We are not
What anyone says we are
We are as
We find ourselves to be
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:
11in theendlesscitythe end-less citythe beg-gars arein oneplacethe copsin an-otherthe finepeoplehere& thepoorpeoplethere(each hashis parisheach hisprecinct)in the endlessendlessendlesscity
Source: Poetry (December 2015)
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!
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
Going inside
Nothing outside
Satisfies
Returning
To unseen unknown
(Yawn)
What do I
Owe for the
Ride
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
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
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.
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
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
It is tiring
These shootings
The drama
The way
Blowhards
Bloviate
The cowardice
Of the gun-
Protected
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
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
Each breath I take
I give back again
My balance sheet
Rests at zero
Asking for nothing
That’s all I get
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
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.