where’d he go?

nowhere --

(between you and me)

Three haiku; ok -- four

1.

New fountain pen --

What resides within

Waiting wording?

2.

Charissa will sleep

In "why not now?"

Will awaken creative newness

3.

I see prayer

Differently -- on earth

As-it-is          in heaven

4.

Mary and Elizabeth,

Two friends, discover

Where heaven is -- within

So much Mu

Doris spends her last day volunteering at Maine State Prison. She is moving to another state.This 85 yr old bodhisattva brings and reads Cheslaw Milosz as her parting gift.

On Prayer 

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not. 

All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge 

And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,  

Above landscapes the color of ripe gold 

Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun. 

That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal 

Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is' 

Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned. 

Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,  

Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh 

And knows that if there is no other shore 

We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.  

(Poem by Czeslaw Milosz)

Doris...thank you.

So.

Mu...

ch.

Speaking of love without subject verb object

Wana Giwu Love

Means:

We are not alone, God is with us, Let our verition emerge!

What happens when researching a Gebserian word, "verition"

Lengthy excerpt from blog entitled footnotes2plato follows:

THE ANGEL OF DEATH AND THE COMING OF CHRIST

The debilitating anxiety of the mental-rational ego in the face of death prevents it from becoming aware of the ever-presence of origin, effective in both the life- and death-poles of the soul. Catherine Keller, another contemporary Whiteheadian, evinces the psychic demand of the integral structure of consciousness by comparing the finite ego’s relationship to the universe with the book of Job. Job, the archetypal human of the post-fall phase of creation, is called by YHWH to intensify the symbolic “horizon of what our little body-brains can know”:

“The limits of our knowing, like the limits of our lives, trap us within an often tragic finality. Yet here shadows of ignorance begin to suggest the bottomless mystery not only of death but of life.”51

Keller attempts to draw our attention both to the mortal limits of rational knowledge and the immortal reaches of aperspectival faith. She suggests that YHWH “is challenging Job’s readiness to stir the destructive forces of chaos”52 in service of the ongoing transformation from a suffering organism into a living symbol of origin, from flesh into Word. Job’s is the story of the initial emergence of the unconscious spirit buried in the primal depths of the universe into concrete and personal presence.

Indeed, says Keller,

“Job already whirls toward an ecological theology of the Whiteheadian sort, in which human becoming looks cramped and cancerous–unless we collude more wisely with the elements, the plants, the beasts and each other.”

In learning to “become-with” the threads of life the bind the world into a whole, Job redeems his fallen state.

“Where were you,” asks YHWH of Job,

“before I laid the foundation of the world…when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? [Did you] enclose the sea with doors when, bursting forth, water went out from the womb; When I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and placed boundaries on it and set a bolt and doors, and I said, ‘Thus far you shall come, but no further; and here shall your proud waves stop.’?”53

Gebser points to the symbol of Christ as the first answer to YWHW’s call, representing immunity to resubmergence in the tumultous and anxiety-ridden animality of the depths of thesoul.54 In Christ, the Creator becomes conscious of the life of its own creation, the poet aware of his craft. YHWH enters into space and time, is crucified as Jesus, and reborn as the living symbol and original organism of creation.

Jesus said: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.”55

Gebser marks water as the symbol of the life-pole of the soul, while the “siren-like angels” of Rilke’s poetry are its death-pole.56 Christ integrates the creativity of the former with the “perpetual plenitude” of the later, allowing the poet to both drink the wisdom of the past and “ware” the wisdom of the present.57 Rilke writes of Christ, who for the ego appears indistinguishable from the siren-like angel “deep inside the doors of the dead,” that “he obeys, even as he oversteps the bounds” of space and time.58

I quote Rilke’s poem Sonnets to Orpheus at length, for these words mark a crucial event in the dateless history of spirit’s creativity:

“To praise, that’s it! Called to praise, he came like ore out of the silence of stone. Oh, his heart’s a perishable press of a wine that’s eternal for men…Only one who’s also raised the lyre among shades may return unending praise with warning…Look at the sky…Even the linking of stars is a lie. But for a while now let’s be happy to believe the symbol. That’s enough…Hail to the spirit who can link us: because we live in symbols, really. And with tiny steps the clocks walk beside our primal day…Dare to say what you call apple. This sweetness that condenses first so in the taste that’s so tenderly intense it may become awake, transparent, double meaning, clear, bright, earthly, ours–O knowledge, feeling, joy–immense!…Deep down, the oldest tangled root of all that’s grown, the secret source they’ve never seen…Branch pushing branch, not one of them free…One! oh, climb higher…higher…Yet they still break. But this top one finally bends into a lyre…Do you hear the New, Master, droning and throbbing? Its prophesying promoters are advancing. No hearing’s truly keen in all this noise; still, now each machine part wills its praise. See, the Machine: how it spins and wreaks revenge, deforms and demeans us. Since its power comes from us, let it do its work and serve, serene…Even if the world changes as fast as the shapes of clouds, all perfected things at last fall back to the very old. Over what’s passing and changing, freer and wider, your overture is lasting, god with the lyre. Pain’s beyond our grasp, love hasn’t been learned, and whatever eliminates us in death is still secret. Only the Song above the land blesses and celebrates…But you O divine one, resounder to the end, when the swarm of unrequited maenads fell upon you, o beautiful one, you over sung their cries with order, your edifying song rose from the destroyers. No one was present who could crush your head and lyre, no matter how they struggled and wrested. And all the sharp stones they threw at your heart, on touching you, became tender and gifted with hearing. Finally they tore you, impelled by vengeance, while your sound still lingered in rock and lions, in trees and birds. You still sing there now. O you lost god, you endless trace! Only because in the end hate divided you are we now nature’s mouth and listeners…Breath, you invisible poem! Steady sheer exchange between the cosmos and our being. Counterpoise in which I rhythmically become.”59

CONCLUSION

While mental philosophy demands explanation (literally, spatialization, or laying out on a plain so as to expose), poetic statement integrates the dimensionality of space and time by making the whole transparently present. Poetry awakens us to origin without the need of argumentation or systematic conception. It “[steadies the] sheer exchange between the cosmos and our being,” as Rilke says. In such verse, the ego-fixed soul find’s its way through the mystery of death and is born again into the eternal life, now not of the waters, but of the spirit. Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” 60

(--from,  The Spirit of Integral Poetry: “Waring” the Symbolism of Organism, by Matthew David Segall, posted Dec.13, 2011, http://footnotes2plato.com/2011/12/

I was all right for a while...I could smile...

At end of film there is a hand. It reaches and grasps another hand. Fade to credits. Is he saved? Or is it a dream, the last hope of imagination?

Henri Nouwen is spoken about in a sermon preached by a preacher in Arkansas in 2008. 

http://www.stpaulsfay.org/id300.html

One day while he was sitting with Rodleigh, the leader of the troupe, Henri fell into a discussion with him about flying. The acrobat told Henri this: "As a flyer, I must have complete trust in my catcher. The public might think that I am the great star of the trapeze, but the real star is Joe, my catcher. He has to be there for me with split-second precision and grab me out of the air as I come to him in the long jump." 

Henri asked him to explain how it works. "The secret," Rodleigh said, "is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything. When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me safely over the apron behind the catchbar." 

"You do nothing!" Henri said, surprised. "Nothing," Rodleigh repeated. "The worst thing the flyer can do it to try to catch the catcher. I am not supposed to catch Joe. It's Joe's task to catch me. If I grabbed Joe's wrists, I might break them, or he might break mine, and that would be the end for both of us. A flyer must fly, and a catcher must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be there for him." (Writings Selected, p. 55; originally from Our Greatest Gift, p. 66)      

Elsewhere there’s a photo of a man sitting zazen on a flat stone surrounded by water. The caption reads: “Don’t worry, nothing is under control.”

Don’t bother catching me, cosmos, I am falling through you with no end, no bottom, no hand, no hope of anything other than falling through.

The hand is falling with me. The anchor line is not tied as it slips through the hawsehole. Turtles all the way down.

Doing nothing!

Nothing at all.

Enjoy the ride.

tohu bohu: of, course

Is nothing sacred? Because if there is nothing, what does that make everything?  Is everything merely what we think it to be? What our hands form it into? What our imagination dances with? A disheveled mind uncertain what is underfoot? Whether what is underfoot is earth, emptiness, or elohim*? (* Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) is a grammatically singular or plural noun for “god” or “gods" in bothmodern and ancient Hebrew language.) (wikipedia) 

Tidy this thought up.

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhak, known as RaSHI (1040-1105) . . . noticed, for example, that bereshit, the first word of the first chapter of Genesis, could mean ‘In the beginning of’, so the sentence should read: ‘In the beginning of God’s creation of heaven and earth, the earth was a formless void (tohu bohu).’ This implied that the raw materials of the earth were already in existence when God started his creative work, and that he simply brought order to tohu bohu.(p.133, in The Bible, A Biography, by Karen Armstrong)

I always found it interesting that the bible begins with phonic bear-shit (i.e. bereshit).

Being a slave to our concerns is like being in debt to them. When we're in debt, we have no real freedom in our hearts. The more we pay off our debts, the more lighthearted we'll feel. In the same way, if we can let go of our various worries and cares, peace will arise in our hearts. (—Ajaan Lee, “Sowing the Seeds of Freedom”)

Squirrels consider the new placement of bird feeder. Buddhist from half mile toward town walks up dooryard rutted drive to meditation cabin. Birds flutter past window through damp air.

I am as I tell myself I am. Yesterday’s reheated coffee and Thomas’ toasted muffin in upstairs retiro remove, morning cars at end of barnestown hill level off toward hosmer pond.

I tell myself I have no idea whether I am mournful sad or marvelously empty. All feels still within. For these days dress uniform is solitude and seclusion. The recluse is in the house.

Conversation            

           By AI             

                    for Robert Lowell 

We smile at each other 

and I lean back against the wicker couch.   

How does it feel to be dead? I say. 

You touch my knees with your blue fingers.   

And when you open your mouth, 

a ball of yellow light falls to the floor   

and burns a hole through it. 

Don’t tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.   

Did you ever, you start, 

wear a certain kind of silk dress 

and just by accident, 

so inconsequential you barely notice it,   

your fingers graze that dress 

and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,   

you see it too 

and you realize how that image 

is simply the extension of another image,   

that your own life 

is a chain of words 

that one day will snap. 

Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,   

and beginning to rise heavenward 

in their confirmation dresses, 

like white helium balloons, 

the wreaths of flowers on their heads spinning, 

and above all that, 

that’s where I’m floating,   

and that’s what it’s like 

only ten times clearer, 

ten times more horrible.   

Could anyone alive survive it?  

(Poem by Ai, “Conversation” from Vice: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1999)

Barbara’s ashes will be spread from the Angelique out in Penobscot Bay this morning. Pirate personnas will playact obsequy of obfuscating obviousness into obscurity. She remains the hoofer upon boards of deep disappearance.

panta rhei wondering about screens

“… I think it’s what Merton is saying about prayer, - whatever it is, anything in it that is an impurity, that is anything but the act itself, which is practically unnamable. And if it is what it should be, then the poetry is prayer, the acrobatic act is prayer. 

“Pure act, I think it’s a metaphysical concept starting with Aristotle and flowering in St. Thomas that God is pure act and that there is no POTENTIA in Him. But that almost everything else in the universe is IN POTENTIA, it’s on its way to being pure act, on its way to unity with God. But only God is pure act. And that made me think about a lot of things. One of them is that business of the purity of an acrobatic performance, of any performance, at the point where it becomes really pure, is at its closest to the divine and closest to that unity.” 

“Throwing everything away except the act itself, and I think at that point it also joins with the ideas of Zen, that everything is right here in this moment, and all those same things are being thrown away in what they describe as the Zen act. So if you were living in that kind of purity or call it action, it would be close to the kingdom of heaven.          (p. 437-438)

  (--from “When Prophecy Had A Voice”, interview between Robert Lax and Arthur Biddle; in beth cioffoletti’s blog “ louie, louie”)   

               http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2014/05/spontaneity.html?  

               utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LouieLouie+%28louie%2C+louie%29, 

Skidder on mountain begins in earnest dismantling of towline stanchions and, (unfortunately), trees  in the way of recreational ambition.

Formless void -- the beginning of, the commencement of, what is of, this moment of -- no birth/no death.

Of.

Exactly.

As you.

See.

jamais plus la guerre

We honor, recall, and pray for

all dead and deadened

by war.

meetingbrook     stand and gassho*         keep mouth shut      war dead silence 5/26/14, 6:09

*Definition: Gassho is Japanese for “palms of the hands placed together.” The gesture is made as a greeting, in gratitude, or to make a request.In the most common form of gassho used in Japanese Zen, hands are pressed together, palm to palm in front of one's face. Fingers are straight. There should be about a fist's distance between one's nose and one's hands. Fingertips should be the same distance from the floor as one's nose. Elbows are held slightly away from the body.Holding the hands in front of the face signifies nonduality. It signifies that the giver and receiver of the bow are not two. Gassho often accompanies a bow. To bow, bend only at the waist, keeping the back straight. 
http://buddhism.about.com/od/buddhismglossaryg/g/Gasshodef.htm

In

"On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you." (--john 14:20, sixth sunday of easter)

In

In

In