gaia, going

 as things go quiet

no need for words or hearing

sound — just close eyes, sleep

her fruit every month

It's ok to break down

Just be willing to be built up. 

To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak.

-- Ecclesiastes ch.3, v.3 and v. 7. 

And the leaves of the tree? 

These are pages on which those who inquire write their journeys and findings to share with us. 

And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 

-- Revelations ch. 22, v.2. 

Be silent.

Until you speak.

Then, listen to your own voice.

Sounding through what is longing to be heard. 

nothing outside

 this soundless morning

whooshing blood through arteries

breath accompanies

if any

Yes is the default 

to any question outside

of MU — they are few

cum silentio errores

 I have 

nothing 

to say 

about God. 

And so 

each word 

I speak 

must be heard

the origin of prayer

 Tell

Me

This

stay around a minute

 What is that stranger

at window this morning — cool 

air — surely soon snow

the distraction of it

The name Sertillange popped up. Some fifty years ago I'd read his book (in translation), La Vie Intellectuelle, son Esprit, ses Conditions, ses Méthodes. (1934)

Antonin-Gilbert Sertillanges, O.P. (French: [sɛʁtijɑ̃ʒ]; 16 November 1863 – 26 July 1948), was a French Catholic philosopher and spiritual writer.(cf, Wikipedia) 

For Sertillanges, the intellectual vocation is a calling to discover, articulate, and transmit truth. How far this is from the understanding and practice of the intellectual life in contemporary academia, in which one’s soul becomes grist for the collective academic mill, the function of which is to recuperate a perpetually dying, artificial, stillborn “intellectual life” of truth-indifferent and jargon-ridden journals, ruthless career-worship, status-quo opportunism, and inner-circle gossip-mongering. Try to live a genuinely intellectual life in the midst of that!

But there is hope, for Sertillanges notes more than once that the intellectual’s best and most essential friend is solitude, though isolation is to be avoided: “The man with too much solitude, “grows timid, abstracted, a little odd: he stumbles along amid realities like a sailor who has just come off his ship; he has lost the sense of the human lot; he seems to look on you as if you were a ‘proposition’ to be inserted in a syllogism, or an example to be put down in a notebook” (59).  The intellectual’s worst and most dangerous associate is the world, especially a world like contemporary academia!

When the world does not like you it takes its revenge on you; if it happens to like you, it takes its revenge still by corrupting you. Your only resource is to work far from the world, as indifferent to its judgments as you are ready to serve it. . . .  Do not busy yourself with the sayings and doings of the world, that is with such that have no moral and intellectual bearing; avoid useless comings and goings which waste hours and fill the mind with wandering thoughts. These are the conditions of that sacred thing, quiet recollection (xxiii, 47).

Of course, most of us have no choice but to dwell in the vengeful, worldly and wordy halls of academia, where much thought is “wandering,” and where bureaucratic “useless comings and goings” are endless. What Sertillanges counsels is not a flight from the world but, simply, balance. For example, the intellectual desperately needs the support of a robust and authentic community of fellow intellectuals, but sometimes it is enough, he says, just to know there are others laboring at the same task, whether or not there is face-to-face or close proximity to such a community. Perhaps blog communities fulfill this purpose in our community-starved day!

With regard to solitude, specifically, the amount of concentrated intellectual work that is required in the intellectual vocation, Sertillanges’ prescription is quite surprising:

Have you two hours a day? Can you undertake to guard them jealously, to use them ardently, and then, being of those who have authority in the Kingdom of God, can you drink the chalice of which these pages would wish you to make you savor the exquisite and bitter taste? If so, have confidence. Nay, rest in quiet certainty (11).

Two hours a day, when one thinks of it, is not an inconsiderable amount, especially when we consider the difficulty of engaging in even a few minutes of genuine, contemplative intellectual activity in a culture “distracted from distraction by distraction” to use T.S. Eliot’s incredibly apt phrase. For Sertillanges, the fundamental virtue required of the intellectual is attention, and two hours a day of it is plenty. Here he is in accord with Simone Weil in her fantastic essay, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God”: “Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.”

(--from, On the Intellectual Life, by Sertillange,  Scribd, Uploaded by tjkozinski on Dec 03, 2013)

I have two hours a day. 

The distraction of it!

as chance has it

There’s no evidence

Thomas Merton was murdered —

Bad luck…yeah…bad luck

how are ya, harry

 Ask him

Ask his name

         I did

          I asked him

And

And what did he say

           He said it is Harry

           Harry’s my name

So you know his name

That’s something, isn’t it

            Yeah

             I suppose

suddenly

 It occurs to me

I am dead, that no one has

Told me, happily

solitude, comma

 All alone, on zoom

AUM chanting, repeating loop

There is no, one here

for practical purposes

 Hallucinations aren’t at all what they appear to be.

In fact, they’re more than appearance.

They’re what sanity used to be before socially collective amnesia and apprehension forced people to pretend there’s a singular reality and our best interests reside in agreeing and affirming we all dwell within its protective custody.

“There is no trustworthy standard by which we can separate the 'real' from the 'unreal' aspects of phenomena. Such standards as exist are conventional: and correspond to convenience, not to truth. It is no argument to say that most men see the world in much the same way, and that this “way” is the true standard of reality: though for practical purposes we have agreed that sanity consists in sharing the hallucinations of our neighbors.” 

(― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness, 1911)

That’s the thing about both democracy and authentic spirituality — their expression is diverse and multivalent.

Do not buy into nor share your neighbor’s hallucinations. 

Have, or be, your own.

When this week started, I was a hermit. 

Before that I was an idiorhythmic monastic.

Now I am a recluse without anything resembling what a neighbor might recognize as kith, kin, or kindred.

Still, I water plants, spray the garden, feed the cats, seed the birds, and listen to all that sounds in my surround.

room for everything

Photograph of God /

Photograph of Buddha /

Photograph of Emptiness /

Photograph of True self

Nothing left out

No one there

Whole and

Entire

Looking around for what-is a-round:

Chongsan, the Second Head Dharma Master of Won Buddhism, said, “Il Won Sang is the blueprint of all things in the universe, the symbol of the realm of universal truth, the Truth Buddha. It is a koan for seeing into our original nature and realizing buddhahood. It is the object of faith and the standard of daily practice.”  (The Dharma Words of Master Chongsan, Chapter 6, v. 3)

“If you are given only the name of someone you don’t know, it would be difficult to believe that anyone by that name really exists. Just as the picture of someone you don’t know can help you figure out what that person looks like, the picture of the Truth, can help you see what that could be like. Master Sotaesan, by using Il Won Sang as the picture of the Truth, made it easier for us to comprehend the realm of Truth. Il Won Sang is the picture of the totality of Truth, therefore anyone who takes this picture as the object of sincere inquiry will be enlightened to the realm of Truth easily. Thus, Master Sotaesan said, Shakyamuni Buddha’s order in the past was that of one buddha with a thousand bodhisattvas. In the future one thousand buddhas and one hundred thousand bodhisattvas will arise in this order.”

(Dharma Words of Master Chongsan, Chapter 5, v. 6)

(—from website on Won-Buddhism)

Il Won Sang is something to look into.

 Perhaps we will come ‘round to it.

benedícere

 This arrived in email box at 1:41AM:

I remember a meeting in which a friend asked a strange and unexpected question: “What do you think is the most valuable land in the world?”

Several people threw out guesses, such as Manhattan, the oil fields of the Middle East, and the gold mines of South Africa, before our friend indicated that we were way off track. He paused for a moment, and said, “You’re all wrong. The most valuable land in the world is the graveyard. In the graveyard are buried all of the unwritten novels, never-launched businesses, unreconciled relationships, and all of the other things that people thought, ‘I’ll get around to that tomorrow.’ One day, however, their tomorrows ran out.”

That day I went back to my office and I wrote down two words in my notebook and on the wall of my office that have been my primary operating ethic for the last several years: Die Empty.

I want to know that if I lay my head down tonight and don’t wake up tomorrow, I have emptied myself of whatever creativity is lingering inside, with minimal regrets about how I spent my focus, time, and energy. This doesn’t happen by accident; it takes intentional and sustained effort. But I can say with confidence from my own experience and the experiences of others I’ve worked with that the effort is well worth it. 

 (—Die Empty, by Todd Henry, Nipun Mehta)

It’s a good day for that.

The birds are in their nave.

Iube Domine benedícere.

Noctem quietam et finem perfectum

concedat nobis Dominus omnipotens.

Empty me, 

Find nothing 

worth 

saving

mala

 Waiting for nothing

in particular, monk prays 

each bead as if last

affirming whatever I am is

 someone asked, are you 

afraid -- I looked at them -- yes

Of course I am, yes

we can and ought to know

 There is a constant undermining of the American tradition of democracy and justice.

It’s been a fragile construct based on privilege and race. But now that white America is experiencing the increase of multi-racial growth of population there is an intentional movement to slow down the vote and disadvantage those neither white nor rich from having too much say over electoral choice and candidates. 

The strategy is to take control of elections and reserve power to a ruling elite benefitting from suppression of the vote.

There’s a consequent ignorance afoot.

 Consequent ignorance is when we choose, for sinful reasons, to remain ignorant of things we can and ought to know. (D.Q. McInerny, A Course in Thomistic Ethics, 1997, pp. 40-42.)

The opposition to full and fair democracy is rabid and fierce. Who can blame the fear? Fear is where love goes when unable to control everything.

It is the continual decision we have to make — love or fear?

I’m not interested in fear.

I’d rather know love.

even if it fits, don’t buy it

 Ezra Pound once said

never trust a poet with

‘cosmic’ in their poem

yes, it is

 Poetry is zen, said R.H. Blyth.

on normandy beaches

 they didn't think much

bullets whizzing past, hitting

final image, home

yes, ask

 Why whisper into the night silhouette of trees at first light of matins?

Because, you might say, that is the transitional space of time where transformation takes place.

Praise, they chant praise, over and over while the rest of us sleep.

Rilke wrote, “Sie sagt für dich, ich bin.” 

Someone says for you, I am.

 Evelyn Underhill, considering mysticism, wondered, “I am, but who else is?”

Who else, indeed.

The earth turns.

I, alone, hear the first bird’s awakening song with glance toward east, the slow lighting its song awakens.

It’s not that we’re all alone that is significant. It’s that noticing such a thing, such haecceity — the thisness of this moment, this noticing, this one noticing, this bird having performed the introit, the opening antiphon of awareness — presumes the inquiry “who else is?” as primary quest and immediate koan of first light.

The statement and the question — I am! (and) Who else is? — becomes foundational realization and inquiry this early Sunday prayer without ceasing.

This is my body.

No one else is.

The astounding, and stark, haecceity of it!

Who, or what, is that “someone” saying for you...

I am!

corpus christi

 what is

body of Christ 

that (we can)

see it

always doing yet always at rest

If you ask what it is like with mystical spirituality, try this:

semper agens, semper quietus, colligens et non egens, portans et implens et protegens,

creans et nutriens, perficiens, quaerens, cum nihil desit tibi.

(--From the Confessions of Augustine, Book I, Chapter 4

Translation: 

(always working, yet ever at rest; gathering, yet needing nothing;

sustaining, pervading, and protecting; creating, nourishing, and developing; seeking, and yet possessing all things.

We look for what we already have.

Seldom recognizing.

Always close at hand. 

though good men die

 Tonight Bobby Kennedy will be shot. Two months ago Martin Luther King was shot. In six months Thomas Merton will die under curious and suspect circumstances.

It is 1968. Assassinations are difficult truths. America breaks. Lives change. Skepticism deepens.

Mr. Kennedy will die early after midnight at 1:44AM on June 6.

The trauma of 1968 sits deep within the bodies of those living through the shocks and deceits of public executions and murky lies following.

But this is what it costs to be alive.

We know and do not know what takes place everyday in the world of power, politics, and pretense.

Edna st Vincent Millay wrote:

Lament

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Listen, children: 

Your father is dead. 

From his old coats 

I'll make you little jackets; 

I'll make you little trousers 

From his old pants. 

There'll be in his pockets 

Things he used to put there, 

Keys and pennies 

Covered with tobacco; 

Dan shall have the pennies 

To save in his bank; 

Anne shall have the keys 

To make a pretty noise with. 

Life must go on, 

And the dead be forgotten; 

Life must go on, 

Though good men die; 

Anne, eat your breakfast; 

Dan, take your medicine; 

Life must go on; 

I forget just why. 

As is 

justice forgotten. 

I wonder...

Why?

no wonder we prefer dualism

 Reading Rohr, he says the task is not separation from evil but absorption and transformation of evil within oneself. (Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality by Richard Rohr, 2007)

It's an annoying aspect of Christian mystagogy. 

Incarnational spirituality.

suffering through

depression is

correct view

of current state

of world

as troubling as 

depression is 

the mindset 

declination

is more stark

more wanting

more frightening

to behold

nevertheless

we keep on looking

and stay willing to

suffer through

whinny and neigh

 Mike Pence reappears

Says Jan/six was a dark day —

But he’s back on horse

remember when lies were frowned upon

 We will get over

Vile points of view by cowards —

Dark clouds drop torrents

alone in empty cosmos

 since becoming old

nothing seems to matter, yet

hand or nod greets each

what do you have to say for yourself

 Yes

Is that your answer

No, it’s my question

What is your answer

Yes

So, your question and answer are the same

There’s a black hole 58 million light years away from our Milky Way galaxy

At foot of mountain birds chant morning praise

In both places at once

Falling into dense emptiness and birdsong

This morning practice

flat satchel

 All this time. Off on our own. Distancing.

I’m not sure I want to near again.

The desolate woodland. The vast sea.

We move on. We are migrants. Mendicants.

passing apparition

 There it is, again, there it is, sliding in alongside bamboo shade, morning sun.

Like vanishing dew,

a passing apparition

or the sudden flash

of lightning -- already gone --

thus should one regard one's self.

― Ikkyu

Now that it is June I have to try to remember who I was before my father and mother were born. 

I recall a glass of orange juice, back stoop, chain link fences, portioned backyards.

The milk box, the clanking bottles, under bedroom window.

Backyard, DeSoto with whitewalls, sun slanting into alley from street with horse drawn vegetable wagon.

Silent ghosts pass under window walking into these words.

foreknowledge

 Do you speak with the dead?

Do you pray?

Do you despair of the living?

Hold your answer.

Think a while.

Don’t give it away blithely.

carne-ne-vale season

 Yes

It is June

Changing 

Everything

May passes

Spring has

Three weeks

Left

If you

Think about it

Your life

Is juggle ball

Somewhere in

Swoop and fell

Arc oohs & ahs 

Launch & descent

Of course

I love you

Sans doute 

As I drop

seeing what is not there here

 Bit by bit

Withdrawing

Little by little

Disappearing

Where will

Anything be

Found

Once lost

If there is

Nothing but

God, where

Is everything

Now that

It has

All gone

Away

this memorial day

 We

Remember

Honor and

Pray for

All dead

And deadened

By 

War

Injustice 

Cynicism and

Ignorance 

. . .

(Photo by S.H.)

unsaying trinity, ya folla

There’s no understanding trinity.

Except as some contemporary Three-In-One-Oikeó.

What is it that “houses” itself where I am?

 The final three models of incarnational theology are all instances of incarnational soteriology. The first instance of this model, and the third model overall, is incarnational soteriology through the indwelling of Christ. This model is exemplified in Paul’s words to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) Christ is not enfleshed in me, Christ lives in me. There is no generation [ginomai] of flesh [sarx] when one lives by faith. Instead, by faith, Christ lives in me, Christ lives in my flesh.26 A Trinitarian understanding allows us to appreciate the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in believers in a similar way. Paul writes to the Corinthians: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16) Through the Spirit, God dwells, or “houses” [oikeo] in you. Paul’s usage of temple language makes an important point in regard to incarnational theology since the Bible consistently portrays God dwelling in the temple found in Eden, in the Tabernacle, in the Temple, in the person of Jesus Christ, and in (as here) the Spirit-filled believer.27

(—from, Christ is the only incarnation: Appropriate use of incarnation language, Sean McGever, ETS Far West Region Meeting April 2018, p.6)

 I have an address, wear shoes and knee brace when taking a walk, the rap-tat-tat of hiking sticks, listening to book in my ears, gaze between ground and mountains and pond beyond beaver lodge. I move through. Any place I’ve been I’m no longer there. I’m a movement of consciousness through place and space going nowhere.

A temporary house. 

Housing and being housed.

Today is celebrated Trinity. Someone called it Non Sequitur Sunday.

Anything said about it really doesn’t follow. (Ya folla?) It stays where it is pronounced.

Maybe we have to MU any pronouncing. 

Unsay. Unask. Neti-neti (not this-not that).

Rather, becoming a passageway, and not being in the way.

as us is

 There

It is

Again

Invoker bird

Begins

Chant

Goes back

Into

Silence

And day-

Break 

Beyond hill

Is no

Longer

Dark

Just so

It begins

Again

Earth 

turns to

Morning

We look

Through

Three windows

Love

Us

Here

on taking down a tweet

 If you’ve got nothing to say, don’t say it.

I’d rather hear night asleep in the field than listen to some braggard telling how it was his idea to sell sand to the Pacific Ocean.

it looks very discouraging

It is worrisome 

that rightwing 

radical fundamentalism 

is becoming the political 

stance of choice of

both US congresspeople 

and white nationalist citizens. 

There appears to be 

a worldwide festering 

of bellicose intolerance. 

Or are we now 

relegated to being

a reality TV audience 

for performing egoic 

cabaret clowns?

infra

 reading Rodriguez

internal memo 

after resignation

on vince

foster's death

and circumstances

the repeated

see infra

suggesting

(yes) see

below

also infers

see 'below'

the details as

though a

phenomenologist

ciphering there is

much to see

under the aletheia

(Ancient Greek: ἀλήθεια)

where every

disclosure is

correspondingly

a covering over

hence the plea

to see under

(our inconsolable

inability to get to

the bottom of

anything)

the slippery

substance of

human subterfuge

needs no theories

no conspiracies

but merely any

articulation winds

around itself until

disentangling is

hopeless

we are left to 

ourselves

with nothing

more than 

vapors

and incense 

smoke

curling into 

obscurity

going

away

drops roof fall

 It doesn’t 

matter

if rain

finds earth

at bottom

of birdsong

Saturday

morning

Maine 

holiday

weekend

cowardly shame ends badly

 Republicans vote down January six commission.

It is a small victory for small-minded remnant of a once important political party.

It is a shame.

It will hasten demise of the Republican Party.

And beyond that, who knows?

A shameful, cowardly, small way to end.

he said: the unanswerable question i live with

To a sangha practitioner:

 Heard richard rohr in one of his books say, (approximately):

    — Faith implies doubt and uncertainty. Evil is always certain and uncompromising.— 

And so, living with unanswerable questions sounds like the right balance of great faith and great doubt.

We share the dharma the way May shares green deepening trees on mountainside.

let your words be

  Yes, Yes

No, No

Easy as that

Go ahead

Try it

the restless removal of distances

We’re no nearer.

These words about technology: 

Introducing the Bremen lectures, Heidegger observes that because of technology, “all distances in time and space are shrinking” and “yet the hasty setting aside of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in a small amount of distance.” The lectures set out to examine what this nearness is that remains absent and is “even warded off by the restless removal of distances.” As we shall see, we have become almost incapable of experiencing this nearness, let alone understanding it, because all things increasingly present themselves to us as technological: we see them and treat them as what Heidegger calls a “standing reserve,” supplies in a storeroom, as it were, pieces of inventory to be ordered and conscripted, assembled and disassembled, set up and set aside. Everything approaches us merely as a source of energy or as something we must organize. We treat even human capabilities as though they were only means for technological procedures, as when a worker becomes nothing but an instrument for production. Leaders and planners, along with the rest of us, are mere human resources to be arranged, rearranged, and disposed of. Each and every thing that presents itself technologically thereby loses its distinctive independence and form. We push aside, obscure, or simply cannot see, other possibilities.”

(—from, Understanding Heidegger on Technology )

 The proleptic character of technology.

We are fabricating untouchability.

to be in question

I no longer wish to be deceived.

Nor do I want some other thing. 

 ",,,truth is loved in such a way that those who love some other thing want it to be the truth, and, precisely because they do not wish to be deceived, are unwilling to be convinced that they are deceived."

(—St. Augustine, Confessions (10:23), Fifth Century)

Neither strident nor acquiescing, I wander in bewildering silence through today and today’s tomorrow.

"I am more and more impressed by the fact that it is largely futile to get up and make statements about current problems.  At the same time, I know that silent acquiescence in evil is also out of the question."

(—Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence,1968)

Where is it that prayer and fasting lead? 

no agenda

 Annual hibernation from news in small bits, twitter, cable, other cracked shell discarding 2 minute pieces off prompter.

Time for more thoughtful writings, books, heft, details of phenomenologic observation, necessary questioning.

It was too hot yesterday.

Inhaling nontraditional pizza topping nearly suffocates my choking throat last night.

This morning.

Personalities, celebrities, broke-down politicians, mass murdering shooters, hawkers of products, spewers of rabid right wing drivel, or conjunctive left wing drivel, preachers of hellfire, or capitalistic rewards religions, for me, are incapacities.

Cedar tree outside window, branches curling upward, is zen teacher with no agenda.

flaps down

 Single engine plane

Flies over house middle night

Mountain landing strip

can you hear me major tom

 Perhaps we've 

never been close

paint on wall

paw on floor

rolling up

winter comforter

stuffing in

closet

something's wrong

we've floated

away from 

simplicity

here am I

no longer

connected to

any tether

recognizable

even desireable

looking over

pollen dust

on kitchen 

skylight, pale

green hue 

not planet blue

sicut est, ita est

 As it is:

In a statement issued Tuesday evening, Trump called the seating of the grand jury “a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history.”


“This is purely political, and an affront to the almost 75 million voters who supported me in the Presidential Election, and it’s being driven by highly partisan Democrat prosecutors,” Trump said. “Our Country is broken, our elections are rigged, corrupt, and stolen, our prosecutors are politicized, and I will just have to keep on fighting like I have been for the last five years!”


A spokesman for Vance (D) declined to comment.

(—from, Prosecutor in Trump criminal probe convenes grand jury to hear evidence, weigh potential charges, By  Shayna Jacobs and David A. Fahrenthold, May 25, 2021 at 8:52 p.m. EDT, Washington Post)

So it is. 

let

Our Tuesday evening conversation: 

Let Evening Come

 

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving   

up the bales as the sun moves down.

 

Let the cricket take up chafing   

as a woman takes up her needles   

and her yarn. Let evening come.

 

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned   

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

 

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.   

Let the wind die down. Let the shed   

go black inside. Let evening come.

 

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop   

in the oats, to air in the lung   

let evening come.

 

Let it come, as it will, and don’t   

be afraid. God does not leave us    

comfortless, so let evening come.  

                                         Poem by Jane Kenyon

And may morning follow.

With joy.

as a transitory dwelling-place.

 Carl Gustav Jung’s words.

A morning meditation:

 “The individual ego is the stable in which the Christ-child is born.” – Collected Works Vol. 11 

“The highest and most decisive experience of all . . . is to be alone with . . . [one’s] own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche. The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation.” – Psychology and Alchemy 

“The divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding . . . as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration.” – Alchemical Studies

“The experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.” – Mysterium Coniunctionis 

“On the level of the Son there is no answer to the question of good and evil; there is only an incurable separation of the opposites. . . . It seems to me to be the Holy Spirit’s task and charge to reconcile and reunite the opposites in the human individual through a special development of the human soul.” – The Symbolic Life 

“[There is a] . . . continued and progressive divine incarnation. Thus man is received and integrated into the divine drama. He seems destined to play a decisive part in it; that is why he must receive the Holy Spirit. I look upon the receiving of the Holy Spirit as a highly revolutionary fact which cannot take place until the ambivalent nature of the Father is recognized. If God is the summum bonum, the incarnation makes no sense, for a good god could never produce such hate and anger that his only son had to be sacrificed to appease it. A Midrash says that the Shofar is still sounded on the Day of Atonement to remind YHWH (God) of his act of injustice towards Abraham (by compelling him to slay Isaac) and to prevent him from repeating it. A conscientious clarification of the idea of God would have consequences as upsetting as they are necessary. They would be indispensable for an interior development of the trinitarian drama and of the role of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is destined to be incarnate in man or to choose him as a transitory dwelling-place. ‘Non habet nomen proprium,’ says St. Thomas; because he will receive the name of man. That is why he must not be identified with Christ. We cannot receive the Holy Spirit unless we have accepted our own individual life as Christ accepted his. Thus we become the ‘sons of god’ fated to experience the conflict of the divine opposites, represented by the crucifixion.” – The Symbolic Life

 (—from, these things inside, Jung on the Christian Archetype)

Then there’s this:

“God is reality itself.”

“God is a psychic fact of immediate experience, otherwise there would never have been any talk of God. The fact is valid in itself, requiring no non-psychological proof and inaccessible to any form of non-psychological criticism. It can be the most immediate and hence the most real of experiences, which can be neither ridiculed nor disproved.”

“All modern people feel alone in the world of the psyche because they assume that there is nothing there that they have not made up. This is the very best demonstration of our God-almighty-ness, which simply comes from the fact that we think we have invented everything physical – that nothing would be done if we did not do it; for that is our basic idea and it is an extraordinary assumption. Then one is all alone in one’s psyche, exactly like the Creator before the creation. But through a certain training, something suddenly happens which one has not created, something objective, and then one is no longer alone. That is the object of certain initiations, to train people to experience something which is not their intention, something strange, something objective with which they cannot identify.

“This experience of the objective fact is all-important, because it denotes the presence of something which is not I, yet is still physical. Such an experience can reach a climax where it becomes an experience of God.”

(Jung quotes from: The Visions Seminars, Answer to Job, Jung Letters, Vol. 2, and the December 1961 issue of Good Housekeeping.)

(—from, these things inside, Carl Jung says God is reality itself,)

Reality itself. 

There’s something to ponder.

This sunny birdsong cool breeze morning.

I think I’ll walk the dog. 

the sight of it

 Underground water

Earth tears the sight of human

Unreadiness drips

monday after pentecost, look again

 It seems, like ocean tide, the phases of mythology rivet our attention on primordial in and out, arrival and departure, appearance and disappearance.

So too in Christian undulation mysteries:

Birth, emergence

Death, cessation

Burial, disappearance

Resurrection, reappearance

Ascension, emptiness hiatus

Pentecost, fullness via illumination and clarification.

Ordinariness, revisiting, reappraisal, inchoate insight. 

His Holiness The Dalai Lama describes the Mahayana Heart Sutra in terms of personal spiritual development as a continual spiraling through the five stages represented by the final mantra "GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA" in his talk (cf especially time from 8:50 to 19:04).    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej0_39J4yts&t=1201s. 8:50 to 19:048

If we think we've arrived, we haven't.

We are always beginning again.

Why not laugh through it.

It's a healthy way to practice.

Look again.

the lady with the umbrella said she never explains anything

There's something to be said for explanation.

Don't! 

Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible. 

(-Eugene Ionesco, Decouvertes (1969))

Point out, if you must. 

Intimate, imply, hint -- even better.

Explanation, especially overexplanation, is where innovative insight goes to die.

destroyed and vanished into the oblivion of human history.

What a phrasing!

The oblivion of human history. Where Salome danced. Where John was beheaded. Where you and I read this.

Early Roman Period 

 

44 A.D.: After the death of King Herod Agrippa I in 44 A.D., when the ruined Machaerus together with Perea, came under the control of the Roman Prefectus Judea in Jerusalem, a military garrison stronghold was formed for the Roman army on the ruins of the original Machaerus citadel. 

66 A.D.: The citadel was taken over by the citizens of its lower city and later reinforced by the Zealot rebels. 

71/72 A.D.: After the destruction of Jerusalem, the Romans—for the third time—conquered Machaerus by order of Emperor Vespasian through the Legion X Fretensis, under the commandership of LuciliusBassus, the Roman Legatus of Judea Province. The fortress of Machaerus was destroyed and vanished into the oblivion of human history. 

 

Modern Period 

 

1807 (January 17): Ulrich Jasper Seetzen identified the Machaeruscitadel.
   

1909 (January 1): Fr. Félix-Marie Abel OP identified the Machaerus lower city.
   

1965–1974: August Strobel surveyed and published the Machaerus circumvallation wall.
   

1968–2019: Archaeologists excavated the Machaerus citadel. 

(—Machaerus Through the Ages, Győző Vörös   November 13, 2020 , Biblical Archeology Society)

day by day, this day

Per síngulos dies* 

      benedícimus te

et laudámus nomen tuum in sæculum,*

      et in sæculum sæculi.

Dignáre, Dómine, die isto*

      sine peccáto nos custodíre.

Miserére nostri, Dómine,* 

      miserére nostri.

Fiat misericórdia tua, Dómine, super nos,*

      quemádmodum sperávimus in te.

In te, Dómine, sperávi:*

      non confúndar in ætérnum. 

…  …   …

Day by day 

     we praise you:

     

we acclaim you now 

     and to all eternity.

In your goodness, Lord, 

     keep us free from sin. 

Have mercy on us, Lord, 

     have mercy.

May your mercy always be with us, Lord,

     for we have hoped in you.

In you, Lord, we put our trust,

      we shall not be put to shame. 

(—ending verses of Te Deum, in Office of Readings, from Feast of Pentecost)