a quiet soundtrack

Reading Bart Ehrman's book, Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End, (c. 2023)

The dispute as to whether the Old Testament God was violent and vengeful but the New Testament God is not so. He wrestles with the subject matter of the Book of Revelation. He presents what is there, not what we think should or shouldn't be there.

So, too, care.

Boléro

BY KEITH LEONARD

From the kitchen, I catch the neighbor

cross the street to switch off my car’s interior lights.

He returns to his house without announcing the favor.

For the last three years, a friend has woken early

and walked the beach, combing for bottle caps

and frayed fishing line. She mentions this

only casually at lunch, after I’ve asked

what she did that morning.

Care has a quiet soundtrack: the sycamore’s

rustling leaves, your nails tracing my shoulder blades.

A melody that repeats—a bit like Ravel’s Boléro.

When it was first performed, a woman shouted,

Rubbish! from the balcony. She called Ravel

a madman. I think I understand. I wish I didn’t.

I’ve been taught that art must have conflict,

that reason must meet resistance. 

 

Source: Poetry (December 2023) (for audio)

When I was involved with agencies of "care" I'd blithely say that "Care is being-with in everydayness."

I taught staff in agencies caring for the profoundly mentally disabled, those abandoned and neglected, those requiring alternative or special education, or those dependent and abused. We'd wrestle with "care" -- other-care, self-care, Care-itself. We'd use poetry, theater, psychology, philosophy, social science, and personality preferences.

Leonard is right. Always conflict. Always resistance.

In prison yesterday one of the men, while reading about mind and rationality, gaps in time and breath, put down the text and wondered whether those with Down Syndrome had anything to do with, what he called, (I think) "originary brain" in contrast to rational brain. He wondered if the sweetness and affection so often displayed on the part of a Down syndrome person was the consequence of some original state of wisdom that hides behind-below-beyond our typical exercise of knowledge, reason, logic, and calculation.

A compelling 

meditation:

non-resistance,

conflict-less

being-with

one an-other

as care

just might

be

sounding through

wednesday treatment plan

 these days

my heart

tells me

make no 

long-range

plans

not out

of lack 

of affection

but shortness

of time

remaining

so I walk Enso 

to spinnaker

he meets 'Dutch'

they play as I

talk to couple

off mountain run

one step at

a time

two stops for

brook sipping

back down

passed yurt

meditation 

cabin

book shed

into barn

perking coffee

English muffin

two cats

too early

for noon treat

the silent room

bird feeder filled

yellow finch

tiempo después del tiempo

Time is on our side —

Of course it is — on other

Side there is no time

κενότητα

 cross is empty

grave is empty

this empty mind

cannot compute

room is empty

words are empty

history is emptying

itself into narcissism

where a smiling fool

cashes in and out

meanwhile, emptiness

slays such nothingness

hic, haec, hoc

 It’s just a matter

Of which breath will be the last —

This or this or this

the mind comes from wisdom ... that’s how it is

In prison today, we read Beyond Time, (Finding the gaps between past, present, and future) by His Eminence the Seventh Dzogchen Rinpoche

 In it, this:

This gap may seem like a small seed of something greater, but it is very powerful. In that moment, you no longer believe your dualistic perceptions and gain a fleeting glimpse of an incredible peace that is beyond language. Clarity gives you that experience. From time to time, you will have spontaneous experiences of spaciousness and peace, but these spontaneous experiences happen only when you are resting in the gap, and there is no reason or purpose to them. That is Dzogchen practice. That is the experience of buddhanature. When your thoughts dissolve in that moment, wisdom can arise.

We have wisdom already, but we need the space to recognize it. The mind and wisdom always go together. We can take the example of smoke and fire to understand how this works. You know there is a fire when you can say, “I see smoke over there.” If there is smoke, there must be fire. In the same way, if there is a mind, there must be wisdom. There is no mind without wisdom. That’s very necessary to understand. Smoke comes from fire; fire never comes from smoke. Similarly, the mind comes from wisdom. That’s how it is.

You have wisdom within you, but it can’t lead if you don’t concentrate the mind. Only ignorance will lead you. You need to minimize the thoughts and stress in your mind so that it becomes very clear, like a cloudless sky. When the mind is free of thoughts, it has a lot of space and peace. That is how wisdom and concentration go together. Wisdom is there, but if you don’t concentrate, wisdom will not be able to lead you. Your meditation is perfect when wisdom can lead. When mind is leading you, you are a sentient being. When mind is resting, you are a buddha. You experience that moment of resting in the gap. That moment is enlightenment.

(--in Tricycle, Winter 2024) 

Timeless time.

"Still" time.

Just sitting around a table.

In conversation.

out, out, jettisoning scupper

                            (for J.E.)

his hands on boats

but his mind

went two places

at same time

the rowing lady

writes to say

he died last week

in ICU

heart, she thought --

how he'd stretch out

on wooden bench

by fireplace in shop

his demons lean by

scupper, lines arrayed 

on deck, he wends, 

sliding them overboard

not yet

looking at 

local

obituaries

not seeing 

my 

name

eat 

pretzel sip 

water

light and love

As Saskia sat in vigil for friend who died in Massachusetts.

Outside window, in upper right corner, the full moon.

dele iniquitátem meam.

           

When I pray, and I do, to whom or what do I pray?

Let’s say, God.

And what is this “God” ?

I’m not sure.

“God” might be Being. God might be Life. God might be the very Inward Reality of each Millimeter of this Cosmos wherein I dwell.

That from which I will (often enough) try to step out and aside from, from time to time.

Of course, you might ask, where can you possibly go?

 Перешагни, transgresser, überschreiten (i.e. transgress, step over). The attempt to egress the Reality wherein we live and breathe and have our being.

But, you might ask, how is that possible and still remain in existence?

Now…now…you are praying.

… 

Psalm 50
Miserére mei, Deus, * secúndum magnam misericórdiam tuam; Et secúndum multitúdinem miseratiónum tuárum, * dele iniquitátem meam. Amplius lava me ab iniquitáte mea: * et a peccáto meo munda me; Quóniam iniquitátem meam ego cognósco: * et peccátum meum contra me est semper. Tibi soli peccávi, et malum coram te feci: * ut iustificéris in sermónibus tuis, et vincas cum iudicáris.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy,

And according to the extent of your goodness blot out my transgressions.

Wash me more and more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I acknowledge my trespasses, and my sin is ever before me.

 

Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; I confess it, that you may be justified in your sentence and blameless in your judgment. (—from psalm 50)  The thing about prayer is the unknowing it engenders. To engender is to cause to come into existence. A procreation of nescience. This absence of knowing, this unknowing, is the beginning  of contemplation. Contemplation is the residing with what-is coming into existence. What-is. Coming into. Existence. Some might see this as radical acceptance. CapituleAp. 7, 12 Benedíctio, et cláritas, et sapiéntia, et gratiárum áctio, † honor, et virtus, et fortitúdo Deo nostro * in sæcula sæculórum. Amen. R. Deo grátias. After the last prayer, the monks add: V. Dominus vobíscum. R. And with your spirit. V. Benedicámus Domino. R. God bless you. V. Fidélium ánimæ per misericórdiam Dei requiéscant in pace. R. Amen. V. Divínum auxílium máneat semper nobíscum. A. Et cum frátribus nostris abséntibus. Amen. Louange gloire, sagesse, action de grâces, honneur, puissance et force soient à notre Dieu pour les siècles des siècles. Amen. R. Rendons grâces à Dieu. V. The Lord be with you. A. And with your mind. V. Let us bless the Lord. R. Let us give thanks to God. V. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. R. Amen. V. May divine help always remain with us. R. And with our absent brothers [and sisters].Amen.

not trivialising the creator.

We spoke about Spinoza at Friday Evening Conversation.

Someone was curious about his idea of God.  

Spinoza argued that whatever exists is in God. The divine being is not some distant force, but all around us. Nothing in nature is separate from Him: not people, animals or inanimate objects. Today, the view that God is synonymous with nature is called “pantheism,” and this term is often retrospectively applied to Spinoza. Whatever the label, the view was—and still is—portrayed as a denial of God’s transcendent power. Spinoza was accused of denying the ontological difference between God and His creations, thereby trivialising the creator.

Lambert van Velthuysen, the governor of Utrecht during the philosopher’s lifetime, wrote that “to avoid being faulted for superstition,” Spinoza had “cast off all religion.” “I don’t think I am deviating far from the truth, or doing the author any injustice, if I denounce him for using covert and counterfeit arguments to teach pure atheism,” he wrote of the Theologico-Political Treatise. More recently, Steven Nadler, an acclaimed Spinoza expert, has argued that “God is nothing distinct from nature itself” for the 17th-century thinker. Carlisle sees the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor as offering a broadly similar reading.

But, in fact, these characterisations are awry. Spinoza’s philosophy does not trivialise God in the slightest. It is true that in his conception God is intimately bound up with nature. But just because God is not separate from the world that does not mean He is identical to it. Actually, He is distinct, because there is a relationship of dependence that travels only one way: we are constitutionally dependent on God, but God is not dependent on us, argues Spinoza.

For Spinoza, everything we are, and indeed the continued existence of all things, is a manifestation of God’s power. Carlisle uses the term “being-in-God” to describe this aspect of Spinoza’s thought: the way we are created by—and conceived through—God. 

(From, Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?! By Alex Dean)

We seem to want to make God something other than God might actually be.

This concerned Spinoza.

As we too, today, are concerned.