With Rokie in the bow of Matinicus Peapod, we round Curtis Island this afternoon heading back to harbor. Near Dillingham Point to the northwest of Curtis just below the channel we come upon Sam and Susan Manning in their Grand Banks Dory rowing toward island. It is 26 degrees on Christmas afternoon and two traditional small craft come within 20 yards of each other in a wide swath of water. We greet each other as Rokie stands to gauge the distance, happily deciding it too far to leap, and after wishing each other blessings of the day, we continue our ways lengthening distance between. It was nearing 3:30pm. Back at dock another man whose dog, after bounding dangerously with Rokie on the wooden float, jumped into stern as he began to row the sailing double-ender out in front of the Grace Bailey and Mercantile, but not before saying, “You get credit for being out on the ocean today.” I wished him good credit and reflected on our small community of Christmas Day rowing folk. I sponge-bailed very cold water from the hidden-away keel/keelson which the rock salt kept liquid, checked lines, then climbed ramp back to VW Beetle. Someone stopped me to ask if I’d indeed rowed out to the island as Rokie leaned against his companion’s legs -- which she thought was just fine. I told the truth -- yes, it was cold, and yes it is fun -- try it some day.

Christmas Haiku

If I were you I’d

Wonder why I’d written this

To someone I am

(wfh, 23dec10)

Listen

Christ

Is

Completely

Alone

Now

With

Another

. . . As

You

Are

Here

Observe this.

Listen to this.

Be this.

It is Christmas -- a silent, holy, and ordinary night.

Being born.

The words say: "Our use for words is almost over now."
http://acim.org/Lessons/lesson.html?lesson=351

"Now is he redeemed. And as he sees the gate of Heaven stand open before him, he will enter in and disappear into the Heart of God." (ACIM)

How to think about this prefacing morning? Cat purrs on chest. Last night's embers rekindled in woodstove as dawn stars guide dog and cat out Wohnkuche sliding door to morning pee. The night was giving way. We are its quiet remains.

In his poem "Ten Years Later," David Whyte writes:

Every year the sea breeze
ruffles the cold and lovely pearls
hidden in the center of the flowers

as if remembering them
by touch alone.

A calm and lonely, trembling beauty
that frightened me in youth.

Now their loneliness
feels familiar, one small thing
I've learned these years,

how to be alone,
and at the edge of aloneness
how to be found by the world.

Innocence is what we allow
to be gifted back to us
once we've given ourselves away.

There is one world only,
the one to which we gave ourselves
utterly, and to which one day

we are blessed to return.

(~ David Whyte ~ from, House of Belonging)
file:///Volumes/meetingbrook/poem,%20Ten%20Years%20Later%20--%20David%20Whyte.webarchive

Perhaps this is a nativity reflection for this morning. There is one. World. Only.

Is Jesus, called Christ, one through which we listen, see, and have awareness of being-itself?

Is this the invitation?

To arrive. To listen and to see. To completely feel with what-is-here. Then disappear. Into the heart. Of God.

Alone with.

With...

Alone.

Cold wind blows through moonlight over this morning’s snow.

Just as sound of existence is heard through Christ-Mind over din of world’s erroneous perceptions.

Still, we listen for light. We look for harmony. We cry freedom.

A curtain of cloud hangs
Before the meditation seat
An ice wheel of moonlight
Turns through the railing
Don't say I have erased
All trace of attainment
Behind me there are still
Heaven and earth.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Still, heaven and earth.

Today was Thursday. Tomorrow Friday.

Then comes Saturday.

God itself is what is sounding through.

I write:

Christmas Haiku:

If I were you I’d
wonder why I’d written this
to someone I am

Cat and dog are in. Saskia gone to family. Cold wind passing through.

Last minute legislation in Congress. Applause.

So many words. Too many.

Our use for words is almost over now. Yet in the final days of this one year we gave to God together, you and I, we found a single purpose that we shared. And thus you joined with me, so what I am are you as well. The truth of what we are is not for words to speak of nor describe. Yet we can realize our function here, and words can speak of this and teach it, too, if we exemplify the words in us.
(--from December 20th - Lesson 354, A Course in Miracles))

What happens when the words become exemplification?

What do we see when the word becomes flesh?

Zen-sitting is the way of perfect tranquility:
Inwardly not a shadow of perception,
Outwardly not a shade of difference
Between phenomena.
Identified with yourself,
You no longer think,
Nor do you seek enlightenment
Of the mind or disburdenment of illusions.
You are a flying bird with
No mind to twitter, a mountain
Unconscious of the others rising around it.
- Meiho (1277–1350)

Twitterless un-con-consciousness without illusions -- sign me up!

Some silence saves even what is lost.

Winter! Solstice!

Light will return.

First, the cold. Then, throughout, returning light.

The Original Self

Even those who have set aside all judgments of right and wrong and do not view people in terms of self and other cannot be said to be truly on the Way as long as they have not seen the original state before personal history.
- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

A few days to Christmas. Today, I am alive.

There's nothing else.

And nothing to fear.

We are not going home. We are home.

The moon will eclipse tonight. I will be eclipsed by the time it happens.

I will try to remain still and silent.

Death and life are looked on
As but transformations;
The myriad creation is all of a kind,
There is a kinship through all.
- Huai Nan Tzu (2nd c. BCE)

A student writes:

"I tried to think logically about how the story could be the way it was but if you just let it be… it is. Being transcnds reason. Being allows for everything to be at once.”
-- Melyssa K, 15dec2010

She sees something here.

I am with you.

God is with us.

Be with one another.

Advent draws into its evening and final days.

Then Isaiah said:
‘Listen now, House of David:
are you not satisfied with trying the patience of men
without trying the patience of my God, too?
The Lord himself, therefore,
will give you a sign.
It is this: the maiden is with child
and will soon give birth to a son
whom she will call Immanuel,
a name which means “God-is-with-us.”’
(-from Isaiah 7:10-14)

All obedience is contained in the phrase: "Listen now."

All spirituality is rooted in listening now to what is now.

What do we hear?

He had made up his mind to do this when the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.’ Now all this took place to fulfil the words spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel...

a name which means ‘God-is-with-us.’ When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home.
(-from Matthew1:18-24)

We are, it feels. far from home as we listen to the fears and frustrations, savaging and sycophanting, noisily clanking though the streets and hallways of our collective sleep and disturbing dreams.

We long to find, to return, to be -- home.

(Angelus, or, Abendbebet, (1857-59), by Jean-Francois Millet, Public Domain)

Joseph, listening, heard, took Mary to his home. Mary was home to her new listening within her. The time was now. What had been time was no more. What would be time would not occur. Everything, from origin to completion, was now.

Was now listening.

Being with.

Is with.

Your life.

My life.

Life itself.

Coming to be-with us.

Bewithing the world as-it-is.

Origin...Present...Holy Wholeness.

Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum!

(Allow it to be-with me as-is your word!)