Saturday, December 28, 2013

Not only don't we see what's there, we don't see what's not there

There's always another story.

At Last the Secret is Out

At last the secret is out,
as it always must come in the end,
the delicius story is ripe to tell
to tell to the intimate friend;
over the tea-cups and into the square
the tongues has its desire;
still waters run deep, my dear,
there's never smoke without fire.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir,
behind the ghost on the links,
behind the lady who dances
and the man who madly drinks,
under the look of fatigue
the attack of migraine and the sigh
there is always another story,
there is more than meets the eye.

For the clear voice suddently singing,
high up in the convent wall,
the scent of the elder bushes,
the sporting prints in the hall,
the croquet matches in summer,
the handshake, the cough, the kiss,
there is always a wicked secret,
a private reason for this.
(Poem by WH Auden)
There's more than meets the eye.

Always.

What is it to live between


Mountains, for example


Buddha and Christ, for example


Dream and sleep, for example


Inspector Bellamy and the solving of a mystery, par example...

Zen Master Bassui (1327-1387) speaks of Jizo bodhisattva.

Jizo is the guardian of children, travelers, and other voyagers.
Jizo stands for the mind-nature of ordinary people. Ji (the character for earth) is the foundation for the mind. Zo (the character for storehouse) is the storehouse for Buddha nature). It is in this Buddha nature that all the virtue of ordinary people is contained.
 (-- from book by Jan Chozen Bays)  http://books.google.com/books?id=rR4cBxpWPRUC&pg=PA239&lpg=PA239&dq=jizo+talk&source=bl&ots=xVVNuAW25L&sig=NYhepsajY6qkekXACqYnYQyEj18&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Ma6-UvnnC8_lsATq2oGoDQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=jizo%20talk&f=false
May all children be safe!

It is the feast of holy innocents.

Open your storehouse, O earth, and let the virtues of compassion of protection of gathering for good seed our heart/minds growing there light and sympathetic joy!

Friday, December 27, 2013

Sound it through: What Is, coming to be! A Christmas Meditation


Christus natus est nobis (Christ is born to us)
Breviarium Romanum - In Nativitate Domini, ad matutinum
Antiphona ad invitatorium
(Roman Breviary, antiphon and invitatory, Matins, Nativity of The Lord)
...


A Meditation, In middle of night

Christus natus est --
Inter nous
Internus
In terrae noos

Christ is born --
Between us
Within
In mind of earth

This is what we do at 2:22am?

Hear that?


What about this?

Psalm 18 (19) Praise of God the creator 

The skies tell the story of the glory of God,    
the firmament proclaims the work of his hands; 
day pours out the news to day,    
night passes to night the knowledge.  
  
Not a speech, not a word,    
not a voice goes unheard. 
Their sound is spread throughout the earth,    
their message to all the corners of the world. 

At the ends of the earth he has set up    
a dwelling place for the sun. 
Like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,  
it rejoices like an athlete at the race to be run.

It appears at the edge of the sky,  
runs its course to the sky’s furthest edge. 
Nothing can hide from its heat. 

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,    
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,    
world without end. Amen.

Between this and that...

Is,

where;

we live!

Thursday, December 26, 2013

On the feast of Stephen; hold no one's coat


Walk and listen. This is my end of year conclusion. It is the only gift I can think of that bridges the material and spiritual edges between which so many for so long have created a bottomless chasm of separation.

"Gods are great," said Atsula, slowly, as if she were imparting a great secret. "But the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return...."
(p.417, in American Gods, by Neil Gaiman)
Walk and listen...and nap.

While it snows.


And read.

While still...able.

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

As dusk walks down mountain





We return our descent.

It occurs, perhaps...

God is the whole of everything as well as the everything we cannot conceive.



And Christ is the Cosmos beyond imagination.



And earth is Gaia, mother, birthing one by one, each incarnation, each expression and manifestation of source itself.



As was Jesus.



As are you.

Today, when earth gives a particularly enlightened being to us, why not converse with insight, enthusiasm, and energy the nature of this gift?

Here is how it begins


Awake.

Bring in firewood.







Christmas morning. 

Only candle flame, wood stove, sunrise.

No other power.

And old reheated coffee.

Earth born


Earth rise.

NASA image AS8-14-2383, taken by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission, 24Dec1968)

Earth wise.

Christus natus est!

In the middle off the night


Rokie, the white border Collie, barks.


In the middle of the night we call your name.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Jitai, (自体 = itself)


This. Itself.

How near?


The absolute near-side.

So close


Earth sees.







So near.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Winter


Ice


Snow


Mute Rockport Harbor.

Dancing herein, therein, and therefore


Something's coming.
“… somewhere in the last 50 years we have crossed a mysterious limit set by Providence and have entered a new era. We have, in some sense, passed a point of no return, and it is both useless and tragic to continue to live as if we were still in the nineteenth century. Whatever we may think of the new era, whether we imagine it as the millennium, the noosphere, or as the beginning of the end, there has been a violent disruption of society and a radical overthrow of that modern world which goes back to Charlemagne.”  
(p. viii, Introduction by Thomas Merton, from THE PRISON MEDITATION OF FATHER DELP, Herder and Herder New York, 1963.) http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2006/12/prison-meditation-of-father-delp.html
A creative resolution, a creative tension.
 The issue of interhuman tension is secondary to earth-human tensions. If humans will not become functional members of the earth community, how can humans establish functional relationships among themselves? It is not exactly the question of whether the nations can survive each other, nor is it even the question of whether intelligent beings can survive the natural forces of the planet; it is whether the planet can survive the intelligence that it has itself brought forth. 
My proposal is that the cosmology of peace is presently the basic issue. The human must be seen in its cosmological role just as the cosmos needs to be seen in its human manifestation. This cosmological context has never been more clear than it is now, when everything depends on a creative resolution of our present antagonisms. I refer to a creative resolution of antagonisms rather than to peace in deference to the violent aspects of the cosmological process. Phenomenal existence itself seems to be a violent mode of being. Also, there is a general feeling of fullness bordering on decay that is easily associated with peace. Neither violence nor peace in this sense is in accord with the creative transformations through which the more splendid achievements of the universe have taken place. As the distinguished anthropologist A.L. Kroeber once indicated: The ideal situation for any individual or any culture is not exactly “bovine placidity.” It is, rather, “the highest state of tension that the organism can bear creatively.”           
(-- from final chapter, "The Cosmology of Peace" in "The Dream of the Earth" by Thomas Berry, c.1988)
 That middle, that middle place, that middle way, that place the gospel refers to when it cites Jesus as saying "The kingdom of heaven (the kingdom of God) is between you." (Cf. John1:26, Luke 17:21) -- it is there that peace is found, not off and away and not oblivious to the push and pull of this and that in the ubiquitous and perennial vying for dominance and bettering. Step, rather, into the between, the center, the middle, the heart of what is being revealed in our midst.

The Pax Gaia is earth and all beings with and through earth coming into proper and true relationality.

Step out.

Step in.

Step between.

Dance herein, therein, and therefore encircle the center of existence.

Listen!

Something's near!

Revealing, itself.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

morning after Handfasting


Newlyweds toboggan down from yurt laughing.

They kiss outside barn.


Everything is ice and grey.

Except their laughter. 

Breathing meditation


Sound of cat jumping to floor. Moving something not nailed down.