Let's not call it hiding. Let's say it is climbing ladder in chapel zendo to loft, opening glass window to screen, and sitting in white cushioned metal chair looking out to trees shading hermitage path.
A light breeze rustles still soft leaves. Old stone wall hasn't moved in decades. Young slender maple alongside cabin stretches itself in early evening new summer warmth.
In prison this morning we spoke of Westman's Structure of Biblical Myths, and Hazony's The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture. Two wonderfully skeptical and agnostic men in prison continually surprise themselves with their observations and insights about the things they read and the discussions we have. Saskia brings vital participation.
Prison is prison. We do our best to listen through it.
Mosquito bobs against screen looking for flaw to penetrate.
Lori and Mark spend three nights. They are sweet kids (if at their third and fourth decades they can be called kids!) They visit their aging uncle and are good sports in the presence of idiosyncratic spirituality and dozing crankiness. They eat lobster. I go to bed.
Saskia says that one of the women in our yurt colloquium mentioned how grateful she was (as an atheist) that meetingbrook has never once attempted to convert her all the years she's known us. I wonder what we'd try to convert anyone to. We are a certain distance away from any particular belief, a nodding acquaintance with every sincere attempt or abject indifference to find meaning in systems that need rubbing oil and dust cloth to have them appear out of the obscurity they've become.
Charlie nailed it with what will become a new blessing in prison this morning. He says, "Fuck it; It is what it is!" I suspect, yes, and it probably always will be so; for now.
I imagine this phrasing will take its place next to the “God bless you's" favored by the believing folks there. It has all the characteristics of detachment, acceptance, and clear sight so important to a meeting of the esoteric and exoteric traditions.
The day ebbs.
Birds begin evening antiphons.
No matter what part is wrong, it's all right!