a dialogue

RE: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain

COLLAPSE

“A life depended on what the doctors answer was. Maybe he really didn't know whether his patient would live or die. But in any case, he could not have been one hundred percent positive. Which meant that he chose to play God. Was he right to do so?”(JB)

...

Your words make me think of words and the power they have. 

If the 2nd commandment, as you point out in the Catholic tradition, is “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” ... then, how does that apply to Dekalog 2?

A rabbi who studies Semitic languages pointed out that, in the Hebrew Scriptures  when the name of the giver of the 10 commandments was asked for, the response was recorded and reduced to four consonants “YHWH”. Vowels were to be added by those who knew what to add. He said that the pronunciation of the letters, which were simply an inbreath and outbreath, required no movement of either lips or tongue, and sounded like mere breath coming in and going out.

What could this mean? Is the name of God the practice and sound of breath? And does the vibration of sound, the pronunciation of words, have something to do with the vibration of God in the world?

When the doctor spoke, finally, in response to Dorota, and said not to have the abortion, that her husband surely would not live — was he “playing God” by attempting to persuade her to have the child? We’re unsure if he knew whether or not the husband would die — nor do we know whether his prime motivation was to attempt to retrieve in some way the lives of his own children killed in the war some 40 years earlier.

Such considerations revive, for me, the question of the name of God as it might apply to our ethical understanding of the world. Are we to consider that the name of God is the breathing of life? That we should not waste our breath on that which is not in the service of life, that is, anything that diminishes or denigrates life, that diminishes or denigrates people or other beings in life, any words or actions that are contrary to the caring compassion needed to assist life to thrive in the world? 

Is Kieslowski pushing us to think in a new way? And what of the feeling we might have that any interference into our ordinary (either/or) thinking is undesirable?

In other words, we ought not to take the name of (that which is) life in vain.

On another level, breath and words can and do bring things into being, and breath and words can and do remove things from being.

Do you think it is possible we do not (yet) comprehend and appreciate what the real value and function of words are?

(And perhaps the fact that the above words are being written as I sit in the parlor area of a hospice house on Saturday evening is influencing what I am writing.)

Thanks, JB, for the prompt!

—bh

meetingbrook described -- cosmotheandric campers

At morning practice, this arose, should anyone ask:

 Q: How do you describe meetingbrook hermitage?

A: We are Cosmotheandric Campers

Q: How's that?

A: Cosmotheandric* is a Raimon Panikkar term combining Cosmos, Theos, and Andros (universe/nature, divinity/God, beings/humanity). By an unseparated combining Panikkar is pointing to the new template of thought that must take into consideration all three aspects of the one reality permeating this existence. Undo focus on any one to the diminishment of either of the remaining two will result in continuation of fragmented, divided, deficient perpetuation of separation and discord.

Q: How does this apply to meetingbrook?

A: We wish to focus on visible cosmos, invisible divinity, and coming-to-see humankind.

Q: And "Campers"?

A: Campers stands for

contemplative 

and 

meditative 

practitioners -- 

engaging, 

recollecting, 

silenting.   

Q: Silenting?

A: As in quieting, stilling, and cultivating silence. (Not in the sense of silencing anyone -- but in the sense of creating an environment for listening and hearing the sound of what is, being, said.)

Q: Anything else?

 A: As cosmotheandric campers we wish to free, transform, perceive, and embody all that we find in creation, illusion, reality, and awakening (essentially the Bodhisattva Vows) and the two Great Commandments (inviting into love of God, wholeness, and neighbor).

We also note the character of such a worded designation as pointing to movement, impermanence, practice, ephemerality, diaphaneity, and peaceful presence -- qualities that allow a way through time and place encountered by everyone sharing this existence.

Q: Thanks...?

A: Yes, gratefulness, appreciation, and acceptance -- thanks, indeed!

...

* Cosmotheandric or theo-anthropo-cosmic (dimension)

“The cosmotheandric intuition is the totally integrated vision of the seamless fabric of the entire reality… the undivided consciousness of the totality” (The Cosmotheandric Experoence). 

“There are not three realities: God, Man, and the World; but neither is there one, whether God, Man or World. Reality is cosmotheandric. It is our way of looking that makes reality appear to us at times under one aspect, at times under another. God, Man, and World are, so to speak, in an intimate and constitutive collaboration to construct Reality, to make history advance, to continue creation: (The Triniity and the Religious Experience of man, London and New York 1975).  

 The cosmotheandric intuition expresses the all embracing indissoluble union, that constitutes all of Reality: the triple dimension of reality as a whole: cosmic-divine-human. The cosmotheandric intuition is the undivided awareness of the totality." What Panikkar proposes is to live so open to this triple dimension of reality, open to others, to the world, and to God that we might achieve harmonious communion with the all: the cosmotheandric reconciliation. It is a matter of an experience more mystical and ineffable than philosophic in the traditional sense, but it breaks the customary philosophico-theological molds. 

http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-cosmotheandric.html

haiku

it is about guns

it is, about, guns -- you see

they mostly kill, guns

goodbye country, hello neighbor

There must be a belief there are too many young students in the United States.

It’s open season on them. AR-15s are for sale, weapon of war, to be owned and used by Americans who belief their freedom to shoot whomever and wherever they wish.

It is curious, isn’t it?

Some say it is our unique quest to discern what is right and what is wrong and act on our findings in each situation..

There is a moment when deliberation gives way to speech about our findings, when speech gives way to action, when actions intimately entwine our life with others’ lives.

Is it really about guns?

Or is it about who we are and what we wish to be with one another?

close the schools with your feet

Perhaps it is

time for

all parents

to stop sending

their children

to school

until sane

and responsible

gun legislation

is enacted.

unnouncing

no

words

reveal everything

unnouncing

nothing

near-

by

until I’m not

Sometimes depression and sadness is the only response.

And when we get tired of that response, we will overthrow the stupidity of automatic assault rifles encouraged and sold cheerfully by hucksters.

Until then, it’s depression.

And sorrow.

Let the official condolence politicos offer their prayers and somber statements about the aberration of mass school shootings.

About mental health.

About domestic terrorism.

About the better place that innocent children and youth go to be with their dead loved ones and welcoming deities.

I’ll just sit.

In silence.

Depressed.

And sorrowing.

Until I’m not.

all I need is the air that I breathe

How do I pray?

You don’t.

Waddya mean?

You don’t pray. Prayer prays you.

Air is breath. Breath is God.

Each breath is God’s name in

and out of you.

on phone with Maryland

Faith is going on through the unknown.

Trust in God is the willingness to affirm reality as being what is here.

Each, an acceptance with compassion.

a gift of god riding bike in cemetary

Once it was the Bible

Then one who would be Christ

Who was locked inside a church

Until a monk remembered scripture


Today it is the cosmos

It is mind that looks through it

Existence asks for nothing

Some bow to empty air


Some say we have no myth

To narratize under our feet

I sit with woman in hospital room

Telling stories of mountain street


There is no meaning to life going

Forward— only a bit of soil

Underfoot as turning body

Asks after someone, is hit, and dies