a split decision

Of course we love him.
He was irrepressible, Muhammad Ali.
Still, the violence to brains and psyches by bashing bodies for sport.
It is a worrisome glory that courts debility.

this thinking now occurring

In prison this morning the drama players performed pieces of dialogue from Dead Poets, Hamlet, King Richard, Goodfellas, Glass Menagerie, and Purple Rain.

At same time, in back row, sitting between myself (the volunteer) and warden, the tall man (inmate) with goatee passed me articles on Leahy and Heidegger -- intellectual work he is doing now that he is out of segregation after "ten months, this time" (he says).

Like monks in scriptorium during dark ages we eke out fragments of illumination in pericopes of passing phrases during background discourse.

"I'm dying here," he says, as purple rain falls.

This thinking now occurring surrounding us.

...and in the end

This is the way we are. The statistical probability of screwing up is fixed (but not final) and fluctuates between often and far too often.

Some call it the law of averages. Or Murphy's law. Some the human condition. Some weave the notion of sin with its need for redemption into the mix.

Whatever we call it, we know what it is.

The good is not the enemy of the perfect.

The good is a pragmatic and possible goal.

No matter what precedes it.

uncertain improvisation

Tuesday Evening Practice!

As Phoebe nest suddenly falls from under eaves.

Perfectly shaped empty space, sitting now on unplanted flower box -- a sudden uncertain improvisation -- the building Phoebes take their efforts to other side, an older transition site -- as once intended nesting home no longer holds.

Cabin zazen MU!

 Anicca visit!

Anicca, ( Pali: “impermanence”) Sanskrit anitya, in Buddhism, the doctrine of impermanence. Anicca, anatta (the absence of an abiding self), and dukkha (“suffering”) together make up the ti-lakkhana, the three “marks” or basic characteristics of all phenomenal existence. http://www.britannica.com/topic/anicca

 Charles Olson wrote:

There is no intelligence

the equal of

the situation

(--from poem, Love)

lacrima

Yes

Mozart's Requium in D minor at Camden Opera House yesterday, Memorial Day afternoon, was preceded by America the Beautiful.

 Down East Singers, musicians, conducted by Tony Antolini.

Bellissimo e profundo!

wit and winsome wisdom -- pray we learn to care for what is right in front of us.

re. Giant algae blob called ‘emergency’ for Camden pond, By Stephen Betts, BDN Staff, Posted May 29, 2016, at 3:17 p.m.

http://bangordailynews.com/2016/05/29/news/midcoast/giant-algae-blob-called-emergency-for-camden-pond/?ref=comments

Gotta love the wit and winsome wisdom of comments section.

At issue here, as always, is how every commenter and reader is under thumb of the powerful and arrogant. In Camden it is managers of town and snow bowl. In United States it is war-entrepreneurs and thin-thougted enthusiasts demanding wars-for-profit and bodies-for-bullets to prop up in front of news coverage for nationalistic consumption.

There are always those who smugly think they know better and know how to cheer for private interests over common good.

This Memorial Day, what say we stop deployments, remember and pray for those dead and deadened by war, and figure out how to sideline the arrogance and idiocy of war as national pastime?

The dead from war are to be honored. The deadened from war, whether disillusioned veterans or illusional civilians, are to be helped through the terrible toll direct terror and fighting inflicts, or the numbing mindless indifference of the "it's not my problem" crowd. Wit and whimsy are poor substitutes for steady gaze and fierce compassion toward the work that remains to change minds and hearts from the glory of war to the (seemingly impossible to instantiate) love of life and earth and one another.

"What's wrong will always be wrong" said the poet Richard Hugo -- and I submit that what's right is each time created new.

It starts with cleaning up your own barn, back yard, junk room, algae'd pond, local town leader arrogance, state leader imperviousness, federal government patronization and pretentiousness. Finally, clearing up our own minds' cluttered beliefs that what matters most is power and winning, being number one and mocking anyone not inside our narrow and selective way of thinking.

We don't bury the dead and forget them. We remember them. We don’t walk away from polluted ponds, rivers, or oceans -- rather, we work together to revive a sense of belonging, belonging to the earth, your God, family, community, and, finally, belonging to yourself.

But we ought to bury the belief in my country right or wrong, water the ground with sorrow for offenses committed, and cultivate the soil for growth of awakened community.

And pray we learn to care for what is right in front of us.

May those killed in war rest in peace! May we preserve life in peace for the rest of our time on earth!

waking up, looking around

We remember

And pray for

All those dead

And deadened

By war --

This

Memorial Day

a time of defect and imperfection

Remember. So as not to forget.

The "Moving Wall" is in Thomaston. I've not gone to see it yet. It stands, this morning, in rain.

Vinny D's name is on it. I have his letters from Vietnam. My friend the left handed catcher on Brooklyn sandlots. 

I remember. His letters said he didn't want to hear complaints about how we lived in the States.  The people he saw in Vietnam had next to nothing. The contrast lit up his mind and broke his heart.

Then the news came home, and he didn't -- not alive -- a land mine.

We remember so as not to forget.

The way a people suffer.

The deaths of war.

The terrible cost.

The stupidity.

The flaw.

seeing Christ is emerging

Corpus Christi, Yes --

The outer of the inner, the here of the beyond, the within of appearance.

The body of Christ is particular, singular, and historical. 

The Body of Christ is the whole of it, our commonality, the community sangha of each place in every time.

When, at communion, it is said "the body of Christ" -- these words are equally declarative, exclamatory, and interrogative. 

This is the body of Christ. This! This is the body of Christ!!! This? This, is the body of Christ?

Body is Christ -- this -- this is the thing, the mystery we do not understand.

To the question "What is Christ?" comes the answer "What is" is Christ. Everything seen. Everything appearing. As it is . Where it is. When we see it.

Yes, when we see it. There is an observatory aspect to Christ-reality.

It requires present seeing of its phenomenality. A seeing presencing that initiates reciprocal emergence of reality.

Christ is emergence. Not univocality, but reciprocality. There is no Christ without but for reciprocal recognition of Christ within one another and all manner of beings appearing in the world.

Hence, Christ is between us, or not at all.

The question "Do you believe in Christ?" is asking a much more simple, basic and profound question, namely, "Is there anything between us?"

(Not, "What separates us?" But "What is between us?")

Until and unless we come to see "what is" between us, we remain fragmented, separated, cut off from the really real reality longing to emerge from, into, as  this existence this place this time this being this revelation this liberation this no-other realization of complete creation accomplished in our presence.

The words "What is this" are equally declarative, exclamatory, interrogative, as well as evocative, and exhortatory.

These words are a spirituality unto itself, yes, unto Itself!

Combined with "body of Christ" the words "what is this" reveal themselves as a zen phenomenological aseity -- [aseity is defined as existence originating from and having no source other than itself] --

this seeing as itself between us between itself as seeing this.

Either way you look at it, we are not alone as long as Christ is, emerging.

My morning koan:

What                  Quid

is                         est

this ...                 haec ...

body        

of                       Corpus

Christ                  Christi