Haiku, (for itself)

Moonlight in dooryard
No one asks: Do you trust it?
White glow on gravel

(wfh)

As it tumbles edge over edge

Mokugyo from Kyoto arrives with returning visitors to Japan.

Watch Iranian film after popcorn fire.

Adrienne Rich's poem 7/26/1968 drove the prison conversation today.

Alea jacta est!

Unconfining knowledge is itself holiness

We row the near empty outer harbor around Curtis Island with Rokie in bow of peapod.

Earlier we walk trails of Ragged Mountain engrossed with October rust, two dogs lumbering alongside.

At Thursday Evening Conversation talk of holiness and unconfined knowing.

I tell students for yesterday's midterms I'm not interested in them telling me what they know, but in their learning what they are thinking.

I'm grateful for those who massacre my egoistic fears.

I'm nearly alive when such gifts are extended.

Long, alternate voices

Wisdom via suffering -- the way of Greek tragedy.

And then Wednesday ends.

Nothing lasts forever

Insanity is temporary. Like words.

Now, love -- that's different.

It might be all there is, but many of us cannot see what is right before us.

Sometimes, insanity is what there is...for the moment.

When that is true, only the truth makes sense, even if insane.

Bob Schieffer said it best: "We all love teachers."

One of the two new residents of meetingbrook.

Then the second.

They're not planning to vote.

They ignored the debate.

Not me. I'll vote. I watched the televised commercial for political maneuvers.

Where were the other candidates?

Robert Creeley wrote: "One thing / done, the / rest follows."

 "Where things go to is where they come from." (Shinzen Young)

That sums it nicely!

There seems to be a general impression that the ultimate goal of mindfulness practice is to be able to stay focused on the breath. I sometimes parody that notion with the slogan “Real meditators are able to come back to the breath.” Actually, if you insist that I give you something to always come back to, I would say “Real meditators are able to come back to ‘gone.’” 
(--from "The Power of Gone," by Shinzen Young, Tricycle, http://www.tricycle.com/practice/power-gone)

Suddenly, back pain is gone. To where? Who knows. When and if it returns I'll be too distracted to ask it.

Visiting patients in Pen Bay Hospital last evening reminds me of "gone." One is near gone. Another quietly beams as she says she has no idea when, but at 91 and with congestive heart failure, she smiles that there's not much to do about what is happening.

She's right, of course. It is "what is" happening.

After two and a half hours of standing by beds speaking and listening, it was time to go. The walk through doors out across parking lot in foggy autumn mist was the stuff of dreams. Everyone is gone in the passing of the evening and everyone comes along with me turning toward Rockport and Camden.

We
  are never
     alone. 

No
  one is
    with us. 

Returning
  to the(e)
    source. 

{wfh}