all we are asking, yes, all of us are asking

Struggle, jihad, suffering, wound, discomfort.

These are the religious values.

These, the emotions of compassion.

Now, anyone feeling religious?

I thought so.

It’s not mystery why there’s a narrative disparaging religion.

Most people do not know what religion is.

Religion is the unspoken realization permeating felt awareness that what is completely real is just this, right now, true here, kind words, love acts.

[silent bow, palms together, deep gratitude]

c i f i c i t

 contemplation --
   interfaith
   interculture
   intertradition

flectamus genua

In Utah, the Parliament of World Religions is meeting this weekend.

On Cobb Road, Susan J. collapses and dies.

In Georgia, two deputies are found not guilty of beating to death a Nigerian college student in a Savannah jail on New Year’s Day this year who was beaten to death by the two deputies.

There’s a connection here.

To find it means we have to learn to pray.

To pray -- then take action.

Doing something.

To begin a new understanding of faith.

To sit with the recently departed in blind vigil.

To finally say “No!” to the absurd belief that law enforcement can kill people with impunity.

Let us pray!

recitative

Meetingbrook is a place of contemplation, 

conversation, and correspondence 

practicing between traditions 

for the benefit of all beings 

toward cosmotheandric understanding, 

kindness, and acts of service. 

hearing myself say my hearing of myself

COLLAPSE

I liked our brief time spent with Lisbeth Lipari's words on"Understanding Understanding." Understanding Understanding, by Lisbeth Lipari, Tricycle Magazine

But what if it weren’t so? What if we were able to give up this way of understanding understanding and see it not as a captured stillness or singularity but rather as a momentary pause in an ongoing movement of unfolding, like a rest in a musical score, or a pause in a story, or a swirling eddy in an inexorable, ongoing river of meaning?

I like this notion that understanding is the briefest of greetings in a vast passing-by of people, places, and things. It is what Japanese brush painting artists characterize as 'touch and go.'

As I think of it, this notion of understanding is brief encounter, letting go, and openness to what might arrive a little bit down the road -- rather than a fixed and formal, unmoving and permanent certainty that is reluctant to meet and greet anything (someone or something) that might arrive unexpectedly at our doorstep.

I've often heard myself say that understanding is overrated. Maybe this new reading of Lipari is clarifying my hearing of myself.

Yes

say yes quickly 

             (~poem by Rumi)

Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up.
You think you know what time it is. It’s time to pray.
You’ve carved so many little figurines, too many.
Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar.
Reach your long hand out to another door, beyond where
you go on the street, the street
where everyone says, “How are you?”
and no one says How aren’t you?

Tomorrow you’ll see what you’ve broken and torn tonight
thrashing in the dark. Inside you
there’s an artist you don’t know about.
He’s not interested in how different things look in moonlight.

If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you’re causing terrible damage.
If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love
you’re helping people you don’t know and have never seen.

Is what I say true? Say yes quickly,
if you know, you’ve known it
from the beginning of the universe.

Towing boat: hearing of someone's death

Possible name for sailing dinghy: See Kindly.

On way returning across border, a message that Dan Page died this morning. His long engagement with cancer now finished.

We wish him safe and enduring travels.

Scores

Cubs win.

Bluejays win.

On to 4th game.

On to 5th game.

Like thanksgiving dinner with friends and new acquaintances.

The nourishing collectivity of the assembled with a certain grace.

Cificit -- (suffice it for now)

In Vankleek Hill Ontario Canada this morning over a lengthy breakfast with friends we discussed something we'd talked about in class -- what is happening with each one of us as we think about belief side by side with our growing longing to know as much as we can and with as much depth as we can about what it is belief is pointing to.

Mark and Heather and Saskia and I pointed out the familiar wording about keeping an open mind risks your brains might fall out. After more coffee and more inquiry we noticed that saying might be better phrased "An open mind risks your beliefs might fall out." But fall out to what?

Perhaps our beliefs are temporary holding markers until we come to a reasonable knowing that what we hold as true is, indeed, as true as we might verify for the current time being.  

We decided to name a new (temporary) approximate label for our state of mind concerning belief/knowledge. 

My contribution was "Cificit" 

"Cificit" sounds like a counterpoint to 'deficit' and stretches out to mean the following: "contemplative, inter-faith, inter-cultural, inter-tradition."

We finished the yogurt and fruit, bread and cheese, and friendship conversation happy enough that the four of us were vitally alive and part of a vital conversation.

Monday is Thanksgiving here in Canada as it is Columbus Day in the States.

Cheers to both!