Six men and a woman -- at large a small coterie

I would like Bush, Cheney, Blair, Rumsfeld, Rice, Bremer, and Powell to fly to Baghdad and do their best to quell the disturbance they created. They could stand on the Sinak Bridge and explain to those fleeing Baghdad and those entering to overrun it just why what they did in invading Iraq was good for them.

In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.— Hunter S. Thompson

They stole Iraq from Iraq.

They didn’t get caught.

There’s no antidote to indifference and political cowardice.

At least none we see.

Let no one call war, or killing, or greedy injustice the 'human condition' or any other dismissive false explanation

"Amongst the many things that religious tradition holds in store for us is a legacy of wonder. The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin. 

"Awareness of the divine begins with wonder. It is a result of what man does with his higher incomprehension. The greatest hindrance to such awareness is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental cliches. Wonder, or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is therefore a prerequisite to that which is." 

-Abraham Joshua Heschel (quoted in Louie, Louie, 11june2014) http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2014/06/radical-amazement.html

Sorrow has one more spelling

INTERNATIONAL

Names of the Dead

The Department of Defense has identified 2,311 American service members who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations. It confirmed the death of the following American recently:

WALKER, Matthew H., 20, Pfc., Army; Hillsboro, Mo.; 101st Airborne Division.

(New York Times, 11june2014)

Din

Another day, another school shooting. Or Las Vegas shooting. Or Afghanistan ‘friendly fire’ killings.

It is quite a din.

In Isaiah 45:7 the Lord declares: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil". Kabbalists have interpreted this to mean that light and peace were already part of the divine, but that darkness and evil were not, and that the fundamental creative act was a withdrawal of God to create the possibility of distinction, of separation, and definition. This idea is paralleled in Genesis 1, where God manifests Light, and then separates Light from Darkness. 

This primary duality has a technical definition in Kabbalah. Light is the power of life, giving, mercy, loving-kindness, and water, and is called Chesed. Dark is the power of death, taking, separation, distinction and constraint, boundaries and fire, and is called Din. 

The diagram above attempts to condense several key ideas in Kabbalah. Light is separated from darkness, creating a space where the power ofDin predominates. Light (divine creative energy) enters this space, and forms ten progressively attenuated "layers" (i.e. sefirot), which shield the primordial intensity of the light. No part of the Light has autonomous existence. The structure of layers is created through the interaction of Light with the power of Din, so that reality emerges from the interweaving. 

The Tree of Life embodies these ideas in the form of the interaction of the Pillars of Mercy and Severity.
(--from, The Tree of Life, in Hermetic Kabbalah), http://www.digital-brilliance.com/themes/tol.php

We have become separated from the equanimity of wholeness included in choosing the right thing to do the right person in the right situation.

 What emerges is our doing.

Doing

what is

right.

when thinking goes, we wonder

how

did

everything
                   get
                           so


small?

Post-Pentecost prelude

God

Is 

Becoming

Itself

pentecost; trois mots

create;

seeing

itself

Pentecost; quatro palabras

Deep seeing

Becoming speech

Pentecost; simplex obligatio

After 50 days mulling unknown in death of known, a thought:

what if this spirit of mulling IS what becomes of God, 

seeing deep 

holding all?

*(simplex obligatio:  L; an unconditional bond — compare 1simple 7c, cf Merriam-Webster)