Saturday, May 21, 2016

sepsis


We destroy a hospital. We call it a mistake. We say, “Sorry.” We think that makes things all better.

We are deluded.
“We started a fire, good effects.” ... 
“The investigation concluded that the personnel involved did not know they were striking a medical facility,” Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of the military’s Central Command, said at a news conference. “They were absolutely trying to do the right thing.”  
(--from, Doctors With Enemies: Did Afghan Forces Target the M.S.F. Hospital?)                                        http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/magazine/doctors-with-enemies-did-afghan-forces-target-the-msf-hospital.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmagazine&action=click&contentCollection=magazine&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0 
Yeah, the right thing. Shooting and bombing and killing. 
How disappointing that language is ruptured and septic from trying to force and fit the horrible into it.

Friday, May 20, 2016

What do you want to talk about

Truth is God. 

That's what Mohandas K. Gandhi held. 

Conscience is God. 

Who has ever seen God?

Truth be told, God has nothing to say.

A clear conscience needs no accusative.

Needing nothing else to say what's true.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

let him not think

All we can do is ask. With no expectation of response. So, we ask -- Where is God?
God is everywhere. He is immeasurably vast and yet everywhere he is close at hand, as he himself bears witness: I am a God close at hand, and not a God who is distant. It is not a God who is far away that we are seeking, since (if we deserve it) he is within us. For he lives in us as the soul lives in the body – if only we are healthy limbs of his, if we are dead to sin. Then indeed he lives within us, he who has said: And I will live in them and walk among them. If we are worthy for him to be in us then in truth he gives us life, makes us his living limbs. As St Paul says, In him we live and move and have our being. 
 Given his indescribable and incomprehensible essence, who will explore the Most High? Who can examine the depths of God? Who will take pride in knowing the infinite God who fills all things and surrounds all things, who pervades all things and transcends all things, who takes possession of all things but is not himself possessed by any thing? The infinite God whom no-one has seen as he is? Therefore let no-one try to penetrate the secrets of God, what he was, how he was, who he was. These things cannot be described, examined, explored. Simply – simply but strongly – believe that God is as God was, that God will be as God has always been, for God cannot be changed. 
So who is God? God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God. Do not demand to know more of God. Those who want to see into the depths must first consider the natural world, for knowledge of the Trinity is rightly compared to knowledge of the depths of the sea: as Ecclesiastes says, And the great depths, who shall fathom them? Just as the depths of the sea are invisible to human sight, so the godhead of the Trinity is beyond human sense and understanding. Thus, I say, if anyone wants to know what he should believe, let him not think that he will understand better through speech than through belief: if he does that, the wisdom of God will be further from him than before.                   (--from The Instruction of St Columbanus, abbot, The immeasurable depths of God),  Second Reading , Office of Readings, Thursday 19May2016) http://www.universalis.com/-400/readings.htm
Anything to say?

Nah.

You?

Nope. 

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

What do we make when we make ourselves known

I'm curious.

Does that remind you of anything?

Together we are the curiosity of life seeking to find itself in us.

Nice to know your (you're?) acquaintance.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

4:29 am

Yes,


First light.

First prayer.

First gratitude.

Monday, May 16, 2016

maybe, nothing opposite


The comforter, the Morman gentleman said, the Holy Ghost.

It was a good conversation.

When differences discuss themselves, something different emerges.

What's that?

Simple. What difference different?

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Showing ... up

I'm not one for parties. But I do love an ungathering wherein attendance is haphazard and a constant surprise.

Rohr writes:
In response to God's call, Moses quickly comes up with five objections: 1) "Who am I?" 2) "Who are you?" 3) "What if they do not believe me?" 4) "I stutter." 5) "Why not send someone else?" If it were not the classic biblical text, I would assume this exchange to be a cartoon in the New Yorker! In each case, God stays in the dialogue, answering Moses respectfully and even intimately, offering a promise of personal Presence and an ever-sustaining glimpse into who God is--Being Itself, Existence Itself, a nameless God beyond all names, a formless God previous to all forms, a liberator God who is utterly liberated. God asserts God's ultimate freedom from human attempts to capture God in concepts and words by saying, "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14). Over the course of his story we see that Moses slowly absorbs this same daring freedom. 
(--Richard Rohr,  Face to Face Knowing, Sunday, May 15, 2016) 
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1103098668616&ca=d1ae3651-a118-41b9-a7fd-acd3ae28b4cd
Maybe Pentecost is "an ever-sustaining glimpse into who God is -- Being Itself, Existence Itself, a nameless God beyond all names, a formless God previous to all forms, a liberator God who is utterly liberated."

Like reading Daniel Berrigan's America is Hard to Find (1972) for morning porch practice, forty four years later ready to hear what hung around so long waiting for audience.

My church attendance on Sundays is solitude and prayer in the quiet of hermitage.

(Weekdays are more intimate, in morning coastal masses, a more inquiring community of unarticulated attendance.)

And inasmuch as everyday is our birthday, I can skip the cake and candles, face 90° east, and allow sun rising birdsong and dew-cool breeze to chant liturgical devotion in this monastery of no-other.