good 

God is 

what good

could be

if God were

capable of

existing here

It’s clear now -- one of my former lives was no doubt lived a prisoner in the Bastille Saint-Antoine fortress, another was lived in Carthusian Grande Chartreuse monastery -- where I dreamt of living in the 21st century, in a sleep paralysis while a desperately disturbed man seeks to rule the world with his comic arrogance and peculiar pomposity.

the hour of our death

 Praying through Mary

The bead-fingering old man

Has no idea no comprehension 

What prayer is what prayer does

a short pier

 Having

 nowhere

To go

 I do so

And do not 

Arrive

nevi’im (נביאים אחרונים, nəviʾim aḥaronim)

 Go ahead

Tell on me

Gaza is Israel’s

Disgrace

Call me antisemitic

Was Isaiah wrong

Was Jeremiah

No, they saw

Betrayal of Yahweh

Long before

Netanyahu was mis-knit

In mother’s womb

unrecognizable number

wristband says patient is 82

needle in spine

fluid and bone taken

nurse doesn’t return pen

doctor walks out with it

truth is no lie

 Let’s 

Not

Forget

final chore

 I will go down to the sea

Step into peapod

Row to lighthouse island

Lay up oars

Bobbing and bounce

Depositing my ashes

Out beyond land

Lobster boats steady

Engines one by one

Turning to, heading in

rubber-banded, waving

Gulls measuring luck 

looking over wondering 

what old man is emptying

Over side into outgoing

Tide until only oars on gunnels

Floppy hat on thwart

Baffin boots on their sides

Painter line loosely hanging

No need to hurry back

Someone will scrape barnacles

Scraps of bone slowly sinking

Depthing quiet unknown 

No need of breath

Nor life jacket

Snailing under

Sturdy keel

sun-slant 

to port

unloquient, uneloquient

 Speaking at UN today

Donald Trump unspoke

and nobody heard anything 

Worth hearing

simple safety

autumn looks

both ways

before crossing

equinox --

better safe

than run over

by exiting

prior season

χωρίς φαντασία

 its just a game

scrimmage, same team

different jerseys

the stadium is full

beer and hotdogs

political merch

do you actually

know what you stand for

the values true

no, I don’t think so

it is a tv game show

full of commercials

before we abandoned God

we wondered -- now we

have no wonder left

we’ve learned to live

χωρίς φαντασία

without imagination

angelus cum una compana

 Matins, French Benedictine nuns chant

Lovely immigration of the necessary

Gregorian lift and loft resonance

I have never not resided there

https://app.neumz.com/listen/matutinum-jubilemus-deo-salutari-t-irreg-88190/22-09-2026

sweet departure

 Summer waves

Backs are turned

Bus rolls out of town

as sundown nears

 no more vows

no more attempts to manipulate

and control reality

one inmate said

everything happens

for a reason

the attempt to

buttonhook reality

is human folly

let what happens happen

face it, transform it, redeem it --

don’t try to oath or vow it away

ours is to reconstruct reality

to burrow into its depth

to become different people

all vows

attempt to freeze and ossify

we should remain warm and sinewy

majórem caritátem nemo habet,

 light

    earth continues

to turn

is all

    I know

this morning

Matutinum

1. Ætérna Christi múnera,

1. The eternal gifts of Christ the King,

Apostolórum glóriam,

the Apostles' glory, let us sing;

Laudes canéntes débitas,

and all with hearts of gladness raise

Lætis canámus méntibus.

. . . 

Atonement

כָּל נִדְרֵי וֶאֱסָרַי וּשְׁבוּעֵי וַחֲרָמֵי וְקוֹנָמֵי וְקִנּוּסֵי וְכִנּוּיֵי, דְּאִנְדַרְנָא וּדְאִשְׁתַּבַּעְנָא, וּדְאַחֲרִימְנָא וּדְאָסַרְנָא עַל נַפְשָׁתָנָא. מִיּוֹם כִּפּוּרִים זֶה עַד יוֹם כִּפּוּרִים הַבָּא עָלֵינוּ לְטוֹבָה. בְּכֻלְּהוֹן אִיחֲרַטְנָא בְהוֹן, כֻּלְּהוֹן יְהוֹן שָׁרָן, שְׁבִיקִין שְׁבִיתִין בְּטֵלִין וּמְבֻטָּלִין, לָא שְׁרִירִין וְלָא קַיָּמִין. נִדְרָנָא לָא נִדְרֵי וֶאֱסָרָנָא לָא אֱסָרֵי וּשְׁבוּעָתָנָא לָא שְׁבוּעוֹת.

The Kol Nidrei in English

All vows, [self-imposed] prohibitions, oaths, consecrations, restrictions, interdictions, or [any other] equivalent expressions of vows, which I may vow, swear, dedicate [for sacred use], or which I may proscribe for myself or for others, from this Yom Kippur until the next Yom Kippur which comes to us for good, [from now] we regret them all; all shall be hereby absolved, remitted, cancelled, declared null and void, not in force or in effect. Let our vows not be considered vows; let our [self-imposed] prohibitions not be considered prohibitions; and let our oaths not be considered oaths.

And may the entire congregation of the children of Israel, as well as the proselyte who dwells among them, be forgiven, for all the people acted unwittingly.

Pardon, I beseech You, the wrongdoing of this people, in keeping with the greatness of Your kindness and as You have forgiven this people from Egypt until now. And there it is stated:

And the Lord said: I have pardoned in accordance with your words.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us and enabled us to reach this occasion. [Cong.] Amen.

. . .

Laudes -- Antiphona

Majórem caritátem nemo habet,

No one has a greater love than this: 

ut ánimam suam ponat quis pro amícis suis.

that he lay down his life for his friends.

all I know is 

    light

earth continues

    to turn

                    Bruch: Kol Nidrei ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ 

Mischa Maisky ∙ Paavo Järvi

https://youtu.be/XGzOozXt4ek?si=mtCbRxNxBAQd_jM1