retrieving original intuition

The old metaphor was good and evil.

The new metaphor is clarity and confusion.

pizza water campfire

mosquitos and blackflies 

weren't sure what to do 

first fire in steel ring 

dancing smoke 

garden circle

summer

Between one and two is three

Arriving

home here now

haiku, (on small planet)

High in dark sky

Airplane

Leaves sound behind

there

First light

Dove

“XXVI
True instruction is this:—to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter, and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for the harmony of the whole.”
(--Excerpt From: Epictetus. “The Golden Sayings of Epictetus.” iBooks. ) 

“XXVII
Have this thought ever present with thee, when thou losest any outward thing, what thou gainest in its stead; and if this be the more precious, say not, I have suffered loss.”
(--Excerpt From: Epictetus. “The Golden Sayings of Epictetus.” iBooks. ) iBooks Store: https://itun.es/us/2f5Kx.l

Mourning Dove gives

morning love to first light.

Forget the fuming and the fussing --

Return to daybreak, 

let night belong to night!

midnight

Absurdity reemerges.

No one can figure out what it means.

cloister falls into silence

There she is

Four AM mourning dove

Intoning antiphonal solitary chant

I listen

Wondering how to address God

Without saying anything

The cloister falls into silence

God is responding

...     ...     ...

St. Francis saw the world as cloister.

And so

Do we:

OF LIVING RELIGIOUSLY IN A HERMITAGE. 

Let those who wish to live religiously in hermitages, be three brothers or four at most. Let two of them be mothers and have two sons, or at least one. Let the two former lead the life of Martha and the other two the life of Mary Magdalene. 2 

Let those who lead the life of Mary have one cloister 3 and each his own place, so that they may not live or sleep together. And let them always say Compline of the day toward sunset, 4 and let them be careful to keep silence and to say their Hours and to rise for Matins, and let them 

p. 90 

seek first "the kingdom of God and His justice." 1 And let them say Prime and Tierce at the proper time, and, after the hour of Tierce, they may break silence and may speak and, when it is pleasing to them, they may go to their mothers and may ask an alms from them for the love of the Lord God, like little poor ones. 2 And after that, let them say Sext and Nones and Vespers at the appointed time. 

And they must not allow any 3 person to enter into the cloister where they live, or let them eat there. Let those brothers who are mothers endeavor to keep apart from every person and, by the obedience of their custos, let them guard their sons from every person, so that no one may speak with them. And let these sons not speak with any person except with their mothers and with their custos, when it shall please him to visit them with the blessing of God. 4 But the sons must sometimes in turn assume the office of mothers, for a time, according as it may seem to them to dispose. Let them strive to observe all the above diligently and earnestly. 5 

(--In the ancient collections of St. Francis’ writings found in the codices at Florence (Ognissanti), Foligno, Rome (St. Isidore's MS. 1/25 and the Vatican MS. 7650), as well as in copies of the compilation which begins Fac secundum exemplar, this Instruction is found at the end of the Admonitions.). http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/wosf/wosf10.htm 

 Then, toward considering a better relationship with this world, this cloister:

“Recent developments in philosophy of science and epistemology have led many philosophers to conclude that we cannot draw a sharp line between true and false theories. This is a problem as long as we claim that reality exists in the world, and illusions exists only in our heads. If there is a continuum between true and false theories, at what point should we claim that a theory loses its grip on the world, and collapses back into the head? The pragmatist answer to that question is: all theories and experiences emerge from the relationships that constitute the brain-body-world nexus. But some theories and experiences have an erratic and unpredictable relationship with the world, and thus relate to the world in an equivocal and confused manner. Because all of our theories are imperfect, and none is completely useless, we don’t have to posit subjective entities called illusions to explain why we make errors. We just have to say that some theories have better relationships with the world than others, and science and other forms of inquiry must help us find the best theories we can.” 

(--Rockwell, W. Teed. Neither Brain nor Ghost: A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theory. 2005. MIT Press. P. xvii-xviii.) http://www.epistemologyexpress.com/Cite_epist.htm

the simple complexity of one-an-other finally and fully seen and embodied

Discontent?

This is the summer of ours.

When a chaos of unleashed rhetoric pushes aside clarity and responsibly measured discourse about the difference of opinion, philosophy, and sensitivities we each embody.

There are among us the crude and uncompromising. They bully their way into the conversation intending to end conversation in favor of dicta and ultimata.

There are always bullies. They strut and sneer and threaten to bloody noses. They preen and posture intimidating anyone not fawning their regal personage with feint and false praise.

Thunderstorms and unbearable heat oppression is on the radar. Skies overcloud. Stifling heavy air umbrella the landscape.

Cheer up, the monk said, things are only going to get worse.

And the worse radiate passionate intensity.

This world, it used to be said, belongs to them. 

There are, the poet said, some people too gentle to live among wolves.

Guns will be omnipresent. Arrogance will seem omniscient. Bullies will loom omnipotent. These descriptives, once reserved for the notion of a benevolent God, have been bought at auction by the new class of ubiquitous and prevaricating provocateurs whose power and wealth admit no opposition to their deadeyed apodictic monotone intransigence.

As for civilization and its prospects, there is not much room for either optimism or joy.

We are likely to follow current obsession with zombies and walking dead and reruns of inane pseudo laugh track comedies.

Comedia dell'arte Punch and Judy assembly-line knockoffs pop up on television network and cable shows mimicking and parroting one another with sardinehead snippets of breaking news that jump out from the dark to steal our minds and kidnap hearts into basements of fear and absurd indictments of everything from dishonest little league umpires to duplicitous big league politicians to disgusting billionaire-league conflict of decency corporations and banks peddling mayhem and misanthropy to open changepurses eager to spill out pennies and nickels into the gutter.

Still, however, some remain undeterred.

It is all ignorance, anger, and greed -- the three poisons.

There is, I concur, a way of seeing into and under the surface distractions so strongly promulgated as (so-called) 'reality'.

I sit and gaze.

At nothing other that what longs to emerge from attentive presence.

The real.

As it is.

Without adornment.

Nor apology.

Merely what is true.

There, for our admitting. There for our fierce submission. There for our spiritual warriorship.

A kind of emergence that arrives with no-self we know, no-mind we recognize, no-heart compromise-able.

A devastating aloneness.

An unrelenting emptiness.

An irreparable brokenness.

As if...as if the Christ-mythology were suddenly to be unearthed as fact -- true and real -- and we awaken, with Buddha-heart, to the suffering all around us. 

And we see that the greatest revelation is stillness.

And the deepest realization is this, here, now.

Within and without, nothing else, only correlational intersecting interdependent interbeing -- a sharing community -- the most profound Corpus Christi, the loveliest bodhisattva, the simple complexity of one-an-other finally and fully seen and embodied.

This, this, is a prayer worth it's silence!

this, this is my body

Hoc

est

Corpus

Meum

if

If you are police in America and you shoot a black man...

If you are a wealthy celebrity and you sexually abuse multiple women...

If you are a billionaire celebrity who becomes president of a country and you fail to follow the laws and ethical rules of the office...

If you are alive in a time of hatred and intolerance and fail to speak out against injustice and oppression...

If...

If only...

If we don't...

If there were a God and that God came to earth and that God became human and that human saw the disgrace of hatred, oppression, and abuse...

If I could see my way clearly...

If I were you...

Is truth was clear...

If I said I love you...

If love was God...

If bodies were the dwelling place of God...

If I didn't care for you...