End of year confession

No longer interested in things I'm no longer interested in.

Sports. Finance. Politics. Conspiracies. Congratulatory religion. Being saved. Being lost. Lies. Blatant sincerity. Crude disdain. Mollifying coddling. Self doubt. Self confidence. Anything tinged with patent insincerity. Defensive fear. Blustery bravado. Deceptive shuffling. Smart alecks. Hustling competence. Overly compensated puppets.

It snows.

Mountain trees bend white with weight.

I am left alone.

Age alights.

Innocence

Mountain outside window
At dusk
Looks in

Morning after

Ah, warmth in white wrap!

Grounding; departing where thought used to be

White wind carries snow into green cedar branch
Night silences...beyond
There is nothing other than this stillness anywhere

Brightness illumines our heart

Snow keeps quiet.

Furthermore, bringing forth the turning point by using a finger, a pole, a needle, or a mallet, or leading people to enlightenment with a whisk, a fist, a stick, or a shout cannot be understood by discriminatory thinking. How can it be understood by the use of supernatural powers? Zazen is an awesome presence outside form and color. How is it not the path preceding concept?
Thus, do not 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 Kigen 1227

Stays everyone at home.

 This is what we have heard from him,and the message that we are announcing to you: God is light; there is no darkness in him at all. If we say that we are in union with God while we are living in darkness,we are lying because we are not living the truth. But if we live our lives in the light, as he is in the light,we are in union with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son,purifies us from all sin.
(--from Office of Readings, Feast of John the Evangelist)

Wind runs, alone, the mountain.

Break a leg

We rush about with pages of script and swatches of costume.

In the Parade interview, he recalled the hand-to-hand combat. “I was crossing a field somewhere in Belgium,” he said. “A German soldier ran toward me carrying a bayonet. He couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15. I didn’t see a soldier. I saw a boy. Even though he was coming at me, I couldn’t shoot. 

”They grappled, he recounted later — he was stabbed seven or eight times — until finally he grasped a rock and made it a weapon. After killing the youth, he said, he held him in his arms and wept. 

Mr. Durning said the memories never left him, even when performing, even when he became, however briefly, someone else. 

“There are many secrets in us, in the depths of our souls, that we don’t want anyone to know about,” he told Parade. “There’s terror and repulsion in us, the terrible spot that we don’t talk about. That place that no one knows about — horrifying things we keep secret. A lot of that is released through acting.”( NYTimes, Charles Durning, Prolific Character Actor, Dies at 89, Published: December 25, 2012) 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/movies/charles-durning-prolific-character-actor-dies-at-89.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&hp

Let's have less talk. Most of what we say is foolish.

God is silence through act.

Exeunt omnes!

Might, I have this dance, with you

An ordinary day... Christ is
Born in each branch holding
Winter's light... slow return

Word is spoken in each silent act

December 25, light before light.

Grace is silence passing through night

Just us. Just as.

Christmas Poem 

Says a country legend told every year:
Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see
what the creatures do as that long night tips over.
Down on their knees they will go, the fire
of an old memory whistling through their minds! 

So I went. Wrapped to my eyes against the cold
I creaked back the barn door and peered in.
From town the church bells spilled their midnight music,
and the beasts listened – yet they lay in their stalls like stone. 

Oh the heretics!
Not to remember Bethlehem,
or the star as bright as a sun,
or the child born on a bed of straw!
To know only of the dissolving Now! 

Still they drowsed on –
citizens of the pure, the physical world,
they loomed in the dark: powerful
of body, peaceful of mind, innocent of history. 

Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas!
And you are no heretics, but a miracle,
immaculate still as when you thundered forth
on the morning of creation!
As for Bethlehem, that blazing star 

still sailed the dark, but only looked for me.
Caught in its light, listening again to its story,
I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled
my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me
the best it could all night. 

(Poem by Mary Oliver)

The justice of it; mere solitude of fire in Waterford. Two cats dozing. Tree outside lighted beyond barn circle of light.

This!

This is church enough.

We do the best we could.

It is time; nearing

Hold off on Santa and Jesus. Just another day. Think of it as earth touching ground. Imagine awareness letting itself be found in everything everywhere.

It is very simple, really.

When we awake we will remember everything.

December 25 is as good a day as any to fall into our ever-present, infinite, and eternal beingness with loving attention given to all.

The ground is frozen. It is winter. 

A woman sang to me from her hospital bed this afternoon. Finnish songs she learnt in school. Now 90, she teaches me a phrase or two so I can say goodbye.

Always goodbye. Always hello. 

This time, Christmas. At another time, a Friday, a sad drama.

Make your way through.

It is time.