qui sumus

 We are not

What anyone says we are

We are as

We find ourselves to be

in the endless

 Wandering into St Francis Church 

in Manhattan in 1962

Behind veil of confessional 

I told the friar I felt I was resisting a vocation 

to be a Franciscan.

The presumptive hubris of an eighteen year old just elevated from mailroom to actuarial trainee at New York Life Insurance Company after being told by academic dean to take some time away from freshman year in college to decide if I was serious about attending college studies.

Sixty four years later, sitting in wohnküche, reading Beneath the Mask of Holiness, by Mark Shaw about Thomas Merton’s relationship with a young nurse and its historical surround, I feel unusually confessional, à la Kerouac or Lowell, a ruse unsubstantiated by any sustained sincerity going forward, where I’d be more Robert Lax than Thomas Merton, vaguely avant-garde versus conventionally essayist, and, in actuality, neither.

Ain’t that the joy of literature!

At Friday Evening Conversation, the question was asked about our favorite book. Instantly I allowed as how my favorite book (surprisingly) was Los cipreses creen en Dios (1953) about the Spanish Civil War.

José María Gironella (born December 31, 1917, Darníus, Gerona, Spain—died January 3, 2003, Arenys de Mar) was a Spanish author best remembered for his long historical novel Los cipreses creen en Dios (1953; The Cypresses Believe in God), in which the conflicts within a family portrayed in the novel symbolize the dissension that overtook the people of Spain during the years preceding the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39. The book, which won the National Prize for Literature, was the first explanation of the origins of that war that was well received by the Spaniards themselves.   

cf. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jose-Maria-Gironella

Also, cf https://thelampmagazine.com/issues/issue-08/fight-kill-die 

As I recall from my reading of it some sixty years ago, it was the final page, final paragraph, final line that embedded itself into my emotional luggage that carried it to mind in the conversation. 

I’m not fond of ‘favorites’ questions. Our plucking memories are too weak-fingered to sustain such retrieval and assessment. But I remember Gironella and my Franciscan mate Gilberto recommending it to me between assassinations in the sixties.

While at it, read the Robert Lax poem Kalymnos: November 29, 1968  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58583/kalymnos-november-29-1968

It ends like this:

    11

in the

endless

city

the end-

less city

the beg-

gars are

in one

place

the cops

in an-

other

the fine

people

here

& the

poor

people

there

(each has

his parish

each his

precinct)

in the endless

endless

endless

city

 

Copyright Credit: This poem appears courtesy of the Robert Lax Literary Trust, the Robert Lax Archives at St. Bonaventure University, and Paul Spaeth, archivist.

Source: Poetry (December 2015)

Robert Lax

1915—2000

and with our absent brothers

 If you want me

To say you

Don’t ask —

movement, not explanation

In prison today, (1) Camus and (2) Wiesel come up:

1. 

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest— whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they  become clear to the intellect. (--The Myth of Sisyphus, A N  A B S U R D   R E A S O N I N G, Absurdity and Suicide)

2. 

"When will you understand that a beautiful answer is nothing? Nothing more than illusion! Man defines himself by what disturbs him and not by what reassures him. 

When will you understand that you are living and searching in error, because God means movement and not explanation."

 

[The Wandering Jew. Elie Wiesel. Legends of Our Time pg.126] cf.https://www.alexisrael.org/vayeshev-tranquility-and-turbulence#:~:text=%22When%20will%20you%20understand%20that,opening%20lines%20of%20the%20Parsha:

 

It was the end of our meetingbrook conversation time. Final circle for the six of us was over. One of the men grew up Jewish but was now Muslim, as were the three other men. We did not have the time to retrieve the below. Perhaps another week. We’d been wondering about meaning, religious influences, our journeys forward.

...

Addendum: The place from whence the Wiesel quote is cited is a piece titled Parashat Vayeshev, Tranquility and Turbulence, from Thinking Torah, by Rav Alex Israel – www.alexisrael.org

It includes this:

 

THE MOUNTAIN FOOTWAY

 

It would seem to me that the centrality of a sense of non-complacency, and the absence of serenity in the religious experience, is powerfully expressed in the following celebrated passage by Rav Soloveitchik. There he writes of the faulty ideology:

 

“…that is prevalent nowadays in religious circles … that the religious experience is of a very simple nature -- that is, devoid of the spiritual tortuousness present in the secular cultural consciousness, of psychic upheavals, and of pangs and torments that are inextricably connected with the development and refinement of man’s spiritual personality. This popular ideology contends that the religious experience is tranquil and neatly ordered, tender and delicate; it is an enchanted stream for bitter souls and still waters for troubled spirits.

 

…this ideology is intrinsically false and deceptive. That religious consciousness in man’s experience which is most profound and elevated, which penetrates to the very depths and ascends to the very heights, is not that simple or comfortable. On the contrary, it is exceptionally complex, rigorous and tortuous. Where you find complexity, there you find its greatness. The religious experience, from beginning to end, is antinomic and antithetic. … It is a condition of spiritual crisis, of psychic ascent and descent, of contradiction arising from affirmation and negation, self-abnegation and self-appreciation….

 

Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging, clamorous torrent of man’s consciousness with all its crises, pangs and torments. Yes, it is true that during the third Sabbath meal at dusk, as the day of rest declines and man’s soul yearns for its Creator and is afraid to depart the realm of holiness whose name is Sabbath into the dark and frightening, secular workaday week, we sing the psalm ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside still waters.’(Ps. 23) etc., etc., and we believe with our entire hearts in the words of the psalmist. However, this psalm only describes the ultimate destination of the homo religiousus, not the path leading to that destination. For the path that eventually will lead to the “green pastures” is not the royal road, but a narrow, twisting footway that threads its course along the steep mountain slope, as the terrible abyss yawns at the traveller’s feet.” (Halakhic Man. JPS. Translation-Lawrence Kaplan. Footnote no.4)

 

IN CONCLUSION

 

This philosophy is a troubling one. Maybe that is why I am attracted to it. This philosophy demands that a person be constantly moving, constantly growing. Stagnation is the enemy.

 

I believe that this is an extremely difficult level to be at. Especially in our 21st Century world that values harmony and comfort as essential commodities, the notion of a war against complacency and an ideology of incessant personal striving is certainly unusual. This is difficult emotionally as well. We all want to feel that we have reached our goal, that we have found our destination and now we can rest. But, I do believe that the truly religious soul is the restless soul; always striving, groping, reaching higher and higher, searching for new avenues of expression, nourishment and good deeds.

https://www.alexisrael.org/_files/ugd/215840_64958fe5b5b7f94536a45b1bd5d6f1be.pdf

... 

 This rare environment, so replicative and concentrative of the outside world of international, interreligious, and internecine activity -- masks itself as a maximum security prison in the most northeastern corner state in the United States.

We are anthropologists and archeologists, monastics and wandering nomads, listeners and cosmotheandric conversants in ever-fresh unscripted and unprogrammed gatherings every Friday and Monday mornings in non-compulsory drop-in conversations -- now for over thirty years. 

The invisible and the delightful surprise of whatever arises never ceases to amaze. 

The movement of it!

respect

 Porcupine wanders

In rain outside

We stay close inside

te ipsum vocans

 I live in a monastery of French Benedictines

(an ocean between us) 

Who chant daily office in Latin, women, men

Toning lift and fall

I live on rainy road between two mountains

Buddha on box against window screen 

All day we call out god, all day call in god

As rain and birdsong pass through mesh

I live within the call

Echoing out echoing in

There is no god

Only the calling of god

Cadence and psalm tone

Lift and fall

The sound of god

Calling

Are you there

Are you there

Here

Here

Nowhere

Nowhere

Sweet rain last day of April

Candle burns for John and Deano 

We laughed together 

Monks of mayhem and bad jokes

Now all we do is call without sound

As god is called soundless inner susurrus

Along mountain road between

Maine and France 

Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper 

Adhaesit anima mea post te

on the house

Going inside

Nothing outside 

Satisfies

Returning

To unseen unknown

(Yawn)

What do I

Owe for the 

Ride 

noise and smoke obscuring heavenly light

 Anniversary of Deano’s death at MSP.

Is the name of Jesus that which was crucified?

Destruction and disappearance of the separate/particular. 

Arising/appearance of the inclusive/cosmotheandric

Jesus descends. Christ ascends.

How are we; to see this

Thoroughness and

Emptiness

Cross carved by Dean B. (Died 2017) MSP

edgelord, off with his headache

 Long live the king!

Charles the visitor --

Begone the pretender

Donald the instigator

Soon we will laugh at

him, his court of jesters

The wreckage, shorn 

deluded followers

how telling the moment

 where is God?

I will tell you

you tell me

there, there 

find God

there

yes

 Yes?

Yes!

a matter for every day

 Sometimes the teacher knows your address.

Don’t be concerned with

who is wise and who is stupid.

Do not discriminate the

sharp from the dull.

To practice whole-heartedly

is the true endeavor of the way.

Practice-realization is not

defiled with specialness;

it is a matter for every day.

--Dogen 1227 (dailyzen)

Even if I try to avoid visitors, they will leave a note before disappearing. 

they want to put his scowl on passports

 in this corner of Maine

looking down route 1

no scowling portraits are seen

en la principal we prefer

real people, not ignoble

examples of the coarse and crass

passing through barn

 This hour of night

Ground is asleep

Stars watch dooryard

herein lies what once thought truth

 sitting in empty room

nothing else here

stillness

I cannot imagine

why it is so many

want more and more

if you find me here

do not think you’ve found

anything of value

just a vacant space

once occupied by

someone gone and forgotten

under cloak of gun bragging

Amateurs attempt

To harm the president

God help us

When professionals 

Are given

The job

No more smart-

mouthed retorts

No more 

political puffery —

Bullshit will be

Disappeared in fog

fill the chamber

 It is tiring

These shootings

The drama

The way

Blowhards

Bloviate

The cowardice

Of the gun-

Protected

you can see clearly now

 silent inner consciousness

(he said)

that place within us

we once called God

if you ask me

we still do

call God, that is

once we enter that

silent inner consciousness

except there is no God to answer

only the calling forth that 

which is the resonance of our call

pure consciousness surrounding

our longing to be free, loving, just

a resonance pronouncing itself

in expanding echo from the humility

of knowing nothing other than

the call responding from the place

immaculate and purely itself listening

in each next thing arising manifesting soul 

transport

 Yes, he thought

Yes

It occurred

To him 

He was saying

Yes to

No one or

Nothing he

Could pinpoint

Or imagine

Yet, still, the

Only response

Could be

Yes

As if cows

In a field

Understood

The meaning of

Mulch or

Ground-spring

In fenced field

As rusted trailer

Pulled by Lariat

Approaches gate

Along

Farm road

ledger

 Each breath I take

I give back again

My balance sheet

Rests at zero

Asking for nothing

That’s all I get

a time will come

Let’s say

His time 

In office

Will end

When fear

Gives way

To love

Of truth

He will

Fall away

No longer

Clinging to

Poisonous

Resentment

And 

deceit

we found invisible currents

In prison this morning, this:

Be Near Me  

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

1911 –1984

 

Be near me now,
My tormenter, my love, be near me—
At this hour when night comes down,
When, having drunk from the gash of sunset, darkness comes
With the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond lancets,
When it comes with cries of lamentation,
                                             with laughter with songs;
Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every step.
At this hour when hearts, deep in their hiding places,
Have begun to hope once more, when they start their vigil
For hands still enfolded in sleeves;
When wine being poured makes the sound
                                             of inconsolable children
                      who, though you try with all your heart,
                                             cannot be soothed.
When whatever you want to do cannot be done,
When nothing is of any use;
—At this hour when night comes down,
When night comes, dragging its long face,
                                             dressed in mourning,
Be with me,
My tormenter, my love, be near me.

 

From The True Subject by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, translated by Naomi Lazard. © 1987 Princeton University Press. 

Man from South Sudan, man from Pakistan, man from New England, man from Brooklyn, woman from Toronto -- a morning talking about Volkswagens, Russian symphonies, Illegitimi non carborundum, David Brooks, character, humility, and slavery, the difference between accountability vs punishment for crimes -- two poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, we do final circle.

You Tell Us What to Do 

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

1911 –1984

 

When we launched life

on the river of grief,

how vital were our arms, how ruby our blood.

With a few strokes, it seemed,

we would cross all pain,

we would soon disembark.

That didn't happen.

In the stillness of each wave we found invisible currents.

The boatmen, too, were unskilled,

their oars untested.

Investigate the matter as you will,

blame whomever, as much as you want,

but the river hasn't changed,

the raft is still the same.

Now you suggest what's to be done,

you tell us how to come ashore.  

When we saw the wounds of our country

appear on our skins,

we believed each word of the healers.

Besides, we remembered so many cures,

it seemed at any moment

all troubles would end, each wound heal completely.

That didn't happen: our ailments

were so many, so deep within us

that all diagnoses proved false, each remedy useless.

Now do whatever, follow each clue,

accuse whomever, as much as you will,

our bodies are still the same,

our wounds still open.

Now tell us what we should do,

you tell us how to heal these wounds.

 

 

From The Rebel's Silhouette by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, translated by Agha Shahid Ali. Copyright © 1991 by Agha Shahid Ali.

The always surprise of gratefulness.