no name at all

Finding the body, again, is finding the earth -- as if for the first time.

Richard Rohr on Thursday:

Please do not think me a heretic, but it is formally and theologically incorrect to say “Jesus is God,” as most Christians glibly do and then need to “prove.” Jesus is instead a third something—the perfect union of “very God” with “very man.” For the truly orthodox Christian, the Trinity must be “God,” and Jesus can only be understood inside that Eternal Embrace. From within this loving relationship, the Christ came forth to draw us back (through the enfleshed Jesus) to where we all originally came from (Genesis 1:26, John 14:3). This is quite a different description of salvation—and, dare I say, the whole point! I wonder if “reincorporation” might not be a better word than salvation. 

We have much less need to “prove” that Jesus is God (which of itself asks nothing transformative of us). Our deep need is to experience the same unitive mystery in ourselves and in everything else—“through him, with him, and in him,” as we say in the Great Amen of the Eucharistic Prayer. The good news is that we also are part of the eternal divine embrace, now as the ongoing Body of Christ extended in space and time. We are the second coming of Christ!

(-- from, The Cosmic Christ, Week 2, The Union of Human and Divine, Thursday, April 6, 2017) https://cac.org/union-human-divine-2017-04-06/

We are not far from that which is our true name.

Which, curiously, is no name at all. 

save the fireworks

Most people love fireworks.

It doesn't matter who's paying for them.

The cost of the 59 Tomahawk missiles is between 60 and 94 million dollars to replace.

Russia's  Syria, we're told, dropped barrel bombs with chemical weapons on civilians. The United States fired 59 missiles at an airport.

Commentators go nuts praising the fireworks.

I usually don't go to fireworks displays.

I didn't go to this one.

Nor did the effusing impress.

The Oval Office has a lot of dark clouds at its windows.

Let's think about and pray for those killed and harmed and displaced by what happened in Syria over the last  . . .  five years. We certainly don’t seem to want any of the millions of refugees from Syria. Nor does it seem to matter that a half-million people have been slaughtered.

Instead, some geo-political backroom show of newly-found character and conscience arises in the dry weeds of Florida-vacationing billionaires seated around a horseshoe poker-table trying to decide who deals and what’s the gig and what's wild.

Save the fireworks.

Don't lose the world.

There's danger afoot.

Where are the wise leaders? Give them a call.

They're hard to find.

listening ... in prison on Friday morning a conversation about God

God is

what is

coming

to be

here

what is God to be

God is

being 

creative

a fox lay dead on side of road

I thought i'd read some poetry

but found all the words

had left their thousands of pages

for places unknown --

Just like them

to absent themselves

once they discovered unloving

mouths and eyes on them

decrypting violence

We know bombs. No matter how justified we think they are.

We don't know how to welcome the stranger. No matter how terrible their predicament.

We shrug. And say god bless us and the world. No matter how hypocritical that sounds.

رحمة ramah

‎Syria, Syria, Syria —

mercy,
‎
rahmah,  رحمة

it's a true story

On Discussion Board, a student posts to another student:

RE: What question is life the answer to?  

The book you described (Mister God, This is Anna) sounds fascinating!  

I'll have to look into it... "My question for the ARÊTE paper, is about the meaning of life. What if I treat 'life' as the answer, and look for the question?   What is the result of sex? Life.    

From an Atheistic point of view, what else is there?  (Not a rhetorical question, if you have ideas, please share them with me)"  

But then this brings back the (perhaps quite cliche by now) question of whether the chicken or the egg came first. If sex is the question and life is the answer, what question does sex answer, or rather, what is the origin? Doesn't life have to exist first? Ah, it seems to me that everything is an answer and everything is a question, and it just keeps going back further and further!  

Fascinating!

On Discussion Board, moderator response:

 RE: What question is life the answer to?  

 "If sex is the question and life is the answer, what question does sex answer, or rather, what is the origin? Doesn't life have to exist first?(student) 

I know the answer. It's a true story. 

An ancient elderly couple from time before time suddenly and unexpectedly woke up and found themselves sitting at a kitchen table as the sun came in the window.  They looked around, having no idea who they were, where the were, and how they got there.  

She asked him, "Would you like some coffee?"  

He, dizzy and disoriented, looked blankly at her, at the empty cup on the table, and began to say "Yes" -- when the word (in his confusion) came out backwards (his synapses weren't hitting on all cylinders yet), and, miscalculating the alphabet, backed up one letter, from 'y' to 'x' -- and he said, instead of "Yes" -- "Sex". 

She looked at him, puzzled, and went to get the coffeepot.  

And this is why there has always been a confusion and puzzlement about sex. It is reversed 'yes', with the 'y' replaced by 'x'.  

 There you have it. There are so many stories from ancient forgotten memory that are no longer told.

Ask me some time about the real reason "bread and butter" was replaced by "money and work" as description of what we do to make a living .

without surcease

I was in DC 4April1968.

The sorrow, the loss, the anger was pulsing.

Forty-nine years later the same consternation, mistrust of narrative, and wariness of the will to correct injustice lingers.

On that balcony a dying took place that is grieved without surcease until even now.

not a joyful time to come

Worry about North Korea.

Worry about Syria.

Worry about Russia.

Then there’s the current administration.

Pick one of the first three.

A skirmish, a terror incident, a diversion from the administration’s scandals.

Soon, I fear, we will be at another war.

And the rascal prevaricators will find camouflage behind new American lives lost and the national distress about a new sorrow giving cover to old tactics of political survival.

It’s not a joyful time to come.

daily prayer

Conversing the unknown