That's it

Looked at obituary of woman I once conversed with about Greek literature.

Then thought about my obituary. 

Decided to publish and get over with.

He once was. Now,
No more. Nothing
Much to think about
Being dead. Who
Knows. That's it.

I'm surprised daily to wake up and return to sleep. I don't know what the fuss is. Some time soon the pattern will interrupt. 

And that will be it.

Whatever 'it' is.

Not yet; still, here

God, it might be said, is the future.

Needleman writes:

To think about God is to the human soul what breathing is to the human body. 

I say to think about God, not necessarily to believe in God -- that may or may not may not come later. 

I say: to think about God. 

I clearly remember the moment something deep inside me started breathing for the first time. Something behind my thoughts and my desires and my fears, something behind my self, something behind “Jerry," which was and is my name, the name of me, from my earliest childhood. 

I can say this now, more than sixty years after my first conscious experience of this second breathing, this first breathing of the soul. 

(--from chapter one, My Father’s God, in What is God, by Jacob Needleman, c.2009)

Breathing, the act of creative intimacy.

Learning of which, we move toward the emergence of God.

Because, the thought arises, God is not yet.

Because the feeling is, what is emerging through each moment is the full reality of God as future now.

Not future time, but future us.

When unified, united as what God is becoming here -- what is becoming here, God.

Here is a hint

If you were to find truth, what would it look like?

Here's a hint: it would look just like this.

You've got to wonder why we don't see this.

47th day

What the Mass says to me is there's a mystery to the relationship between words we say and things that occur.

Language reveals what is hidden inside words.

Breath.

an unveiling shaking of head

From Monday morning New York Times briefing:

See something, say something? 

An economics professor said his flight from Philadelphia to Syracuse was delayed because a passenger thought the mathematical equations he was writing might be a sign he was a terrorist. 

Last month, a college student was removed from a flight after a passenger reported him for speaking Arabic.

Fear and ignorance are not only rife and real. They are the lifeblood of an unaware time and the people sleepwalking through the space time unveils.

what being is written

Poets attempt to word what they are.

Jesus said:  

I speak this in the world
so that they may share my joy completely.
I gave them your word, and the world hated them,
because they do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world
but that you keep them from the Evil One.
They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth.
Your word is truth.so that they may share my joy completely.   I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.            (--from John 17)

Poets try to pronounce a world from within a world hard to hear and hard of hearing.

Better worlds (I suggest) are born,not made; and their birthdays are the birthdays of individuals. Let us pray always for individuals; never for worlds.          (--from i: six nonlectures, by e.e.cummings)

Poets come from that place where words come from.

A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true. This does not mean, of course, that one can only appreciate a poet whose beliefs happen to coincide with one’s own. It does mean, whoever, that one must be convinced that the poet really believes what he says, however odd the belief may seem to oneself. 

What the poet has to convey is not “self-expression,” but a view of a reality common to all, seen from a unique perspective, which it is his duty as well as his pleasure to share with others. To small truths as well as great, St. Augustine’s words apply. 

“The truth is neither mine nor his nor another’s but belongs to us all whom Thou callest to partake of it, warning us terribly, not to account in private to ourselves, lest we be deprived of it.”

(--from A Certain World: A Commonplace Book, by W.H. Auden)

 Poetry stands mute before the ways the world divides the world against itself.

But the challenge is, most of the people who are passing through that system don't have the money either. So what we see is that people get assessed fines and fees, all of these fines and fees, they can't pay them, and that can end up driving them back into jail, which only increases the pressure on the jail system and the justice system overall and makes it more costly. So it's ultimately kind of a vicious circle. 

On traffic violations being a major driver of jail admissions       It was interesting, we just did some work in Oklahoma City, and we looked at just a week's worth of booking into the jail from the Oklahoma City Police Department, and fully a third of the people who were booked into jail were booked on traffic violations, and not DUI — everything but DUI, we took DUI out of the mix. We're talking about just violations — broken taillight, driving on a suspended license, failure to make a turn signal — most people got three or four of them, some of them had, again, warrants for not having paid other fines and fees, and that's sweeping them in.Seventy-five percent of the people in that one week of admissions were being booked into the jail for misdemeanors or lower. ... And only 5 percent of them were for any crimes against the person; in other words, not necessarily violent crimes, but maybe something involved hitting another person, etc. 

On the cost of being in jail       In addition to having to pay bail, they are assessed a cost for their housing, so it's as if they're in a hotel. ... There's a daily rate that they are responsible for. They will have to pay the cost of any lab tests associated with their case. They will have to pay the cost of drug testing.If they apply for a public defender, a lot of places actually have a fee. You have to actually pay money to apply for a public defender who you get because you can't afford to be represented.There are other costs — people get referred into programs, drug treatment programs, or they're required to be drug tested when they're out, they have to pay for those. They will often pay for the cost of probation supervision. 

On the irony of bail      The irony of bail is that its initial purpose was to make it possible for people to get out of jail, right? You couldn't be held in jail without a finding of guilt, or prior to a finding of guilt, without having an opportunity to get out. But the irony is that now bail really functions to hold people in. .... This means that if you have money to pay bail, you can get out no matter how dangerous you are, whereas if you are poor and all you've committed is a traffic violation, which is one of biggest drivers, frankly, of jail admissions in most places, you are going to sit in jail because $500 is a lot of money to you. 

On alternatives to bail    It seems remarkably simple, which is [that] one of the best ways of increasing the likelihood that people will show up to court once they're released is to send them a reminder. I think that's the first piece. A lot of people with community ties can be released without bail, and they will show up to court if you are providing reminders to do it.The other thing to remember is that, in fact, most people, the majority of people, do show up to court dates, and when people don't show up to court, this is not El Chapo sitting in the tunnels waiting for Sean Penn and the cameras to show up. These are people who live in the community, and the reasons why people don't show up to court are they can't get of work, they have child care agreements, they forgot the appointment, they never got proper notice of the appointment, the appointment was changed, their address was changed. And there are mechanisms that we can put in place that are actually focused on getting people back to court that don't necessarily involve bail.

(--from, Is America Engaged In A 'Vicious Circle' Of Jailing The Poor? 35:50, May 11, 20161:25 PM ETHeard on  Fresh Air   http://www.npr.org/2016/05/11/477547366/is-america-engaged-in-a-vicious-cycle-of-jailing-the-poor 

 Poetry is what being is written.

an awkward alignment

What is

Mine is yours

Yours is mine

Jesus sounds like a revolutionary radical outlining 21st century metamorphosis. A student wondered why he was not among the philosophers of education.

Gospel

John 17:1-11 

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said:
‘Father, the hour has come:
glorify your Son
so that your Son may glorify you;
and, through the power over all mankind that you have given him,
let him give eternal life to all those you have entrusted to him.
And eternal life is this:
to know you,
the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
I have glorified you on earth
and finished the work that you gave me to do.
Now, Father, it is time for you to glorify me
with that glory I had with you
before ever the world was.
I have made your name known
to the men you took from the world to give me.
They were yours and you gave them to me,
and they have kept your word.
Now at last they know
that all you have given me comes indeed from you;
for I have given them the teaching you gave to me,
and they have truly accepted this, that I came from you,
and have believed that it was you who sent me.
I pray for them;
I am not praying for the world
but for those you have given me,
because they belong to you:
all I have is yours
and all you have is mine,
and in them I am glorified.
I am not in the world any longer,
but they are in the world,
and I am coming to you.’ 

(--reading at mass, Tuesday)

Perhaps Jesus was a Buddhist.

Before Buddha was I am was all there was, is, and will be.

Yoga -- union and unity is true reality.

Everything else is noise, name, and smoke.

Obscuring, as the poet said, heavenly light.

O so tedious the temerity and timorousness in tempest within tepid and tremulous souls!

etymologies change

The calligraphy given 20 years ago had three words, "God spoken here."

I always thought the emphasis was on first word.

Now I think it reads "God-spoken here." Emphasis on third word.  As in -- What kind of place is this? It is a God-spoken 'here.'

long division; no more

A Tibetan monk once said that whatever we put our attention on, we mother.

At practice tonight we read from interview with Fr. Basili Girbau (d.2003), monk and hermit of Montserrat

Nowadays there is a great loss of religiosity, of religious feeling. Many people have turned their backs on religion. Why is this so? 

Well, we speak of everybody as if the world consists solely of ourselves, the people of Europe and America, when in fact there are many places in the world where there is much religiosity and much fervor, a great sense of God. Now, in the West this absence of religiosity is real. I think this is due, on the one hand, to the excessive value placed on material things, to comfort, to money, and, on the other hand, to the excessive value put upon the discursive capacity of rational intelligence without considering, truly considering,  the actual results. This leads to great intellectual and technical development that could bring about grand benefits but its results are as if in the hands of an irresponsible child. I refer, for example, to atomic energy, which has been used in a completely irrational manner to manufacture weapons. Fear of the enemy has led to an arming to the teeth, creating the potential for enormous destruction. Not very intelligent, eh? This is what happens when people live superficially, as they do today. Everything should be in proportion. There is no interior without exterior, no depths without surface, no surface without depths. What is terrible is to live on the surface without being aware of the depths, just as it would be terrible to be aware of the depths without being aware of the surface. Likewise, religion can be lived at a superficial level, for many barbarities have been committed in the name of religion. 

Do you think that religion needs to evolve? 

No, it needs to deepen. In religion nothing should evolve. What should evolve is people, who should discover their roots, the roots of the self, their origin, the source ... 

What should change in society in order for it to improve, to become more just? 

The heart of man. Nothing else. It's that simple. But it is so hard for most people, troubled by an almost insurmountable inertia. 

Can there be a spiritual renewal in the West? 

Yes, certainly. To the degree that men disillusion themselves. Disillusionment is a very positive thing. If one lives deluded, then disillusionment is a liberation. I recommend complete disillusionment, for everyone, for as a person becomes disillusioned so arises enlightenment. Disillusion in the positive sense, eh? In order to discover the negative of illusion and in order that what remains be real.

(--from, “Disillusionment is Positive”: Conversation with Basili Girbau, hermit of Montserrat, on Hermitary), http://www.hermitary.com/articles/interview.html

Attention must attend to everything.